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Being diabetic aint cheap :O

F

fendertele

Well-Known Member
Messages
221
Right now sticking to the low carb high fat is really breaking the bank!

I'm working out roughly 200 pound a month just for me lol!

Meat being the big one... not being able to eat cheaper options like beef burgers and sausages due to the additives means the more expensive meats like steak,chops and chicken breast is the options and can easily get through 20/30 pounds worth a week then eggs... dark choc 2 pound a bar..... greek yoghurt more expensive than regular and it all adds up.

Any tips how to eat lchf but a bit cheaper ?
 
|I spend around £20 or less a week on food for me. Lots of full fat milk, cheese, eggs. I dont like red meat, so I dont eat it often. A whole cooked chicken last me for 5 main meals. I eat veg in season. I make soups out of veg and chicken stock from the roast, plus cooking the bones. There is no need to eat a lot of meat, or steak, or only chicken breasts, any part of the chicken is good. I use butter and olive oil too. I have tins of tuna from Aldi, drained cans are only around 80p a tin, and a tin can make a lunch and dinner.

There are three adults in my house, including me, and we spend around £300 a month on food, total, and we eat well.

What are you eating over a day? How many carbs are you having?
 
Breakfast

Protein shake
3 x bacon
3 x eggs with small dab of butter
Mayo or no added sugar/salt ketchup.

lunch

Tuna
cheese
mayo
sometimes eggs.

Dinner
2 x chicken breasts or red meat ( steak, chops etc..)
3 x eggs
cheese
mayo or no added sugar/salt ketchup.

snack

Greek oyghurt
few squares of 90% dark choc.

Normal day of eating for me.
I train very hard at gym so need to have quite a high calorie intake daily around 3000 cals.
 
that is a LOT of protein. Why are you saying that the expense is due to low carbing? How much did you spend on food before low carbing?
 
I eat burgers and sausages. I just choose the right ones, check the labels. Good ones are under 2g/100g carbs sometimes under 1g. Not the cheapest brands but not the most expensive either. Often Lidl/also or Sainsbury’s own brand but not the nasty ones. Mince is cheaper. As are chicken drumsticks and thighs. Greek isn’t too bad but again depends what brand you buy. Again Lidl and Aldi’s own are good and always look for the offers on big brands.
Also consider what you aren’t buying now. Were takeaways and processed foods on the shopping list before? Lots of snacks etc? Was chocolate on the main shop or did you pick up cheaper bars gone in two bites on the road and thus unnoticed £ wise?
 
Love tuna but limit myself to 2 tins every couple of days due to mercury levels or else this would be my cheap go to meat.

Cant eat nuts get itchy and asthmatic... this includes peanut butter and hazlenut spreads.

So limited to meats,eggs,cheese,shakes and greek yoghurt and 90% dark choc
 
I cant eat nuts or pulses for protein either. How much has your food bill gone up since low carbing? maybe we can help with some suggestions.
 
lucylocket61 said:
that is a LOT of protein. Why are you saying that the expense is due to low carbing? How much did you spend on food before low carbing?
Click to expand...

Well pre diagnosis.

I would have the same amount of calories but it would come from cheaper meals/sources.

Cereal and milk
Lasagne
Pizza
curries

etc........

I would still have chicken here and there but wasnt eating tons of eggs for example.

I basically hit 3000 calories but used carbs to get to those numbers and carbs are cheap.
 
lucylocket61 said:
that is a LOT of protein. Why are you saying that the expense is due to low carbing? How much did you spend on food before low carbing?
Click to expand...
In contrast we had 4 or 5 adults (all active males with large appetites other than me) to feed and there’s no way on this planet I could do it for £300 a month and have any quality or our preferences met (we aren’t that fussy or posh honestly) . I obviously eat a lot more protein than you as it didn’t sound unusual to me.

Agree it depends what the “before” menu was how much the change hits e purse
 
how much more a week/month are you spending now?
 
lucylocket61 said:
I cant eat nuts or pulses for protein either. How much has your food bill gone up since low carbing? maybe we can help with some suggestions.
Click to expand...

I would say I was around 30/40 a week for just myself and now i'm closer to 60/70 then add the 30 pound for testing strips it just starts to creep up a little.

Im considering buying direct from butchers ? more meat for my money plus more eggs for money ?

It's the increase on things like this.

I now buy 4 bars of 90% dark chocolate to last a fortnight coming in around 8/10 pound.
Before I'd buy milk chocolate and get 4 bars for 4 pound and usually much bigger so would last longer etc...

Greek yoghurt is much more expensive than regular.....

But the biggest kicker is the meat

2 pieces of steak is like 4 pound
chicken breast fillets 5 pound lasts a few days....

This all climbs if your eating a high calorie diet to maintain your energy output.

I'm thinking butcher might be a better option now than supermarket since it is purely meat and eggs i buy ?
 
I am not suggesting you manage £300 a month with 2 extra adults. My figure is for two large adult males, and one small woman (me). Your figure would be around double that.
 
£200 a month is £45 a week. Buying trays of meat from a butcher, and freeing them in portions, saves a lot of money.
 
lucylocket61 said:
£200 a month is £45 a week. Buying trays of meat from a butcher, and freeing them in portions, saves a lot of money.
Click to expand...

My most recent shopping just delivered on monday was 63 pound and its now saturday and i've eaten all the red meat and two tubs of the 3 greek yoghurt tubs i bought along with 2 bars of the dark choc... so come monday i will be doing a top up shop of around 30/40 pound to have meat back in for next week.

so yeah roughly 200 a month for just me.

Yup im gonna look into it... im thinking meat hampers for 30/40 pound should last a fortnight and maybe 2 dozen eggs for cheaper than supermarket price.
 
Where do you shop? Maybe you need to rethink which meats you buy if £ is an issue. It doesn’t need to be all steaks.

Your focus is on energy yes? not calories. The proteins and fats give you energy but the metrics don’t match the old fashioned calorie count. Once fat adapted that gives you the energy you need without the need to count calories. You are mixing two systems together that simply don’t blend. Yes you need enough physical energy. Focus on that not the artificial concept of calories. @Mbaker perhaps you as a gym user can help out here with some resources to support the point I’m trying to make.

most people eat less dark choc than milk. Try upping the % so you need less at a time
 
lucylocket61 said:
I am not suggesting you manage £300 a month with 2 extra adults. My figure is for two large adult males, and one small woman (me). Your figure would be around double that.
Click to expand...
That and a bit more often. If pushed I could lower it a bit but food is our only real pleasurable outgoing with no social expenses etc these days and little in the way of other vices.
 

Energy and calories I need to maintain certain number of calories to either bulk or prevent muscle loss... when im knowingly cutting calories to burn fat I then need to maintain a certain amount of protein to prevent too much muscle loss.

So right now im not trying to lose weight or gain weight (gain muscle) i'm maintaining.

To maintain I need to hit 3000 cals for example and within those calories I still need to hit a certain % in protein just like when cutting to maintain muscle.

Sorry i'm confused by the the last part about dark chocolate ? I'm eating Dark choc to avoid my craving for milk chocolate and the sugar that comes with it so I eat 90% dark chocolate and 2 pieces at a time gets me past this craving.. which i have twice a day.

This means I go through a bar in 2 days.

Are you telling me to increase the percentage of the dark chocolate ? or how much of it eat ?
 

It's the reaction i get from eating things with yeast or rusk etc.. I'm getting tested for it but I had really bad heartburn and pain when swallowing food for a very long time that disappeared when I dropped carbs completely so being diagnosed as diabetic also led to figuring out I have a slight intolerence to gluten or whatver else is in bread as the feeling of eating glass disappeared once i dropped all carbs.. must be a similar reaction to when someones skin comes into contact with stinging nettles.

I had been eating sausages and beef burgers at the start of my lchf journey and realised i was getting the same issue whenever I ate either of them and read the label and saw it contained wheat/rusk/gluten etc. whatever it is they use to form the sausages and hold them all together.,
 
I eat good quality sausages and burgers, you can find ones with very low carb content if you look around. I have abandoned chicken breast in favour of either chicken legs (around £2 for 4) or chicken thighs - skin-on for the best crispy-skinned roast chicken in the air fryer, skin-off for curries and the like.

And you don’t mention veg - don’t forget, you can add in as much low-carb veg as you like to bulk out your meals, meat is not essential and additional protein and fat can be supplied by cheese - can be cheap block cheese, nothing fancy, especially if cooked like for pasta-free lasagne or something. And the cheese-crusted omelette as mentioned on a different thread a few weeks ago is a pretty awesome belly-filler!

And what about frozen fish? This is cheaper than fresh, often fresher than fresh since it’s frozen at sea or immediately from the fish farm. Just avoid the ‘river cobbler’ aka ‘basa’ which is a catfish farmed in vietnam and tastes of nothing at all, with a texture of damp cotton wool.
 
how about upping your fats? or more cheese? Green veg is an option too. That would increase your calories.
 
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