ditchy76 said:
Ok, so what kind of diets do you guys follow? By that I mean for breakfast, lunch and dinner?
I have never had any guidance on diet so I appreciate all your comments.
Cheers
Paul
Breakfast - Ham Omlette, plain yoghurt with some "berries" mixed in, bacon egg and mushrooms
Lunch - Wholemeal or better Burgen Soya bread sandwich cheese or prawn or meat based, yoghurt
Dinner - I started by basing a lot of main meals around 250g of mixed veg then half a jar of curry or dolmino sauce. Add to that chicken or mince etc. If you have to have rice or pasta with it limit those to around 2 or 3 level tablespoons of stuff.
Snacks - Cheese and celery, nuts, small amount of 85% dark chocolate, max of around 8 Ritz crackers
Treat - India takeaway. By a dry curry or chicken tikka mossalla is ok, add an extra chicken tikka starter then a couple of small onion bhajis, mushroom bhaji, spinach bhaji. Again if you must have rice buy plain pilau rice as its fried rice which is best for levels and limit to a couple of level tablespoons. No Nan bread, maybe one or two potatoes out of a Bombay potatoes
Chinese takeaway - Chicken Green Pepper and Black Bean sauce, beanshoots, maybe a small amount of chow mein but the noodles are not too good for you. Chinese is very hard to do safely.
Pub Meal - Do the classic steak and chips but say "no chips" and ask for a bacon and fried egg topping instead. Mushrooms, peas and a few onion rings are fine.
Drinks - Tea, coffee (no sugar but sweetners ok). Any diet drink so diet coke etc. Pure fruit juices are out as they are full of sugar.
Other people will advise some more but as you can see what I've listed has cut out sugar and drastically cut down on starchy foods such as rice, pasta, potatoes, bread, cereals and flour based products. Like I say eating this stuff has given me the blood levels of a non diabetic, normalised my cholesterol and I've lost well over 3 stone since diagnosis
As you get used to it you find there are some really nice things to eat. This forum has 100's of recipes.
Use your meter to determine what is safe for you as the quantities of starchy things people can tolerate varies.
How to resist temptation -
Write you blood level readings down and watch how they progress. Get competitive with them
When you are tempted to go off the rails imagine the bad thing you are about to eat will send you instantly blind for the next hour . The trouble is T2's consequences are down the line so you need to get your head in gear to believe its hurting you NOW (which it is)
Think about imposing all the grief of being blind, being an amputee or having a heart attack and needing your families support. Do you really want to put them through all of that?