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Carb treat: on its own or with a meal?

Many coffees are unpleasant drunk black - the coffees sold on the high street are vile, to my taste, so I only drink percolated coffee - often watered down as my husband prefers it stronger than I like - and I add a dessertspoonful of extra thick cream to the water and mix it in before pouring. Cream does make a big difference to the drink.
 

Yes I completely empathise with you there - I think when all of us are diagnosed it’s bit of a shock so we’re looking for improvements as quickly as possible, hence your mentioning the hyperthyroidism and insulin sensitivity and hope that the diabetes might go away. But you have completely hit the nail in the head with your comments regarding making healthier food choices. When we are first diagnosed, it’s essentially our bodies literally shouting at us ‘Hold Up - I can’t cope with this any more!’ - our dietary intake that is. So we have a choice to either listen to it and improve, or ignore it and suffer. You have made the right choice and rest assured the improvements will come. So well done! Keep it up!!

The focus on losing weight and dietary change is really the most important things at the moment. The reason being that it’s not just diet that impacts our health markers, it’s also the amount of weight we carry. Both contribute to our bodies struggling with Type 2. For me, I noticed that as the weight fell away over time, I saw a direct impact in how my hba1c was improving as a result - and I realised it wasn’t just diet alone, but a diet that perpetuated sustainable weight loss that was really making the difference. The more weight I lost, the more improved my hba1c became. It takes time, just be patient, you will get there

In terms of food choices, try to make choices that are low in carbs. The reason being that when we reduce our carbs, our bodies have a natural disposition to start pulling the fat from our bodies and using it as a source of energy, burning it off - and that’s what perpetuates the weight loss. It amazes me how that happens - but it does! So try to get in a habit of looking at the labels on food packs and choosing the ones with lowest possible carbs. The general rule is around 10g or less per 100g - However, it’s also determined by serving sizes. For example if a product has 25g carbs per 100g, but you know you will only have say a 5g teaspoon of it, well that serving is only 2.5g carbs, so all good. And likewise, if you know you will have 150g of something that has 10g carbs per 100g, well that is a15g carb serving. I’d be looking sideways at that and thinking about making some other choices!

Same for whole food, count the carbs. Diet Doctor has some quite useful visual resources for a quick look here:

https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/foods

And it’s the same principal, serving size determines the total carbs eaten.

For me personally, I aim to stay around the 50g or less mark per day for total carbs, but for you, when you’re ready to move onto the next phase, I rekon a keto diet mixed with some intermittent fasting is what’s really going to help you keep losing the weight quite quickly but more sustainable over the longer term because I’m guessing the diet you’re on at present will likely have the keytones up to some degree already, so a natural move.

Here’s a good overview on it…
https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/keto

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haha, well. Coffee is the one thing I refuse to NOT sweeten in some way when I adjusted my diet! That lead me to try pretty much every zero carb sweetener I could find! In the end I settled on Erythritol as it’s not loaded with all the chemical residue a lot of the artificial sweeteners have, it behaves pretty much like sugar in baking and most things and while the flavour’s not exactly the same as sugar, it’s close enough for me to act as a replacement. Have you tried it? Amazon has it. I use granulated. Do you put cream in your coffee? It softens it’s flavour considerably. That and a bit of erythritol works for me…

Some facts…
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/erythritol

In terms of sweet sensitivity, in my experience it’s more about averages. In the first 6 months of diet change I stopped all sweet tasting food except for some sweetner in my coffee, coke zero from time to time or some fruit (mostly apples) when I was getting a pang for something sweet and needed to take the edge off. The rest of my diet had no ’sweet tasting’ foods really. So the majority ruled and I think that was what sensitised me to it. It’s more a gradual thing over time though than a kind of sudden arrival. Probably also depends on how much sweet stuff you're already having too.
 
@Ribbet I think we have a similar approach! I actually dislike the taste of most sweeteners, I don't notice at first but then over time my body has a negative reaction like "this is not good stuff! Stop eating it!" And I get sensitised to the taste.

Erythritol was the one I tried to use in baking but it tasted like sawdust. Was trying to make a variant of cocoa biscuits with peanuts that I'd liked as a child. When I first started making adaptations to my diet I was eating a lot of raw chicken salads and my treat was whole cheese scones. I seriously didn't mind not eating sweets if I could have a hot cheese scone! But that's gone because of trying to eat low carb. I checked back and my daily total of carbs has been between 60-65 carbs a day so not extreme - that's because of the fibre issue (having a spelt and seed bread slice each day).

It's a learning journey. I have got almond and coconut flour now, so shall have to experiment.
 
@Ribbet. Those charts you linked were really useful, I learned stuff. Especially happy that pecans are the lowest carb nut - I'd thought from the sweet taste that they'd be high! And whiskey has ZERO carbs. Yay!
 

Yes, I have to be careful with aspartame (in things like diet cola's etc) that stuff can be a bit weird with me.

That sounds really odd with the erythritol, I've not experienced that. Is it the granular or the powder version you're using. Always use the granular in baking.
Who says you can't have cheese scones? Or at least a lower carb version...
Try this one here.
They're not exactly the same as traditional flour but a pretty good assimilation and they do taste great! The recipe volumes and all the ingredients working together give an excellent flavour balance, however just one tip when you start cooking with almond, coconut and seed flours (or 'meals' as they are often called on the packet). Sometimes the recipes liquid ratios need modifying which involves following our instincts a bit as the dough comes together. For example in this recipe she stated 45g of almond milk. Well I had to take that all the way up to about 160ml to get the moisture I wanted in the scone (admittedly I didn't weigh the flours, just used cups for the volumes). Anyway I think a lot of it has to do with how the different flours are milled by different manufacturers (especially coconut flour as it absorbs a lot of moisture) and also the fact that what is a 'medium' egg in one country might only be a small or large one in another. Anyway I usually go for a bit more moisture than not enough in doughs like this cos it's easier to add a bit of baking time if necessary than end up with something too dry. Tihs type of recipe dries a little too as it cools so more is better than less.
This recipe here describes the kind of texture in step 3 of the instructions down the bottom. Not sodden but definitely needs to be moist yet still pliable as a dough.
Anyway don't be afraid to try, it doesn't take long to get a feel for it once you've had a few goes. And the rewards are great in every way. These will be nice with some salad lunches!

Here's how mine turned out pre and post cooked. I added a bit of the almond meal as well so you can see what the texture of mine is like I've not heard of fat reduced almond flour before so just to compare...
 
Ribbet said:
If you like, post the original recipe I'll see if I can find an alternative.
Click to expand...

Wow, thank you. This is the original, it comes from my childhood in New Zealand - written down by my mum.

4oz butter
4 oz sugar
1 egg
6oz flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 dessertspoonfuls cocoa powder
8 oz salted roasted peanuts

Cream butter and sugar. Add egg and beat.
Add dry ingredients.
Lastly add peanuts.
Form into balls and flatten with a fork.

Bake at gas regular 4 for 15-20 minutes, until they have lost their sweaty look.

Can be iced with chocolate icing (or trickle iced for less sweet).

(But I can learn to love them without icing I think!)

I bought some Xanthan gum today. Looks like it might be useful.
And it turns out that what I used and got a result like sawdust was in fact xylitol.
 

Ok, well I’m sure there’ll be something about that’ll be a good replacement for it. I’ll have a look around and give it a test before posting to make sure the ratios are working properly.

I’m just conscious I’ve turned this thread into the Food Channel a bit haha … so what I’ll do once I’ve got it working is post it over on the ‘Post Your Recipes Here!’ thread under Food and Nutrition and drop a note back.

Yes I don’t think Xylitol works too well in baking. Erythritol is great and behaves much the same as sugar, and pretty much 0 carb as well. Some facts on Xylitol here.

Xanthun’s definitely a good choice as a binder. Take a look at this Keto Bread and scroll down to the bottom. He shows a range of different binder results. There’s a lot of different Keto Bread Recipes there too to experiment with.

Oh, also, I meant to mention, if you don't have a Spiralizer then I highly recommend them for low carb/keto diets. Truthfully, once you try courgette/zucchini as a pasta alternative, you'll be wondering why you ever bothered with pasta in the first place. Plus many other wonderful veges you can try. I have this one but they come with table top winder handle versions too.
 
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