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Going to dip my toes in LC - do I need armbands?

RFSMarch

Well-Known Member
Messages
693
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Tablets (oral)
So having spent my first three months just trying to stabilise... time to dip my toes in the world of Low(er) Carb!

Registered for the program here but probably not going to make much headway as I head off to a tournament in a couple of weeks, but I did download the recipe/meal plan and there's a good few i can try my hands at before I leave/when I get back as I am home for a fortnight before last tournament of the year (THANK GOD!!!!!!!)

Been looking at some of the recipes, and I spent an obscene amount of time looking for an amazing low-carb version of tartiflette using cauliflower instead of spuds for Sunday dinner. I am going to experiment with a couple of recipes I found and merge what I think the best of them is!

Next stop... far more normal A1C...!
 
Go for it! I started on diagnosis, keeping to under 100g carbs/day, then after 6 weeks when my blood sugars plateaued I dropped to between 50-70g/day, that’s where I’ve stayed. My last HbA1c was non diabetic
Hope it works for you too.
 
I'd take a rubber ring with you as well! Low carbing isn't something to go into blindly, read and read again. There are pitfalls but be kind to yourself, we have all slipped up at some point. Fingers crossed for you.
 
Guzzler said:
I'd take a rubber ring with you as well! Low carbing isn't something to go into blindly, read and read again. There are pitfalls but be kind to yourself, we have all slipped up at some point. Fingers crossed for you.
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Yeah which is why I am picking and choosing from the meal planner and continuing down my merry way of shifts and travel... I wanted to get my cholesterol fixed but I can still remember feeling so shell-shocked from diagnosis - GP was all "cut out sugar, fizzies ... oh and for your cholesterol NO DIARY..."

Then I found this lovely forum, browsed the Low Carb stuff and ... wait... dairy dairy everywhere!

Anyway - now I have stabilised a little, and honestly can only give this time when I am not away, I am going to pick some of the lovely recipes... and I was positively salivating at some of the very yummy recipes here!
 
We all have different carb amount tolerances. I started off at somewhere near 120g (with low fat!). I did lose weight and my BS dropped but sort of plateaued, so I halved them and went back to full fat. Eventually I had to halve them again with increased fats mainly from protein based foods such as extra eggs and cheese. That brought me to 30g carbs and that's where I have stayed, although some days it is less than that, and more than that on Sundays!
 
Rachox said:
Go for it! I started on diagnosis, keeping to under 100g carbs/day, then after 6 weeks when my blood sugars plateaued I dropped to between 50-70g/day, that’s where I’ve stayed. My last HbA1c was non diabetic
Hope it works for you too.
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That's a good goal to start with... luckily I love home made soup and where I am working they have a nice soup bar (can you have a bar for soup?) so I will try for under 100g for the next two weeks before I abandon myself to media centre catering (!)...
 

I wouldnt' worry about the cholesterol. In practice if you low carb properly including the dairy your cholesterol numbers will get better nice high HDL and low trigs exactly what you want! Good luck in finding things you like
 
I just dove in and went for it - dinner after diagnosis was a chop - I ordered a whole hogget on the way home from the clinic - a well grown lamb as it is not as fatty as a younger animal. I ate a lot of salads at first, but was no longer diabetic after 80 days.
Now I am not even prediabetic and I have seen my weight drop and my ability to cope with carbs has increased a little - I am not even a year from diagnosis. I have a lot more energy and my knees are a lot better than they were - though the tablets made me ache all over, and itch too. I just stopped taking them. Not the sort of thing a sensible person would do, but I don't seem to do sensible.
 
check out www.dietdoctor.com too for some great meal ideas..
 

There are some fabulous sites out there for LC living. Just some of my favoured sites are:

ditchthecarbs.com
ibreatheimhungry.com
sugarefreemon.com
kalynskitchen.com
lowcarbyum,com
lowcarbmaven.com
twosleevers.com

I subscribe to the first couple, and that alone has helped me find more and more sites. Many of these sites do periodic digest posts of the "Top 10 Ribs Recipes", for example. The beauty of those is they have links to other LC sites, which broaden the horizons.

To collate recipes and ideas (I'm not always massively good at following recipes), I record things in CopyMeThat. CopyMeThat allows me to keep recipes from all over in one electronic folder, and to "follow" people, which just means I can see their saved recipes. There are some massively creative people out there.

Good luck with it all. There is some fabulous food out there.
 
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Fabulous suggestions... looking forward to hopefully being a lot more victorious with Cheat's Tartiflette than I was subbing coconut and almond flour into pancake batter. The less we say about THAT little adventure the better [/bleah]
 
RFSMarch said:
Fabulous suggestions... looking forward to hopefully being a lot more victorious with Cheat's Tartiflette than I was subbing coconut and almond flour into pancake batter. The less we say about THAT little adventure the better [/bleah]
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The other site you might want to try for recipes is yummly.com .

Once logged in, you can save personal settings, including dietary style and food intolerance. Because not all naturally LC food/recipes are marked as such I stated I didn't want wheat, pasta, rice, potato and bread etc. I haven't hit any limitations on my preferences.

Yummly allow you to record your culinary competence, plus any preferences for as well as spicing levels and desired prep/cook times.

OK, you have to read the recipes and sense check them, but it's a great blue-sky-thinking sort of site. Again, I save the things I fancy in CopyMeThat. In CopyMeThat I can add tags for anything I define such as LC, GF, Mains, Indian, Sides, Beef/Chicken or the like, which allows me to find recipes quickly.

Yes. I am a fan.
 
Having a look at yummly and already I am being distracted from writing tournament pages. This is LETHAL @DCUKMod !!!

I really just want a bit of inspiration having spent three months modifying some of my favourites. I know when the season starts again and with the travelling, it is not something that will be sustainable in the slightest. But what I can do is when I am home, I can try to start with one low carb meal a day and then when I am not working a sportsdesk shift I can look at at least two a day.

For me while I could certainly drop a few more pounds, that is not my motivation behind the plan. It's to get those BG levels down. If I lose weight in the process then so much the better.
 

When the new season starts and you're in the groove, you may find it a bit easier than you think. I hope so.

Are you pulling you recipes together in CopyMeThat? I love that it allows me to keep recipes from everywhere together, then I can filter by chicken, Mexican, or whatever.

There are some very creative people out there, and I'm happy to learn from them.
 

My cholesterol has gone down since the low carb diet - and I can't tell you how much cheese and cream I eat !!!!
 

Honestly I doubt it. It varies from tournament what food you get, how much credit is on your accreditaion if at all. Madrid and Rome for example give you nothing!!! So you have to use the same concessions as the punters and Madrid and Rome have nothing healthy!

Same true for Indian Wells. You have enough for one meal... and all their concessions are awful. Deep fried with mega spuds! The nice places you save for your dinner really so that leaves lunch. Birmingham give us sandwiches, that's it! Anything you want, again you have to go to the concessions for a burger or fish and chips!

But my friend recommended some Waitrose cuppasoup which might be my rescue, fairly low in carbs and I can take them with me where I go. When I head to Singapore in a couple of weeks I will have a stock of protein bars, some of these soups (we work until 3am there, sigh) and my trusty Lemon & Ginger & Peppermint tea bags... And I think that will be the best I can do when I am away... but it is a plan that is far better than anything I managed this season!

I just registered for CopyMeThat but I need to do some work tonight but will definitely have a play... have already started pulling together a ton of yummlies!!!
 
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I can now confirm I have fallen down a Yummly hole and I fear I will never get out...
 
Guzzler said:
I'd take a rubber ring with you as well! Low carbing isn't something to go into blindly, read and read again.
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@RFSMarch I love your 'dipping the toe in' analogy! Tempted to shout out 'come on in, the water's lovely!'.

Different approaches work in different ways for different people. It sounds like you're coping really well with what is a very recent diagnosis, and the results in your signature show that in spades!

I'm type 1 and find my blood glucose more straightforward to control by eating a less carb-rich diet than I used to (despite being able to use insulin to cover carbs).

Keep testing the water - and the red stuff! - and see how you go. There's never any completely 'right' or completely 'wrong' answer in this game - see what works for you, and keep smiling.

Love Snapsy
 
RFSMarch said:
I can now confirm I have fallen down a Yummly hole and I fear I will never get out...
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I just hope you have filtered to reflect your personal choices, or you may be gone a looooong while!

Glad to have been of (dis-)service to you................ :s

Ahem.
 
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