Hi Sunshine
Glad it was helpful.
I found that if I threw out the store bought food and did some baking once a month, I could freeze and make my own ready meals, which was a better option. Everything store bought is loaded with carbs to preserve it, but it doesn't have to be. One thing I learned was to read the nutritional info on the back and ignore the labels on the front. A lot of things that are called low carb, really aren't. In fact, I don't think I found one low-carb option in big supermarkets that was genuinely low carb. The mass production places are still loading carbs into everything, and you need to avoid low fat things like the plague.
If you're cutting carbs, but not quite enough and then doing a lot of energetic exercise, like running, it will knock you out at the start of the diet because your body is still using carbs for energy, but it's not getting enough fuel because you're cutting them. Meanwhile, your fats are sitting on your waist. So the reason I cut my carbs completely was to get my body to use my fats for energy faster--you've gotta remove the carbs to force your body to change over so it eats the fats. The process is called 'Ketosis'. The Keto diet eats away at the belly fat and all the other fat in your body and uses it for energy once it kicks in. But, it's really important that you don't work out on my diet for the first two weeks while your body changes over, or you'll feel like you've died. So it's a case of having a lazy couple of weeks where you focus on cutting carbs. You need to let your body get used to the diet for at least two weeks before doing anything else. You'll have a few tired moments, but they don't last long, and eating something always helps them go away. So stock in high-fat and low-carb foods and grab some good movies to watch while you lounge on the couch.
I had two stone to lose, so I lost weight faster, like all diets, the closer you get to your target weight the less weight you lose, but my mother is on it and sticking to 40g of carbs a day she lost 5lbs in a week with only 1 stone to lose and doing no exercise at all. She's not diabetic. She just wanted to never be diabetic, so she jumped into the diet with me. But she found ketosis harder than me, and I think it's because of her doubled up carb intake. Basically, the more carbs you give your body, the longer it is going to take to change over to fats for energy. Your body will keep trying to use the meagre carbs (thus making you tired) instead of changing over to fats. So, I shocked mine into changing over faster to get it to work, but even then I had a couple of days of feeling tired during my first two weeks.
Once the two weeks are over, if you're still losing weight you stick to it. But, if it stops losing weight you start counting calories (based on your BMI) and doing HIIT exercise to get rid of the final few pounds. By the two week time, you'll be feeling better and full of energy, so that's pretty easy. After that it's a case of maintaining your weight and keeping the carbs low, but low carbs can be 50g-70g a day at that point. You'll still keep using fats for energy, so the carbs can go up a little bit. Personally, I don't want mine to go back up though. I can't see the point in having carbs. They do nothing for my body that is good.
Also, watch out for caffeine. It does give energy, but it also desensitises your body to your natural insulin. So, I went decaf on everything, to get it out of my diet.
I was only diagnosed with diabetes two weeks ago, but luckily one of my best friends is a nutritionist, so she set me in the right direction on day one. I still haven't seen my doctor's nutritionist or found out about blood sugar levels yet. I'm still waiting for the appointment. I got told to lose weight, so when my friend told me about the keto diet (which is for body builders and oddly, obese people who can't get out of bed) I went into research mode and looked at how I could manage it. Oddly, a lot of my recipes came from the bodybuilder's forum or chefs with diabetes.
I'm wondering how cheese can spike your blood sugars. I wonder if it's the kind of cheese you use? Anything 'low-fat' is high-carb. Replace low-fat spreads with full-fat butter. Try full-fat cheese: Cheddar, Double Gloucester, Wensleydale etc. I use cheddar in just about everything because it has no carbs and tons of fats and proteins. Full-fat milk is another to have, but use it sparingly. Low-fat foods are loaded with carbs, even skimmed milk and yoghurts. For me, I had to unlearn everything I knew about diets and turn it on its head. So on the cheese, I'd check what kind you eat. One triangle of Dairylea has 1g of carbs in it, but one giant block of cheddar has 0 carbs in it. You need to be eating the highest fats you can on this diet to make it work. Milk is something to use sparingly. I have a splash of some each morning in a decaf coffee and that's it. And avoid cereals like the plague. A small bowl of porridge or some museli can be had, but for the carb count in them compared to how filling they are, I just removed them from my diet totally. I'm happy with some coconut cake for breakfast instead.
For the start, ignore calories and exercise and focus solely on low carbs. You physically can't eat too many fats on this diet. High fat foods fill you up, so after a full-fat meal you will be stuffed and not need anymore food for several hours. If you eat meat there are lots of foods you can have, but I haven't researched them because I'm a veggie. But I know I saw a lot of recipes with bacon in them on my travels, so that looks like a good thing to have. This is a good guide to what you can eat. The low carb food pyramid:
http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/whattoeat/ig/Low-Carb-Food-Pyramid/. The top tier, you avoid or use sparingly, the lowest tier you can eat as much as you want of. It gives you an idea of the better food types to choose.
Eggs are a great source of protein, so omlettes etc. are a great option. Pancakes with soya flour, rather than regular flour will cut your carbs immensely. Anything with wheat, corn and even oats in it are carb monsters, so you need to change the flour you use. Also avoid yeast if you can. When it's cooked it turns into sugars, so extra carbs.
Here are the flours I know of so far:
Linseed meal/Flax meal -- This is an ancient food source that has been used since ancient Egypt for baking. It's high in protein and fats, low in carbs and full of Omega nutrients and iron, which is why a lot of people recommend it. It's a super food. You can put the full seed or the meal in a lot of things. It's got a nutty flavour, so I tend to mix it in with savoury recipes for the nutrients. But you can make museli out of the whole grain with berries in it.
Coconut flour -- It's high protein and fat with a lot of nutrients. It's also low carb. I find everything I bake with it tastes like coconut, so cakes, cookies and macaroons are all good with this. I've got a recipe for coconut chocolate chip cookies from the scone chef that looks really good for this, but there are lots and lots of recipes you can use. Just Google 'Low Carb Recipes'. If one serving of something filling is under 7 carbs, I usually give it a try. The scones are like a whole meal because of the cream in them, so they work for a nice breakfast.
Soya Flour -- It's high protein, fat and low carb. It was a super food in the 1970s. It's a pale flour that resembles regular flour in many ways. It has a very mild nutty flavour, but works well in everything pretty much. I'll often use it for pastry. I actually ate this before the diet began. I'm surprised I don't see it more in low carb recipes, since it's the lowest carb flour I've found. (14g carbs per 100g of flour).
Almond Flour -- Again it's high protein and fat and low carb. I haven't tried this one yet, but I'm told it's a great flour substitute.
Hemp Flour -- Another one I have yet to try.
Depending on what you make, you change up the flour. For sweet stuff, I tend to go for coconut or almond flour. For savoury I like linseed or soya flour. I think sweet flavoured baking is easier to replicate, because coconut flour is so good. It's naturally sweet in flavour, so you don't need many artificial sweeteners in it to make it taste great. You can also use 85% dark chocolate sparingly to decorate your macaroons for example. Be careful with dessicated coconut because they sweeten it. Go for coconut flakes instead. Bascially, you have to read the carb content on everything. In flours, under 30g of carbs per 100g seems to be the max carbs you want.
Also, you need new recipes for most things you make. There are recipes for just about everything, but they are all made a bit differently to the regular recipe (an example would be bread with no yeast and five eggs in it instead).
I've compiled a list of recipes I plan to try. I wonder if I can attach the document here? It might be useful to you. No, it doesn't look like I can, but if you just Google 'low fat coconut cake' for example, there are 100s of blogs from people around the world with recipes to try, and most of them are pretty good. I found a lot on food.com.
A Daikon Radish is a very mild radish (I think it comes from Japan). It looks like a massive parsnip and is also called a 'Mooli' which can be bought online at Ocado (Waitrose) and offline I found it in most Japanese stores. If you cut it up into chip shapes and fry it in sunflower oil or even butter, it tastes just like a potato. The only difference is that it has stringy insides, so a celery kind of texture. To avoid it being a weird chip, just cut it width ways, so the strings are all cut short and not noticeable. I was amazed, because raw, it tastes like a radish, but when you fry it up like a chip, it tastes exactly the same as one. I heard there's also a method of boiling the stringyness out of it to make mashed mooli (mashed potato) and roast potatoes etc.
Hermesetas are just sugar replacement. There are a lot of artificial sweeteners, and it's a toss up between natural sugars and lab made sugars. In tea or coffee I'll use the no carb option because it's less carbs. Some people don't like them because 'sucralose' (the 0 carb sweetener) has the possiblity of chlorine traces in it, but the thing is that tap water has traces of chlorine in it, so to be honest, I'd choose the 0 carb sweetener over the natural sugar substitute. I'm fighting diabetes, so any other effects aren't my biggest concern. But, there is a new sweetener coming out soon, that I'm told is 0 carb and 0 risk. It's made with steam. So that would be a solution for both. People who want only natural will use Stevia sugar. It's higher in carbs, but purely natural. People just cutting carbs will use sucralose based sweeteners (Splenda or Hermesetas etc.) It's a choice you make on a personal level I think, but I go for 0 carb because I'm focussed on beating diabetes rather than living organically, right now.
For a quick meal, something I really like is what I'm calling a Mexican salad. To me, it tastes just like a cheesy nacho platter. I slice up some iceberg lettuce and cover my plate in it. Then I chop up a tomato and some cucumber and put it on top of the lettuce. Then I grate up as much cheddar cheese as I want and sprinkle it over the top of the salad (the more the merrier). I mash up an avacado with half a crushed garlic clove in it to make some guacamole, then add a couple of tbsps of Doritos mild salsa, a couple of spoonfuls of my guacamole and a couple of spoonfuls of sour cream (on the sauces the more the merrier). This makes a gorgeous salad that really tastes like a nacho platter. It's full of nutrition, protein and fats, and it fills you up for hours. I feel like I've had a four course meal after it, and it's yummy if you like Mexican food. You can chop up bacon or chicken and throw it in there too if you eat meat. This was my staple diet for my first week while I was trying to find recipes etc. It takes a few minutes to make and it's good in all the right ways. The only thing with carbs in is the salsa, but 100g is about 6g of carbs, so at the most you'll be looking at a 7g carb meal with this.
Another one is Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing. You have to buy the mix on Amazon (It's called Hidden Valley Ranch Mix). The flavour is what they use to flavour Cool Dorito Chips, so if you like those, you'll like this. You mix a spoonful of the powder with half a pot of sour cream, then dip things into it. My favourite is slices of cucumber dipped in it. You can also drizzle it on salads and do just about anything with it. It's very moorish, high protein and low carb as a cool dressing for a lot of things.
At the end of the day everyone likes different things. If you weren't on a diet, what would be your favourite fatty meal? What's that meal you used to ban on low fat diets? Finding the substitute for that is usually the answer. Mine were cheesy nachos and cheese sandwiches. So, I found a way to replace them and keep the flavour.
I hope all this helps
(I do write essays don't I? lol)