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I know I need low carbs but what about fat?

NoCrbs4Me said:
If you are eating natural (i.e. unrefined) fat in whole foods, you'll be fine. Avoid margarine and veg/seed oils.
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Thank you for the advice. The last 3 days I have stopped Gliclazide and my blood readings are reading higher, between 7 and 9 instead of below 7. I have also started eating some low GI carbs. I do not want to go backwards. Thanks. Jeff
 
jlm said:
Thank you for the advice. The last 3 days I have stopped Gliclazide and my blood readings are reading higher, between 7 and 9 instead of below 7. I have also started eating some low GI carbs. I do not want to go backwards. Thanks. Jeff
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You're welcome. What kind of "low GI" carbs? Things like brown rice and whole meal baked things tend to raise blood glucose almost as much or more than the regular versions.

Why not just cut out all starchy food?

Do you have a blood glucose meter? If so, I recommend following the advice in the link below about how to use your meter to lower your blood glucose:

http://www.phlaunt.com/diabetes/14045524.php
 
Not an expert here, as I just eat less carbs than before. But what I do know is that you need your calories. So if you cut out carbs, you need them from somewhere else. Your sister got an idea how to get them if you're also limiting fats?
 
jlm said:
Thank you for the advice. The last 3 days I have stopped Gliclazide and my blood readings are reading higher, between 7 and 9 instead of below 7. I have also started eating some low GI carbs. I do not want to go backwards. Thanks. Jeff
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Carbs of any sort are not a great idea if you want to reduce blood sugars.
Try ditching them for a couple of weeks and see what happens. Also up the meat and fat to achieve satiety.
 
Check out this study about insulin requirements for low and high fat meals:

Diabetes Care. 2013 Apr; 36(4): 810–816.

This is true for me, I have changed my diet in recent years to low sat. fat (<10g/day) and high carbs, and my insulin requirements have almost halved (basal from 22 to 14 per day and carb ratio is up to 23 and still gives me hypos)! This isn't related to exercise either as I am doing less than before.

Hope you find what works best for you. Good luck :)
 
Bopps said:
Check out this study about insulin requirements for low and high fat meals:

Diabetes Care. 2013 Apr; 36(4): 810–816.

This is true for me, I have changed my diet in recent years to low sat. fat (<10g/day) and high carbs, and my insulin requirements have almost halved (basal from 22 to 14 per day and carb ratio is up to 23 and still gives me hypos)! This isn't related to exercise either as I am doing less than before.

Hope you find what works best for you. Good luck :)
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Excellent for you!!! The study of MY BODY says NO WAY
 
derry60 said:
I didn't realise that tomatoes were off the list. I cannot have a salad without my tomatoes. I also like tin tomatoes,but choose the lowest sugar ones.
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Don't worry.... I eat tomatoes (I've got a greenhouse full of tomato plants and harvest about 2kg a day at the moment). I just keep in mind that tomato is the carby ingredient in a nice mixed salad and only have one medium size one. If I'm having meat, chicken or fish with the salad and no other carb it still works out to be a low carb meal. :)
 
Chook said:
Don't worry.... I eat tomatoes (I've got a greenhouse full of tomato plants and harvest about 2kg a day at the moment). I just keep in mind that tomato is the carby ingredient in a nice mixed salad and only have one medium size one. If I'm having meat, chicken or fish with the salad and no other carb it still works out to be a low carb meal. :)
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Thank goodness. I cannot do without my tomatoes. I only have 4 cherry small tomatoes on my salad.
 
derry60 said:
Thank goodness. I cannot do without my tomatoes. I only have 4 cherry small tomatoes on my salad.
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I must look like a tomato with the amount I eat. I have 6 or 7 cherry toms at least 6 times a week, plus one large tomato on the vine grilled 3 or 4 times a week. I occasionally have half a small tin of toms but much prefer the raw/grilled ones.
 
Bopps said:
Haha I don't blame you Kristin251
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I should also have mentioned when I first started insulin I was told to eat 20 carbs per MEAL ( not day, as I do now) While eating those carbs I was taking 5-8 units with each meal and yo yo ing. Now I eat less than 20 per day, mostly in avocado, above ground veg, nuts and seeds and I take 1/2-1 unit with meals. So my vlc/ high fat diet has reduced my insulin substantially as well.

Goes to show.... we are all very different.
 
Geordie_P said:
Yes, good call Robbity: Dr. Bernstein is *very* strict, so I should be clear it's really a guideline: what I like about it though, is that it really outlines the foods that *may* be cause for concern. Honestly, when I was first diagnosed, I would have thought that things like bananas, tomatoes, oatmeal etc would have been healthy choices. I actually started my 'diabetes control diet' on a diet of oatmeal for breakfast, tomato soup for lunch and an orange or dragon fruit every day for my snack, because I had informed, credible sources that advised a diet along these lines. In fairness, the low-calorie angle and weight-loss I had doing this meant that my sugars *did* go down, but I wish I'd known Bernstein's list earlier, coz it really would have informed me as to what is, and isn't 'carby'. Banting's old-time pamphlet on corpulence was another good one (for the most part)
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Robbity said:
When you reduce carbohydrates, you need to replace them with an alternative food type as your energy source. With LCHF this is provided by fats and oils.

Low Carb High Fat is a slightly misleading name, as
  • you will be eating normal fats instead of reduced fat/lite products
  • the fat content in an LCHF diet may often just be higher as a proportion of your total carbs/protein/fat ratio due to the reduction in carbs, rather than due to much extra fat being consumed.
And it's worth being aware that:
  • there is nothing wrong with full/normal fat foods - they were an essential part of our diets for 100s of years prior to the 1970s, and we survived pretty well on them
  • eating fat doesn't make you fat, it's generally a diet high in carbs that does so
  • bad cholesterol levels are not necessarily related to dietary cholesterol
  • you body is actually designed to use both fats and carbs as its fuel and will (re-)learn how to do so once you've reduced the carbs in your diet to a sensible low enough level to trigger this process again... and so be able to work more efficiently without you getting hungry every five minutes due to needing a carby top up to your fuel tank :D
I've eaten a low carb normal fat diet for over 3 and a half years, I've lost a fair bit of weight and kept it off, I've reduced my glucose levels from well into the diabetic range down to low pre-diabetic/just about normal and kept them there; I've also come of metformin and most of my other long term medications, and amongst other things have got rid of long term brain fog and reduced the incidence of food related migraines.... So for me LCHF and scoffing fat has done me much more good than any harm.

Robbity
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I completely aggree. The fact is, if you eat more vegetables (as you should in LCHF) it is actually very hard to eat enough calories because they fill your stomach up so much. When I started I ate all I could and ended up around 1600 kcal a day. I actually had to almost force feed myself in order to come back to safer intakes (I didn't need to lose weight in the first place). That is why most people here say they didn't check their fat intake and yet lost weight.

There are some people saying, and I believe quite truly, that this myth on fat being the most awful thing comes from the 60s-70s where industrials who wanted to use loads of sugar to hide the poor taste of the food they sell because it is a super cheap product. So they financed biased research to tell the government and the world that all the bad things in this world come from fat, and that you can eat all the sugar you want. You can see the result when you check the evolution of prevalence of metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes and obesity in the US and UK notably following the 70s.

Obvioulsy don't stuff yourself with loads of bad fats though, but things like cheese, walnuts and olive oil are doing nothing to me really, and I eat loads.
 
Watch those cherry tomatoes, they are higher in sugar than the normal ones. My meter tell me they should be eaten in half the amounts to ensure the same raise in BG. I don't buy them but have spotted the difference after being given them when out of the house.
I find that choosing lower carb foods rather than just counting the carbs eaten makes a big difference, but you do need to be careful when taking glucose lowering medications, as it can be very effective all by itself - by results shocked me considerably.
 
Resurgam said:
Watch those cherry tomatoes, they are higher in sugar than the normal ones.
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Cherry toms are 2g carbs per 80g.
Toms are 3g carbs per 80g.

According to my Carbs & Cals book.

They are both OK for me. Cherry toms most days for lunch (6 or 7 of them)
It's tinned toms that raise me.
 
Eldra said:
I completely aggree. The fact is, if you eat more vegetables (as you should in LCHF) it is actually very hard to eat enough calories because they fill your stomach up so much. When I started I ate all I could and ended up around 1600 kcal a day. I actually had to almost force feed myself in order to come back to safer intakes (I didn't need to lose weight in the first place).
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Adding butter to your veg can help with this likewise with olive oil based dressings on salads. There are also a lot of nice drips/sources you can make with double cream as a base. Grated cheese is also nice on veg.
 
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