Lack of low carb options in stores!!

[KennyA]

Goonergal went there in 2022 and was very positive about it! https://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/threads/what-have-you-eaten-today-low-carb-forum.75781/post-2516894

Ah, brilliant - that's a sound recommendation.

 

[AloeSvea]

If I move to NZ do you want a lodger??

Actually I was throwing my supermarket receipts in the bin and realised I had computated it wrong, and the food came to NZ$100 (the alcohol amount was correct). So a small shop of LC/Keto food and drink - NZ$140. Don't ask me to turn that into british pounds. My English forebears jumped on boats to get out there generations ago....

And it would be great to have another fun person with T2D in the house! We could take turns going to the supermarket with our keto food lists! (Do let me fill you in with some of the, ah, quirks of my galpal before you move in though - one is midnight loud kitchen cleaning, followed up by 5 am loud kitchen cleaning....) (I am currently in the countryside catching up on lost sleep!)

And social drinking? Well that goes without saying! Always enjoy a good drinking companion. I have been painstakingly explaining to folks that low sugar alchoholic beverages are not off limits for those with T2D, in fact, are a low-carb drink, for the past ten years. I explain they are thinking about calories, and that is a whole other ballgame. (As is safe amounts of alcohol!) The worst time was about six months after diagnosis explaining to an otherwise very nice English bar tender in Stockholm that, yes, I could indeed fairly safely have a prosecco as a type two diabetic. That I was thinking carbs, and she was thinking calories. (Yeah, sorry folks - she had quite a bit of padding on her, and I had lost mine, so....)

 

[retrogamer]

The worst time was about six months after diagnosis explaining to an otherwise very nice English bar tender in Stockholm that, yes, I could indeed fairly safely have a prosecco as a type two diabetic. That I was thinking carbs, and she was thinking calories.

For many years now I've been overweight. 5ft 8in tall and hovered around 18.5 - 19 stone. No idea what that is in new money, I'm of the age where my school teachers did not know whether to teach metric or imperial measurements!

For quite a number of those years I tried on many occasions to lose weight by watching calories, reducing fat content etc. I would oven and grill everything but I'd never lose weight.
My problem, I was still eating too many carbs. I would eat pasta, thinking it was healthy, I would still have chips with a curry or something but I would oven bake them. When I had a drink it would be beer, always a beer drinker me. Never really touched spirits and only occasionally wine.

I was diagnosed in September/October last year, I had already lost some weight (the unexplained weight loss they talk about) but I was still about 17 stone.

When I joined this forum I was given some harsh but fair truths about diet, I had no idea that everything I always believed was healthy was actually most likely to be the cause of my diabetes and my heart attack nearly 5 years ago.
I immediately cut all carbs from my diet, but because I am not much of a vegetable eater I opted for a carnivorous diet. I do love meat and dairy. I also now drink whiskey and coke zero (yes I know it's not really good for me but we're restricted enough as T2s!)

I'm now 14st 7lb. Only reason I'm not lower is I'm taking a break from the strict <20g carbs per day as I don't think its really sustainable from a nutritional point of view long term. I'd rather do it in bursts, a few months of strict dieting then relax a little for a few weeks or so.

It's worked for me and I still enjoy a drink or three!

Oh and my last Hba1c result was done at the end of January:

AFAIK that is more than acceptable compared to the three digit number it apparently was last year

 

[Art Of Flowers]

After being diagnosed with T2 diabetes I cut out food containing sugar. I was shocked that my "healthy" Country Crisp breakfast cereal was 20% sugar. However, other cereals I used to eat such as Special K was 84% carbs and like rocket fuel. So I cut out all breakfast cereals. When buying food I look at the carb content and it is shocking to see that so many products have added sugar to make them taste more appealing. Sugar is highly addictive.

For breakfast I now eat Alpro NO SUGARS plain yoghurt with has 0 carbs. For milk in tea and coffee I use Alpro NO SUGARS Almond Milk (long life or chilled). Oat milk has lots of carbs, so I avoid that.

I used to eat Thai rice as we have a rice cooker, but I stopped that as it was high carb. I also stopped eating potatoes, bread, pizza and became more selective on the vegetables I eat. We steam vegetables as they taste better. The only fruit I eat now is strawberries, raspberries and blackberries with cream. Most other fruit is too high in sugar. I use https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/vegetables and https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/fruits for reference.

For stacks I eat Baby Bell cheese, nuts and avocado, plus the occasional 90% cocoa Lindt chocolate.

I think you have to cook food yourself rather than buy ready meals if you want a low carb diet. Low carb helped me loose a lot of weight. Previously I joined weight watchers and put all the weight back on a few weeks after I stopped going. Carbs=Body Fat, but fat in food is slow burn energy which doesn't raise blood sugars.

 

[Art Of Flowers]

There is an interesting you-tube video of the amount of sugar in supermarket food ...

 

[AloeSvea]

I think you have to cook food yourself rather than buy ready meals if you want a low carb diet. Low carb helped me loose a lot of weight. Previously I joined weight watchers and put all the weight back on a few weeks after I stopped going. Carbs=Body Fat, but fat in food is slow burn energy which doesn't raise blood sugars.

To be really secure in a Keto or Low Carb diet - yes I agree with you. But, and it's a big but, the reason for this thread is the pull we have to lowering our personal domestic work load (as in cooking and dishes and kitchen cleaning).

And to do that, unless one is wealthy enough to have a cook, a cleaner and probably a personal assistant , (or what used to be called a 100 years or so ago, ' a maid of all work' in Britain according to those excellent docos you can get on the subject on youtube).means buying as low carb as we can get food at the supermarket. (or specialty stores, and online - especially if one is lucky enough to live in California, I have noted in LCHF online shopping websites before but Londoners educate me if there is plenty in your environs....)

Or, as @retrogamer and I have been joking about - getting together with other LCHFer/Keto eaters with the big incentive of having a dietary disease and wanting to live as long and as healthily as possible, and sharing those household duties to buy and cook in bulk-er, to lessen the daily load. And on the pocketbook one must include?! By buying in bulk?

(Currently, retrogamer and I live oceans and a kertrillion kilometres apart, on other sides of the world, drat it, but hey! It's fun to dream, and joke, for sure.)

 

[AloeSvea]

Just some more on the prohibitive cost of keto/LCHF ingredients , and of course ready-to-eat specialty low-carb food. Since the global cost of living crisis especially, of course.

I had a hankering for LCHF/Keto muffins (cold season in Aotearoa/NZ, and being hit by polar blasts), and trotted off to too expensive member of the supermarket cartel in my countryside area. Ingredients for muffins, making 14 of them came to NZ$42. Didn't use all of the ingredients of course, so maybe halve that to $21? which makes the muffins $1.50 each. And electricity for oven and dishes (machines and rising cost of water and cleaning material and attendant laundry) - I can't bear to factor that in! I'm going to say a dollar per muffin, thinking like a business. So - $2.50 each? Especially if I factored in the expensive stevial crystals and liquid. (I don't use much though. A third of what the recipe suggests, just to knock the edge off an entrely savoury muffin.) Very wholesome muffins though!

Almond and coconut flour costs about five times that of wheat flour? If my arithmetic serves me correctly? Egga are a big cost, and the recipe had six of them.

And, to top it off, the cost of my unpaid labour (time out from paid labour), adding on the preparation and cooking and post-cleaning, of keto cabbage and tuna and cheese patties. Very very yummy. I ate a lot of tuna patties and muffins. Is it a 'lifestyle'? Yes! Is it costly? Hell yes!