Low Carb Confused

[cratat]

I have just been advised to start a low carb diet to aid in my weight loss and am a looking for help and advise as don't know where to turn, I need to lose 5 stone, I have started doing more cardio to help this process. I am struggling to get an understanding of what I can eat for my meals and snacks I leave the house at 6am to go to the gym and workout for an hour before having breakfast then work in an office all day, arriving home about 6pm for my evening meal. Any information or links to information greatly appreciated someone did mention Slimming Worlds Red days as anyone tried this and had any success. Many Thanks

 

[dawnmc]

Lots of low carb forums and recipes on the net. But basically eggs and bacon, omelettes for breakfast, tuna/ chicken salads for lunch with avocado. Any meat with cabbage, sprouts, broccoli - all the green stuff, and above ground veg. Coffee with cream, butter on your veg and olive oil on salads, don't fear the good fats. And have a look at 'blood sugar 101' for more ideas and advise.

 

[chubbyian]

Hi Crstat, welcome to the house of fun

You will get loads of advice about Low carbs on here, there is a recipe section, and a good cook book on here, Basically the only thing to do is to test your blood before a meal and again about 2 hours after, as we are all different that is the only way you are going to know if you are on the right track.

Personally I have to sear well clear of wight flower (pastry, cakes and bread), I can only eat small portions of whole meal pasta and brown rice, Having said that, any amount of bacon and eggs, mushrooms and lots of other really good stuff.

I am also T2 and on Metformin, and work out, I have lost 3st in the last 4 months, so if I can I am shore you can get close if not do better. Good on you for coming this fare, you CAN do it, we are all here for you

 

[Andy12345]

hi well done, yes i agree with the low carb lifestyle, its a great way to lose weight for many, why dont you post a typical days food and we can tweak it for you or chuck it away and start again hehe

 

[xyzzy]

Here's a link to a low carb lifestyle diet as recommended by the doctor that the Swedish health service took its advice from when adopting its policy of advocating low carb for it's entire population not just diabetics. Hope that helps http://blogg.passagen.se/dahlqvistannika/?anchor=my_lowcarb_dietary_programe_in

 

[cratat]

hi well done, yes i agree with the low carb lifestyle, its a great way to lose weight for many, why dont you post a typical days food and we can tweak it for you or chuck it away and start again hehe

Hi a typical days food would be
Breakfast 0730 Special K Cereal & Skimmed Milk or Beans on Wholewheat Toast
Snack 1000 Banana
Lunch 1200 Sandwich on Wholewheat Bread or Jacket Potato
Snack 1400 Apple
Dinner 1830 Meat with Veg and Potatoes or a pasta or rice dish these are always a slimming world meal as my wife is a member
Snack 2000 Fat Free Yoghurt

 

[Beachbag]

Hi a typical days food would be
Breakfast 0730 Special K Cereal & Skimmed Milk or Beans on Wholewheat Toast
Snack 1000 Banana
Lunch 1200 Sandwich on Wholewheat Bread or Jacket Potato
Snack 1400 Apple
Dinner 1830 Meat with Veg and Potatoes or a pasta or rice dish these are always a slimming world meal as my wife is a member
Snack 2000 Fat Free Yoghurt

I would question exactly how many carbs that "typical day" consists of?

 

[Yorksman]

Hi a typical days food would be
Breakfast 0730 Special K Cereal & Skimmed Milk or Beans on Wholewheat Toast
Snack 1000 Banana
Lunch 1200 Sandwich on Wholewheat Bread or Jacket Potato
Snack 1400 Apple
Dinner 1830 Meat with Veg and Potatoes or a pasta or rice dish these are always a slimming world meal as my wife is a member
Snack 2000 Fat Free Yoghurt

That's quite a carby diet. If it's supermarket wholewheat bread, its highly likely not got much wholemeal flour in it. It will be mostly white flour dyed. Real wholewheat breads are not springy at all, they are dense. When I started, I stuck to pumpernickel and ryvita.

A jacket potato is also probably not the best as they tend to be light and flourery. Baby new potatoes were OK for me but anything which wasn't yellow and hard, sent my blood sugars upwards.

White rice is very carby but some brown rices are OK. I found I could eat Morrisons brown rice which is parboiled. As well as having a very low GI, it had the benefit of being about a third of the calories of other brown rices, about 100kcal per 100g as opposed to 320 kcal per 100g. I made a lot of dishes with that.

Whilst pasta isn't as bad carbwise as many people think, you still have to watch portion sizes if you want to lose weight. I tended to stick to small 40gm portions of buitoni wholewheat pasta.

Watching your carbs and watching your calorie intake is a juggling act and you really need a meter to measure the effect of various foods on your sugar levels. Some will be OK, some will be bad and some will be OK if you keep the amount you eat to small portions. You have to learn about food, what to eat and how to prepare it. I eat well and have still lost 30Kg and halved my HBA1c in one year. But, I spent a lot of time testing. If you settle on a diet that someone else suggests, you'll get bored with it and stray. You get as bored with big mixed grills as you do with lettuce and raw carrots. You have some discovering to do but, at least, it is fun learning.

 

[xyzzy]

Hi a typical days food would be
Breakfast 0730 Special K Cereal & Skimmed Milk or Beans on Wholewheat Toast
Snack 1000 Banana
Lunch 1200 Sandwich on Wholewheat Bread or Jacket Potato
Snack 1400 Apple
Dinner 1830 Meat with Veg and Potatoes or a pasta or rice dish these are always a slimming world meal as my wife is a member
Snack 2000 Fat Free Yoghurt

Looks like you are confusing Low Carb with Low Fat which a lot of people do. While low fat diets are generally fine for weightloss they are not going to help your blood sugar levels if you are diabetic or near to becoming diabetic as to do that you need to be actively reducing carbohydrates (effectively foods that contain sugar or starch). It's generally been found that a low carb diet is just as effective for weightloss as low fat in fact weightloss in generally initially quicker on low carb than low fat.

So...

Special K - is a cereal that contains starch and sugar - not low carb
Wholemeal Toast - is made from flour which is high starch - not very low carb although Burgen Soya bread is pretty low carb and a better choice
Banana - is a fruit has a load of sugar - not low carb.
Jacket Potato - very high in starch - a high carb food that you should avoid on a low carb regime
Apple - same as Banana
Dinner - Pasta and rice are both full of starch two of the highest carb foods that most of us who follow low carb limit or avoid entirely.
Fat Free Yoghurt - Fat Free foods are generally higher in carbs than non fat free versions as when the fat is removed the manufacturer tends to replace the fat with some form of carbohydrate (sometimes sugar!) so eat the full fat versions.

So in summary you should be avoiding sugary and starchy things. Starchy things are generally rice, pasta, potatoes, cereals and anything made from flour. You should look to be limiting them as a means of stabilising blood sugar levels if you need to. Replace the starch with things like meat, fish, cheese, eggs and especially green vegetables and simply avoid sugary things.

If you are diabetic or near to becoming diabetic then fruit is a bit more difficult. It's best to eat fruit after say your main meal as "afters" as its blood sugar spiking potential will be much reduced (because of mixing it up with other foods) compared to eating fruit as a snack by itself. Generally berries are more low carb and taste great if you mix a few of them in full fat Greek yoghurt for breakfast.

 

[mpe]

Hi a typical days food would be
Breakfast 0730 Special K Cereal & Skimmed Milk or Beans on Wholewheat Toast
Snack 1000 Banana
Lunch 1200 Sandwich on Wholewheat Bread or Jacket Potato
Snack 1400 Apple
Dinner 1830 Meat with Veg and Potatoes or a pasta or rice dish these are always a slimming world meal as my wife is a member
Snack 2000 Fat Free Yoghurt

If you want to go "low carb" it would be more "radical change" than "tweaking". Since your existing diet looks to be High Carbohydrate/Low Fat.
Having lots of fairly small meals is also a method of avoiding weight gain on a high carbohydrate diet.

 

[mpe]

Watching your carbs and watching your calorie intake is a juggling act

Part of what makes LCHF diets heretical to the dietary establishment is that using artificial metrics such as "calories" tends to be discouraged.

and you really need a meter to measure the effect of various foods on your sugar levels. Some will be OK, some will be bad and some will be OK if you keep the amount you eat to small portions. You have to learn about food, what to eat and how to prepare it. I eat well and have still lost 30Kg and halved my HBA1c in one year. But, I spent a lot of time testing. If you settle on a diet that someone else suggests, you'll get bored with it and stray. You get as bored with big mixed grills as you do with lettuce and raw carrots.

Even if you can stick with someone else's diet it may have different effects on your BG from theirs. This can also be a complication where you are not the "cook" of the household.

 

[Andy12345]

hi, to a normal eye your diet would look great, in fact to the general medical profession your diet would look perfect, ive deleted the sutff i wouldnt eat from your list...


Breakfast 0730 ******* * ****** & ******* **** or ***** on ********** *****
Snack 1000 ******
Lunch 1200 ******** on ********** ***** or ****** ******
Snack 1400 *****
Dinner 1830 Meat with Veg and ******** or a ***** or **** dish these are always a ******** ***** meal as my wife is a member
Snack 2000 *** **** Yoghurt


all the above advice is great for diabetics good luck


Ive done an alternative day that would suit me better, this is just one alternative, there are lots of lowcarb meals

Breakfast: Natural Greek Full Fat Yogurt with mixed berries
Snack: handful of nuts
Lunch: Salad with boiled egg/cold meat
Snack: eat enough at lunch you wont need this snack
Dinner: Meat with Veg & Cauliflower Mash
Afters: Sugar Free Jelly with Double Cream
Snack: couple of squares of 85% Dark Chocolate

If you dont eat many carbs you will need to eat fat as an alternative source of fuel, its hard to get your head around fat being ok to eat as we have been brainwashed for so many years, ive spent 11 months low carbing and lost a shed load of weight and got bgs down etc etc and still cant get my head around it really, its a leap of faith

 

[cratat]

Having been a diabetic since 2007 I have never checked my blood sugar levels and my diabetic nurse as always told me it is not required which seems to contradict the advice given on here, so am now getting even more confused, I appreciate all the advice given and will try different things I am concerned about going back to high fat items like double cream and full fat yoghurt as my wife lost 5 stone on slimming world although not a diabetic still a great achievement and has kept it off for over a year

 

[xyzzy]

Having been a diabetic since 2007 I have never checked my blood sugar levels and my diabetic nurse as always told me it is not required which seems to contradict the advice given on here, so am now getting even more confused, I appreciate all the advice given and will try different things I am concerned about going back to high fat items like double cream and full fat yoghurt as my wife lost 5 stone on slimming world although not a diabetic still a great achievement and has kept it off for over a year

Yes very confusing isn't it. Your wife's achievement on her low fat diet is excellent and no one would sensibly dispute that a low fat diet is a valid way for a non diabetic to lose weight but for diabetics whose blood sugar levels are important then its sugar and carbohydrates that are far more important to restrict. I'd read some more history of the 100's if not 1000's of people on this site who have successfully controlled both their diabetes and their weight by adopting low carb over the years.

I have done low carb for 2 years since diagnosis and know easily meet all the guidelines for blood sugar levels, cholesterol, blood pressure and I initially lost 4 stone in 6 months on precisely the kind of regime Andy recommended in his post.

Although not a particularly good analogy you can imagine that the average person needs to eat a number of calories a day. How they get those calories is largely irrelevant and if you eat roughly 500 calories a day less than what you need you will lose around 2lbs a week. So a low fat diet is low calorie and allows weightloss. A low carb diet that is higher in fats (to provide adequate calories) will still be low calorie and also allow weightloss. The difference is a low carb diet will also help your blood sugar control. Make sure if you do decide to try low carb you don't cheat and end up doing a high carb high fat diet as that will kill you pretty quickly!

Many of us found testing are blood sugars invaluable in the early days after diagnosis as how else can you see what foods are spiking your blood sugar levels dangerously as everyone reacts somewhat differently even to the same foodstuffs. You can get a cheap BG meter off ebay called an SD Codefree from healthcare co uk that is more than accurate enough for non insulin dependent T2 diabetics. You could also ask your gp to be prescribed one but don't hold your breath that you'll have any success.

By the way the next time you see your diabetic nurse ask to see her certificates that she is a specialist in diabetes as many are simply practice nurses who have been told by the surgery that they are the "diabetic nurse". The same applies to your gp. Ask them both why the dietary advice they hand out has not changed since 1991 whereas in other countries low carb regimes are routinely advocated to help control diabetes. Are you getting the full set of tests and check ups you're entitled to each year? My gp and DSN fully support my low carb lifestyle as they can see it works.

 

[Yorksman]

By the way the next time you see your diabetic nurse ask to see her certificates that she is a specialist in diabetes as many are simply practice nurses who have been told by the surgery that they are the "diabetic nurse". The same applies to your gp.

LOL. Are you some kind of qualification crazed terrorist? When Mrs Yorks last submitted a Clinical Incident Report because a patient had been transfused with the wrong blood, the response was "What's all the fuss about? The patient didn't die." The fact that it was more by good luck than good judgement didn't affect the overall outcome which is all target driven cultures are interested in. Even poor advice given today will not make itself apparant in the figures until all the parties have collected their pensions.

 

[cath99]

Hi Crstat, welcome to the house of fun

You will get loads of advice about Low carbs on here, there is a recipe section, and a good cook book on here, Basically the only thing to do is to test your blood before a meal and again about 2 hours after, as we are all different that is the only way you are going to know if you are on the right track.

Personally I have to sear well clear of wight flower (pastry, cakes and bread), I can only eat small portions of whole meal pasta and brown rice, Having said that, any amount of bacon and eggs, mushrooms and lots of other really good stuff.

I am also T2 and on Metformin, and work out, I have lost 3st in the last 4 months, so if I can I am shore you can get close if not do better. Good on you for coming this fare, you CAN do it, we are all here for you

ian i would love to hear your meal plan in brief as im struggling shifting weight ... not sure were im going wrong x

 

[xyzzy]

LOL. Are you some kind of qualification crazed terrorist?

Hope so ...

Actually I can't take the credit for the "ask to see her certs" thing. That honour goes to CatherineCherub who made that comment some years ago but it is excellent advice.

Saying that I had a run in with a real diabetes specialist nurse early after diagnosis. Stupidly I showed her my spreadsheet of bg measurements, food diary and weight loss showing my rapidly improving stats on low carb. She went ape and insisted I ate 200g of carbs a day and then expect to go on diabetic meds to cope and to expect to put a load of the weight I'd lost back on. Oh and give up testing my bgs as it would send me mad. When I disagreed wirh her approach she just shouted louder and when all else failed recommended I went on insulin. She threatened not to recommend any further medication or help unless I rolled over and complied with her orders.

I got my hba1c lower than hers in six months...


Sent from the Diabetes Forum App

 

[Yorksman]

Saying that I had a run in with a real diabetes specialist nurse early after diagnosis. Stupidly I showed her my spreadsheet of bg measurements, food diary and weight loss showing my rapidly improving stats on low carb. She went ape

LOL. Mine was exiled to our town's equivalent of Siberia and the GP practice head forced into early retirement by a rebellion amongst the other GPs. There have been 5 resignations in 2 years and the whole practice is in chaos. I felt like saying that they couldn't even manage themselves, let alone the patients but I didn't want to rub salt into a very open wound.

 

[chubbyian]

ian i would love to hear your meal plan in brief as im struggling shifting weight ... not sure were im going wrong x

You asked about my diet. Well I will do my best to tell you, but I am not to good at explaining myself. So if you do not understand, please ask. First I will say I am no good living by rules, I try to live by principles.

Here goes. When we eat the body produces insulin to disperse the gutigens. Either to the cells (muscle) or as fat, if we have lots of insulin floating around, the brain wants you to eat more food so that it can be used.

That was part one

Calories are a measure of heat, If you take a gallon of petrol and tip it on the floor and set fire to it all the energy is released very quickly. But put it in a car, or a container with a small wick, the energy is slowly released. The amount of energy is the same in both cases.

So to put the two together, If we eat slow digesting food, our bodies can utilize the suggers, If we exercise after eating we create space for the sugars to go.

So I low card, to bring down the sugar level. and the carbs I do eat I try to get to release slowly, In effect, unprocessed (whole meal pasta, brown rice etc) If I do eat something that "spikes" me (as pasta does) I mix it with something slow like cheese, and I am fine.

To help choose food look out for the Glycemic Load, that will give you the best starting place (google it)

I hope this is of some use to you if you do not understand or want to know more just ask

 

[Andy12345]

Yes very confusing isn't it. Your wife's achievement on her low fat diet is excellent and no one would sensibly dispute that a low fat diet is a valid way for a non diabetic to lose weight but for diabetics whose blood sugar levels are important then its sugar and carbohydrates that are far more important to restrict. I'd read some more history of the 100's if not 1000's of people on this site who have successfully controlled both their diabetes and their weight by adopting low carb over the years.

I have done low carb for 2 years since diagnosis and know easily meet all the guidelines for blood sugar levels, cholesterol, blood pressure and I initially lost 4 stone in 6 months on precisely the kind of regime Andy recommended in his post.

Although not a particularly good analogy you can imagine that the average person needs to eat a number of calories a day. How they get those calories is largely irrelevant and if you eat roughly 500 calories a day less than what you need you will lose around 2lbs a week. So a low fat diet is low calorie and allows weightloss. A low carb diet that is higher in fats (to provide adequate calories) will still be low calorie and also allow weightloss. The difference is a low carb diet will also help your blood sugar control. Make sure if you do decide to try low carb you don't cheat and end up doing a high carb high fat diet as that will kill you pretty quickly!

Many of us found testing are blood sugars invaluable in the early days after diagnosis as how else can you see what foods are spiking your blood sugar levels dangerously as everyone reacts somewhat differently even to the same foodstuffs. You can get a cheap BG meter off ebay called an SD Codefree from healthcare co uk that is more than accurate enough for non insulin dependent T2 diabetics. You could also ask your gp to be prescribed one but don't hold your breath that you'll have any success.

By the way the next time you see your diabetic nurse ask to see her certificates that she is a specialist in diabetes as many are simply practice nurses who have been told by the surgery that they are the "diabetic nurse". The same applies to your gp. Ask them both why the dietary advice they hand out has not changed since 1991 whereas in other countries low carb regimes are routinely advocated to help control diabetes. Are you getting the full set of tests and check ups you're entitled to each year? My gp and DSN fully support my low carb lifestyle as they can see it works.

perfect!