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Low carb v keto

Duffysmum

Active Member
Messages
26
Location
Wales
Type of diabetes
Family member
Treatment type
Tablets (oral)
Morning everyone,
Been here before, disappeared and back again!
OH Hb1aC is 81 - only realised this when we needed to renew our life cover - he thought it was in the 40's (no, thats where it needs to be if normal...!) Anyway, bought strips took BS - 21 on Saturday afternoon.
So have looked at low carb/keto - and am struggling to understand the best one. Not sure if we are hard core enough for keto.

So yesterday:
Breakfast - 2 x keto bread rolls (made with the Diet Dr Keto bread recipe)
Lunch - low carb protein ball (home made with peanut butter)
Dinner - low carb feta and spinach tart with mixed vegetables

By yesterday BS was 9.7 so a great improvement, but still a long way to go.

Am I on the right track - will the keto bread help as a substitute for toast? OH is fussy about breakfast - wont eat eggs (I get fed up with those too, especially as we are vegetarian so lots of eggs in other meals! Also isnt keen on milk or yoghurt j- so its usually toast and peanut butter for breakfast which works (with the keto bread?)

Thoughts please
Thanks
Tracey
 
Hi @Duffysmom,

Sounds like a great menu to me. I also have DD keto bread regularly and it hardly does anything to my blood sugars, so imho a great choice. Does your husband enjoy it?

Does it have to be keto? Not really -- the most important aspect is that you can maintain this way of eating long-term. So, if you find keto too restrictive, the chance is that you/he may fall of the wagon eventually. ... and who knows, both of you may naturally drift more towards a ketogenic woe with time -- this at least has happened to me.

Also, congrats on the drop in your OH's blood sugars -- this is wonderful progress. For most of us, it takes several weeks, maybe even months, to approach truly normal blood sugar levels, so things are definitely looking good.
 
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There are actually quite a range of foods you can eat even on keto. For example for breakfast sometimes I eat a platter of olives and halloumi and feta. Other days corned beef and eggs. If I have time to cook something more fancy I might make pancakes with almond/coconut flour and eat it with berries and cream. Maybe you can start with your carbs at maybe 50-80g per day and see if you can whittle it down as you try new recipes. On your next grocery shop stack your cart with a whole bunch of keto ingredients and see if it gets you through the week.

Some ideas:
https://www.eatthis.com/keto-diet-food-list/
https://thefitbrit.co.uk/best-keto-snack-foods/
https://www.myrecipes.com/ingredients/essential-keto-diet-foods
 

Hi Tracey - I have been living a reduced carb lifestyle for 7 years now and going strong. I'm sure there have been times - possibly quite protracted periods, when I have been keto, but to be honest, I just don't find the label helpful.

In my world, who cares if something is keto, low carb or just plain old good, healthy food?

My meter has guided me. Test, eat and test again, two hours later. If the numbers are too big, or have risen too much, either eat less of that food, or don't bother with it again.

I have also tried my hardest to avoid anything labelled low carb or keto (on shop labelling, as opposed to a recipe description). I find that more often than not it just adds a margin to the cost of the food/drink , and rarely adds to the nutritional values.

In reality, I have stuck with good old food. Meat, eggs, cheese, low carb vegetables, Greek yoghurt, cream, cream cheese and lots of seasonings to flex and change the flavours of our food.

Mt HbA1c was 73 at diagnosis (how exactly did that happen??), but has never been above 37 since. In fact, aside from the 37 as the next test after diagnosis, my A1cs have skirted around 30 again and again.

It doesn't have to be complex, complicated or heavy work.

I do respect those who choose to have lots of substitute foods, but I couldn't be bothered with any more label reading than I absolutely had to do. In the early stages there was quite enough already.

I wish you well with whichever approach you choose to adopt, but my suggestion would be to keep it as simple as possible, as I am sure you have other things to be getting along with in your lives too.
 
Low carb is the key. If you are sufficiently low-carb your body will start to process fats into ketones as fuel, instead of relying on glucose. This is the process known as ketosis and is, from my personal experience, where I want my body to be most of the time, for its many and varied benefits.

You can get there by religiously ‘doing your macros’, working out what is the appropriate amount of fat, protein and carbs you as an individual need to maintain ketosis, and weighing food to ensure that you meet those targets.

Or you can be more casual about it and just try to keep carbs as low as possible by choosing varied, diabetically-healthy meals with as few carbs as possible. This is what I do - I eat ordinary low-carb food - meat, fish, eggs, dairy, above-ground veggies and selected (and tested) fruits like berries and stewed underripe plums and pears. I just eat normal food and am in ketosis most of the time. I didn’t aim for ketosis when I started but now I embrace it as a natural outcome of eating very few carbs.
 
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