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No weight loss

It's great that you are cooking from scratch for many reasons, including the fact that you therefore know exactly what goes into meals. I agree with you, the onion family make a wonderful contribution to flavour and also nutrition. The trouble is, any part of a vegetable that is used by the plant for storage, like tubers (potatoes) and bulbs (onions and garlic) will contain quite a lot of carbohydrate. If you are lucky you can eat onions without raising your bg too much. Are you testing after meals to find out? I am unlucky enough to have to eat a very low carb diet, so I have had to give up on onions except that I do use some of the green shoots from time to time in the hope that they are less carby.
 
Alexandra100 said:
Onions are too high in carbs to be included in a very low carb diet. Tomatoes even more - they count as a fruit. Leafy green vegetables like spinach are the lowest in carbs.
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I eat tomatoes every day, sometimes twice in a day. 6 or 7 cherry toms at lunch and a grilled ordinary one in the evenings if appropriate, or the other way round. I also eat a large Baxters pickled onion, sliced up, on my salads. They do me no harm.
 
Bluetit1802 said:
I eat tomatoes every day, sometimes twice in a day. 6 or 7 cherry toms at lunch and a grilled ordinary one in the evenings if appropriate, or the other way round. I also eat a large Baxters pickled onion, sliced up, on my salads. They do me no harm.
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You are able to say that with confidence because you have tested many times after such meals and seen OK readings.
 
Alexandra100 said:
You are able to say that with confidence because you have tested many times after such meals and seen OK readings.
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Indeed I can, and I can confirm even after 4 years most of my meals are tested. However, I have always eaten tomatoes and pickled onions, so I know that even as a newbie I was able to eat them. I don't know about onions, but many, many people on here eat tomatoes.
 
Alexandra100 said:
You are able to say that with confidence because you have tested many times after such meals and seen OK readings.
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same here for me. Pickles of all sorts are fine for me. And all salads, including onions and leeks and shallots and garlic. Also parsnips, swedes and turnips.
 

Some also claim that McDonalds grow their letuce in sugary water the day before harvesting it. That could explain why their salat more often taste sweet than bitter
 
Guzzler said:
This is the method I now use instead of using tomato puree or cornflour to thicken. We are all different, I can tolerate onion (the plain ol'English type) and a small amount of baby plum tomatoes.
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I don't see how onions and tomatoes can fit into my very low (<20g daily) diet. As you say, we are all different and we all have to set our own targets and find our own ways of achieving them (or not, as is often my case). Dr Bernstein excludes tomatoes and onions from his OK foods list.
 

Well, that is why testing and recording readings is so important. We all react differently, for example I cannot tolerate dark beans and most white beans but a lot of people can. If I excluded everything that other people report as raising their bg to unsatisfactory levels I would be left with very little to eat. Just because one expert puts a food on a list shouldn't exclude anyone from at least testing that particular food. Briffa says to exclude soya but doesn't say why so I used to eat it eat and didn't see any noticeable rise. I no longer eat it but if it was in a meal I wouldn't be too concerned.
 
Yes I do test and since I make 4 portions the onion count is negligible. However I have had to really pull back on adding carrot or swede to stews. Funnily enough carrot affects me more than swede I have discovered. The meter has decided. The other thing I use a lot is tinned chopped tomatoes. Again they are a great low carb base with an onion for curry, soup, bolognese, chilli, etc. I never touch jars of ready made sauce. At my recent Desmond course I was dissed for this by the presenter who told the room not to worry about them they made no difference. Do t want to sound preachy but you can tweak your own stuff made from scratch.
 
I theorise that in my case the main problem is that I make only a very small amount of insulin, so that by the end of the day, and often long before there is none left to cope with any carbs I eat. This means that I can see a low reading fasting and after breakfast, unlike the many people who are more carb resistant during the hours after waking, but higher readings in the evening even though I have eaten very few carbs, when I presume I have used up all my supply. So the fact that an individual food doesn't spike me doesn't let me off the hook, I have above all to look at total carbs per day. And yes, I am left with very little variety of food to eat. In an ideal world I would at least be on basal insulin, but that is out of the question, I did very well to persuade my GP to prescribe Metformin for me.
 

May I ask how you know you are not producing enough insulin? Have you had an insulin assay done?
 
Guzzler said:
Great little graphic there.
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Here is Dr B on tomatoes:

"Tomatoes, tomato paste, and tomato sauce
Tomatoes, as you know, are actually a fruit, not a vegetable, and as with citrus fruits, their tang can conceal just how sweet they are. The prolonged cooking necessary for the preparation of tomato sauces releases a lot of glucose, and you would do well to avoid them. If you’re at someone’s home for dinner and are served meat or fish covered with tomato sauce, just scrape it off. The small amount that might remain should not significantly affect your blood sugar. If you are having them uncooked in salad, limit yourself to one slice or a single cherry tomato per cup of salad. (See page 380 for a recipe for a low-carbohydrate, tomato-free, Italian-style red sauce that can be good over, say, a broiled, sautéed, or grilled chicken breast or veal scallopine.) Onions fall into this same category—despite some sharp flavor, they’re quite sweet, some varieties sweeter than others. There are other vegetables in the allium family that can be easily substituted, although in smaller quantities, such as shallots and elephant garlic."

I realise everyone will make their own decisions, but if bg is raised after a meal including tomatoes and/or onions IMO they might well be the culprits.
 
Guzzler said:
May I ask how you know you are not producing enough insulin? Have you had an insulin assay done?
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I don't know, I theorise. Since my GP thinks that with an A1c of 37 (achieved at the cost of very restricted carbs) I fall into the "worried well" category I don't want to bother her for tests that would not change anything in my lifestyle or treatment. My priority is to keep my bg as low and level as possible, and the only way I can see to even approach that is drastically to limit daily carbs.
 

To be sure one would test, as has been said, some of us can tolerate both even in the same meal. Insulin resistance (especially in the earlier days of Diabetes (Pre Diabetes and T2)) counts as a high determiner. Fingers crossed that IR, in my case, will improve over time and I may be able to tolerate a slightly higher amount of carbs in my diet. There are no fixed rules because we are all individuals with different metabolic responses.
 
@Alexandra100 You can order your own insulin tests from Medi Check and this may put your mind at rest. In my case I would prefer this to theorising and having to eat such a restrictive diet. They may appear expensive, but perhaps worth it? Is the Metformin working? If so, it could be insulin resistance rather than lack of insulin.
 
I think, sometimes, there comes a point where diet only, or diet and metformin may not be enough to keep sugar levels down, for some people.

In my own view, if i reach a point where my diet is so restricted as to become untenable for me, or unable to supply all my nutritional needs, i will take medication.

I recognise that some people do not feel this way however.

at this moment in time, its not an issue for me. I test, I eat, I am OK.
 
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