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Partial LCHF?

shedges

Well-Known Member
Messages
432
Location
Hampshire, Uk
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Pump
Hi Everyone. I'd like your opinion on my potential LCHF approach.

My family and I eat a conventionally balanced diet and are all healthy (in terms of BMI, blood pressure, other health indicators, etc). I don't want to impose LCHF on them because they are not diabetic and don't need to lose weight. I do want to give it a go myself, so here's the question: Is there a benefit to changing one or two meals a day to LCHF? Or would I actually risk my bg control by eating LCHF for breakfast and lunch and conventionally balanced meal in the evening?

Any thoughts welcome

Sam.
 
Only way to be sure is to test and see what happens.

You may also want to experiment with which meal you eat 'conventionally' - evening might not be the optimum although I can see how that might be the easiest for family purposes. Alternatively there's no reason why you can't all have the same dinner and you just forego the carbs is there? (OK that's tricky if you have something like lasagne or paella I admit!).
 
I eat LCHF but my family do not (as there is no reason for them to do so) but I don't really cook anything special just for me, I just leave out some of the food they have. For instance last night we had salmon steaks wrapped in streaky bacon and grilled with mashed potatoes and oven roasted veg (aubergine, onions, tomatoes and courgettes). I left off the mash but put a large dollop of sour cream with a bit of lemon and coriander on my roasted veg. I then had a sugar free jelly with double cream.

I often eat Indian food and will eat what they do but leave out any rice, naan etc...

I have noticed recently that my 16 year old son, who is trying to bulk up for rugby, has started reducing his carbs as well but eating more protein and earlier on this week I made some chili con carne and all the family opted not to have rice but eat it just with salad.
 

I don't believe reduced/low carb is a binary way of eating. I follow a reduced carb diet, which contains more carb than many on here, and my OH largely eats the same, although he may have more rice, potato or whatever.

Do you guys manage to eat all three meals a day together? If you're looking to dip your toe in the water, perhaps you could low carb breakfast and lunch, which could be easier if you're not all together, then be moderate with carbs at dinner - you having proportionately less carb than the others?
 
its a very valid point. last night i had breakfast (bacon, nice sausages, scrambled egg and loads of mushrooms - gone off tomatoes) for my tea, hubby had bacon and sausage butties. youngest had a stuffed crust pizza eldest had toast. (yes i cringe at the carbs in a pizza).

I'm more along And Breathes carb ratio.

Quite often i make 2 or 3 different dinners depending who wants what, as long as it can be shoved in the oven i dont mind. whereas my dinners i have to be a bit prepared. I've got mackerel for my tea tonight so i'll have peppers and onions and maybe cauliflower rice with it. God knows what they're having!

However i have got the youngest actually eating more veg than she ever did before and she likes my cauliflower cheese and likes sweet potato - shame about the pizzas.

Hubbys just hubby - he eats less veg than ever before, but does eat plenty of fruit so cant complain.

Oh ive got strawberries and cream as well - i'm missing fruit for some reason.
 
My Eating habits are:
Breakfast : Low Carb.
Lunch : Low Carb.
Main Meal : Lower Carb.

This is because my main meal is joint with family, so I tend to eat what they eat (but lower carb) and omit the rice/potatoes/pasta!
 

To be clear, the only separate meals we have are at lunchtime, when would I tend to have my fix of oily fish. My OH is allergic to fish, so he's not able to join in on that one, even if he wanted to. He tends to have a sandwich or biscuits with cheese, so it's not a high effort diversion.

When I was diagnosed, we agreed we would not be cooking two different meals, for two of us, and I think it has done me good to not really be able to swerve off into some of the more extreme things we read of in here; particularly when I was driving my numbers down. It also made socialising much simpler. On the rare occasion things might have been sub-optimal for me, I can always hide a bit of extra food on my OH's plate.

Sneaky? Moi?
 
Thanks everyone for your replies.

Should be easy to do breakfast and lunch lo-carb as breakfast is pretty lo-carb already (<20g). Lunch - I make it for us both most days but we eat separately; will just include extra fats/proteins for myself and less of the carb portion. Evening meal is the one that bothers me most. Giving myself less carbs and more of the good stuff (meat, sauce, veg, etc) seems a bit unfair to my wife (in my mind). But then, I guess if she feels left out that can only be a good thing for the cook and can eat lo-carb too. She won't want the high fat bit though - proper old fashioned attitude to dietary fat (as her mum was a nurse practitioner). That is definitely going to cause a problem.

Oh.... and snacking. I love a cake/biscuit/bag-of-crisps. Already snack on nuts and celery/cucumber/pepper/fruit in addition to the bad stuff so will have to actually change my eating habits there. :-/ And don't say drink more! How can I stop myself wanting to graze all day long?
 

Why do you necessarily need to stop grazing, if that's how you like to eat and other factors aren't at play?

I had a snack yesterday for the first time in months and months, but that's because I've never snacked.
 
AndBreathe said:
Why do you necessarily need to stop grazing, if that's how you like to eat and other factors aren't at play?

I had a snack yesterday for the first time in months and months, but that's because I've never snacked.
Click to expand...

Need to stop grazing to lower my carb intake. As well as nuts and salad/veg, I graze on crisps, chocolate, biscuits, fruit, cake (it's always someone's birthday, it seems).
 
shedges said:
Need to stop grazing to lower my carb intake. As well as nuts and salad/veg, I graze on crisps, chocolate, biscuits, fruit, cake (it's always someone's birthday, it seems).
Click to expand...

You could graze on significantly lower carb snacks - cheese, pork scratchings, prawns and so on. Many create low carb cakes and sweet snacks, but I'm no expert on those.....
 
Speaking based on my experiences, I've noticed much more benefit if I spread my (low) carbs through the day, mainly at meals.

If I save them up to eat in one go, then that has a much harsher effect on my body than a few gentle rises and falls.

And burying any carbs with a proper meal, esp fat and fibre, also minimises their effect.

In your situation I would probably set myself a carb limit per meal (anywhere from 5-50g depending on how low you want to be). And I would avoid any carbs at all in snacks.

Hope that helps.
 
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And yes... Check out the low carb recipes for cakes, biscuits and breads.

No deprivation required on LC at all!
 
Generally the only meal I eat with my husband is dinner. If it's suitable, I just do without the potato, rice, pasta, etc. Otherwise, if he's feeling kind (he's chief cook for this meal), he'll cook me something else, or if not I'll prepare my own food.

Like Brunneria, I prefer to spread my carbs, to ease the load on my body and keep my spikes as low as possible.

If. you must have sweet stuff you should definitely look at our low carb recipes (or do some Googling) , get yourself some sweetener (natural if possible but it's up to you), some ground almonds,. flaxseed, and possibly coconut flour, and try out a few new recipes. Much of my fat & fibre intake comes from the nuts, seeds, butter, etc in my bakied goodies, so as long as they're low carb, cakes and biscuits are not necessarily a bad thing!

Robbity

And, PS - you don't have to lose weight on a low carb diet so your wife could join you in healthy eating - I've been stuck at my current (too high) weight since March, and really need to watch calories a bit as well as carbs. There are many athletes and body builders who low carb because it suits them better.
 
I've been started on insulin after discovering that my BGs were increasing despite careful dieting and monitoring. The diabetic nurse is currently 'playing ' with my Novomix 30 units until we reach acceptable limits for my BG.. What bothers me is that she insists in keeping my carbs intake high at every meal, (a balanced diet). This seems contrary to what I read in most forums and I wonder if anyone can see the logic.
 
she does what she's told by nhs guidelines and how she was taught, also on a mix you get both, sort and long acting.., you need enough LA/basal...so you have to eat carbs for the SA part or you will hypo.
if you want to do different you need to swap to basal bolus sperate injections

not everyone needs to do low carb, if your BG and weight is stable and you are happy with your diet...why change?
 

You could ask to switch to a basl/bolus insulin regime, that way you can adjust the insulin doses at meal-times yourself to suit the carb portions on your plate, it gives you much more flexibility than mixed insulins.
 
I think the vast majority on here advocate lower carbs than the standard uk diet.
But probably everyone here has an individual view on quite how low...

Once you arm someone with a blood glucose meter and an idea of normal blood glucose levels, it becomes harder and harder to follow NHS thinking, training and dietary advice on carbs. Using insulin does, of course mean handling the carbs-with-every-meal idea much more manageable.

But again, for me, the logic falls down.
Why eat carbs, raising BG, which then requires insulin to lower BG?
Why not exercise dietary control, avoid the BG highs that require so much medication?
Type 1s will always need insulin, but the amount they need depends on carb eating choices.

It is all about choice. Mine just happens to be to avoid NHS carb quantities.
 
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@akphoto
Your nurse is right with the insulin you are using.
If you are using a mixed insulin you will have to vary your carbs according to the dose. It contains both the long term insulin to cope with the glucose your liver supplies between meals and the fast insulin to cope with meals. It can't be varied so if you need more long term insulin you may need more carbs as otherwise there may be too much of the rapid insulin
The solution is to change to two separate insulins.

I've agree with Brunneria and Robbity about spreading the carb load. Actually that has been advice for many years (consistent carbohydrates) and though I can vary my insulin to cope with the odd variation in meal pattern, I think that for me a regular pattern of intake with not too varying carbs at each meal works best.
 
Any reduction in carbs improves your insulin dose precision. There's a 20% error in carbs on nutritional labels, a 30% error in the amount of injected insulin that enters your blood and if I gave you a plate of food, you'd guess the amount if carbs wrong by about 20% (according to a study). Ever had a meal and had an unexpected high or low, despite injecting what you thought was the correct amount if insulin? Well, this could be why.

If you lower your insulin dose, you lower your exposure to error. A 20% error on insulin injected for, say, 20g of carbs won't mess your levels up, but a 20% error on 100g carbs will.
 
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