Slimming world extra easy?

Do you have lots of weight to lose? If so you may be able to get a free referral for 3 months from your GP. I did. (I confess I followed LCHF at SW though, mostly because I knew that low fat diets weren't the ones for me.) I found the weekly weigh-in and support helpful.

I've had a quick look at the plan you are talking about. It looks OKish. Could you tailor it a little to your own needs re carbs and fats anyway? Like you say, test along the way and see what happens.

No I don't think you are in denial as such, but having accepted the initial diagnosis I found it was hard to accept that T2 is forever.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do. Like others have said elsewhere, you can always change back again if the plan doesn't suit you.

Yes that makes a lot of sense.

The thing about change, any change is that it's hard. It's even harder if it's not your idea, and harder still if you don't understand what drives the change, and why it is being made. The former statement applies to you all and the latter particularly to your little one. She obviously won't understand why she isn't eating in her usual way, and for now, that's all she'll be interested in.

I'm not a mother, so can't say how I handled this sort of situation with any child of mine, but doesn't it concern you that she doesn't eat vegetables, irrespective of your diabetes diagnosis?

In terms of the bigger picture, you have to ask yourself a few difficult questions. Firstly, what is your primary objective? To lose weight or improve your blood glucose scores?

As I have alluded, my personal circumstances are different to yours. There's just me and my OH who is not diabetic and has never carried any weight, but we agreed that whatever my diet was to be, we would both be following it because with just the two of us, there was no way we were going to be preparing different meals. We have always sat at the table to eat, and used that time to "unpack" our day and talk things over in general, so mealtimes have always been important periods in our day. When I was diagnosed my only objective was to improve my bloods. If I trimmed up, that would be an added bonus.

I reduced carbs, but didn't concentrate up upping the fat. I didn't eat low fat, but I didn't consciously add fat to anything I wouldn't have done pre-diagnosis. My bloods got better, and I trimmed up too.

I've never done Slimming World (or any other for that matter), so I don't understand what a pointed food is. But, could you create some, applying the LCHF principals? Is the situation with your little one getting worse, or are you just getting tired of it? Right now, if she doesn't like what you guys are eating, how do you deal with it? Do you tough it out until she eats what is in front of her, or do her something different immediately?

As I say, change is difficult and chopping and changing will be tricky with the little one, unless you are going to revert to the former norm with her.

I would suggest you do some more reading and thinking before chopping and changing anything. Do you plan meals ahead, or decide each day what you're going to eat? Initially, we found meal planning tiresome and tiring. Nothing was second nature any more, but we worked though that. Maybe this is a situation you can work through with some forethought?

Mrsmac247 said:

@AndBreathe thank you for your reply. I think you have some very good points. Indeed, having to alter my eating was not something I chose at this time and something that I have wondered is the question of my motivation; to loose weight or to get the numbers down. Truth is, I think weight loss first and secondarily my numbers, that is where I get confused. The right answer should be BG first and weight as a bonus but I think because it was my "intension" in the near future to loose weight, I have joined the two together; reasoning that if i loose the weight the BG will come down.

I chose the lower carb eating as it does both, and typing this I can see where you are coming from with that line because me contemplating going back to SW probably means sacrificing my BG in some instances where the drive should be the BG levels...I shall give this more thought definately.

It definately concerns me that the little one does not eat vegetables. This was a battle before my diagnosis but the way we used to work around it was to finely chop up the vegetables in her rice, or sneak them in her mashed potatoe, the problem with this is that she now knows the colours of vegetables and can tell when we try to hide them and refuses the food. In all honesty, this was the thing, our meals used to consist of meat and rice/potatoe/pasta and veg was a side. I have tried sticking it out but she has an excellent throw and if she detects anything she doesnt want, she pulls it out her mouth and chucks it across the room. Work in progress I know, but with most of our meals now consisting of vegetables it is getting harder to get her to accept them. I will go and get some advice from the health clinic on this I think.

Meal planning is where I am also falling short and I have been building the enthusiasm to create some which I think will help.

Indeed I have some thinking to do about diet and how to manage the changes, thank you

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To be honest, I really do think you have a lot of thinking to do here. You have a number of issues at the moment and are looking for a single solution, which I don't necessarily think is readily achievable. In no particular order:

You are a bit muddled on your diabetes priorities. For most people, their blood scores improve as they lose weight, because, generally speaking, insulin resistance improves as weight reduces. But, in terms of controlling the blood scores the most important and consistent thing to achieve that is what we put into our mouths. I'm not talking calories, I'm talking components, and for most of us that means fewer carbs. My concerns about your "diverting" to a carb heavier diets are two-fold. Firstly carbs are addictive, and many people comment that as they consume carbs they want more and if you spend 2, 3 or 6 months concentrating on losing weight, but your bloods don't improve then you have to address that and make further changes.

I have no idea if you experienced any diabetes symptoms before diagnosis (I was completely asymptomatic), or if you already have any complications, but it is my understanding that most diabetic complications are as a result of elevated blood sugars. I don't know of any diabetes specific complications which are directly wight related. Of course we have a potential chicken and egg thought process we could go through there.

So, you can probably guess my take on things as blood scores being primary objective with weight loss highly desireable secondary objective. If you improved your blood scores but didn't lose weight, you would achieve your objective. Conversealy, if you lost weight but didn't improve your bloods your objective would not be achieved. (I don't know if I have expressed that well at all.)

Then, you have a child who doesn't like vegetables. This is a separate issue to your diabetes. I am almost reading that everyone is going to eat rice/mash/pasta or whatever so that your little o ne can be duped into eating brocolli or the like? (Extreme expression, I know.) You further state she is beginning to recognize the colours of veg and rooting them out to be ejected, with force, when found. It sounds like hiding veg in carbs is on a limited lifespan now anyway. This issue needs to be separated from your diet. Whilst I appreciate a mother's love and making sacrifices, it doesn't make sense that you would consider compromising your health to try to get the little one to eat peas/carrots or whatever. She needs a healthy mother.

Please do have a think about meal planning. We have always planned meals, a bit, at home. It helps us with shopping, and ensuring we have the ingredients at home for whatever we plan to eat. To be honest, when I was diagnosed, my OH challenged me with total control of meal planning, so that he couldn't be blamed for ruining my eating plan (method in his madness!!), but once I got into it, it took the pressure off. I knew I would always have something to eat, and I knew we would have the food in for what we had planned. (It does also make a difference, in this house anyway, to food waste and budgets.)

We don't plan meals on the basis of Monday = X, Tuesday is Y, then never vary from it. We plan weekly, and plan for seven main meals, then can work our way through those as and when we fancy pork chops, sausage bake, roast chicken or whatever else we have planned. Additionally, with a decent store cupboard, we can always have a quick omellette ro something if we really, really don't fancy something from the plan. If you were to adopt that planning approach, you would be able to ensure you have 7 main meals for you all, with the others having spuds, bread or whatever in addition to your own requirements. Won't you have to plan for Slimming World anyway?

I have no idea what pointed foods are, but are they foods you can have freely, or some you can have almost as treats? Which ever it is, couldn't you create a list of those things from reduced carb options? I'm sure you would get loads of ideas if you wanted help with that.

Erm,.............. Quite a brain dump from me!

For a significant part of my working life, I worked with change, so I do understand all about it. I understand how hard it is to change ourselves, and how much harder it is to encourage others to change.

Have a really good think about things. Try to find some time when you can really think things through and plan for whatever you decide to do. Changes made "on the hoof" are much more likely to fall by the wayside than those thought through, planned, executed and reviewed. If you plan through your changes and prepare your "tools" (in this case, probably doing a preparatory shop), it is far easier to see through, and harder to side-step. It's very easy to side step "eating well", if you find yourself making it up as you go and searching the pantry for something suitable to eat 30 minutes before people expect to be fed.

I know you want to do the right thing for your little one, but building your family lifestyle around her picky eating isn't aa appropriate way forward, but I'm sur you know that.

Clearly I have spoken extremely plainly here, but it is intended to really challenge your thinking so that your decisions are well thought through and reasoned. I'm sure it's not comfortable reading, but my objective isn't to make anyone feel bad. My objective is to almost force rounded thinking. You certainly don't have to share your conclusions. I really do wish you well. These are challenging times for you and your family.

Mrsmac247 said:

@AndBreathe I totally get where you are coming from and thank you for your response, I am definitely not offended and appreciate your honest comments and observations. I guess I was trying to see if I could find a solution for all of us but that may not be possible. I guess I was thinking along the lines of making it easy for all but as you said, that would require an element of sacrifice of myself in order to achieve this.

As you said, adding more carbs could trigger a response I am not yet able to deal with and I haven’t given that much thought, I guess because I done the diet before I was quite disciplined with my portion sizes. It would indeed be disappointing to change my eating plan and then jeopardise my current good BG levels.

Food is a big deal in our family and we always eat our meals together. It was just the other day that my parents said they haven’t invited us around for dinner as they don’t know what we are now eating! That made me sad. The issue with my daughter is quite deep in that I had undiscovered gestational diabetes, I could only keep down carbs at the time and when she was born she was considered a big baby which led to complications and a permanent disability. She has always been a funny eater and doesn’t even drink her allocated milk but she still maintains a “chubbyish” structure. Having just typed that, I think the way to go with her is to seek support and not to confuse it with my condition now.

Meal planning will have to feature in this as feeding 5 people at the best of times can be difficult and although organisation is not my strong point, I see hoe this may help some of what I am feeling at the moment.

I am definitely happy with the good readings I have been getting and thinking about it, I have been following the guidelines of the low carb eating and not really testing outside of the box which I may start doing and set myself a challenge of one food a week other than sticking to what I know is ok if that makes sense.

Yes, basically the plan is you eat from a list of free foods depending on what plan you are following and “point” or “syn” everything else. So say you have 15 syns available and you’ve eaten your “free” food, you choose how to spend those “syns”. Indeed those foods have a higher calorific and sugar value than the free foods. My thinking was that on the plan, I could occasionally have that milk chocolate bar. I know I could substitute it for dark chocolate now, but I have always hated dark chocolate.

I indeed will give everything written here some thought, you guys are very knowledgeable on diabetes and are a great help to someone like me

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Excellent. There are some really positive thoughts going on there.

I appreciate planning isn't for everyone, but it honestly was one of the biggest stress relievers in my early days - just knowing that for the next x days there was definitely something in I could eat. In the end we ended up with quite a list of meals and planning got much quicker.

MrB and I are both data monsters (although I'm much more extreme than him!), so we like information to hand. Initially, we started a spreadsheet with three tabs. The tabs were Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. In each tab we would each note options/choices that formed the basis of our meal lists. That may not be necessary for breakfasts or maybe even not lunches, but it was extremely valuable for main meals. In the main meal tab we eventually had three column areas for main courses, side dishes and deserts. Routinely, we're not great desert or starter eaters, but it made sense to capture the ideas.

Again, after a very brief period, we had a list of options to make planning quicker. Once you know you're having Lemon Pepper Chicken or Pork Chops, or Faux Cottage Pie this week, that drives the shopping list and it comes together.

Again I reiterate we planned for a week's worth of meals, so that we could flex the actual meals a it if we found ourselves starving or not hungry, or whatever.

I think your parents' reaction is extremely common. When eating with friends, if I am asked (bearing in mind I'm not out of the diabetes closet to everyone), I tell the hostess to cater as normal and I'll be fine. I have never, ever not been able to eat, although sometimes I've had to think a bit, and/or accept I'm passing on the usually considered best bits! Again, if you can put together something like the document MrB and I created, you could always share it with your parents so that they have a load of choices to suit you.

The one thing that I've failed to grasp whilst reading this is why do you need to change to a formalised diet plan for the whole family - why does it need to be either one regime for weight loss, or another for BG control? Apologies if I sound blunt, but what were you eating before your diagnosis, that presumably the family en masse were happy with and enjoying, that can't be modified for yourself now - and for your husband if he wants to lose some weight too?

By your own admission you've already made considerable improvements in both your BGs and you've lost weight too - neither of which are easy to achieve, but you've made considerable and admirable progress already in a short time - a mere 6 weeks, that's the blink of an eye in your whole future.

Granted, I've been diabetic for a long time, so I have been eating to an appropriate regime for a long time already - long enough for it to be second nature where it's still very, very new and confusing for you. So my starting point to decide to try LCHF (at least my version of it) was already part way there, where for you it was no doubt totally new and you simply haven't had chance yet to acclimatise and you're now finding yourself overwhelmed by it all. I can assure you that we've all felt this way at some point - or several points.

My husband and I, just like AndBreathe and her partner, have always eaten the same food - and like yourself, mealtimes have always been important to us as a family, we eat every meal at the table, which I set properly, even for breakfast. So preparing a meal together and eating as a family is something I feel that bonds families and is important time together.

You said "our meals used to consist of meat and rice/potatoe/pasta and veg was a side." - why does that need to change? When we have this sort of meal, we just plate up the proportions differently - he has more potato and I have more veggies around the same core ingredient. For example; the other night we had gammon steaks with a fried egg on - he did a batch of oven chips with his, I did a pile of green veggies - I had half a dozen chips, he had a portion of the veg, I had more. If your husband wants to lose weight. then he just gets a similarly modified version with smaller less calorific portions. We had curry tonight, nuked one pack of wholegrain rice, he had two thirds of it, I had a third and a couple of poppadoms at 3g carbs each. It's our current Saturday night treat and I look forward to it and really enjoy it. But I had two very good low carb meals earlier today. So if you eat daytime meals apart, but evenings together, then restrict your personal carbs more at lunch, but allow yourself some more slack at dinner time, so you can enjoy a family meal.

I think you need to drop the thinking that it's a 'diet' - it isn't - it's a way of life and you need to make changes to what you were doing before to make it better for you - long term. You have to make an investment in your future health and it does require some effort - at least until you get better to grips with it.

And I will get lynched again by the LCHF hardcore brigade - but you do not have to give up treats and totally stop eating things you like - in moderation and with common sense. Allow yourself a bit of milk chocolate on a Saturday night for example. I tend to buy fun size individually wrapped bars, so that I control the portion and if you eat it after dinner, it's being digested after everything else, so it minimises its impact on BG. And find a chocolate that melts well in your mouth, so you can savour it properly and enjoy it - make it count! Over time, you will learn the tricks that make things work for you.

AndBreathe has already given you some most excellent advice and covered some of the points I was going to raise better than I could. I would suggest something else - think about your family meals pre-diagnosis and how they might easliy be modified to suit your own criteria - I bet meals that you previously enjoyed can still be utilised with some tweaks.

It doesn't have to be an either/or eating regime and you don't have to give anything up totally. If you're finding it overwhelming just now, maybe ease off a little whilst you think. If you went low carb in a short period, it maybe isn't sustainable for you long term, maybe that's why you've hit this hurdle. Maybe you need to approach it again more gradually and walk before you run.

Lost my weight due to exercise and watching what i eat it is funny as when I tried diets i could never stick to them so yes I agree get away from, the idea of being on a diet

If you join a SW clasd you can ask for the original plan. You also get online access which you should be able to find the red day details. There us also extra easy sp.

You dont have to eat the carbs or the low fat yogurt. You could just make meals for everyone and just dont put the pasta or potatoes on your plate for instance.

Whatever you decide good luck

3 points as not going to get into the advantages or disadvantages of various diets. If you lose weight, you will decrease your insulin resistance. There are people that manage to do that with all sorts of diets.
The biggest problem for most people is not regaining it and that does mean you have to eat in a way that you enjoy . It's particularly important if mealtimes are a big part of your life (those people who don't and just eat to provide the necessary calories don't usually have problems with weight )
1) there is almost no difference in carbohydrates value between low fat, reduced fat and full fat plain greek yoghurt. (O% Fage has 4% carb, 'original' has 3.8% carb ) The difference is purely in how much of the fat has been removed from the milk before it's made into yoghurt. Flavoured yoghurts are an entirely different matter and many contain so much sugar that they are not good for anyone.

2) It's great that your older daughter likes vegetables. Whatever you decided to do, there surely is no reason to cut back on them. Conventional healthy eating plans for people with diabetes and everyone else, also call for at least half of a plate to contain vegetables . http://www.diabetes.org/food-and-fitness/food/planning-meals/create-your-plate/ (they are all carb containing foods!
3) We all know young children can be fickle about food . My own son is bemoaning the fact that his young son who would eat everything that was presented to him at 2 and 3 is now far more choosy at 5. Trying to force them is a losing battle (60 years on and I still won't eat the tripe that they tried to force me to eat at nursery school)
It's much easier to 'hide' vegetables in dishes that aren't just simple meat and veg . You disguise veg much more easily in dishes that have some sort of sauce . It's such a common problem that there are lots of ideals on the net.
http://www.madeformums.com/toddler-...karmels-hidden-vegetable-bolognese/35789.html