Snack help please?

The food forum has loads and loads of low carb delicious food, have a look there. I wouldn't have ryvita but at around 7g of carbs each, they are not too terrible. Fruit will spike him most likely, most of us eat fruit that ends in berry, strawberry, raspberry etc as they seem to be the better. Snacks, sugar free jelly, with or without a glug of cream, slices of ham or other cooked meat with a dollop of Philly cheese, wrapped up into a parcel, a small handful of nuts, pork rinds, cheese, or something from the low carb recipe's that are within his daily carb allowance.

I dont eat much fruit, only berries, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries.
I have found that with Ryvita my bs went up so I stopped those.
I'm veggie but when I wasn't I could have eaten pork scratchings, ew not for me tho. You can grind them up in a processor and coat chicken and stuff with it. Rather like breadcrumbs without the bread.
Only one of many suggestions.

I have similar problems. I'm over 6ft and slim, and have a reduced (but not low) carbohydrate diet. I have to snack and be inventive to keep my weight up!
For snacks, I eat a lot of nuts. Walnuts are very good, in fact most are ok but avoid cashews - not really nuts, they're part of the seed pod of the cashew tree, quite high in carbs and higher GI.
I also snack on pork scratchings, cold hard boiled eggs, cold sausages (when you buy them, check the carb content. The meatier ones are far less carbs), home-made low carb ice creram, low carb home made "almost bounty" bars, cheese with olives and cherry tomatoes, occasional atkins daybreak bar (they say net 2 grams carbs per bar, but even if you don't believe the figure the gross is only 8), cold chicken wings, parmesan crisps........
Fruit I have berries, any (straw, blue, black etc). Often have some clotted cream with them. I also have an apple each day and a small satsuma later. Seem to be ok for me.
That's about it for snacks. Meals are normal lowish-carb and also low GI. Lunch is often one or two slices of Burgen soya and linseed bread from sainsburys (or tescos) which is about the lowest carb bread and low GI. I quite like it and cope with it well. I'll have it with ham, tuna, any proteiny food. Bit of side salad and cheese and silverskin onion.
The key is, of course, to eat and test. Were all different in what we can tolerate, so experiment and test.

My snacks are very like Grazer's, except for the pork scratchings - I don't think my teeth could cope :lol: (yes, they are still mine!).

I eat Ryvita - the sesame seed type - and I butter the side with the holes in. That should help to keep his weight up :wink: . Also oat cakes - about 5g carb per biscuit.

I tried Burgen bread but I don't much like it. I find Tesco's Multigrain Wholemeal (in their Finest range) doesn't affect my BGs much. I can manage an occasional sandwich - usually meat or cheese with salad and mayonnaise - full fat, of course! I'm also okay with the occasional wholemeal pitta bread, or our local baker's wholemeal granary cob.

If I want chocolate, I go for anything with a cocoa percentage above 70%. The higher, the more bitter. Not too much at a time.

I try to keep my carbs very low because I'm trying to lose weight. Your father shouldn't need to go as low as I do - maybe 100g carb per day will do for him to stabilise his blood sugars without losing too much weight. The trick for him may be as much portion control as anything else - 3 tiny new potatoes, one tablespoon of basmati rice, for instance. No more heaps of mashed potato - I'm told it hits the blood stream faster than pure glucose :shock:

It might be worth having a look at Viv's Modified Atkins Diet, which is in the Sticky Thread section. That's much too low carb for him, I would think (though it will certainly lower/stabilise his BGs!), but it gives an easy list of very low carb foods. Then get him a carb counter book (eg Collins' Little Gem do one) and add on low GI carbs until he reaches the daily level he wants to eat.

The main thing is, read the labels, test as much as he can, initially, and learn what he can eat without trouble.

I hope he finds a controlled carb intake suits him, and works. Do let us know how he goes on

Viv 8)

PS My BG levels were never very high, because I was caught very early. I got my HbA1c down from 6.5 to 5.6 in 6 months, and now, 2 years after diagnosis, I'm very rarely out of the non-diabetic range. I'm still low-carbing because I still have weight to lose.