Vegetables...how to fit them in?

When I first started on a low carb diet I ate meat, fats, etc, and very low carb (leafy) vegetables & salad for a couple of weeks (similar to Atkins recommendation) to "kick start" ketosis, and was eating around 20g carbs a day. By adding very small portions of the lower carb berries i could stay at around 25g carbs a day. But i found this still a bit restrictive and prefer a slightly higher target, and am able to eat a larger variety of low carb veggies, slightly larger portions of fruit, and nuts.

I think you need to look at where your carbs are coming from and then decide where you can make any reductions, and still eat healthily. If you do this and also look at reducing quantities , e.g. of fruit, you could still eat around 20 grams of veggie carbs, and 5 grams of fruit carbs and stay at your proposed lower level.

Check with your meter as well to see if any of you fruit and vegetables spike you more, and consider making adjustments there first.

Robbity

PS If you're getting hungry are you eating/drinking enough fat?

Brunneria said:

Maybe you need to eat more fat?
That is incredibly filling, and a dab of butter, or a scatter of cheese on top of veg is not only delicious, it also slows digestion, leaving you fuller for longer.

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Brunneria, Should we point Vintageutopia to the Jenny Ruhl nutritional calculator? I think we should .. Going to get it .,

Ah, here it is .. I hope. The whole site looks a bit tatty at the mo, but don't mind that. The nutritional calculator is what you want. It is *gold.*

http://mobile.dudamobile.com/site/phlaunt1?url=http://www.phlaunt.com/diabetes/sp3index.php#3033

lisajohnson101 said:

I find I'm at my weakest at breakfast time - I crave porridge or granola but even with unsweetened almond milk that's still 20-30gram carb. I know I should have eggs but I really can't eat them in the morning.

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I struggle with eggs for breakfast too, unless it is a late brunch at the weekend. And even then it is missing toast. I've been having 100g greek yoghurt, with cinnamon or vanilla extract to sweeten a little with lots of flaked almonds (about 15-20g) and some peacans (10g) and then a few raspberries. The nuts really satisfy the craving for a granola type breakfast.

I've bought some Livlife bread so thinking of having some toast and peanut butter tomorrow. Mmmmmm

Just for comparison, I'm on 30 g carb a day, about 80g protein, and about 180g fat. When I stick to that, my weight stays stable (I lost stacks of weight initially but don't want to lose any more now).

Yes, I carb count. I weigh things, or did for the first month. The app I use is Carbs & Cals. A lot of the food items I needed weren't in there, though, so I added them. Did that from this nice nutritional database below, only because it's a US database, fibre hasn't yet been subtracted from carbs. So I do that myself, and input the carb value per 100 grams. Or whatever the useful amount is.

http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/search/list

I think I got this from Dr Bernstein - who you should read. His basic method is just sanity.

And another great tool is Cook and Count. Here you input your recipe, and it will give you carb values etc for portion sizes. Fantastic!

Oh yes, Carbs & Cals keeps your meals stored by date for you. For a year? I've been going so far about nine months.

I still weigh new things, because it gives me a sort of certainty that I need. And I put everything into apps. I use both DiaConnect and mySugr, because, well, I like that stuff. MySugr shows you standard deviation, which is really important for a Type 1. DiaConnect graphs are better. The main thing is that you can only see how well you're doing when you document and analyse the data, and the apps do that for you.

So get back to veggy crunching!! Veggies are our friend

My complete favourite is chard. Eggs and spinach also a lovely breakfast, but eggs and chard .. Oooo !

PerfectStorm said:

How are you sugars with the quinoa and pearl barley, Enclave? I thought they were high carb but might have to give them a try - I guess I won't know what's ok for me until I try it!

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Hmm. Quinoa is 57% carb raw and 18% cooked, so it's out for me. I would never eat it. - Unless you're going for Glycemic Load, rather than a particular carb limit every day.