What do I substitute bread for?

omelette? home made soup? salad? I often cook too much for tea, box it up and bring it for lunch

Are you working, or at home?

Do you eat sandwiches for convenience or practicality?
And do you make them, or buy them?
And where do you usually do your shopping?

I will probably make different suggestions, depending on your answer.

Thanks!

Our local Morrisons is a pain. Lots and lots of lovely cake and pies and stuff. It is torture. I feel for you.

Does anyone know if Morrisons are still doing Liv Life bread? It is a lower carb bread. Burgen also do one. I will try and find some links.

Alternatively, if you have a Lidl's near you, they do some high protein rolls (triangular and covered with seeds) which are MUCH lower carb than normal bread.

I have packed lunches at work nearly every day, and they are usually one of the following
- crustless quiche (i make it, but you can buy them in Morrisons or Tescos, and probably elsewhere
- cold meat (ham, beef, chicken)
- slices of cheese or a blob of mozzarella, with a big tomato (you could swap something like avocado for the tomato)
- hummus (but you could have some cream cheese, egg mayo, chicken in mayo sandwich filling) eaten with a teaspoon, or on a Lidl roll

I don't know how low carb you want to go, but oatcakes and ryvita are lower carb than bread.

Here are those links
http://www.livlifefoods.co.uk
And
http://www.burgenbread.com/breads/

My local morrisons isnt doing the LivLife bread. I also tried to get some from Waitrose - but apparently they have stopped stocking it too :-( so I've yet to try it sigh.
One thing I do sometimes is check out the crackers - there are some varieties with just 3 to 4 g of carbs per cracker. I limit them to just 2 every few days or so - with pate or cream cheese when i get fed up of cucumber and celery! I'm pretty new to it all so not going as low carb as some folks. I aim to keep my intake at less than 20g carbs per meal. I absolutely take my hat off to those of you who manage to stay under 25g per day! Am hoping it will get easier over time

Newly diagnosed and really struggling with glucose levels. Not too bad before breakfast but up quite high by evening giving me a headache. I have suffered neuropathy, including lightheadedness, because I was undiagnosed for a long time so find walking/exercise quite painful and difficult. Would love to feel more confident re food and going out.

romania said:

Newly diagnosed and really struggling with glucose levels. Not too bad before breakfast but up quite high by evening giving me a headache. I have suffered neuropathy, including lightheadedness, because I was undiagnosed for a long time so find walking/exercise quite painful and difficult. Would love to feel more confident re food and going out.

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Hi, and welcome. There is a thread at the top of the list in the low carb forum called something like 'What did you eat today' which is many pages long but I found to be the most helpful because it showed me that other people are successfully living with diabetes and how they are eating to keep it under control. There are also a couple of recipe discussions which are also very helpful

bigshow1271 said:

AAAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!! Really really struggling with this, I'm sick of feeling hungry and tired. Doing my box in

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It WILL pass! Promise.

Short term ways to make yourself feel better is to
- eat more low carb food
- eat more fat (I always find that just having a dash a cream in coffee, or a slice of cheese, or some berries with cream on, or a spoon of peanut butter, makes the floppy, wobbly, hollow, carb craving feelings go away)
- drink more
- add some salt to food, or have a cup of bovril, or some broth. this can make a HUGE difference, since as we adjust to lower carbs, our body sometimes flushes salt away in our urine, and having too little salt can make us feel very listless, miserable and floppy.

My personal view is that people often make a mistake when they start low carbing. They want to lose weight. They want to switch to lower carbs. They start both at once.

I would advise people to do the low carb thing FIRST. while eating lots, never going hungry, and making sure they feel comfortably satisfied.

Then, when they have adjusted to THAT, they can go for weight loss, if they want.

However, many people find that weight loss happens naturally when they switch to lower carb - in which case they don't need to take the next step, and don't need to cut portions.

Hope that helps.

My local Morrisons has a deli bit where you can have cheeses and deli meats cut to the size/weight you want. They also do a roaring trade in salads and rotisserie chicken at lunch time. I don't know if Morrisons deli does them, but at Tesco and Sainsbury's you can get samosas with various fillings singly. The pastry is very thin and they're small so you could buy one and try it.

Pickled stuff eg eggs, cockles, beetroot, gherkins, sauerkraut - the acetic acid lowers blood sugar for some people.

Some people will be fine with things like couscous salad and others won't. Nuts, pork scratchings or maybe your body could manage those toddler size packets of snacks eg Organix Goodies cheese and herb puffs.

Small pot of natural unsweetened yogurt or cream with some berries, Or a small pot of cottage cheese (not the diet kind).

Have a look for frozen pork cocktail sausages that you can cook and take to work.

Tomatoes, celery. cucumber. lettuce, olives, cheeses, peperami, salami. Parma ham, tinned fish. Think more of a picnic than just something between bread.

Just had another idea - have a look at the frozen party food stuff at Iceland etc. Haven't looked this autumn but last year quite a few things were around 5g carbs each. You might be able to wean yourself off carbs with mini pasties with other things to start with.

Brunneria said:

My personal view is that people often make a mistake when they start low carbing. They want to lose weight. They want to switch to lower carbs. They start both at once.

I would advise people to do the low carb thing FIRST. while eating lots, never going hungry, and making sure they feel comfortably satisfied.

Then, when they have adjusted to THAT, they can go for weight loss, if they want.

However, many people find that weight loss happens naturally when they switch to lower carb - in which case they don't need to take the next step, and don't need to cut portions.

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Excellent advice!! I've only had to start looking at my menu three months after starting low carbing now that I've reached a plateau with my weight and its just been a question of reducing portion sizes so they are now average instead of huge.

bigshow1271 said:

Hi guys

I normally have a sandwich for my dinner but my BG's are rubbish, I have substituted my bran flakes in the morning with yoghurt and berries, changed my tea-time meals to ones with no potato, pasta or rice but now I'm struggling with what to eat at dinner time (12pm)

Has anyone any suggestions for someone who doesn't eat tomatoes, cucumber, celery

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If you really like bread you could try Burgen Linseed and Soya bread and the Lidl protein rolls are a great favorite with people here as they don't raise their BG

Do you have a physical job? I do. I used to have 4 slices white bread with meat, brown sauce and perhaps sliced tomato to make me feel I was being healthy - obviously not! Then there's be a couple of slices of cake and a chocolate biscuit like Penguin. No wonder I weighed over 20 stone and developed type 2.
Now I have a plastic box with chopped salad, mayo salads (from asda), egg or meat or cheese (or all three), with as many cold cooked vegs as I can cram in. Usually followed by an apple - carbs I know but not a HUGE sin! Flask of coffee with full fat milk, cream doesn't travel well in a flask, and some pork scratchings in case I get hungry.
If its a really cold wet day I sometimes have 2 slices linseed and soya Bergan bread with lots of butter and cheese with raw onion instead of the salad (I don't really like salad all that much). I just fill the sandwich with lettuce/cucumber/raw mushrooms etc till it looks like a doorstep. Thats what I prefer, but its a bit of a 'treat' and only taken when I'm having a bad day! The day then usually gets worse when I get home and find my bloods are all over the place.
The bloods are, on the whole, doing fine, but the weight's stopped coming off probably for the reasons stated above - there's just too much carbohydrate. Still, I console myself its better than it was and I'll try to cut down on the mik and have black coffee next.
One step at a time for me.

So you're doing OK , keep it up!
To tell the truth I do get very very hungry and I really miss my bread (and pastry and chocolate and beer and chips and .... all those good things that we enjoy with our mates), but I don't want to end up as a half-blind, non-driver with a foot amputated and a non-functioning sex drive - so I tell myself it'll be worth it.
Sometimes the cravings get the better of me though.
Life can be a b****r and then you die, as they say.