What have you eaten today? (Low carb forum)

[Chook]

We have a little round machine where you can cook meat (bacon and stuff) on top and melt cheese in little pans underneath (on the coffee table in front of the telly). A few bits of melted cheese and I'm full The accompanying bread and potatoes are probably off limits for many of us, but there's always things like salad, pickled gerkins, etc.

I'm going to have to try that!!! What is the little machine called? Can we get them over here?

 

[Chook]

Naughty Day - giggles
B - Nothing til 12.00
L - Small fish and chips (26)
D- Spinach and sprouts with cream cheese - turned out I really like sprouts covered in cream cheese cooked in the microwave for 3.5 minutes. Considering I dont like sprouts this was a revelation. Lightly cooked is the way for me wonder what raw sprout is like.

Raw sprouts are nice finely shredded in a coleslaw type salad and I almost always put them in (finely shredded) for the last minute of a veg stir fry.

Also, bizarrely, they are very nice shredded, fried in butter then used to fill an omelette, especially with a little smoked bacon.

 

[Rosbif]

I'm going to have to try that!!! What is the little machine called? Can we get them over here?

If you do a search for 'raclette grill' you should find plenty of models. Ours is a round purple one by Tefal called "simply invent" (if I'm allowed to cite brand names). It's well worth comparing prices on the French version of the big shopping site that starts with A as the one we have is 42 eur on the French site and 59 quid on the UK one! But there are also of course other brands that might be cheaper in the UK.

 

[Chook]

Day 3 of Week 1 of 8 Week Blood Sugar Diet - FBG 6.4 (a bit better though)

The hunger is wearing off today, thank goodness.

Breakfast: Lidl Turkish Yoghurt with tsp Monin sugar free gingerbread syrup
I've ordered some Alpro Plain with Coconut yoghurt for a change of breakfast for next week after reading about it on this thread!

Lunch: Broccoli & Stilton soup @GeoffersTaylor - thanks for the inspiration, its amazing!
I was in my local Jack Fulton shop yesterday and they were selling off stilton (use by date today) for 25p for 150g packs. So I bought all they had left, diced it and its in the freezer for future soup making.

Dinner: Asda Mediterranean Pork Loin steak, roasted celeriac, roasted cherry tomatoes, roasted baby fennel and baby spinach and baby kale salad (lots of baby/small vegies - coincidental but a bit weird!)

 

[Chook]

If you do a search for 'raclette grill' you should find plenty of models. Ours is a round purple one by Tefal called "simply invent" (if I'm allowed to cite brand names). It's well worth comparing prices on the French version of the big shopping site that starts with A as the one we have is 42 eur on the French site and 59 quid on the UK one! But there are also of course other brands that might be cheaper in the UK.

Thank you very much! I will go to the A...... jungle and investigate...

 

[debrasue]

Yesterday was brunch of ham salad with edamame beans, one slice of wholemeal rye bread with hummus and an apple, and dinner was roast chicken, cabbage, mushrooms, peas, cauliflower and gravy, kiwis and strawberries.
Breakfast today was 2 eggs fried in a teasp of butter, mushrooms & courgettes tossed and fried in a dessert spoonful of olive oil, tomato, spinach and 1 slice of wholemeal toast (no butter), 3 big strawberries.
I'm a newbie - only diagnosed T2 last week - aged 62, obese, and I can't get to see the practice nurse or dietician until the 11 April! I've declined meds at this stage, chosen an LC diet, and need to lose a significant amount of weight to have any chance of getting this under control, but does it sound as if I'm on the right track, please? Any direction/affirmation would be be very welcome...

 

[GeoffersTaylor]

Yesterday was brunch of ham salad with edamame beans, one slice of wholemeal rye bread with hummus and an apple, and dinner was roast chicken, cabbage, mushrooms, peas, cauliflower and gravy, kiwis and strawberries.
Breakfast today was 2 eggs fried in a teasp of butter, mushrooms & courgettes tossed and fried in a dessert spoonful of olive oil, tomato, spinach and 1 slice of wholemeal toast (no butter), 3 big strawberries.
I'm a newbie - only diagnosed T2 last week - aged 62, obese, and I can't get to see the practice nurse or dietician until the 11 April! I've declined meds at this stage, chosen an LC diet, and need to lose a significant amount of weight to have any chance of getting this under control, but does it sound as if I'm on the right track, please? Any direction/affirmation would be be very welcome...

All seems fine to me, apart from the bread. You probably have more carbs in those two slices of bread than you have in the rest of your menu combined. Personally I would lay off the hummus too, but that's just me.

Quite a few of us here are not only low-carb - we're high fat as well! So to us, butter is fine, frying in olive oil is fine, cream in our coffee, avocados etc... So if I did have toast, buttering it would be the least of my problem!

Low Carb High Fat - LCHF. It's something you should have a good read about and see if it could work for you. LCHF a little counter-intuitive at first because it goes against most of the standard dietary advice for the last few decades, but I'm here to say it can work wonders. Just be clear that, with LCHF, the High Fat part is just as important as the Low Carb part - they work together.

 

[debrasue]

All seems fine to me, apart from the bread. You probably have more carbs in those two slices of bread than you have in the rest of your menu combined. Personally I would lay off the hummus too, but that's just me.

Quite a few of us here are not only low-carb - we're high fat as well! So to us, butter is fine, frying in olive oil is fine, cream in our coffee, avocados etc... So if I did have toast, buttering it would be the least of my problem!

Low Carb High Fat - LCHF. It's something you should have a good read about and see if it could work for you. LCHF a little counter-intuitive at first because it goes against most of the standard dietary advice for the last few decades, but I'm here to say it can work wonders. Just be clear that, with LCHF, the High Fat part is just as important as the Low Carb part - they work together.

Thanks for this, GeoffersTaylor. I'll take your advice about the bread and hummus, although I thought I was supposed to be working to between 40-50g of carbs per meal. (In fact, I seem to be averaging around 30g.) Have I got that wrong? I'm also trying to stick to a maximum of 1,500 calories per day for the weight-loss.

 

[mo53]

Hello @debrasue I use myfitnesspal.com to keep a food diary as it calculates carbs and calories. If you go to forums and then the low carb section there is a new guide to low carb which is excellent. It gives all the what you can and can't eat. There is also a low carb online training program which you can log on to but I haven't tried that yet. It is hard at first to get your head around butter is good and bread is bad lol

 

[GeoffersTaylor]

Thanks for this, GeoffersTaylor. I'll take your advice about the bread and hummus, although I thought I was supposed to be working to between 40-50g of carbs per meal. (In fact, I seem to be averaging around 30g.) Have I got that wrong? I'm also trying to stick to a maximum of 1,500 calories per day for the weight-loss.

Don't quit hummus on my account - it's not an evil food! I'm just super-strict.

Personally I try to limit to 30g of carb per DAY, although I'm a bit more relaxed about it these days. That's very low, though, and I don't suggest you should go that extreme

For overall calories I wouldn't presume to suggest a figure but I would outline a method...
Carbs & protein are 4 calories per gramme. Fat is 9 calories per gramme. I used an online calculator to calculate my calorie requirements (Google "Mifflin Equation" or "Harris Benedict"). Let's say my base calories were 1800. I might then decide to eat less for weight loss and restrict my intake to just 1300 calories (a 500 calorie deficit).

If I decide to eat 50g of carbs per day that would be 50 x 4 = 200 calories
I might also decide to eat 100g of protein per day - another 400 calories (protein intake is recommend at about, roughly, 1.5g per kilo of lean bodyweight).

So if protein and carbs are giving me 600 calories and I want a total of 1300, the rest has to come from fats. So 700 calories of fat at 9 calories per gramme would equal nearly 80g of fat.

So as a rule of thumb, I heavily restrict my carbs and eat roughly the same proportions of protein and fat. Crucially, when I decide to increase my intake so that I stop trying to lose weight, I will increase my fats.

 

[debrasue]

Don't quit hummus on my account - it's not an evil food! I'm just super-strict.

Personally I try to limit to 30g of carb per DAY, although I'm a bit more relaxed about it these days. That's very low, though, and I don't suggest you should go that extreme

For overall calories I wouldn't presume to suggest a figure but I would outline a method...
Carbs & protein are 4 calories per gramme. Fat is 9 calories per gramme. I used an online calculator to calculate my calorie requirements (Google "Mifflin Equation" or "Harris Benedict"). Let's say my base calories were 1800. I might then decide to eat less for weight loss and restrict my intake to just 1300 calories (a 500 calorie deficit).

If I decide to eat 50g of carbs per day that would be 50 x 4 = 200 calories
I might also decide to eat 100g of protein per day - another 400 calories (protein intake is recommend at about, roughly, 1.5g per kilo of lean bodyweight).

So if protein and carbs are giving me 600 calories and I want a total of 1300, the rest has to come from fats. So 700 calories of fat at 9 calories per gramme would equal nearly 80g of fat.

So as a rule of thumb, I heavily restrict my carbs and eat roughly the same proportions of protein and fat. Crucially, when I decide to increase my intake so that I stop trying to lose weight, I will increase my fats.

Thanks, GeoffersTaylor. Wow - it's going to take me a while to get my head around this! But I really, really want to succeed so I appreciate your input. I can DO this.........

 

[Chook]

@debrasue I'm keeping to the same carb level as @GeoffersTaylor. I lost 4st that way last year so it really does work and it is very possible to eat an interesting healthy diet with very few carbs. As the others have said the struggle is learning that at all the foods I previously thought were healthy aren't actually very good for people with diabetes. I feel so much better physically and mentally since I cut my carbs to less than 30g a day. I used to eat a 'healthy' diet which was supposed to help me lose weight - loads of fruit, wholemeal pasta, brown rice, jacket spuds, wholemeal bread and bananas - not realising that those are the foods making me fat and so very ill by increasing my blood glucose.

Then, which for me was the bigger weirdness, finding out that all the previously limited stuff isn't limited any more - butter, double cream, cheese, animal fats, etc. I found that (while yummy) I couldn't cope with a lot of fat in my diet so nowadays I don't actually eat things specifically to increase my fat intake - I just don't restrict it like I used to. Having said that... I have now got a mini addiction going on to having double cream in my coffee.

I'm sure there are other people on this forum with different ideas about how to cope with the big D but I preferred to take as few meds as I can as long as this more natural solution works for me. We are all different and this is my personal view based on my own experience.

 

[debrasue]

Had to check the word raclette - its basically a hotplate of food some times served with a fondue pot

It's the name of a particularly yummy French cheese, too, which melts beautifully!

 

[debrasue]

@debrasue I'm keeping to the same carb level as @GeoffersTaylor. I lost 4st that way last year so it really does work and it is very possible to eat an interesting healthy diet with very few carbs. As the others have said the struggle is learning that at all the foods I previously thought were healthy aren't actually very good for people with diabetes. I feel so much better physically and mentally since I cut my carbs to less than 30g a day. I used to eat a 'healthy' diet which was supposed to help me lose weight - loads of fruit, wholemeal pasta, brown rice, jacket spuds, wholemeal bread and bananas - not realising that those are the foods making me fat and so very ill by increasing my blood glucose.

Then, which for me was the bigger weirdness, finding out that all the previously limited stuff isn't limited any more - butter, double cream, cheese, animal fats, etc. I found that (while yummy) I couldn't cope with a lot of fat in my diet so nowadays I don't actually eat things specifically to increase my fat intake - I just don't restrict it like I used to. Having said that... I have now got a mini addiction going on to having double cream in my coffee.

I'm sure there are other people on this forum with different ideas about how to cope with the big D but I preferred to take as few meds as I can as long as this more natural solution works for me. We are all different and this is my personal view based on my own experience.

Okay guys - I'm going down! (Maybe not as far as you just yet, but I'm hearing your advice.) Thanks x

 

[AndBreathe]

I'm going to have to try that!!! What is the little machine called? Can we get them over here?

Lidl sell Raclette devices every now and then on their weekly deals.

 

[Kyi]

Personally I go with no potatoes, rice, bread, or pasta. I limit the starchy vegs - mainly roots and pulses. Everything else is not off limits. I aim for carbs around 50g per day no less than 30g no more than 80g. Probably need to limit the proteins but Im not sure what to yet. I try to have at least 1 day of raw vegs and limited meats
Brunch Liver Bacon Mushrooms snack cashew nuts Dinner curried eggs in lettuce wraps. The usual double cream in my coffee. Its yummy.

 

[Chook]

Lidl sell Raclette devices every now and then on their weekly deals.

Too late . Amazon.....

I also bought a whole load of CDs and DVDs.

 

[SamJB]

Yesterday...

B: Linseed muffins
L: Smokes salmon salad
D: Cauli Singapore rice

 

[KayeStevenson]

All seems fine to me, apart from the bread. You probably have more carbs in those two slices of bread than you have in the rest of your menu combined. Personally I would lay off the hummus too, but that's just me.

Quite a few of us here are not only low-carb - we're high fat as well! So to us, butter is fine, frying in olive oil is fine, cream in our coffee, avocados etc... So if I did have toast, buttering it would be the least of my problem!

Low Carb High Fat - LCHF. It's something you should have a good read about and see if it could work for you. LCHF a little counter-intuitive at first because it goes against most of the standard dietary advice for the last few decades, but I'm here to say it can work wonders. Just be clear that, with LCHF, the High Fat part is just as important as the Low Carb part - they work together.

I had a little tub of hummus last night at 8pm and two hours later I tested at 7.2. I am never that high. Ho hum...no more hummus for me.

 

[Chook]

I had a little tub of hummus last night at 8pm and two hours later I tested at 7.2. I am never that high. Ho hum...no more hummus for me.

Yes, know that feeling. It's always a shock, even after all these months, when something I think of as healthy does that to me. I found making a dip from the innards of a soft baked and peeled aubergine, olive oil, roast garlic and lemon juice instead hit the hummus spot for me.