What have you eaten today? (Low carb forum)

[amgrundy]

yesterday Saturday
B Bacon / egg / crumpet
S 1 pear
L No lunch felt a bit off Think I had a stomach bug.
D N dinner
BG reading at 7.15pm 5.8

 

[Dickensfan]

Hope everyone is well. Have been away for a week, partly because I was down in Devon on holiday (and nipping off to watch Maidstone United win 3-1 at Truro City). I have been trying to attack weight this week by eating below calories after staying stuck at 13st 10lbs for 2 weeks. So I have existed on smallish meals and plenty of water/fizzy (no sugar) water. Cheese/tomato/mushroom omlettes have featured a few times along with cream cheese with salad, sausages, bacon, stir fried chicken, salmon and veg a few coffees and teas and mugs of warm milk with turmeric, coriander and cinnamon in. The low point was sitting in car park with a coffee while everyone else ate McDonalds on the way back from Devon, especially as I was doing a 600cals or less fasting day (on that today as well). However, the high point has been weigh in day today where I have shaved off another 3lbs to go down to 13st 7lbs. I have now cut my weight by 1st 10lbs since being told about my blood/sugar levels. I am so glad I found the Newcastle study and this forum.
Today's menu will be:

B: Coffee
L: Fizzy water
D: Small chicken roast dinner (no spuds, stuffing or Yorkshires)
S: Raspberries followed by warm milk with cinnamon, turmeric and coriander in it.

Shout out to Dickensfan a couple of posts up. I know what you mean about being sluggish and feeling rubbish from the word go in the mornings. I felt like that for 2 or 3 years before I started dieting and doing LCHF. I don't feel like that now so stick at it. Not sure where you are in the cycle of things but weight reduction can start to make a real difference to how you feel although be a little careful how quickly you do it because I played football yesterday having eaten very little and suddenly found I dropped in energy and had to eat a banana quick! I have found that some days doing 5 or 6 meals at 300 cals has been a great way to under-eat without noticing at all. Obviously that would be 4 or 5 meals for you (the bane of being female I'm afraid )

Hello there Adrian, and thanks for the info, however, as I am no stranger to how good it feels to lose weight, having in the past (pre diabetes) been on every conceivable diet, and having felt great - so far I cannot say the same for this LCHF way of eating, and not impressed at all. Today should be the start of week 2 of the DietDoctors.com 2 week LCHF challenge, when according to his notes, I should have dropped 2 or 3 lbs and feel terrific.

Wrong on all counts. i'm exactly the same weight as I was last Sunday, and my waist is exactly the same measurements. I have a problem though, all of the recipes call for things I'd never put in my mouth, and won't change now. Because of its nature there's a lot of butter, and no low calorie items, including creams etc, which I do like over my berries or adding to sauces. I don't want to be spending hours in the kitchen, I'll be honest, and I only these days eat fish, chicken and shellfish. I have not eaten meat, lamb, pork etc since I was 5 years old, and ain't about to start, so maybe I've noticed no difference because I've substituted where it says 'beef' for chicken or 'pork' for chicken - you get the drift.

In the past on very strict diets, and changed eating patterns I've lot an awful lot of weight, I lost 10st at one point in my life and now need to lost 5st which if I was not diabetic I'd lose in no time if I put my mind to it.
Sorry to all the folk who have tried to advise me with their own experiences. I also realize there may be people on here who have never until recently dieted or changed their eating habits - but I just don't think looking at everything that the LCHF will suit me and lose weight at the same time as controlling BG.

 

[Brunneria]

Goodness, struggling to remember what I ate yesterday.. oh yes. Memory returns.

B: coffeencream
L: bacon with eggy bread (a stolen slice of Mr B's Burgen). Interestingly, I stopped eating Burgen cos it spiked me something silly, but after soaking in 2 beaten eggs, the spike was much gentler (thank you Libre for letting me see these things). In fact, it was barely a spike at all!! Worth trying again.
S: 2 Godiva dark chocs
D: chicken thigh curry with asparagus, broccoli sprouts and sugarsnaps, served with cauli rice, followed by berries and cream and 2 more Godivas (oops, how did that happen?)

Felt great all day. Masses of energy, spring cleaning, gardening, etc. etc. which is excellent since my bgs have been jangly and wangy ever since ProfiteroleGate. Suggests I have got over it.

 

[Blitzie]

B - Low carb pita bread with a beef burger & egg. Coffee

L - Ham & cheese salad. Chocolate chia seed pudding.

D - Pork fillets with Mediterranean sauce,peppers,mushrooms & a small amount of onions. Sugar free jelly with greek yoghurt.

Pork scratchings in the evening

 

[britishpub]

Starting to try to add a few more Carbs this week.....but struggling to find any I want to eat.

I keep feeling starving and my BG's are running in the 3's before eating.

B: Fried Egg, Bacon, Chipolatas, Tomato and Tea with Skimmed Milk (splash)
L: Country Pate with Gerkins, Pickled Onions and a couple of Plum Tomatoes
D: Roast Duck Leg in a Red Wine sauce, Celeriac Dauphinoise, Asparagus, Green Beans and Broccoli

...for pudd we had a Marks & Spencer Salted Caramel and Custard slice.............which was 39g of carbs.

It wasn't anywhere near as nice as I anticipated, but the good news was that I had a 4.8 2 hours after scoffing it

 

[AndBreathe]

Hello there Adrian, and thanks for the info, however, as I am no stranger to how good it feels to lose weight, having in the past (pre diabetes) been on every conceivable diet, and having felt great - so far I cannot say the same for this LCHF way of eating, and not impressed at all. Today should be the start of week 2 of the DietDoctors.com 2 week LCHF challenge, when according to his notes, I should have dropped 2 or 3 lbs and feel terrific.

Wrong on all counts. i'm exactly the same weight as I was last Sunday, and my waist is exactly the same measurements. I have a problem though, all of the recipes call for things I'd never put in my mouth, and won't change now. Because of its nature there's a lot of butter, and no low calorie items, including creams etc, which I do like over my berries or adding to sauces. I don't want to be spending hours in the kitchen, I'll be honest, and I only these days eat fish, chicken and shellfish. I have not eaten meat, lamb, pork etc since I was 5 years old, and ain't about to start, so maybe I've noticed no difference because I've substituted where it says 'beef' for chicken or 'pork' for chicken - you get the drift.

In the past on very strict diets, and changed eating patterns I've lot an awful lot of weight, I lost 10st at one point in my life and now need to lost 5st which if I was not diabetic I'd lose in no time if I put my mind to it.
Sorry to all the folk who have tried to advise me with their own experiences. I also realize there may be people on here who have never until recently dieted or changed their eating habits - but I just don't think looking at everything that the LCHF will suit me and lose weight at the same time as controlling BG.

Dickensfan, I'm not someone who gets a long too well with following "Day 1 = x, Day 2 =y" sort of programmes. I prefer to have a "stuff I eat and stuff I don't eat any more" approach. Aside from anythuing else, I have found this latter approach makes co-existance with MrB somewhat simpler.

Whay not just draft yourself up a couple of lists to start you off, broadly under the above categories and go from there? I didn't pile into the fat elements of the LCHF dietary style, and by comparison to others, I still don't very HF now. Particularly overseas, I find some of the fats to be very expensive -double cream at almost £5 for 300ml. Whilst we're fortunate that that wouldn't be a real show-stopper, I just can't think it's thousands of food miles, coming in from the US is all that helpful to me!

If there was a really simple, "eat this and you'll be cured", there would be no need for this website and all the fierce debates we hear so often. Annoyingly, diabetes is a very personalised condition where we each have to go through a period of open-minded discover and exploration.

Good luck with it all.

 

[debrasue]

In the past on very strict diets, and changed eating patterns I've lot an awful lot of weight, I lost 10st at one point in my life and now need to lost 5st which if I was not diabetic I'd lose in no time if I put my mind to it.

Hi @Dickensfan!
Like you, I have been on many, many different diets - in fact, I have spent almost my whole life on one diet or another. And lost heaps and heap of weight. And eventually put it all back on again ....... and developed Type 2 diabetes. As someone far cleverer than me once said: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result."
I started the diabetes.co.uk LCHF eating plan 8 weeks ago (NOTE: the diabetes.co.uk eating plan, not the DietDoctors plan) and I have since lost 15lbs and achieved BGs regularly in the 'normal', non-diabetic range. Yes, it's true I could have lost that amount of weight much more quickly using one of my previous diets, but I would soon be back where I started. Instead, I now feel confident I can maintain this style of eating for the rest of my life,
I can understand why you're feeling the way you do. I originally started with the DietDoctors LCHF plan you're following, but it didn't work for me, either. Then I found this website and began to read everything I could on the Forums. I gradually came to realise that the key to my success was to "take what I liked and leave the rest". We are all different, and what works for some won't work for others. But YOU are the best judge of what works for YOU, and if you give it a chance this eating plan gives you the flexibility to choose what to eat and how to eat/cook it. And it works!
I maintain a daily food chart, counting the calories and carbs in everything I eat, trying to stick to around 1450 calories per day and 30-40g carbs. That's helping me lose between 1 and 2lbs per week, and keeps my BG levels between the 4s and upper 5s throughout the day. Which all makes me a very happy bunny!
I notice you don't mention your BG levels. Are you testing? Or are you simply trying to use LCHF as a way to lose weight?

 

[Dickensfan]

Hi Debra - to answer your last question, I test 3 or 4 times a day, and whilst I agree with what you say that we are not all the same, I really think I'm going to do my own thing and see how it goes, because obviously the dietdoctors one is just not to my liking, as it turns out the veg on that diet are indeed, the only veg I have ever bought, as I dislike the others, so there's really no change for me, as I've (unknowingly) been eating low carb veg anyway. Unlike you, I'm sorry to say i won't be counting calories, it's one of the reasons why I have in the past joined diet clubs, only for a few weeks at a time, I hated the club mentality, and sitting alongside a bunch of women who mainly had no intention of using will power (I have that in abundance) and go to the chip shop after meatings for fish and chips - just awful, and I noticed it a lot. For me to start to weigh things, count calories, I just refuse to do it, but as they say if that's what works for you by all means do it, you and others are probably used to that way of working.
For me, and I know myself well, if I started the count thing, it would only last a week, then I'd get fed up - oddly enough, despite my weight, food is not the be all and end all for me, and i'm not even sure if I'm all that bothered about the diabetes now.

Yesterday whilst at the garden centre I met an ex colleague of mine who is a lot slimmer than me, always was, she told me she'd been diabetic for 3 or 4 years, as was her brother (now decd) both with Type 2, I told her my brother also has type 2 and that I was told it can run in families, and you do not have to be overweight or obese to have it. It was very nice to see her, it's been about 10 years since we last met, and will meet up next week for coffee. I asked her what she did - 'absolu6tely nothing, I don't even do readings' that amazed me, but she seems fine on it.

 

[debrasue]

Hi Debra - to answer your last question, I test 3 or 4 times a day, and whilst I agree with what you say that we are not all the same, I really think I'm going to do my own thing and see how it goes, because obviously the dietdoctors one is just not to my liking, as it turns out the veg on that diet are indeed, the only veg I have ever bought, as I dislike the others, so there's really no change for me, as I've (unknowingly) been eating low carb veg anyway. Unlike you, I'm sorry to say i won't be counting calories, it's one of the reasons why I have in the past joined diet clubs, only for a few weeks at a time, I hated the club mentality, and sitting alongside a bunch of women who mainly had no intention of using will power (I have that in abundance) and go to the chip shop after meatings for fish and chips - just awful, and I noticed it a lot. For me to start to weigh things, count calories, I just refuse to do it, but as they say if that's what works for you by all means do it, you and others are probably used to that way of working.
For me, and I know myself well, if I started the count thing, it would only last a week, then I'd get fed up - oddly enough, despite my weight, food is not the be all and end all for me, and i'm not even sure if I'm all that bothered about the diabetes now.

Yesterday whilst at the garden centre I met an ex colleague of mine who is a lot slimmer than me, always was, she told me she'd been diabetic for 3 or 4 years, as was her brother (now decd) both with Type 2, I told her my brother also has type 2 and that I was told it can run in families, and you do not have to be overweight or obese to have it. It was very nice to see her, it's been about 10 years since we last met, and will meet up next week for coffee. I asked her what she did - 'absolu6tely nothing, I don't even do readings' that amazed me, but she seems fine on it.

It's certainly true that there can be a genetic link to diabetes (my father and paternal grandmother both had it) and, as I said, you know best what works for you, so I wish you every success in however you decide to handle it.
I would encourage you to continue to test from time to time though, if only to keep an eye on the bigger picture, because - as I'm sure you're aware - the long-term complications of untreated diabetes can be deeply distressing, and I wouldn't want to wish that on anybody!
Good luck, hon!

 

[Dickensfan]

It's certainly true that there can be a genetic link to diabetes (my father and paternal grandmother both had it) and, as I said, you know best what works for you, so I wish you every success in however you decide to handle it.
I would encourage you to continue to test from time to time though, if only to keep an eye on the bigger picture, because - as I'm sure you're aware - the long-term complications of untreated diabetes can be deeply distressing, and I wouldn't want to wish that on anybody!
Good luck, hon!

On the 27th I am due to see the dietician, I recall when my practice nurse said I'd see the dietician, I'd have a while to wait, this was in February and there you go first available appointment is 27th April. I am somewhat peeved at what has been described as our marvellous NHS there's nothing marvellous about it, if you lived in a country where you paid for it, you would be seen very quickly by any department, and furthermore, you would receive your treatment, diagnosis, surgery etc., for whatever your ailment happens to be also very quickly, instead of waiting months here. I think the NHS at times is embarrassing to the UK, albeit well intentioned when the population was much smaller than it is now - however, I digress. My diabetes is not 'untreated' Debra as I'm sure you too are aware. I am very aware of the consequences should I not be receiving treatment, and I also have someone disabled whose very existence day to day depends on me being around.

 

[Chook]

Is this the right thread for this conversation?

 

[debrasue]

Is this the right thread for this conversation?

Nope!

 

[Brunneria]

B: coffeencream, then a latte and a sausageneggmcmuffin minus the carbs. No spike. Yay! We ate in the car, out of the wind, pre dogwalk. Then got hailed, rained and sleeted on during the walk. Good job we fortified ourselves, eh? The poor cherry blossom must have got a nasty shock

L: forgot. Was washing down kitchen tiles, by hand, on knees. Which now hurt. But by golly, what a difference. All these modern cleaning mops and steamers just don't compete with elbow grease, do they? Had 2 slices of smoked cheese at 4pm.

D: cooked by Mr B. 3 Black Farmers sausages and 200g of sugarsnaps, in butter. Berries and cream and 2 Godivas. Stuffed. And happy.

 

[Mongolia]

B: 1/2 Lidl roll, avocado, bacon, poached egg
L: Cheese - a variety of. Also made experimental raspberry & chocolate soufflé as had egg whites left over from making lemon curd. Used sweetener instead of sugar obviously but BG after 2 hours was 7.8 Still have 3 more in the fridge. May have to experiment with taking out the chocolate before cooking.
D: beef ragu, celeriac rosti

 

[Millie_Tant_]

B: 3 Ryvita with marmite and peanut butter
L: Chicken salad with feta and mayo
D: Chicken, Broccoli and a tiny carrot with cauli cheese made with cream
Coffee and water to drink
I feel accomplished as I've finally managed to get blood testing right. Average 6.2 today so far, very pleased

 

[PenfoldAPD]

B: sausage sarnie - LivLife bread and Heck sausages so around 16g carbs

L: roast pork, good vegetables ... and a little gravy

D: a few slices of gammon, a bit of cheese - and a homemade sugar free mousse with a couple of raspberries (my new favourite dessert)

No alcohol, just fizzy soda stream water!

 

[britishpub]

B: 2 Soft boiled eggs and 2 slices LivLife, Tea
L: rest of the country Pate with more pickled onions, gerkins & Baby plum tommies
S: Coffee n Cream with 2 squares 85%
D: Beef in Red Wine, Cauliflower Purée, various green vegetables
Shiraz & maybe a Lemoncello later.

 

[adriangoatseye]

Hello there Adrian, and thanks for the info, however, as I am no stranger to how good it feels to lose weight, having in the past (pre diabetes) been on every conceivable diet, and having felt great - so far I cannot say the same for this LCHF way of eating, and not impressed at all. Today should be the start of week 2 of the DietDoctors.com 2 week LCHF challenge, when according to his notes, I should have dropped 2 or 3 lbs and feel terrific.

Wrong on all counts. i'm exactly the same weight as I was last Sunday, and my waist is exactly the same measurements. I have a problem though, all of the recipes call for things I'd never put in my mouth, and won't change now. Because of its nature there's a lot of butter, and no low calorie items, including creams etc, which I do like over my berries or adding to sauces. I don't want to be spending hours in the kitchen, I'll be honest, and I only these days eat fish, chicken and shellfish. I have not eaten meat, lamb, pork etc since I was 5 years old, and ain't about to start, so maybe I've noticed no difference because I've substituted where it says 'beef' for chicken or 'pork' for chicken - you get the drift.

In the past on very strict diets, and changed eating patterns I've lot an awful lot of weight, I lost 10st at one point in my life and now need to lost 5st which if I was not diabetic I'd lose in no time if I put my mind to it.
Sorry to all the folk who have tried to advise me with their own experiences. I also realize there may be people on here who have never until recently dieted or changed their eating habits - but I just don't think looking at everything that the LCHF will suit me and lose weight at the same time as controlling BG.

While I agree this is probably not the right thread for this I will sort of back up what Debrasue and some of what you said. Make the diet suit what you like (I am not ready to go to HF and don't do it to a great extent). However, the calorie counting and working out what gives what and how things balance has been great. My degree is economics so I fully get that if I want to lose something then my income must be less that my outgoings (or, in this case, calories in must be less than calories out). I have days where I break even, days where I undercut a little and days where I really attack things (using willpower and fizzy water). I'm not forever counting things but simply have a rough knowledge of where I am at. I know also what you mean about the hereditary possibilities of diabetes. However, I am going to fight the potential of being diabetic all the way down the line (have not actually been diagnosed diabetic) with everything I can use. I implore you to do the same, particularly if you have a dependent. I hope I am not coming across as condescending because it is not what I am being. I just get concerned when you say that you don't really care about it.

 

[adriangoatseye]

Today I had:

B: 60g Cream cheese, 50g peppers, 50g tomatoes
L: 125g chicken, 40g cheese, I plum
D: 175g salted peanuts, I banana
S: 150g raspberries

The reason for the strange dinner is that I had to get something while out and that was the best I could do. Calories were around 1900 and carbs were around 100g

EDIT: And I have some lovely blueberries with crème fraiche lined up for brekkers tomorrow

 

[adriangoatseye]

How much of the spices do you put in your milk?

Not loads. A little bit of turmeric and cinnamon and coriander amounts are greater than the turmeric. Probably all totals about 1/2 to a teaspoon tops. The turmeric is there because it is referred to as the king of spices. The coriander is there because it is an old Indian method of inducing sleepiness/relaxation. The cinnamon was introduced at a later stage because it is supposed to help blood sugar control. The cinnamon and coriander actually taste nice in it (which surprised me). The turmeric does not make it taste nice and hence it is there in lower quantities.