to wonder how the hell she stays so slim??

[SequinsAndSparkles]

My BIL is engaged to a spanish woman, and we spent the weekend at MIL's, all of us together.

She is very slim, I'd guess a size 6/8. Her skin is glowing and she is stunning, yet her diet perplexes me?

On the first morning, we were all having breakfast, MIL made a fry up for everyone, but I am on a diet so I had special K and some toast. SIL prepared her own breakfast (they are currently staying at MILs while they have some work done on their house), and she had some kind of cheese, can't remember what she said it was, about 10 olives and a slice of ham! Yet she said that my breakfast of Special K and toast was stodgy and apparently English women have 'very strange ideas about nutrition'.

For lunch, she had a chicken salad, but it involved lots of extra virgin olive oil, all over the peppers and a big dollop of salsa. And then for dinner she had chicken smeared in pesto, with green beans in salt, more salsa and a slice of cheese.

How is she so slim??

I didn't have a particuarly healthy weekend in the end, we ended up having a takeaway on the Saturday evening, and SIL wouldn't eat any of it, she wasn't rude, she politely declined but I just find it hypocrytical that she eats all this fatty stuff and made the comment about England having strange ideas about nutrition when I was eating Special K and toast!!

Kewcumber - what have you been eating to lose so much?

There has been loads of reports over the years about calcium being important for weight loss - i think (if i remember rightly) people who diet can be calcium deficient which causes hunger or food cravings as the body tries to compensate for the lack of calcium. Its why diets like SW include a calcium element.

lots of dairy

actually thats partly true - I really had very very low calcium intake - now I try to drink two skimmed latte a day at least. I have protein for breakfast - egg on toast or porridge made with milk and 2 brazil nuts chopped. Moderate carbs - I eat the same size refined carb quantities as my 5 year old now. No take away - maybe a childs burger and chips at burger king every couple of months. Absolutely no pizza, indian or chinese (so far though may add a little back in when I've lost enough).

And I slowly increased my exercise levels.

And to be fair I was ill last year and lost a lot through that, have just kept it going more slowly since.

Kewcumber - out of interest why do you eschew chinese (apart from MSG)?....it is the one take away I will consider and I am also on a (successful) diet atm. I do eat only about 1/3 of a portion of rice with my chinese though, and I am careful to select something like 'chicken with spring greens'

I've just started walking to work so have been having a piece of toast with jam before I leave, and then 2 hard boiled eggs when I get to work, a salad with salmon or meat for lunch and then a meat based dish with small portion of carbs in the evening, and fruit as snacks. I have milk in tea/coffee in the day and if I don't I have cheese.

Been losing weight slowly but the walking is helping.

However, we've just discovered a pub on the way home from work and the cider there is lovely....

Oh yes HMC I probably could manage something not too disasterous from a chinese takeaway but -

1 - the stuff I like is the high fat yummy stuff
2 - if I can;t get what I like I may as well buy a chinese ready meal from M&S
3 - if I was very good at moderation I wouldnt be in this position now.

Childrens meals are great, I don't have to leave half what I want to eat on the plate!

Your diet sounds like mine now auntieM but luckily I rarely drink and not tempted much by it so don;t have that problem. It has been much easier since my insuin levels droppd to within normal ranges though and not such a sweet tooth when it dropped for some reason.

had lunch at Ikea - today and had childrnes meatballs and chips (so no saint re carbs as it was still chips) and a bowl of salad (including potato salad but predominantly more salady stuff)

Ditto on the chinese front.

I had problms with my insulin due to PCOS but its much better now I dropped processed foods and limit my carbs. Well thats a lie, I'm not too strict with them but I know they don't fill me up so much so I eat them but not too much.

I don't crave things like cake, chocolate or other crap like I used to but I do notice if I have crp like that then I tend to start wanting more of it so I steer clear. Though a piece of really nice cake with a cuppa is sometimes nice.

I'm not a big drinker either, but the pub has become a Friday night habit as it's the one place that serves the one cider I like! And then that leads to the temptation of junk food!

I also try and make sure I have salad or veg even if I'm having rubbish stuff to try and balance it out!

So what do vegetarians eat then when they are trying to lose weight? Or is Quorn low carb? It's funny really how much I've learnt from starting this thread, it seems that I really didn't have a bloody clue!

Can I ask, what would be high carb per 100g?

I am trying to lose a bit of weight & started a lowish carb/no snacking diet last Sunday,since then i have lost about 8lb.

Today i have had porridge made with water with a sprinkle of raisins & cinnamon,lunch was tuna salad & a honey yogurt & dinner was chicken breast cooked in olive oil with cauli,broccoli,green beans & mushrooms with grated cheese on top & an apple.

Does this sound like i am getting enough nutrients?

So who eats churros and hot chocolate on Spain?
Does that make them fat?

mrsscoob - here are some carb counts, i.e. grams of carbs per 100g:

Mushrooms 0.4
Watercress 0.4
Spinach 0.8
Celery 0.9
Broccoli 1.1
Asparagus (raw, boiled or canned) 1.4
Cucumber 1.5
Lettuce 1.7
Fennel 1.8
Courgettes 1.8
Cauliflower 1.9
Avocado flesh 1.9
Turnip 2
Pumpkin 2.2
Runner beans 2.3
Swede 2.3
Celeriac 2.3
Bean sprouts 2.5
Carrots 2.5
Green pepper 2.6
Baby sweetcorn 2.7
Aubergine 2.8
Leeks 2.9
Okra 3
Tomato 3.1
Mangetout 3.3
Shallots 3.3
Brussels sprouts 3.5
French beans 4.7
Cabbage 5
Yellow pepper 5.3
Carrots 6
Orange or red pepper 6.4
Ginger (peeled) 7.2
Butternut squash 7.5
Onions 7.9
Beetroot 9.5
Peas (frozen) 9.7
Broad beans 11.7
Parsnips 12.5
Potato 15.7
Garlic 16.3
Sweetcorn (canned) 26.6

That list also demonstrates how much veg you can actually have for your 20g per day - you could eat a massive amount of cauliflower and broccoli, for example!

After reading this thread last night and eating what I thought was quite a healthy active prune yogurt, then looking at the ingredients and realising it was full of crap, I've been to the supermarket to buy all sorts of nice things!

I've been dieting on special k, diet foods / bread etc, and this thread has been a bit of an eye opener for me. I'm always starving when I calorie restrict myself then end up gorging myself, it,'s a vicious circle TBH.

So today I've had

Breakfast- fruit and cheese
Lunch - huge ham salad
Snack- full fat small pot of Greek yogurt with a teaspoon of honey and small bag of cashews.

I have been full all day for the first time in ages and I don't really fancy my dinner just yet so I've had a small pot of houmous with carrots and green beans, I'll have a small omelette with salad later if I fancy it

When I have logged my food intake on weightloss website I use, I have only used 756 cals of my daily allowance which seems tiny and I'm still full.

But on the daily nutrition report my fat intake is nearly 40% which seems a lot! But it has all been good fats so will that be ok?

So far today:

Breakfast:
2 boiled eggs with marmite and an apple

Late lunch:
A plate of rocket with some of 2 waitrose mini salad things (1 olive with manchego and one sundried tomatoes with mozarrella) + low fat cottage cheese and a large slice of pineapple.

Dinner:
Moroccan chicken soup.

and a bottle of red wine as DPs home :)

I had chorizo and cheese for breakfast.
Lunch was crackers and houmous as I couldn't face anything else.
DH bought me mushroom pasta for dinner.

Not hungry.

Kew - sorry I have no time read and answer no posts.

However, I've recently gone as gluten free as I can (as my dh's Italian Med diet just killed my digestion over the last 16 years and was about to get referred for digestion issues) - but basically gluten free means carb free right?

My diet prior to meeting him was low carb and based on veg and beans. That's what I eat now (plus odd bit of meat and some eggs). It's worked wonders for my digestion and energy.

My dmum is type 2 diabetes (slim but from ethnic group that typically gets it) and I'm reading that low carb is good for diabetics. Is that right? Should I be plugging my way to eating to her? As she's on the verge of being given insulin.

Is this basically what you're saying - that low carb (healthy version though) is good for regulating insulin and therefore helps diabetics?

I'm getting very confused as so many people are plugging a med diet but I've lived in spain and am married to a dh and both ways of eating I found very hard (one that has so much meat and bread and little bit of veg and other being so carb based).

giveitago I know you didn't ask me, but gluten free definitely does not = carb free.

My dh is a coeliac and has to follow a very strict gf diet.

However he regular eats the following:
rice
gf pasta (either corn based or the gluten removed from wheat pasta)
gf bread
loads of potatoes
oh and he loves sugar in all forms, and is allowed it from a gf perspective (2 sugars in coffee, chocolate bars as long as they are gf i.e. no wafer/biscuit)

In fact I would say he eats more carb than me!

yes giveit a healthy diet as recommended by british heart foundation or diabetes UK will help control her diabetes though if her genes are against her it may be a fruitless struggle to avoid going on insulin. Notmany people realise that type 2 diabetes is progressive so you ned to tkae it seriously and change your diet form the moment its diagnosed.

I reckon the australian experts are the furthest ahead (or so it seems to me) in thoughts on a healthy diabetic diet and they generally sibscribe to the glycaemic laod approach which is basically a refined version of the Glycaemic index diet you may have heard about - it takes the speed at which the carbs in any food is converted and looks at how much actual carbs is in a normal serving of that food. So in theory using BIWI's helpful chart above garlic is quite high on the amount of carbs per 100g but the likelihood of eating 100gr of it is so low that the 16.3 (higher than potato) is meaningless in practical terms and the glycaemicload will probably be insignificant. The aim is to get an overall meal in the moderate to low GL range.

I'll see if I can find a simpler diet to follow for you/her.

Also some basics for type two diabetics - snacking on high carbs is a disaster for diabetics, if she has a sweet tooth she should be eating her sweet stuff with other food to reduce the GL of it overall. Don't graze. Exercise is hugely beneficial in reducing insulin rquirements a brisk 30-40 min walk 5-6 times a week.

Before your mother gets to the insulin stage - make sure she discusses Byetta (exenatide) with her consultant (I don;t think GP's can prescribe it yet) it is in injection and tablet form though currently the injection form is seeming more efficient. It is the only authorised drug at the moment to actually increase produciton of insulin and doesn't have the hypo/hypers associated with injecting insulin.

Interesting Onepiece - but I've not been diagnosed with anything as I've sorted my digestion more or less by cutting out all bread and pasta (I don't like potatoes anyhow and I' mnot a cake person) - and all my sugar comes from veg and fruit.

I'm scared of doctors but given my diet changed from a varied one to one based on wheat for 16 years I had to try something.

It's interesting. I hate going to visit my mil in Italy and now I think alot of it was the diet (seasonal so not much choice) and it's just pasta for lunch and dinner plus bread and cheeses and animal products. I looked like I was dragged out of a lake and felt unwell and basically it took me about a month to get back to normal.

What masked it was that I was an exercise freak so I could just about digest things as I had so much blood circulating around. It all changed when I got pregnant late in life and developed a conditon which meant I could barely walk and post birth being a sahm and no exercise available to me and my digestion relying increasingly on lactulose and then getting right into middle age.

I'm just wondering whether I should actually just go see a gp anyhow to get tested (even though I feel so much better having ditched all the things I've been eating the last 16 years).

Thank you for that - it's given me some ideas. Although got to say if low carb means some weight loss that's more than welcome as I'm just over half a stone heavier than pre kid. And iflow carb can ensure my dm doesn't end up on insulin I'd be even happier.

Bloody hell - even though I don't like chocolate much I had no idea it had gluten in it!!!

www.mendosa.com/gi.htm this might be helpful