Blood sugar diet thread 9

[thenewaveragebear1983]

Shiny new thread for the blood sugar dieters!

I still have sweetener in my coffee (so 3 or 4 a day) but really it isn’t great. Oddly, if I have coffee and the only option is sugar then I go without, bug at home I just can’t.

Welcome Zazu, and well done Bridget!

This lunchtime salad is 412 calories. 143 for the mixed bean salad and 203 for the mozzarella and tomatoes!!
Seems like a lot, for very little!!

Looks lovely though oblomov, enjoy!

Yum. Love mozzarella.

Been trying the flaxseed bread substitute thingy. It's tasty. Not really hugely like bread but works as bread i would say. What do others think?

Hi tobee, I don’t know what flaxseed bread you mean?? Is this one you’ve made yourself?

We have had such a lazy day watching Robin Hood, then the incredible journey, and now ice age 4. I’ve not moved in hours!!!

Will start properly tomorrow!

Sorry not to be clear!

This is recipe I found:

Basically you stir in a mug and then microwave for, personally found, 1 minute 20 secs.

It comes out a bit like soul from a flower pot. Cut in half warm, butter, add your choice of topping. I had marmite!

Soul from a flower pot??? Soil from a flower pot

How bizarre! Is it sweet or savoury?? Is it like this cloud bread I have heard about??

Oh yeah. I left out cinnamon as was after a savoury effect.

I've not tried cloud bread yet. It's quite substantial. For example, that's all I've eaten so far.

Today I mean

hurrah bridget that's so excellent! And hang in there everyone else. It's so hard now, when it's cold outside.

Have been keeping safely in the 850 cals region now since back from work trip. Though have found myself having trouble sticking to 2 small squares of chocolate (50 cal worth of Green and Blacks). I may have to switch to a mug of Options as my post dinner treat, which I can at least drink very slowly. I'd like to be some amazing person who can simply have herbal tea as a before bed treat, but that will never happen.

Had too much chocolate today, and had the same reaction I did earlier this week when I had a margarita - all that sugar made me incredibly jittery. Not used to it anymore, so I guess I really have changed my eating habits successfully.

So a new week, 5 weeks til Easter! My weekend of excess hasn’t damaged me too much, I’m weighed in at 11.9 and ready for a strict week to get me back on track. Food shop today, and menu planned for the week. I’m going back to shakes at home in the mornings and evening meal, as this is the simplest way for me to get consistently close to 800. My average calories last week was 1400 (and that doesn’t allow for the two days I didn’t count at all!) so I’d like my average this week to be under 1000.

Have a great week everyone!

I haven't had this feeling that loads of you all have had: that not liking sugar anymore, now finding it too sweet- like Bear and her dc, or going jittery, like veryvery.

I still crave all the things I always longed for. This really pisses me off.

Maybe it's because I've never gone long enough without sugar? My diabetic clinic, as all do, want me to run my diabetes as low as possible, as tight as possible. They want me at 4 ideally. But at 3.5 you are hypo. So I regularly have to take lucozade. Which I don't want to do.

Actually, do you know what. That's an excuse. Truth is I've still continued to eat chocolate every few days. I can't blame anyone for that!!

I can't see this ever changing for me.

Oblomov, I think it's because you're still eating carbs in the evenings. It really is true that the stricter you are with the diet, the easier it is. Carbs are what create carb cravings.

What if, instead of thinking of it as a long term thing, or even an 8-week thing, you committed to a week without any carbs at all? Just think of it as an experiment. And if, after a week, you're still craving sweet things you're allowed them.

Oblomov the dc May have experienced that, but I haven’t! Things do taste very sweet, but I still eat them enthusiastically. The only thing I’ve found to be really unpalatable was a little taste of chocolate orange and it was the chemical orange flavour that was off putting. Every time I eat sugar, or god forbid, walk through the supermarket while they waft bakery smells around the bastards, it’s like making up with an old friend. I think the difference is, I simply can’t have chocolate every day for exactly this reason. I still consider myself wholly addicted. For me it’s definitely easier to not have it, than to have a small bit; then occasionally I indulge. It’s the same with bread, porridge, fruit- I have to have none.

I had a conference at the weekend with a set menu. Not very BSD-friendly but I was hungry so ate everything and the funny thing is that I had a noticeably better sleep that night. I don't know if it's because the days were so busy that I tired myself out or if it was because I ate more food.
It's made me reconsider what I'm actually trying to do.
In April, I'll have been roughly following this WOE for two years. I've reintroduced some fruit, occasional carb heavy meals (eg risotto) but try to keep relatively low calorie and low carb. On a bad week, I'm 2 stone 4lbs less than when I started. On a good week, I'm 3 stone less.Generally I'm now in the healthy BMI bracket and wear size 10/12. But I feel as though I'm constantly thinking about and planning food, and I'm a bit weary of it all.

maybe you (bear and bridget) are right .....

Like Place, I've been been on this, for more than 2 years, and I find it..... all consuming. And I too am weary.

Place it sounds like you've accomplished a lot. Even on the bad weeks, you're in an excellent place (so to speak!). Maybe it's time to shift into 5:2, so you minimize the tracking, which I agree is a massive pain. Or even just general vaguely Mediterranean diet (with risotto and the like every so often, just not every single day) to maintain?

You've accomplished something amazing - congrats!

Oblomov sorry, didn't explain myself clearly. I am still craving wine. Every. Single. Day. And I am still craving chocolate, which explains the occasional splurges that are hard to control. I don't think all the cravings will ever go away. Some have - rice, potatoes, cake, biscuits, crisps - but others - wine, cocktails, chocolate, chips -simply won't.

I was just surprised how my body reacted to a big sugar fest, by getting jittery. Which is probably a lesson for me about how dependent I was on sugar. Now the problem for me is how to have the wine or margarita (oh god it was good) in moderation, occasionally, without thinking MORE MORE MORE.

Can I ask a quick question about grains/carbs? I know it's low carb, but how low? I have the book and have read it but can't seem to find which carbs are ok. Obvs carbs from certain veg (in moderation), but what about couscous, bulgar wheat? And how about pearl barley?

Aromatic I don’t eat them, but my advice on this is always to go back to the menu plan in the book, and use that as your guide- so for example, if he uses a tbsp of couscous once a week, that’s your limit. Same with porridge- he might use it one day a week, so that’s ok, but it’s not a ‘free food’ as such so you shouldn’t replicate that daily. The plan will have been Very carefully balanced with nutritional experts so I’d always turn to that as your structure when planning your own menu. He does describe use of grains etc as ‘a taste, not the whole meal’ or similar.

Place and oblomov I’m nearing my 2 year anniversary too, we must have joined at the same time more or less. For me it was just after Easter, I had literally gorged myself on chocolate and reached my ‘rock bottom’ I guess. I was 13.3. So in 2 years I have lost only 1.5stone in that time (actually yo-yo-ed around a bit)- this is my last proper attempt I reckon. I already know that 800 calories works, but if I cannot actually stick at it then it’s not working is it? I promised myself over Christmas that I would give it one last proper go. Not a strict 8 weeks, but instead a 6 month, 5:2 ish plan but cutting the rubbish, allowing some leeway in other things (wine!), and above all, getting off the sugar (and the resulting binge eating which makes me so unhappy). And exercise, which i can honestly say is the best thing I’ve ever done for myself and my ‘head’. I prefer this plan and this group to the boot camp style things which is why I still hang out round here, when I suppose what I do is not strictly BSD.

I also think about food a lot. I cook every day, and plan all our meals and I love food and cooking which means I’m always thinking about it. I suppose it’s only a problem if you’re thinking negatively- can’t have this, oooh I ate Xx and now I feel rubbish, etc. Stripping the choice out of my weekday menu has helped me tremendously; I only need to think about 1 meal a day now, because my blend does breakfast/lunch for me and it’s the same every day. Would that help you Oblomov? For evening meals, I put all the meat in the freezer and take it out daily, so there’s no option to change the menu. Again, removes the choice.

It’s so hard to get your head back in the game, and I know this all too well because I’ve been there so many times.

Aromatic I think he talks about how, for instance, brown rice in moderation is vastly better than white rice for controlling carbs, and I know some of the recipes include lentils and chickpeas so clearly those aren't completely off the table. I think the issue is just having them in moderation, maybe a few tbsp per serving at most as part of something larger, rather than as the vast basis to a meal.

MyFitnessPal shows cooked pearl barley as being relatively lower carbish, at 18g carbs and 90 cal for 100g cooked barley (25 g raw). So it sounds like if you are trying to keep carbs low but still get healthy grains/legumes, you could add some to a salad or stew.

Bear is right though in that eating a reasonably balanced diet that hits the 800-ish cal per day mark and follows the general BSD guidelines will mean that you will naturally end up eating eating relatively fewer carbs, prob about 50gr/day. MM doesn't set a firm carb guideline. I think many of us shoot for 50 or 30 gr/day, just to see how it can help prod weightloss, but it's certainly not a rule.

So if I were you (and esp if I were vegetarian) I would continue to eat legumes and healthy grains, but as an input to meals, not the basis of meals - if that makes sense? In other words, I have black beans in my vaguely Mexican chicken salad, and a few tablespoons sprinkled in with my fajita salad (basically, fajitas but served on leaves rather than wrapped in a tortilla), but I wouldn't dig in to a side order of refried beans or eat a main entree size of beans and rice, because it's so easy to eat a lot of calories quickly that way.

(I was shocked when I found out how many calories are in a tortilla - 172 for a wholemeal tortilla! If I'm going to use up 1/4 or 1/5 of my daily calories on something, it's going to be a damn sight tastier than a wholemeal tortilla!)