Healthy eating confusion!

[indiegrrl]

Hi, would really appreciate any advice. I'm late 30s, exercise regularly (5-6 hours running and active yoga per week), am the right weight for my height and age, and always get my 5 a day. So why am I bothering you? Well, I've just had a birthday and am becoming more aware of a family history of high cholesterol and heart disease that I'd love to avoid. I feel stupid bothering my GP and wondered if the following sounded like a healthy diet. I know portion size matters and this is all a bit rough, but basically I've got paranoid reading magazine 'diet plans' that advocate no carbs and sugar, most of my friends are older/male, and I don't know if I'm eating ok. So, breakfast: muesli/porridge, semi-skimmed milk, wholemeal toast w butter, 1 coffee, 1 o.j. Lunch: salad w veg/falafel and huumus in pitta bread. Afternoon snack: banana/slice of cake (homemade), herbal tea. Dinner: usually veggie stew w rice/pasta, pesto and salad/stiryfry but eat out twice weekly - grilled chicken or fish usually, pizza once a month. A glass of red wine 3-5 nights pw. Supper: muesli and fruit, or if no cake in afternoon then ice-cream/slice homemade cheesecake. I'm v conscious that I have a sugar hit every day...I comfort myself that I'm low on transfats because we don't eat processed food and we get homemade cake from a neighbour :) but I'm willing to hear if this seems like a poor diet.

It sounds fine to me, really if you're within the right weight range for your height & exercise as much as you do I cant see a problem.
No processed food and plenty of fruit and veg I'd say are definite pluses!
Probably the benefits of red wine outweigh the disadvantages of alcohol @ your level of consumption.

If you wanted to be super fussy you could swap the sweet stuff for something savoury and cut out the wine :)

Maybe cut down on some of the carbohydrates and add a bit more protein if you wanted to fine tune it a bit. I work in the medical sector and am hearing more and more about high carb consumption adding to the risk of type 2 diabetes developing.

very true jaype, but my understandingis that high glycemic index carbs combined with a sedentary lifestyle and having too much body fat is most likely to lead to insulin resistance?

Thing is that I find I get migraine if I cut down on carbs - I kept a food diary and it seemed to suggest that the carbs (wholemeal bread, basmati rice mainly) were doing a good job. Do they really cause diabetes?

diabetes results from a combinationof factors..as per my previous post:)

I think if you have a family history og high chol it can sometimes be the way your body makes chol more than diet.

Your gp wouldnt mind testing you, some chemists do it for free, lloyds springs to mind

Thanks! And lovesineffable I didn't fully take in yr post, sorry...turned out I had a migraine coming on and it scrambles my brain. I will ask for a test. I'm a bit worried I'm becoming a bit too anxious about what I eat (as is DP) and not sure entirely why cos I've never had issues w food...am hoping if I get tested it might help me to get it in perspective

Honestly it sounds more healthy than most. I would be very surprised if your cholesterol was high!

I think it sounds very healthy and balanced, OP. Maybe try to find some healthier alternatives to the ice cream/cheesecake. Frozen yogurt perhaps or a healthy fruit crisp? Try searching "healthy puddings" on BBC Good Food.

One of my favourite desserts is strawberries with a few squares of melted (good) dark chocolate for dipping, or chunks of banana dipped in a mixture of melted dark choc and peanut butter, then frozen. Plain frozen pieces of banana and frozen grapes are also really delicious and a good alternative to ice cream.

Thanks topsi and scruffyterrier. Those sound like good alternatives, scruffyterrier. I do have a really sweet tooth, but then again clearly lots of people on mn have stopped themselves eating more crap than this over the yrs and have lived to tell the tale! Who knows, perhaps doing so cd help with my migraines, too...I just wish there was somewhere close to us (Liverpool) that sold frozen yoghurt, I used to love that stuff when I worked in Oz. But you've given some great sounding alternatives there.

Hi indiegrrl, I eat a healthy diet and exercise a lot but, like you, I have a sweet tooth and like ice cream. I always check the sugar/fat content though and chose the healthiest ice cream I can find then I smother it in chocolate sauce. Diabetic ice cream may have a lower sugar content I think.

Sainsburys sells their own make frozen yogurt and "Yoo-Moo" but, if your local supermarkets do not, as a compromise you could freeze individual pots of 'healthier' yogurt and then allow them to semi-defrost before eating them. It is not as nice as real frozen yogurt of course but it's worth a try

Copycat, LOL, I was talking to DP last night about some of these great posts and he said 'it isn't as if we have ice cream every night and smother it in chocolate sauce and nuts' and of course I soooo wanted just that! He then couldn't get it out of his head and went and queued in Tesco's Local for half an hour on a Sunday night in order to get some rank imitation of a lemon tart which was so disgusting that it put me right off sugar and I just wanted yoghurt and fruit. So maybe the answer is for him to eat like a pig?
Good news re Sainsburys cos we have got one nearby and I'm going there today, so I'm going to check out the frozen yoghurt!