low carb diet

[Anonymous]

Hi
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I’ve just joined and hoping to get any information about other people’s experience of using low carb diet. Any alternatives to the wholemeal bread and pasta? Is it safe for diabetics?

[Anonymous]

At the mo I’m trying the theory of less bread and pasta and eating more fruit and veg containing carbs and so far nearly lost a stone! Obviously you do need to eat pulses/beans and nuts/seeds also skimmed milk but I don’t miss the heavier carbs. If I fancy a slice of toast I have it but just eat sensibly. My insulin needs have reduced but be aware you do need to watch your blood testing. Its really an Adkins/GI menu.

What has your dietician advised?

[Anonymous]

thanks Catherine
I’m waiting to see my dietician – trying to gather info in the meantime – the experiences of other diabetics is really helpful
Like you, I’ve cut down on bread and potatoes and try to keep to a healthy diet, but have noticed that a lot of ‘low carb’ recipes are quite high in fat!
Does anyone know of any interesting links for diabetic ‘low carb’?

[Annette A]

If you are into baking, try using Soya flour instead of standard flour. It only has ~20g carbs per 100g (as opposed to ~70g for other types of flour) – but it does have a definite taste of nuts to it, so wont work in all recipes, and also it is heavier so you need to add baking powder. Also you can reduce any recipe’s sugar content by 1/3 and not even notice – and if you really want to go the whole hog, use one of the new temperature stable sweeteners (eg splenda, although Tesco do thier own at much lower price, so I’d guess other supermarkets do too) instead of any sugar – means you can eat ‘normal’ recipes at less than half the carbs – and no fat increase.

[Tim]

Hi @nerys – welcome to Shoot Up!

I have absolutely nothing to add here (so why am I posting?) as I stay on a normal carb diet all the time. I only go low carb if I’m really messing things up as an aid to diagnosing what’s going wrong.

[Anonymous]

thanks for the welcome Tim
have bought soya flour and will try it out Annette – thanks for the tip
I have found some interesting low carb foods like mashed caulflower instead of potato), which is really tasty!
But, like you say Tim, low carb is usually a last resort to check fasting sugar levels – or is it?

[Tim]

I once saw a presentation by a guy who advocated a virtually no-carb diet. I thought the diet worked well for diabetes control, but by God it was boring! I like food too much to go completely no-carb!

Also low carb reminds me of the Allen diet, pre Banting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Madison_Allen Eeeeek!

[Anonymous]

ok – food for thought!
I’m really interested to know how all those brilliantly controlled diabetics (there must be many) do it.
Can I ask – what are the alternatives?

[Tim]

I don’t think there is such a thing as the perfectly controlled diabetic! I think it’s bordering on impossible to keep your levels within 4-8mmol/l all the time (and have a life!) However, my control isn’t too bad and I do it by testing, logging, testing, logging, testing, logging, looking for patterns in the results and trying to work out why I’m going high in the mornings, low in the evenings, high during the night. I then tackle each problem at a time – so I work on the high mornings and ignore the rest. Once I’ve got that sorted I move onto the next issue.

I also try and do things really methodically – so leave my lantus alone while adjusting humalog – never both at the same time as I won’t know which is actually making the difference. I only adjust one ;

[Anonymous]

@Tim Glad to hear it – thought you were a saint! Being female doesn’t help hormones are a real pain from week to week never mind month to month.

[Annette A]

Perfectly controlled diabetics _dont_ exist. Even obsessives go off the rails sometimes. It was my hormones got me a pump, they screw me up so much. The trouble is so many things beyond carbs and insulin input affect levels – whether types of carbs, hormones, exercise (type of, lack of, length of), weather, time of day, you name it.

[Anonymous]

Currently carb loading to soak up the alcohol – I never claimed to be a perfect diabetic…

[Hairy Gnome]

I wouldn’t say I have a cavalier attitude towards carbohydrates, but there are two fresh cream raspberry and apple turnovers in my fridge, I can hear them from here shouting, “Eat me! Eat me!” Needless to say I will succumb to their blandishments in the end. They’re sitting next to jars of Balti and Rogan Josh sauce that will be combined with prawns and Uncle Ben microwave rice for my dinner tonight and tomorrow (the prawns were on special offer, so I bought two packs). Along with the full fat milk, English butter, and plenty of fruit I eat a fairly balanced diet.

It’s not low fat or low carb, and it might shave a year or two off my life, but if I die young I won’t know about it, and at least I’ll die happy! If I have one true regret though it’s smoking. I wish with all my heart I’d never started, and I really, really, wish I could stop. The human mind, and mine in particular, is a very strange thing. (Lights another cigarette.)

[Tim]

@mustard – nowhere near sainthood. Yet I’m not bad at the whole diabetes thing, but it’s seriously not very easy to get consistent levels because of all the things @annette mentions above – I would also say that other things that seem to effect levels include strength of tide in nearest port, alignment of stones of Alkazar, whether the Chinese population are all jumping up and down at the same time and so on – it can be pretty bloody random!

[Tim]

@teloz – I got prawns on offer this week too (I’m focussing on the least relevant and entirely incidental part of your post here, obviously). However, I’ll be making them into a prawn curry (prawns, coconut milk, ginger, three red chillies, splash of Thai fish sauce and so on) – very nice and quick as anything to make.

[Anonymous]

God all this talk of food is making me hungry! Its amazing how food can talk to you @Teloz voices from our fridge always seems to be saying “eat me eat me all in one go. No don’t savour the flavour just cram as much as you can in especially cream/chocolate” Salad and fruit don’t appear to talk to me (that or I’ve just got selective hearing!)

[Anonymous]

Ask a silly question……!! But what wonderful responses

[Annette A]

Melons talk to me (ooh, healthy!). And ice cream (not so). Chocolate doesnt (luckily), but ginger nuts do…

[Author]

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