Enjoyable meals!

[DeusXM]

Dr Bernstein's Diabetes Solution is probably still the gold standard on all of this, despite sounding a bit like an infomercial title. I don't completely agree with everything he recommends as he's a bit puritanical and I think he forgets that we treat our diabetes to live, not live to treat our diabetes.

He is the reason, however, why you and I have the opportunity to test our own blood sugar at home.

Gary Scheiner's Think Like a Pancreas is also good as a general primer - interesting, Gary has publicly raised a point I've also noticed about low-carb diets in that there are a few elements about them that can make them complex for T1s.

For a more in-depth look at the entire relationship between carbs, fat and health, Gary Taubes' Why We Get Fat is very readable, and Zoe Harcombe is also worth a look. As ever though, remember these guys have books to sell, so treat them with a healthy degree of skepticism. No-one has all the answers and the best thing is to find what works for you.

On a safety note, I don't recommend any T1 try reducing their carbs without having first mastered the arts of adjusting their basal and matching their boluses and correction factors.

 

[lucy123]

Wow thanks everyone. I think the nail has been well and truly hit on the head with the ham sandwich scenario! That is what I have been doing. Time to get the cheese and olives etc in.

This morning I had just chicken breast for breakfast but ate the skin too.

I am also trying to work out why I feel so tired today! Struggling to get up and move.

 

[AndBreathe]

Wow thanks everyone. I think the nail has been well and truly hit on the head with the ham sandwich scenario! That is what I have been doing. Time to get the cheese and olives etc in.

This morning I had just chicken breast for breakfast but ate the skin too.

I am also trying to work out why I feel so tired today! Struggling to get up and move.

Lucy - Some of your fatigue could be from reducing your carbs along the way. Some folks notice a dip in energy (I didn't), some have almost hangover symptoms and some lucky people just sail on through the transition. If you do have a carb hangover (sometimes known as carb flu), it's likely to disappear in a few days. Just go with the flow and try not to over analise absolutely everything in these early days.

It looks like you have a plan which sounds good.

My approach was quite simple, once I worked out what needed to be done, and that was I cut out all the obvious stuff I could - bread, potatoes, pasta, rice, and the obvious sugars, and decided I'd try to just get my carbs from vegetables. That really worked for me, in that it was simple, my OH, who does the vast majority of our cooking, could "get it" quickly, so it saved on too many oooopsie moments, although we inevitably did have several.

I didn't deliberately count carbs, or set myself a target level, just followed my approach, although I did keep (and still do, every day) a food diary on myfitnesspal. Once you start adding your regular foods it gets really quick to maintain.

If you can find yourself a simple means of approaching this to begin with at least, it'll be more sustainable and over thinking things can lead to a bit of burn out if we're not careful. We all have days when we wish this would just push right off, but you'll be fine, and once you get past the initial stages and see improvements to your scores it's very easy, in my view, to remain motivated.

Good luck with it all.

 

[Superheavy]

Cheers @DeusXM - some really good insights in there, and it seems to tie in with what I'm (constantly!) learning when it comes to managing blood glucose levels. Think I'll check out the Dr Bernstein book too - pick out the things that suit the balance I'm looking to achieve, and leave the extra-puritanical stuff.

@lucy123 - I'm a few weeks out since the big diet and lifestyle change, and while I started off with tiny unsatisfying meals, long term that wasn't sustainable, so balancing a few things I like and a few things I should eat which don't spike the levels too much is what I'm aiming for. I'm still getting headaches, which I think is a part of the sugar withdrawal symptoms, but apart from that I'm not finding hunger to be too much of an issue.