Making soup for 800 cal diet

[Johnboy63]

Hi to all.
I love soup!
My type 2 diabetes, cholesterol etc has been well under control for several years, taking 3 x 500mg metformin a day.
I recently read about the results from the low calorie diet and want to give it a go. I'm about 3 stones overweight.
My GP says I can do it. I have the testing gear so I'll keep an eye on things.
My problem is the healthy-eating plate diagrams - there's hundreds and such variety!
I have made soups in large batches for several years, but now I want to get serious.
I've got lists of all my ingredient's calorie count, I'm just not sure how to divide it up.
Is it as simple as ... 1 x soup = 800 cal / 3 = 266 cal.
50% of cal to be veg
25% of cal to be starch
25% of cal to be protein.
I'd have 2 of these a day and the third meal would be anything else I've missed.

I saw a diabetes dietitian a couple of years ago. I thought I was a healthy eater. Mackerel, with olive oil drained off, on 2 slices of dry bread for breakfast every other day, and so on with other meals.
Her responses still ring in my ears every time I eat now -
Where's your protein, where's your dairy, where's your starch, where's your fruit, where's your veg.... in every meal.
At the end she said I could do the 5/2 diet.
I had to stop because I found it impossible fitting that lot into 3 meals totalling 600 cals for 2 days a week.
I want to lose weight but I also want to keep my diabetes under control. Combining everything into soup would make it so much easier.

Thanks for any advice.
John

 

[RoyalBlood]

The thing with diet is that it's not hard and fast. By that I mean there's no 50% must be X, 25% must be Y, etc...

It boils down to eating what you enjoy, what you know doesn't wreak havoc with your BG and what you can afford/source easily enough.

So for instance, a bowl of French onion soup is unlikely to meet the criteria you've outlined, specifically the starch aspect. But the important thing is that you adjust your macronutrients (carbs, proteins and fats) accordingly to compensate for any caloric "lacking".

The "healthy eating plate" diagram you referred to, is a guide - not a mandatory absolute. It is also something that needs reviewing (that came from a dietician I met at my last NHS funded course)... There we have it.

Eat what you like that will keep you at or below your maximum caloric intake, without feeling tired or hungry. Exercise as much as possible and remember that absolute science can't be directly applied to diet.

Good luck with the weight loss!

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

I saw a diabetes dietitian a couple of years ago. I thought I was a healthy eater. Mackerel, with olive oil drained off, on 2 slices of dry bread for breakfast every other day, and so on with other meals.
Her responses still ring in my ears every time I eat now -
Where's your protein, where's your dairy, where's your starch, where's your fruit, where's your veg.... in every meal.

Feels like rather outdated thinking to me.

Protein - yup. Some is important.
Dairy - nope. Not essential at all. Many happy healthy people on well-balanced Vegan diets eating no dairy at all.
Starch - Technically I believe our requirement is zero, though that is very hard to actually achieve. Some can be useful, and the body will readily use it for energy, but metabolically basic 'starchy carbs' can be a nightmare for people with diabetes.
Fruit - Some good vitamins, but often rather sugary. 'Fruit' as defined by dieticians often includes fruit juice, which is only really useful for us lot for treating hypoglycaemia.
Veg - a pretty good basis for most meals IMO, though veg-alone (depending on type) can leave you lacking in some micronurients, vitamins and minerals.

As for a requirement to have all of that in every single meal... Well on that basis I think there isn't a single person in the world with a healthy diet. Plus you could tick-box one of each of those categories for a meal plan and still end up with a ridiculously unhealthy diet.

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

There have been quite a few scientific papers published about the Newcastle 800 cal study - would be interesting for you to see if you can find one that is free to read, to find out what they used for their foods and how they were prepared.

 

[trophywench]

Errr - you've all missed Fats as an essential dietary component - we'd certainly die without them, many vitamins and other nutrients can only be assimilated into the body with or by dietary fat. You may well be getting your fat in conjunction with something you class as 'protein' - oily fish for instance as in the mackerel - but it doesn't contain every kind of fat so I dunno if you'd get enough for everything just from oily fish alone.

I like soup myself - however whatever in the soup that contains carbs (root veg and legumes for instance as well as ordinary starchy carbs like flour etc, pasta and rice) if you overcook it (like reheating the other two portions of one larger batch of soup) or thicken it with eg cornflour or liqiuidise all or part of it to make it smoother - then those carbs will be absorbed by our bodies much more rapidly that when raw or cooked 'al dente' - which is the worst thing diabetics as a whole can do cos our BG will shoot up PDQ.

Man cannot live on soup alone! LOL

 

[Johnboy63]

Thanks to you all for the replies.
It has, however, left me a little confused.
It appears that my dietitian has given me some duff advice?
The starch element came from a call I made to the national diabetes advice line, and my GP who specialises in diabetes.
Also the NHS site.
My diabetes nurse said my diet was fine but she wished I'd stop eating bread and potatoes, so I rang the advice line and my GP.
They both said they recommend diabetics need to eat bread/potatoes for the starch?
I get fats from beef, lamb, butter, cheese etc, but I cut off any excess fat.
I'll remember the point about not overcooking veg, which I wasn't aware of.
The one about fruit is a good point. A friend is an eating disorder counsellor and she says fruit is no good to diabetics, and I should just stick with plenty of veg.
The plate guide was a starting point for the soup. I need some kind of reference to work out the amounts to put in to count the calories.

I may have also got mixed up with the calories.
This link is to the article I first read about the diet. From there I researched further.

https://www.theguardian.com/society...t-can-reverse-type-2-diabetes-new-study-shows

I may have got the 800 cal from one of the many, many articles I read, because it's not mentioned in this one.
I did read in one that if you want to go on this diet to ask your GP. I don't think they're making the diet known for some reason without GP advice.
I'll make an appointment with him and get back to you.
Thanks once again.
John

 

[Radders]

I like soup myself - however whatever in the soup that contains carbs (root veg and legumes for instance as well as ordinary starchy carbs like flour etc, pasta and rice) if you overcook it (like reheating the other two portions of one larger batch of soup) or thicken it with eg cornflour or liqiuidise all or part of it to make it smoother - then those carbs will be absorbed by our bodies much more rapidly that when raw or cooked 'al dente' - which is the worst thing diabetics as a whole can do cos our BG will shoot up PDQ.

Man cannot live on soup alone! LOL

I thought that about soup being more quickly absorbed than whole veg, but then I saw a programme that rather counterintuitively demonstrated that soup takes longer to digest than the same ingredients eaten whole, leaving the subjects feeling full for longer.

 

[Johnboy63]

Do you know I forgot about seeing the same programme.
Last year I think but can't remember the name.
They gave some people a Sunday roast, or full English etc.
They then pureed the same meals and gave them to others.
They put them all under a scanner which could see the contents of their stomach, and filmed the rate of digestion.
The soup took far longer to digest.
The obvious conclusion was, if you want to feel full for longer, and not be tempted to snack, puree all your food!
Don't know about the individual constituents of the food being absorbed in what order though.
Can man live on soup alone?
It appears so.
John

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

That’s really interesting John.

Having said that, I don’t think my body has read the textbook or understood the theory. We had soup tonight and I needed to allow almost a third more insulin than I would for the same amount of carbs consumed in other ways. I always seem to need a spare couple of units floating around when we eat soup!

 

[trophywench]

Good grief! I have absolutely no idea how that can happen, although of course I believe you. I reckon my digestive system must be a lot more cast-iron than quite a lot of people, do you think it's to do with all the food - most of it unadulterated with chemicals and processing - and the attendant 'bugs' and dirt I would have eaten with it, cos nothing was as sterile as it is now, including mom having had the same wooden chopping board and the same wooden pastry board and rolling pin she'd simply taken over from her mother!!

'Tub' butter, loose cheddar, loose biscuits etc etc ....

 

[Amigo]

Good grief! I have absolutely no idea how that can happen, although of course I believe you. I reckon my digestive system must be a lot more cast-iron than quite a lot of people, do you think it's to do with all the food - most of it unadulterated with chemicals and processing - and the attendant 'bugs' and dirt I would have eaten with it, cos nothing was as sterile as it is now, including mom having had the same wooden chopping board and the same wooden pastry board and rolling pin she'd simply taken over from her mother!!

'Tub' butter, loose cheddar, loose biscuits etc etc ....

Absolutely right Jenny and no ‘best by dates’ then....smells ok, it’s ok!

Interesting about the purée effect however.

 

[trophywench]

The crock mixing bowl had quite a lot of chips and various cracks in it too, and didn't actually pop its clogs till I was well in my teens.

Fairly ruddy obvious, isn't it - fresh food tastes better when it IS fresh - however only posh people quite probably with more money than sense LOL - had a fridge, unless you actually managed to get a prefab off the council in which case you also got central heating. If cheese had mould on it - you cut it off, same as you cut mould off and/or out of bread. What a surprise decades later to discover that bread mould at least had travelled miles through all the bread before the outward signs appear - we didn't eat all that much bread in the first place though but we all must have eaten some mould along the way.

I was over 30 when they suddenly told us green spuds were bad for us - well bit late to tell me now mate ! There again they were said to be very bad in pregnancy and I've never been preg so that's ok, though my mom was twice, years before ! Though she never ate that many spuds, I fully expect everybody might have eaten a few more during the war if they could get hold of some.

 

[Mark Parrott]

Please steer clear of the 'eat well' plate. It is very out of date & not suitable for diabetics. Starchy veg (as well as sugary things, rice & pasta) all raise our blood sugar. These should be kept to a minimum. Do you have a blood glucose meter? This is the only way to know how the food you eat affects you BG levels. I personally stick to a low carb high fat diet. This works for me & has kept my blood sugars in the non diabetic range.