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'Not diabetic enough'!

Drummer said:
It isn't realy the time of year for salads. On a cold night I often have a stew - whatever meat there is in the fridge, chopped heated up with a bag of Lidl frozen mixed veges with tomato, celery and an onion, in the pressure cooker and a bit of gravy powder. It is done in five minutes, and could easily be taken out in a wide mouthed vacuum flask to keep it hot.
Years ago I tried low carb dumplings with herbs - I found the recipe on the internet - might have been sugar free londoner web site. They were a bit fragile so probably best packed separately and added in just before eating.
I would not have oats, or several pieces of fruit, due to the carb content - they do add up.
I experimented with low carb breads for a while, and you can make some really nice ones - I made a small amount of 'real' bread dough and allowed it to rise once, then mixed up all sorts of low carb flours and milled seeds, with the warm liquid and activated yeast, mixed it in gently and divided it up into small loaves or even muffin tins, allowed it to rise for as long as it took to at least double in size and then baked until hollow when tapped. It froze well, so would be an option to have with packed foods.
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I agree about stews ...I try to bulk cook when I make them - tomatoes, onions, peppers as a base - lentils, beans, pearl barley, that kind of thing. I don't allow sauces in jars in the house! 🙂
 
AnnL said:
I agree about stews ...I try to bulk cook when I make them - tomatoes, onions, peppers as a base - lentils, beans, pearl barley, that kind of thing. I don't allow sauces in jars in the house! 🙂
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Personally, I like to keep things simple, so my go-tos, in your husband's shoes (nightshifts with a need for "something" to keep me going) would be either a decent soup - something like brocolli and stilton - with a dollop of sour cream - which is surprisingly sustaining, with the cheese and cream in it.

If finger food is the name of the day, then I'd be on airfried (because we have one!) chicken thighs or leg portions - with the crispy skin on. I'd be going for thighs as they have a bit of fat in them to keep them moist on cooking and plenty of meat, per mouthful. Obviously they can be eaten with cutlery or wrapped in foil, the use the peeled back foil to hold it.

Decent sausages (again in the A/F). Watch the carbs in the supermarket "normal" ranges. They can have quick a bit of rusk in them, which doesn't help us out. Hard boiled eggs. Crispy bacon rashers.

Thick, creamy Greek yoghurt, maybe with some berries in a clip top pot.

There are loads of options. It's just about finding a new routine, but batch cooking certainly helps.

Finally, on bread? I haven't eaten bread in over a decade. It's perfectly possible to live without bread, although I do know that for many it can be the hard thing to ditch or reduce. There are lower carb breads out there of varying qualities, but I'm not your best source of guidance on that.

Good luck with it all.
 
@AnnL - Have you looked through this:

Semaglutide | Drugs | BNF content published by NICE

View semaglutide information, including dose, uses, side-effects, renal impairment, pregnancy, breast feeding, contra-indications and important safety information.
bnf.nice.org.uk bnf.nice.org.uk

It is the NICE appraisal of semaglutide and its recommendations for its use. If you follow your way through the links you can see haw recommendations for its use in Scotland and Wales vary from the recommendations in England. It presents a different picture of the drug than that which appears in the popular press. It is clearly useful if used in the right circumstances under correct supervision but is far from a universal treatment for T2. You can see why your partner was not offered it in Wales and it is unlikely he would be offered it elsewhere in the UK. Don't see any mention of "not being diabetic enough" anywhere in it.

I'm like you and don't use sauces in jars... although I might use a Patak spice mix when making a curry. When making something I will always consider the carbiness of components and reduce the amounts of those with high carbs in the final mix. In your example I would be looking at the lentils and beans, not to eliminate them, but to reduce the amount in each final portion.
 
AndBreathe said:
Personally, I like to keep things simple, so my go-tos, in your husband's shoes (nightshifts with a need for "something" to keep me going) would be either a decent soup - something like brocolli and stilton - with a dollop of sour cream - which is surprisingly sustaining, with the cheese and cream in it.

If finger food is the name of the day, then I'd be on airfried (because we have one!) chicken thighs or leg portions - with the crispy skin on. I'd be going for thighs as they have a bit of fat in them to keep them moist on cooking and plenty of meat, per mouthful. Obviously they can be eaten with cutlery or wrapped in foil, the use the peeled back foil to hold it.

Decent sausages (again in the A/F). Watch the carbs in the supermarket "normal" ranges. They can have quick a bit of rusk in them, which doesn't help us out. Hard boiled eggs. Crispy bacon rashers.

Thick, creamy Greek yoghurt, maybe with some berries in a clip top pot.

There are loads of options. It's just about finding a new routine, but batch cooking certainly helps.

Finally, on bread? I haven't eaten bread in over a decade. It's perfectly possible to live without bread, although I do know that for many it can be the hard thing to ditch or reduce. There are lower carb breads out there of varying qualities, but I'm not your best source of guidance on that.

Good luck with it all.
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Thank you again. Sorry to take up your time.

Yes to the airfryer. We have a small oven type which pretty much everything (apart from soups and stews) is cooked in - quite a revelation when we got it.
Like yourself, sausages tend to come from a local butcher, as does any bacon. Chicken I buy frozen in large quantities from Iceland ... fresh, butcher sourced is just so expensive.

My diffculty is (but we'll get there), is convincing him that all 'fat' is not bad. Being overweight he's very conscious of calories and looks towards low fat versions of cheeses, yoghurts etc.

I can see from reading current dietary/diabetic/heart health guidance, that the thinking is changing. Sugar is the new bad boy and fat ...good fat, in moderation, isn't the evil it once was 🙂
 
You mention using lentils, beans and pearl barley in your stews but they are quite high carb so it would be worth using the monitor to see if they are tolerated. I do use a can of kidney beans or chickpeas in chilli or curry but that is then between 6 portions.
I have found butchers sausages are often higher carb than good quality supermarket ones so worth checking those out for carbs. Supermarket ones can be as little as 1.5g carbs per sausage up to as much as 4g if they are flavoured ones.
Somethings can be a surprise like the difference between ALDI's spareribs, the BBQ ones are nearly twice the carbs as the sweet chilli ones which are only 11g carbs per half a rack and less if you don't put all the sauce on.
 
AnnL said:
Thank you again. Sorry to take up your time.

Yes to the airfryer. We have a small oven type which pretty much everything (apart from soups and stews) is cooked in - quite a revelation when we got it.
Like yourself, sausages tend to come from a local butcher, as does any bacon. Chicken I buy frozen in large quantities from Iceland ... fresh, butcher sourced is just so expensive.

My diffculty is (but we'll get there), is convincing him that all 'fat' is not bad. Being overweight he's very conscious of calories and looks towards low fat versions of cheeses, yoghurts etc.

I can see from reading current dietary/diabetic/heart health guidance, that the thinking is changing. Sugar is the new bad boy and fat ...good fat, in moderation, isn't the evil it once was 🙂
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I buy the sausages from Iceland and the coop as they are low carb, and not overspiced like some brands.
If your husband did Biology at school in his teens, he should know that Humans make hormones and other important substances from the natural fats in meat and dairy - which can be important for men in particular.
I avoid seed oils and after eight years I am sure it was a good decision. Just being able to go out on a sunny day and not end up looking like a lobster was enough to convince me that they are not a good thing.
I was only watching the carbs in my diet at first, and never take any account of calories, and I lost so much weight my clothes were sliding off - luckily in private. so I am thoroughly convinced that reducing carbs, not calories is how to lower weight.
 
AnnL said:
Thank you again. Sorry to take up your time.

Yes to the airfryer. We have a small oven type which pretty much everything (apart from soups and stews) is cooked in - quite a revelation when we got it.
Like yourself, sausages tend to come from a local butcher, as does any bacon. Chicken I buy frozen in large quantities from Iceland ... fresh, butcher sourced is just so expensive.

My diffculty is (but we'll get there), is convincing him that all 'fat' is not bad. Being overweight he's very conscious of calories and looks towards low fat versions of cheeses, yoghurts etc.

I can see from reading current dietary/diabetic/heart health guidance, that the thinking is changing. Sugar is the new bad boy and fat ...good fat, in moderation, isn't the evil it once was 🙂
Click to expand...

If your husband is reducing his carbs, and also going low fat he'll very likely find himself hungry. The protein and fat are the bits that keep us full and satisfied.

When I was at the beginning of my diabetes journey I actually found I was eating more, in terms of calories than I had been before, yet my love handles were melting in front of my eyes. Your husband doesn't need to be eating cheese, spread with butter, but just enjoying fattier cuts (belly pork from the A/F? Be still my beating heart!) of meat and not trimming it away

I am not the main cook in our house. I'm very spoilt having a chap who loves to cook. He was insistent when I was diagnosed that we would still be eating our meals together and the same foods. He had a few more carbs than me, but the main events were the same.

I accept your husband's HbA1c has increased in recent times, but it really isn't that far into the diabetes diagnostic area, so even altering the proportions of the elements on his plate will help.

A very wise man once said,...... "Eat carbs to satisfy your blood glucose monitor and the fat to satisfy the bathroom scales.
 
AndBreathe said:
A very wise man once said,...... "Eat carbs to satisfy your blood glucose monitor and the fat to satisfy the bathroom scales.
Click to expand...

I like that.

Question for one and all: if you had to choose between the glucose monitor and the bathroom scales, which would you choose?
 
JITR said:
I like that.

Question for one and all: if you had to choose between the glucose monitor and the bathroom scales, which would you choose?
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That would depend on whether I felt I need to monitor my glucose numbers (I test less regularly these days), or if I needed to alter the display on the scales - up or down.

I routinely step on and off the scales every morning. About once a month, I do a full Karada scan (Omron BF511 scales) to ensure my visceral fat isn't creeping up, and that I'm managing to preserve my muscle percentages.
 
@AnnL - apologies if I have deflected your thread topic a bit there.
 
Welcome to the forum @AnnL

Hope you ‘ve found some of the suggestions, ideas, and shared experiences here helpful.

At the end of the day, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach for the ‘perfect’ diabetes menu. Diabetes can be infuriatingly fickle, and digestion & metabolism is a complex and highly nuanced thing.

Using his BG meter to check before and again 2hrs after the first bite of a meal or snack can be a very direct way of checking what portion sizes of various ‘forbidden’ foods are actually safe for him, and what ‘safe’ foods need to be avoided entirely!

Ideally he’d want to see a ‘meal rise’ of no more than 2-3mmol/L between the ‘before’ and ‘after’ check, and ultimately allow things to drift downwards to aim for 4-7mmol/L before meals, and no higher than 8.5mmol/L at the 2hr mark.

Good luck with it all, and let us know what you discover on your journey 🙂
 
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