Low carb for free spirits
Here's your Low Carb 101, folks. If my posts have been making some decent sense and you're wanting to give this low carb thing a go, here's the place to begin.
Are you one of those lovely people who likes meal plans and lists and recipes? If you are, you're very welcome here 💗 - please stick around for the entertainment and the information... and at the end of this post I'll give you a lovely list of resources that will float your boat.
But I am not wired like this, sorry peeps - you'll find few recipes here, and even fewer meal plans - I'm just not that kinda gal. I think everybody's different: some hate broccoli and others hate salmon - that's fine - we gotta work out how each of us can implement our own version of low carb - and prescriptive diets seem to miss this fact that we are all individuals with different lives, lifestyles and tastes. What I prefer is to just give some key concepts and just work through one tweak at a time. So here we are: J's free spirited guide to going low carb.
First, write down what you eat in a usual day. When working with patients, this is always a good starting point, and I usually ask the following questions.
What you usually eat for:
Breakfast?
Morning snack?
Lunch?
Afternoon snack?
Dinner?
After dinner?
Drinks? (type, quantity)
Frequency & type of desserts, sweets, takeaway?
So why don't you go ahead and give it a go? Try to be as honest and accurate as you can about your USUAL food intake.
Here's an example of a really typical food story that many people tell me - especially those with diabetes, who have often been told to eat small meals and snacks every few hours! (...advice which I consider to be unhelpful, by the way!)
Breakfast: 2 weet-bix with lite milk and some berries, 1/2 glass of juice with morning tablets
Morning snack: low fat fruit yoghurt or a piece of fruit
Lunch: a wholegrain meat and salad roll
Afternoon snack: wholegrain crackers with cheese
Dinner: small serving of lean meat with 3 veg, including a small potato
After dinner: cup of milo with low fat milk.
By conventional wisdom, this all sounds pretty wholesome - there's no junk food, no TimTams (although a goodly number of Scotch Finger biscuits seem to make their way into these food stories), but even without the naughty biscuits, the total carb content of this typical day's meal comes to about 270 grams per day. That's a lot of carb for someone who's having trouble processing glucose, don't you think? (Remember, carbs = long chains of glucose molecules).
So now have a look at your own food story and circle the foods that are higher in carbohydrate. These include:
The foods that you circle are the ones to start working on. So what change would be good to work on first? Just pick one thing and do that until it's been conquered. Then move on to tackling the next thing.
My recommendation is to start with the macro tweaks: the changes that will give you the most bang for your buck. If you regularly eat or drink sugary items (like biscuits, desserts, iced coffees or Coke) your very first aim would be to cut down your sugar intake, and specifically, wean off that favourite thing you keep going for on a daily basis. Just for kicks, why don't you do a little exercise: Google the carb content of your favourite treat - the one that keeps calling to you.
Back when I was really struggling with stress eating, my 'thing' was an after work Coffee Kick frappe from the Golden Arches. It's pretty astonishing when you know how to do the maths... according to CalorieKing, a medium frappe contains 67.1 grams of carbohydrate in it. Now if you're a low carb newbie, that won't mean much, but let's turn that into something we all get: spoonfulls of sugar. One spoonful of sugar is equal to about 4g of carb. So 67.1 / 4 = 16.775... I was drinking 16 spoonfulls of sugar each time I went through drive-thru after work! (And that's not even counting the after work cheeseburger or snack wrap that often accompanied it!) No wonder I had a persistent weight problem!
SO what's your thing? Have you identified the thing you're going to take out first? Consider the following strategies:
Finally as promised at the beginning, here are some resources to help you learn more about low carb living - especially if you like meal plans and wonderfully detailed instructions like that:
Websites:
ditchthecarbs.com
dietdoctor.com - This website offers a huge amount of information from medical professionals who use the low carb approach in their practices. They have a great beginner’s section, and there’s also a membership section ($9/month) which gives access to meal plans, extra videos and films.
lowcarbdownunder.com.au
Lastly, diabetes.co.uk has a fabulous online video course which steps you through low carb principles over a 10-week period.
Books:
Theory and recipes (the full how-to of low carb):
The CSIRO Low-Carb Diet by Grant Brinkworth and Pennie Taylor
What the Fat? by Grant Schofield, Caryn Zinn & Craig Rodger
Real Meal Revolution by Tim Noakes, Jonno Proudfoot & Sally-Ann Creed
Have a grand week, everyone! I'll check in with more low carb information again soon.
- Juliet.
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| Photo by Alex Munsell on Unsplash |
But I am not wired like this, sorry peeps - you'll find few recipes here, and even fewer meal plans - I'm just not that kinda gal. I think everybody's different: some hate broccoli and others hate salmon - that's fine - we gotta work out how each of us can implement our own version of low carb - and prescriptive diets seem to miss this fact that we are all individuals with different lives, lifestyles and tastes. What I prefer is to just give some key concepts and just work through one tweak at a time. So here we are: J's free spirited guide to going low carb.
First, write down what you eat in a usual day. When working with patients, this is always a good starting point, and I usually ask the following questions.
What you usually eat for:
Breakfast?
Morning snack?
Lunch?
Afternoon snack?
Dinner?
After dinner?
Drinks? (type, quantity)
Frequency & type of desserts, sweets, takeaway?
So why don't you go ahead and give it a go? Try to be as honest and accurate as you can about your USUAL food intake.
Here's an example of a really typical food story that many people tell me - especially those with diabetes, who have often been told to eat small meals and snacks every few hours! (...advice which I consider to be unhelpful, by the way!)
Breakfast: 2 weet-bix with lite milk and some berries, 1/2 glass of juice with morning tablets
Morning snack: low fat fruit yoghurt or a piece of fruit
Lunch: a wholegrain meat and salad roll
Afternoon snack: wholegrain crackers with cheese
Dinner: small serving of lean meat with 3 veg, including a small potato
After dinner: cup of milo with low fat milk.
By conventional wisdom, this all sounds pretty wholesome - there's no junk food, no TimTams (although a goodly number of Scotch Finger biscuits seem to make their way into these food stories), but even without the naughty biscuits, the total carb content of this typical day's meal comes to about 270 grams per day. That's a lot of carb for someone who's having trouble processing glucose, don't you think? (Remember, carbs = long chains of glucose molecules).
So now have a look at your own food story and circle the foods that are higher in carbohydrate. These include:
- foods made from flour, grains or sugar (such as bread, crackers, pasta, rice, noodles, breakfast cereals, pastries and sweet foods like cakes and desserts)
- potatoes, corn,
- flavoured yoghurts, milk drinks
- beer and sweet drinks like soft drinks and fruit juice.
The foods that you circle are the ones to start working on. So what change would be good to work on first? Just pick one thing and do that until it's been conquered. Then move on to tackling the next thing.
My recommendation is to start with the macro tweaks: the changes that will give you the most bang for your buck. If you regularly eat or drink sugary items (like biscuits, desserts, iced coffees or Coke) your very first aim would be to cut down your sugar intake, and specifically, wean off that favourite thing you keep going for on a daily basis. Just for kicks, why don't you do a little exercise: Google the carb content of your favourite treat - the one that keeps calling to you.
Back when I was really struggling with stress eating, my 'thing' was an after work Coffee Kick frappe from the Golden Arches. It's pretty astonishing when you know how to do the maths... according to CalorieKing, a medium frappe contains 67.1 grams of carbohydrate in it. Now if you're a low carb newbie, that won't mean much, but let's turn that into something we all get: spoonfulls of sugar. One spoonful of sugar is equal to about 4g of carb. So 67.1 / 4 = 16.775... I was drinking 16 spoonfulls of sugar each time I went through drive-thru after work! (And that's not even counting the after work cheeseburger or snack wrap that often accompanied it!) No wonder I had a persistent weight problem!
SO what's your thing? Have you identified the thing you're going to take out first? Consider the following strategies:
- If it's a sweetened drink - swap for a flavoured water (check the nutritional panel to ensure there is no carbohydrate there.)
- If it's filling a void as well (e.g. stress eating, emotional eating), a bandaid strategy can be at least to swap the carby food for a small serve of a favourite protein / fat food such as a chunk of favourite cheese. Yes, there may be more work to do on that issue, but for now the aim is to reduce carbohydrate intake, so we can work on the finer details down the track. I'll talk about it more in another blog post down the track too.
- If it's a carby meal base (for example, if you're eating pasta twice a week and you want to cut it out...) consider swapping the starchy carbs for green vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower or zucchini. Our weekly spaghetti bol became broc(colini) and bol. Another option if you're not very keen about veggies, is to just put your curry, taco mince, stew or thick chunky sauce in a bowl and eat it with a spoon... and if you have to lick the bowl afterwards because there was no starchy ingredient to mop it up with, well, we won't tell!
- If you drink lots of teas and coffees with sugar added to them, try the step-wise method of reducing your sugar amount by half a teaspoon every few weeks. Our tastebuds regenerate about every 3 weeks. So if you reduce sugar in your tea or coffee, at first it will taste horrible, but within a few weeks, it will be 'the new normal' - your tastebuds will be used to the taste of less sugar. At that point, reduce sugar again by another half a teaspoon. Using this method, you can eradicate sugar in your hot drinks within a few months. My husband, I and our 3 teenage daughters all used this method a few years ago, and all of us went down from 2 tsp sugar in every drink to zero sugar within about 6 months.
There are so many more strategies and thoughts to share with you, but these will have to do for today (this post is getting bigger than Ben Hur!) But this is a good start I think. I'll aim to share lots more information over the coming weeks, but if you get stumped on one of your own challenges in the meantime, leave me a message in the comments or on Facebook, and I'll be happy to help.
Finally as promised at the beginning, here are some resources to help you learn more about low carb living - especially if you like meal plans and wonderfully detailed instructions like that:
Websites:
ditchthecarbs.com
dietdoctor.com - This website offers a huge amount of information from medical professionals who use the low carb approach in their practices. They have a great beginner’s section, and there’s also a membership section ($9/month) which gives access to meal plans, extra videos and films.
lowcarbdownunder.com.au
Lastly, diabetes.co.uk has a fabulous online video course which steps you through low carb principles over a 10-week period.
Books:
Theory and recipes (the full how-to of low carb):
The CSIRO Low-Carb Diet by Grant Brinkworth and Pennie Taylor
What the Fat? by Grant Schofield, Caryn Zinn & Craig Rodger
Real Meal Revolution by Tim Noakes, Jonno Proudfoot & Sally-Ann Creed
Have a grand week, everyone! I'll check in with more low carb information again soon.
- Juliet.
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