Low-carb diets support thread

SHEILA54

oldtractor - well done but be careful of the low salt as I believe that we excrete more salt when low carbing so need to replace it. I am sure that someone will correct me if I am wrong. Also you need more fat to provide fuel if you are limiting carbs so you could end up making yourself ill. Even my GP told me that I would need more fat and she is suspicious of the low carb way!!

lamarsi - welcome and I am sure that you will lose!

Mercy - seems like you grew up around the same time as me but I was stuffed with sausage rolls, spam fritters, breakfast sausage, pies and suet puddings with syrup. Peas and tinned carrots were the usual veg and I now hate peas

Mercy

oldtractor wrote: »

Hi all I have recently started a lo-carb lo fat lo salt diet . I find that I now eat a lot of fruit and veg. Its easy to make these enjoyable eg leeks with tarragon cooked in white wine with tarragon are delicious. Cajun seasoning on chicken with spinach and peas and dry "fried" strips of savoy cabbage. yummmm

Hi hunni!

Are you following a low carb plan? If so what are you on? I'm really a Dr Dahlqvist follower myself (link to plan on 1st page of this forum)

How low are your carbs? I ask as I'd find it difficult if eating lots of fruit as they tend to be sugar heavy.

Have to agree with Sheila on the low fat and low salt side of things. Can you say why you choose low salt and low fat?

The foods you suggest sound lovely, I'd be using butter too, though

Welcome and I hope you like it here.

Mx

Edwardia

I'm going to disagree to a point.

I'm not a mother but used to be a nanny for some pretty wealthy people and in the absence of the parents I was the one in charge 24/7 often for several weeks.

The chubby baby decides it's had enough food but we seem to have this mental thing a growing baby needs stuffing with food and if it starts bawling because it doesn't want any more, what we should be doing is thinking OK, s/he'll bawl when hungry, s/he isn't going to starve. Instead, hands up, who has sat there doing aeroplanes noises with a spoon to get the baby to eat (besides me ?) ??

If you think about the foods you dislike, at least some of them will be foods which you had a battle with as a child.

My brother won't eat fish because my mother used to give us a pile of cod's roe and mash or herrings. I won't eat liver because my mother made me sit at the table eating the liver and onions and I wasn't allowed to leave the table until I did - I threw up once.

Consciously or sub-consciously, kids will battle over food because it's all about control, just like the teenager with anorexia or the teenager who goes veggie. I've never made a child eat something s/he violently objects to but neither do I think it's good for them to get their own way to the point where they are really fussy eaters. The threat of you won't get any ice cream/yogurt/fruit/watch your favourite TV show can work wonders to get them to eat food they previously made a fuss about, without a murmur.

E numbers, fructose etc aren't good for kids. I wouldn't advocate with-holding all carbs, but I do think if kids get really good food, they are not likely to want to eat a steady diet of McNuggets. That was my experience. I had to accompany kids to parties and yes sometimes I did find myself removing the fourth glass of Coke from their mitts. Other times it was the kids themselves who looked at white sliced bread sandwiches with tuna in as if they were aliens and refused to touch them.

I would have issues with any school that told me I couldn't give my child the healthy packed lunch I wanted to give him/her. I would tell them that if they were that worried about kids with nut allergies swapping sandwiches with another child, they should put all the kids with food allergies/intolerances on one supervised table. :mad:

sistercas

just back from lunch and food shopping , really enjoyed my lunch , i had 2 bowls of salad and 10 pieces of pizza ( topping only) and it was lovely, blood sugar was ok when i got in thankfully.

just been walking around m0rris0ns and the amount of carp is incredible and everyone has it piled high in their trollies.

mercy thanks for the link

sheila i was brought up in the late 60's and 70's my mum worked and didnt cook much we had vesta dried beef rissoto and chow mein and yeomans dried potato lol. i didnt know how to make real mashed potato until i started living with DH. now i love cooking and so do my 2 brothers and sister . my mum can cook but i dont think it ever interested her , plus the 70's were all about convenience carp :cool:

my kids have never been fussy , but i have never made an issue about it either , i cook and they eat - simples

Mercy

SHEILA54 wrote: »

lamarsi - welcome and I am sure that you will lose!

Mercy - seems like you grew up around the same time as me but I was stuffed with sausage rolls, spam fritters, breakfast sausage, pies and suet puddings with syrup. Peas and tinned carrots were the usual veg and I now hate peas

Lamarsi - I too welcome you to this happy place! Keep posting, you sound like a success in the making!

I'm 44 this year. Don't think my Mum could afford all that type of food :rotfl: Also, we never ate what Mum couldn't stomach - think spam fritters would be amongst that number :rotfl: Although I do remember dipping toast into the fat and juice produced by grilling bacon :T :rotfl: Yum.

We had suet puddings but only really at school and with lots of custard

Maybe I was just lucky but I would never have been allowed to be a picky eater. :eek: :rotfl: Luckily it was never an issue. Mum did put a lot of effort into our food. She made it fun and stressless. That is only 1 of the many things I have to thank her for :beer:

Mx

Mercy

Hello again, had shopping adventures today.

First - Meat :cool:

560g turkey steaks from £4.60 to £2.60
300g Prime beef frying steak from £3.45 to £1.80
and 2 X 526 Prime beef medalion steak £6 - £3.50.
The joys of being in Asda when they've whoopsied the meat.
Can't say I've saved all that as I wouldn't have bought it not on cheap but is nice to have a freezer full of low cost meat All good British foods! :j

On a completely different subject - but still moneysaving - I had good regular shopping day today, too.

A top (gypsy black n white), a shirt (fitted black), a brolly (black with moths/butterflies in blue,green n purple), a M&S silk scarf in green, purple and black on white ground (with £20 tag still on) 6 books, a crock pot for making sauerkraut in (:j) and 12in high statue of Pegasus. Not bad for £15.:rotfl:

Got myself an unexpected afternoon off - so glad I did that :j:rotfl::D

Mx

Mercy

Edwardia wrote: »

Mercy just spotted you (((Mercy))) Have you read the Fifty Shades trilogy yet ???

Ha, just thought, maybe it should be called the 'Filthy Shades Trilogy'

Will be borrowing em off my sista. I've not been in contact but she will have them :rotfl:

Mx

murphydog999

Mercy wrote: »

But back in the day was 40 years ago and Mum was there to cook all our food from scratch every day Then there weren't all the foods imported, you ate seasonally from local produce.

Maybe that is the way to go?

I try now to do that very thing and I think it's part of the low carb thing too.

Keep it simple and tasty.

Absolutely Mercy. I don't think anyone is saying kids should low-carb - I certainly wasn't - healthy eating and freshly prepared, with the emphasis of the plate not being carbohydrate, i.e. chips with........pasta with........

However, minimising inflammatory foods whatever their make-up is equally important - grain is one of those - plus cooking with vegetable/sunflower, even olive oils, and avoiding deep-fried foods like the plague - as they turn into trans-fats - is crucial..........for everyone.

daska

Mojisola wrote: »

If they don't have health problems and aren't obese, is it wise to put children on a low-carb diet?

DS2 certainly isn't on a low carb diet - even if I wanted him to be school meals don't allow for that option LOL. I'm cutting down sugar and very carby things for his evening meal but he's still having plenty of fruit, milk etc - it would probably be fairer to say he's on more of a paleo diet. But he generally gets an element of choice. I force him to try things, one mouthful and then it's gone if he doesn't like it - but I'm usually quite careful not to give him things I think he'll hate LOL. The only things I don't keep in stock are potatos and bread. I still make bread occasionally and slice what isn't eaten and put it in the freezer - it's now in the class of another option he can choose to have rather than the automatic basis of the meal.

But it's an interesting question because the answer isn't quite as cut and dried might be supposed. The elephant in the room is weightloss but while very low carb diets can be used for weightloss their overall effect is to balance out weight. So put that consideration to one side.

Nutrition isn't an issue if you're still eating an omnivorous diet. Cutting out grains might lead to less B vitamins but they're available from meat. There are top class athletes who live low carb so energy isn't an issue. Protein is necessary for growth so it gets a tick there. Fat is necessary so another tick there. Plenty of green veg - tick. Other veg - tick. Berries, seeds, nuts - tick. All good, all highly nutritious. More nutrient dense food than the diet most chidren eat. What's 'missing' except the perceived need for the carbs from bread/potatos/rice/sugar for energy?

Then add in that a low carb diet is used, sometimes for many years, to control (and sometimes cure) paediatric epilepsy and to help with diabetes in children/adults of all ages. Low carb diets have people singing their praises for the differences it can make in children with ASD/ADHD - one example is the GAPS diet - it's quite common for ASD kids to be carb fiends.

And it's not the norm in every culture - traditionally the Masai children don't eat a carb rich diet (not in the Western sense anyway) but have the same diet as the adults: meat, milk, blood with herbs, bark and wild fruits. Since they were forced to rely on maize etc they've become stunted and developed heart attacks - not previously known in the Masai people. It's not likely to be a exclusively genetic trait as the Masai have traditionally included people from other tribes.

So, I suspect the worry that "it's probably not good for children" is more a learned bias than necessarily based on fact.

murphydog999

Very good post Daska.