I need some meal ideas please!

slowandsteady_2

Hi everyone,

thanks for reading

Oooh i feel like ive come home lol, not posted on the board for ages, so please be kind!

Im in great need of some recipe ideas as i have a few problems at the moment health wise that need my diet being 'right'

Ive spent the last couple of years trawling MSE and doing everything advised, especially when it comes to groceries and shopping and now i have it all worked out, something else comes up to spoil my hard work!

Basically i'll be 35 weeks pregnant on Monday and a couple of weeks ago i was diagnosed with gestational diabetes, although apparently all the tests etc they have done suggest i might have already been type 2 diabetic before pregnancy. I am fine in myself, but baby is growing huge apparently due to the GD and i am likely to be induced in 2-3 weeks.

I have been started on a daily shot of insulin at night but it doesnt seem to have made a difference, albeit ive only been on it since Thurs, but it has been suggested i will have to go on insulin after meals too as my numbers are all over the place.

I saw a dietcian and she told me what i already know and what i already did regarding meal choices-wholegrain foods, portion size, monitoring carbohydrates, etc.

However i now feel i have a limited choice of meals to work with within my limited budget and am desperately bored, and to top it off i had a letter from the hospital today telling me my last blood tests show i am anaemic and can i go to the GP for an iron prescription, and while i feel i have a good understanding of nutrition after spending the last couple of years trying to get the best value most nutritious food for our budget i am stumped for ideas.

The hospital arent sure if this will go when baby comes, and i guess i will cross that bridge when i come to it!

Basically i am using wholegrain pasta and brown rice, new potatoes, tinned fish, chicken, and making a big pan of soup every couple of days with lentils/split peas/carrots etc for lunch.

I am basically just doing meat, veg and potatoes, or rice and tinned fish, or pasta with mushroom/garlic/peppers and toms, toast and peanut butter for breakkie with the bread i was advised to get, and soup for lunch.

I havent generally tended to eat three meals a day at set times due to my working patterns so this is really hard to do and to think of something interesting to.

I am particularly concerned that im not eating enough now as i dont know if im supposed to eat inbetween meals or if im supposed to stick solidly to 3 meals a day but i get hungry and am not sure what low GI snacks would be ok.

I have cupboards full of low GI stuff and healthy beans, pulses lentils, pastas and rice, just very few ideas with what to do with them!

Im now also limited in when i can shop as my car had to be scrapped so i rely on hubby now to ferry me for the shopping as i cant carry a lot on the bus due to baby bump etc.

There is me, hubby and dd1 who is 2 1/2 years old but i organise her meals seperately a lot of the time as she eats a little earlier than us.

Sorry for the long post!!

sharronej

I am carb sensitive and also have to limit how much and what I eat, I too struggle to eat every couple of hours so can fully understand where you're coming from.

For breakfast I have a banana smoothie :- small banana, 2 tablespoons of flaxseed, 1/2 tablespoon peanut butter, 1/2 pint of milk. I count it as about 40g carbs which is quite high I suppose but it fills me up and the milled flaxseed has lots of Omega's and other health benefits in.

Apple and cheese about 12grams carbs

Hummous (1 tablespoon) and a handful of carrot sticks about 15grams

cheese and crackers - 5g per cream cracker

Tuna or meat Salad

Peanut butter smeared onto cut pieces of Banana (might not sound nice but it;s lovely) about 30 - 35g carbs

I stay away from anything processed and try and to stay away from bread.

HTH

sharronej

I am carb sensitive and also have to limit how much and what I eat, I too struggle to eat every couple of hours so can fully understand where you're coming from.

For breakfast I have a banana smoothie :- small banana, 2 tablespoons of flaxseed, 1/2 tablespoon peanut butter, 1/2 pint of milk. I count it as about 40g carbs which is quite high I suppose but it fills me up and the milled flaxseed has lots of Omega's and other health benefits in.

Apple and cheese about 12grams carbs

Hummous (1 tablespoon) and a handful of carrot sticks about 15grams

cheese and crackers - 5g per cream cracker

adelight

That is really tricky but you do have the right ideas for meals. Could you get into the habit of eating at say 11am & 3pm rather than just lunch? Or having a cup of tea with a small snack morning and afternoon.

You can make most meals with your alternatives, even if they taste a bit odd at first! A shepherd's pie topped with mashed cauliflower and beans is delicious and OS.

I'm not 100% on what's okay to eat while pregnant so you might have to check some of these:
mussels- very high in iron, low in fat and actually very cheap at around £6/kg from the waitrose fish counter or less bought frozen at Asda.
Oat bran is very low GI and high in iron, it takes a bit of getting used to to cook with as to make a healthy oat bran pancake you have to leave the oat bran to soak. Search for "oat bran pancake" or "dukan galette" as oat bran is part of the popular dukan diet so there are lots of recipes online.
I have a feeling you can't eat much liver when pregnant? Soon as it's okay to eat try chicken liver stewed with tinned toms, onions & red wine vinegar served on pasta. I've converted liver haters with this dish.
Sweet potato- baked, wedges, stewed with chick peas or spicy chicken.
Lentil loaf, bean burgers- they keep well in the fridge so could make a good snack too.

For snacks:
Along with the batches of soups you could make bean dips to eat with vegetable sticks or ryvita(OR lidl "wheat crisp breads" which are about 1/3 the price!).
Liver pate.
Cottage cheese.
HM baked beans with less sugar and a mix of bean types.
Muffins using all-bran, a rough recipe is 6oz all-bran mixed to a pulp with hot milk, add one egg, 1oz diced nuts and enough SF flour(wholewheat+baking powder) to make a thick lumpy dough and bake until a cocktail stick comes out clean. There are more recipes around but most are very sugary.

toriaterrier

Congratulations!

I'm type 2 Diabetic and am 34 weeks pregnant with my first. I have insulin after meals too because my results are too high. I am also getting induced at 38 weeks to stop the baby getting too big (she is ok at the moment).

For breakfast I have porridge/weetabix/bran flakes/cornflakes. But be careful for portion sizes (this is my downfall). For bread I try to have granary/wholemeal. Atm as a compromise with dh we are on 50:50 etc and it doesn't seem too bad.

For pasta I try to get the kids wholemeal pasta from Asda as it is about the same price for a pack of their ordinary wholemeal pasta but the pasta shells are a fraction of the size so seem to go a lot further/visually you seem to get more. I haven't found an equivalent at Tesco's.

For potatoes apparently sweet potatoes are better than ordinary potatoes. I haven't tried this myself so I'm not sure how accurate this is. Also, things that may work for me may not work for others.

Be careful which fruit you eat as some are shockingly high in sugar! Stay away from specialist diabetic products. You are better off just basically following a healthy/low gi diet.

For sauces - try to use tomato based sauces rather creamy ones. For snacks I like oat cakes/rice cakes or veg like cucumber/cherry toms/carrot or celery sticks as these are water based. One dietician I saw recently recommended I had yoghurts for snacks/lunch too but apart from plain/natural yoghurts they can be quite high in sugar.

For drinks I like water or I have hot drinks with sweetener. It can be an acquired taste but I find sugar tastes weird now lol.

Chicken is the best meat to go for (turkey even better) but this can cost a lot. I would still have beef 1/2 times a week as you will get iron from this (I think). Wholegrains are good for iron as are beans and dark green leafy veg.

We are on a limited budget too and we do quite well.

It sounds like you are doing quite well. If you need any more help just ask

mardatha

I sympathise. I had it all sorted with cheap healthy diets and then my OH was found to be diabetic and for a while it seemed to me that there was nothing to eat at all. Hope and feel sure that you will get it organised.

Miss_J

adelight wrote: »

I'm not 100% on what's okay to eat while pregnant so you might have to check some of these:

mussels- very high in iron, low in fat and actually very cheap at around £6/kg from the waitrose fish counter or less bought frozen at Asda.

I have a feeling you can't eat much liver when pregnant? Soon as it's okay to eat try chicken liver stewed with tinned toms, onions & red wine vinegar served on pasta.

For snacks:

Liver pate.

Not recommended to eat any of these when pregnant.

slowandsteady_2

Thanks everyone, love the idea of the shepherds pie with mashed cauli, and the sweet potatoes. I was stood in the shop wondering about if sweet potatoes were ok and i wasnt sure as i couldnt remember readin g any info on them.

When to eat is definately the killer, as OP suggested eating around 11am, 3pm etc funnily enough is what i tend to do! I am up with lo first thing anyway and that is when i do my first blood sugar but then i may not eat for another hour or longer until im hungry, but before this diagnosis and since being on mat leave i havent generally bothered at all till mid morning, then again late afternoon because we eat our main meal late when hubby comes in, around 9pm. I have to admit this is what i am comfortable doing and what we've done for a long long time now, with work etc else i would be starving again by 8pm if we ate at 5pm! It doesnt seem to have affected my blood sugars as ive tried different ways in the last couple of weeks and luckily i seem to be having not much difference in my already erratic numbers, but hospital have said they would prefer if ate at regular times but its hard to break long term habits!

I have some wholegrain (or equivalent) ryvita in the cupboard that i must dig out, thats a good idea, always have carrots and salad bits in so maybe i should be utilising these more and eating little and often, that may help stave the boredom. I was umming and ahhing about yoghurts but did get some nice low fat/diet ones and they seem ok when i had one after meal the other day

I have been cautious about fruit, and have cut out the fresh juice as recommended. I was worried about eating cereals as i believe they can have a lot of sugar but i might have a try with some bran flakes or porridge, probably porridge would be better i guess. Funnily enough i dont have a sweet tooth so im lucky in the sense i dont miss chocolate/cake etc but i do miss crisps!

Thanks for the advice and support, i think i'll have a good rummage around the cupboards when lo goes to nursery in the morning and see what i can invent lol

slowandsteady_2

toriaterrier wrote: »

Congratulations!

I'm type 2 Diabetic and am 34 weeks pregnant with my first. I have insulin after meals too because my results are too high. I am also getting induced at 38 weeks to stop the baby getting too big (she is ok at the moment).

For breakfast I have porridge/weetabix/bran flakes/cornflakes. But be careful for portion sizes (this is my downfall). For bread I try to have granary/wholemeal. Atm as a compromise with dh we are on 50:50 etc and it doesn't seem too bad.

For pasta I try to get the kids wholemeal pasta from Asda as it is about the same price for a pack of their ordinary wholemeal pasta but the pasta shells are a fraction of the size so seem to go a lot further/visually you seem to get more. I haven't found an equivalent at Tesco's.

For potatoes apparently sweet potatoes are better than ordinary potatoes. I haven't tried this myself so I'm not sure how accurate this is. Also, things that may work for me may not work for others.

Be careful which fruit you eat as some are shockingly high in sugar! Stay away from specialist diabetic products. You are better off just basically following a healthy/low gi diet.

For sauces - try to use tomato based sauces rather creamy ones. For snacks I like oat cakes/rice cakes or veg like cucumber/cherry toms/carrot or celery sticks as these are water based. One dietician I saw recently recommended I had yoghurts for snacks/lunch too but apart from plain/natural yoghurts they can be quite high in sugar.

For drinks I like water or I have hot drinks with sweetener. It can be an acquired taste but I find sugar tastes weird now lol.

Chicken is the best meat to go for (turkey even better) but this can cost a lot. I would still have beef 1/2 times a week as you will get iron from this (I think). Wholegrains are good for iron as are beans and dark green leafy veg.

We are on a limited budget too and we do quite well.

It sounds like you are doing quite well. If you need any more help just ask

I usually get the 50/50 bread as i thought it was better, and was very pleased with myself lol when i told the dietician this! However she said that apart from granary and seeded breads, that all breads are pretty much the same GI wise and she said i'd be better off getting a bread called Burgens, it is made with soya and linseed. I got it and am absolutely addicted to it, its gorgous, although it is around £1.34 a loaf, but there's only me eating it so i only have to get one a week. Its definately worth a try whether or not for health as its really lovely.

Congratulations too on your pregnancy and best of luck with everything!

sophistica

Are there any suitable cookbooks on https://www.bookpeople.co.uk?