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Mondays child
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04-04-2018, 10:23 AM
1

Need diet advice. Please

I've just had two heart attacks 2 weeks ago.
I also have COPD and Diabetes type 2.
Obviously I've now got to avoid sugar, fat, salt and anything else that's bad for my health problems.
From what I found out so far it also rules out anything tasty, enjoyable and brings pleasure into my life. God forbid anything like that happening.

Please can anybody point the way to a simple diet that's not going to take me hours a day to prepare, not going to cost me an arm and a leg to buy, and that will not be so tasteless and boring that I will voluntarily give up the will to live.

I'm fed up scouring the internet, which seems to be giving me conflicting information.
I did really well when I saw my new diabetic nurse and I cut out sugar completely from my diet but after a few months things went very wrong for me and I not only lapsed but did it big style, hence heart attacks i suppose.
Obviously I've now learnt my lesson and need to be very good from now on.

Any help or advice on a salt, sugar, fat free diet would be really helpful. I'm not actually cooking yet as at the moment I'm being shipped from one family member to another, a bit like an unwanted pet waiting to be adopted, big sad brown eyes and whimpering noises, and this is till I can get about without going dizzy, clutching at chest pain when I sneeze or hiccup, and can get off the sofa without needing help.
So really I'm planning ahead for when I'm released and allowed to go home.
Realist
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04-04-2018, 10:48 AM
2

Re: Need diet advice. Please

Stay clear of diets they simply do not work, will never work and will levae you in a worse position that you started.

What you are asking for is silly.

All you need is the change of mind set to want to eat like a proper human being, to treat your body as a machine that needs a specific type of fuel.

Buy fresh vegetables, fresh fruits, well sourced meats and be sure to cook your own meals. There is no substitute. Get plenty of garlic and ginger into your meals and chillies/cyenne pepper for blood circulation so on.

Understand that sugar is a class A drug that has people addicted same as coccaine. It will convince you that foods containing it are pleasurable and tasty when in fact they are pure poison to your body.

Throw out any bags of white refined sugar you have in the house. Don't buy them ever again.

Stay away from sweets and cakes.

Make your own sweet treats from GOOD ingredients using healthy coconut oil instead of butters and other fats, using honey/treacle in place of white sugar and/or using dried fruits.

Get out of the mindset that cooking/preparing food is an unpleasant chore. It's simply a life necessity. Be disciplined and get up and do it. You need to do it EVERY DAY, cooking your meals is and should be an integral part of your life. There is little else that should take priority over it.

Re prioritise your life if you think you don't have time to cook properly. It's not difficult, it IS cheap to do and esp if you buy certain ingredients in bulk, like tins/cartons of chopped tomatoes/passata or buying real tomatoes in bulk and making your own batches of passata (really easy to do) and freezing them.

You DO need to get sugar out of your life but you need to understand that it is effectively a CLASS A drug and that a sudden cessation will result in awful hunger pangs and an inevitable lapse as you have already described.

If you currently drink tea/coffee and put sugar in them then for 1 to 2 weeks, stop drinking tea coffee completely and instead drink fruit teas. Your body will crave caffeine and once it is craving it enough you can then, and only then, make a cup of tea WITHOUT any sugar in it. You will find that it is very palatable and the craving for caffeine will be enough for you to enjoy it without any sugar. From that point you won't need sugar in your drinks.

Go through your cupboards and throw out all the crap. The packets of crisps, biscuits, chocolates, sweets etc. These are all unhealthy and will not help you.

Your body is simply a machine that needs the right fuel. It doesn't matter what you think you enjoy and don't enjoy. What matters is that you give the machine the right fuel.
If your car could speak and told you it really fancied being loaded with milk instead of petrol for a change would you do it? No that would be stupid, you would ruin the car's engine.

On a deeper level, understand that there is YOU and there is your body. The body should not be dictating to you what you do. The body responds to poisons and sugars in particular completely fool it and make it addicted. YOU have to take control of it and refuse to feed its addictions and make it healthy.

I cook every day for myself and my wife who still works. I make great tasty meals with little more than 30 mins effort every day. The meals are always based on simple vegetables and meat/fish. I don't buy anything processed or in tins. I put plenty of variety in there and use herbs and spices to make them tasty.

It's really easy to do. Just needs a bit of discipline.

Good luck
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susiejaeger
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04-04-2018, 10:57 AM
3

Re: Need diet advice. Please

Hello MC.

I've been Diabetic 30 years now and I am Type 1, have to Inject Insulin 3 times a day plus 4 Metformin tablets.

You can eat any lean meat, all vegetables, salad etc. treat it as if you are just having a healthy meal.

If you look on the food labels it will say Carbs, then under it will say which are of sugars, it must read between 0.5 - 2g only.

Be careful when eating fruit, Apples, Berries and Blueberries are good for you, but Oranges, Bananas, Plums, Grapes etc. are full of natural sugars that will bring your sugar levels up.

A glass of milk also brings your sugar levels up.

When having Chicken Breasts or Pork chops, instead of marinating them in sauces use spices instead.

Or visit the website

Diabetes.co.uk

Its very helpful.

Hope this helps.
Mel15
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04-04-2018, 11:15 AM
4

Re: Need diet advice. Please

The new thinking, which is old thinking, is just eat a diet that is as close to natural as possible

That is if you eat meat, eat it in as natural a form as possible. Avoid sausages, burgers, ready meals, ham

Keep the carbs - thats your rice, pasta, spuds, potatoes to a minimum. If you fancy potatoes or chips use sweet potatoes as they are much better for you, less carbs and full of vitamins. Change pasta and rice to brown, tastes nicer actually but does take longer to cook

Avoid fizzy drinks, esp those with sweeteners. Drink tea, coffee, water and milk


Keep cheese portions to a minimum. A portion is a matchbox size, and thats not a safety box either

Eat oily fish at least twice a week. I find this easy as I love sardines, mackerel and pilchards from a tin. We also try to fit salmon or another fresh fish dish in each week

Eat 3 times a day, make most of each plateful vegetables

Ive been switching us over to a full fat diet and the weight is falling off us and DH's cholesterol levels are lower. Theres a lot of talk and research now that shows this low fat, full of sweetner and sugar diet that we have been told is good for us, is actually the reason for the increases in diabetes and obesity. More and more cases are being reported where diabetes has been reversed when people have changed over to a high protein low carb diet.

So here, crisps and biscuits are a no no. We do have chocolate, good dark stuff, not huge bars of fat and sugar. Bread is granary, butter is used. Full fat milk and yoghurt are used - all full of Vitamin D and calcium. We don't buy ham, we use chicken and turkey or tuna, sardines for sandwiches

I don't use salt at the table. I do however add a sprinkle to potatoes when cooking and green leafy veg. Tastes bloody awful if I don't and a sprinkle really is a sprinkle. I don't worry because we eat so little in the way of processed food we aren't shovelling hidden spoonfuls of it down our necks daily

I scratch cook 6 days a week and I never spend more then an hour a day in the kitchen. Its not difficult to cook healthy and cheaply using raw ingredients once you get into the swing of it. I often cook a lot of an item and freeze into portions so another day I spend less time cooking. Like tonights chicken, the rest of it will be some sliced for sandwiches, the rest in a stir fry. Im serving it with cauliflower cheese I made Sunday so Ive only peas and cabbage and potatoes to cook, and the left over potatoes and cabbage will be bubble on Friday

Basically we eat the way we did in the 60,s and 70's ( without the over cooking of veg lol ) We eat well, we don't over eat, and I cook from scratch what we eat as much as possible and I don't throw anything away
Nom
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04-04-2018, 11:20 AM
5

Re: Need diet advice. Please

MC its only recently been published that T2 falls into 5 different categories so what works for one wont for another, dont be afraid to question your health care givers, many just spout out the same tied old cliches.

Find what works for you trial and error over time will aid in this. A lot of cash is invested in maintaining the status quo by large pharmaceutical companies.
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04-04-2018, 12:32 PM
6

Re: Need diet advice. Please

I'm not here to give advice on something I know nothing about.

I'm just wondering that if sugar is taboo, what's wrong with sugar substitute - sweetex etc? You can even buy in in a jar to add to your baking and sprinkle on serials instead of sugar.

Is that so bad?
Realist
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04-04-2018, 12:46 PM
7

Re: Need diet advice. Please

A key part to achieving the discipline needed to cook good meals for yourself on a daily basis is to ensure you have plenty of meat and other ingredients always to hand. If you try and cook on a "just in time" daily basis you will fail because it's a hassle having to keep going to the shops to buy food.

This is my regime

MEAT

I buy all my meat from a reputable farm shop with good provenance. I visit maybe once every 2 to 3 months and buy in quantity in those visits. Typically I will buy:

A couple of large packs of chicken breasts (about 20 to 30)
A large pork loin joint (half or full sized one)
A large pack of shin beef for stews
A large pack of mutton for stews
A reasonable sized joint of fillet steak or ribeye
Some sauages (processed I know but these have very little fat, nothing drips out when cooking).
Some packs of proper cut bacon
Any venison if it is available (haunches, saddle, liver and kidneys)
Some large packs of good steak mince

When I get home I portion all of the above into portions for 2 or 3 people. I bought a great meat slicer some years ago which has proven to be a real asset. This one:



Andrew James Meat Slicer.

It has interchangeable blades giving it a multitude of uses and costs about £50.

I use it to slice up pork loin joints into individual loins, to slice up steaks to my preferred thickness, to slice up Christmas Gammons (the ones with honey and cloves) and much more. A serrated blade let's me slice up home mead bread loaves as if they had been sliced at the supermarket.
A really good investment for any kitchen imo.

With the above my freezer is ALWAYS stocked with portions of good meat to make delicious meals from.


COOKING INGREDIENTS

There are some standard things you will need for lots of dishes. Tomato passata or equiv is one of them. Tins of chopped tomatoes are high in sugars but low in fibre due to how they are processed. Therefore, buy real fresh plum tomatoes in bulk from Macro/CostCo and simply quarter them, put them in a large saucepan with plenty of chopped garlic and simmer them until they break down. Then blitz them in a blender and portion into separate glass "tuppaware" style containers (loads in Ikea really cheap) and put in the freezer. Any time you want to make a Chilli or Lasagne or pasta you can just pull one out at the start of the day to defrost.

Other standard ingredients I also buy in bulk. Tins of red kidney beans, butter beans, chick peas. I always have a tray of each in my garage which I rotate. I have a large plastic storage box filled with different types of dried pasta which lasts a long time. I buy worstershire sauce bottles in bulk too, they add lots of flavour to dishes.

I cook only with Avocado oil or Rice Bran oil as these have high smoke points. I buy these whenever I see them on offer and buy plenty at that time.

I buy good Atlantic Sea Salt or equiv (like Maldon's) and always grind. Discard any refined Saxa table salt you have.


HERBS AND SPICES

Each to their own taste obviously. Buy herbs and spices in bulk quantities from Macro/CostCo etc as it is far far far cheaper than buying stupid little pots from supermarkets.

The bulk of my dishes see me using:

Smoked Paprika
Turmeric
Dried Chilli flakes
Cayenne Pepper
Mixed Herbs
Morrocon Spice Blend (for lamb stews)

Thus I always have large pots of these in the garage which I routinely replenish the typical small kitchen pots with.


FRUIT AND VEG

About once or twice per week I go out to buy good fruit and veg. I have yet to find a proper organic veg grower near where I live but that would be my preference. Until then it's about all I go to the supermarket for along with milk and yeast.

A supermarket shop for me thus takes about 15 mins. My defacto shop is:

A packet of 3 courgettes
A packet of 3 leeks
2 heads of broccolli
2 or 3 packets of stringless green beans or dwarf beans
A bulb or 2 of garlic
A good piece of ginger root
One butternut squash
4 baking potatoes
A pack of baby/salad potatoes
A pack of bell peppers
2 packs Chestnut or Portabello mushrooms
Couple packs of baby plum tomatoes (for salads)
Salad ingredients (lettuce, radishes, spring onions etc)
A pack of 6 apples
A bunch of bananas
A bag of waxless lemons
A couple packs of good cherries (expensive but worth it)
A couple packs of blueberries
A couple tubs of TOTAL 0% FAT natural yoghurt
Semi skimmed milk

It's that simple and takes no time at all, in and out. Once per week, possibly twice if the MIL comes round to join us for meals.

STRATEGIES


As can be seen from the above, each day that I cook a meal I decide what I want to cook and simply grab the meat/fish element from teh freezer, grab the main ingredients from garage/cupboards and the veg from my veg drawers. EVERTHING I need is already there for the entire week. It is no hassle whatsoever.

Most meals take no more than 30 mins effort.

To keep things easy I often oncorporate 2 strategies which are either TUMBLEDOWN meals or SLOW COOKER meals.

With tumbledown I simply make a large casserole saucepanful of the meal in question which is typically a good chill con carne or vegetable/meat pasta sauce. This will provide meals for 2 days for 2 of us, and the second day's always takes infinitely better as things have had more time to marinate. So, cook plenty, eat one portion today, put the other in the fridge for tomorrow. Simples. Little cooking to do tomorrow !

Slow Cooker meals are fantastic as the absolute best way to cook meat is to slow cook it making it tender and mouth watering. What I really like about these meals is the fact I can chop everything up early in the day, fry off any meat and bung it all in the slow cooker and just leave until the evening, job done and then I have the rest of the day to myself. Slow cooker meals are great if you don't know exactly when you will be eating. Sometimes my wife comes home late from work for example.

And as with tumbledown meals, you can cook a large slow cooker amount and eat half and save the other half for tomorrow.


CORE MEALS

I do try to vary things but I have a core set of easy meals that I will typically cook every week. You just tend to fall into a nice easy routine with them.

Chilli Con Carne

Quick and easy to make early, very tasty. Lob a couple of baking potatoes in the oven later to have with it and reheat when needed.


Lasagne/Pastas

As easy as Chilli Con Carne above. Same veg, tomato passata portion from the freezer. Make early and reheat when needed.

Meat and Veg

Simple portion of meat and 3 or 4 varieties of veg. If it's chicken I take 2 breasts, pop them in a plastic sandwich bag with the juice of a freshly squeezed lemon, a chopped garlic clove, teaspoon of paprike, teaspoon of turmeric and leave to marinate for 1 to 2 hours then just cook in the oven in a dish covered with foil with a bit of white wine thrown in. Really delicious. Serve with broccoli, beans, potatoes.

If it's pork loins/chops I chop a butternut squash in half, scoop out the seeds, score criss cross with a sharp knife and rub with a little butter. Fry off some chopped onion with chopped fresh ginger (in matchsticks) with a half teaspoon of cinnamon and a handful of raisins. It makes for a delicious christmassy warming set of flavours. I add the onion/ginger/raisin mix to the squash scooped out hole, cover in foil and bake in the oven for 45 mins or so. That alone with pork chops is really tasty and filling enough and very healthy.

For Shin Beef or Mutton it's a slow cook stew. Fry off the meat with a little flour. Fry off onions and mushrooms and add to the pot. Throw in some decent red wine, a glug of port, a bunch of mixed herbs (or morrocan spices for lamb), plenty of worstershire sauce, some cubed butternut squash or root veg like parsnips and leave to slow cook.

And so on. All very easy.


Dessert wise I have that TOTAL 0% natural yoghurt with cherries and blueberries (super fruits) and sprinkle with home made granola which is full of toasted oats, nuts, dried fruit and so on which adds the needed fibre element.


All the above really doesn't take much discipline at all TBH.

The key is to make things easy for yourself with tumble down meals and slow cooker meals and simple meat/veg meals.
There's much more you could do if you want to go further, curries for example but they can take longer to prepare.

Start simple, get your bulk ingredients in place and get into teh routine and go from there.
Realist
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04-04-2018, 12:49 PM
8

Re: Need diet advice. Please

Originally Posted by carol ->
I'm just wondering that if sugar is taboo, what's wrong with sugar substitute - sweetex etc? You can even buy in in a jar to add to your baking and sprinkle on serials instead of sugar.

Is that so bad?
Yep, very bad. Artificial Sweeteners are carcinogenic and to be avoided. Better to each actual sugar than those. The recent natural sweetener Stevia is for me, not yet something I would consider. I'm distrustful of the sugar merchants and sweeteneer makers and would want to do lots of proper research into Stevia before believing any of the spiel.
Mel15
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04-04-2018, 01:30 PM
9

Re: Need diet advice. Please

One of the things they have discovered about sweeteners is the role it has in the cause of diabetes

You take sugar and the body produces insulin to convert the sugar glycogen and which forces the body to take up the glucose and drop the blood sugar levels. What happens with sweeteners is the body produces the insulin, and there is no sugar to convert so eventually it stops producing the insulin
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Adanac
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04-04-2018, 02:39 PM
10

Re: Need diet advice. Please

Just want to say there is some good info here that we can all use.

While I do have salmon twice a week, I would like to add sardines to my diet but cannot bring myself to eat them straight out of the tin. Suggestions anyone?
 
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