Some questions for a newbie

Sharonks

I have been at a plateau for over 6 weeks. I have continued to slowly lose inches but no lbs. I am pretty close to goal though.

Activity Level Daily Calories
Sedentary (little or no exercise, desk job) 1475
Lightly Active (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/wk) 1690
Moderately Active (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/wk) 1905
Very Active (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days/wk) 2120
Extremely Active (hard daily exercise/sports & physical job or 2X day training, i.e marathon, contest etc.) 2335

I run about 3.5 miles on a treadmill 3 x week. 1 hr of yoga 3 x week. Currently doing JM 6W6pk 3 x week. Usually take 1 rest day per week. I'm a full time student so pretty sedentary the rest of the time. I figure that puts me at lightly to moderately active so about 1800 cals per day?

I am diabetic and am on a severely restricted carb intake. I shoot for about 30 to 50 net carbs per day otherwise my glucose readings get too high. Dr. won't put me on more meds so my only choice is to cut carbs. This makes it hard to eat a lot of cals. I already eat eat an average of 100 grams of protein and plenty of fats. I can't afford to up my carbs. I can't even manage much peanutbutter because it has carbs. How am I going to up my cal intake since the only thing I can do is eat more non-starchy veggies?

31prvrbs

With your lower carb intake, increasing your healthy fats will be your best bet. I don't know if you can do any types of smoothies, but adding flavored oils can add taste, texture and healthy cals to your day. I love the flavored fish/flax oils by Barleans, they have "smoothie flavors" like coconut/strawberry/orange, etc. You can also add unrefined coconut oil, if you like coconut flavor. Cooking with oilve oils, etc, also helps, as well as oil based salad dressings. And eating more fatty fish like salmon is plus for your hair, skin, and nails, as well.

You could also do greek yogurt, which is higher in cals, and the plain kind has no added sugars, and can be used in place of sour cream on everything. I slather it on mexican dishes all the time. I also use it to make homemade ranch dips and dressings for salad or for dipping veggies in

Don't know if that helps at all? :embarassed:

How many carbs are you allowed?



~Kiki

Sharonks

I try to stick to around 30-50 net carbs which usually works out to about 60-80 total carbs.

Most of my carbs are from veggies and one serving of fruit. If I work out sometimes I'm ok with a second serving of fruit. I have been experimenting with adding some carbs back but find that I can only do maybe 1/4 cup of brown rice or a piece of bread maybe 3 times a week before it affects my blood sugars.

I generally try to eat about 1200-1400 cals per day and have managed that by eating cheese, olive oil and whole fat greek yogurt. I have to keep the yogurt servings down because milk has carbs. Smoothies are tough because I can't have milk, juice, or much fruit, and limited yogurt. Doesn't leave me much to put in there. I suppose water and veggies might work but somehow that just doesn't sound that good nor very cal rich either.

I love meat and have no problem eating a good steak, burger or pork chop. I eat a lot of fish but it's usually tilapia since that is cheap. I was going to look at Costco and see if they have salmon individually frozen. No one in my house eats fish but since I can't eat most of what they do I usually cook a whole separate dinner.

I'll have to look for those oils and figure out what I can put them into. Thanks.

ashley67203

The two recipes I make that meet my meal calorie requirements but are low in carbs are turkey/black bean chili and lentil/cauliflower curry. The fiber from the beans and lentils in those two dishes end up giving me around 20 net carbs per 400-calorie serving. I think the cauliflower makes a good substitute for rice because it soaks up the sauce so well and has an almost grainy texture that low carb dishes always seem to lack.

Whisperinghorse

I have switched from cows milk to soya milk as it has far less carbs and a little more protien in. I also have soya spread and soya yoghurts again which have a lower carb content....