Have been “Swapping” sugar completely out of my diet. No sweet drinks sweet biscuits icecream jams…
Still a way to go (still having some alcohol in wine and beer) and quite a lot of carbohydrates (non-sweet biscuits bread rice chips from the fish shop salt & vinegar crisps muesli with some dried fruit in it pasta) and some fruit (bananas apples (at most one a day) blueberries & raspberries) and lactose sugars & fats (milk cheese yoghurt cream). Vegemite or peanut paste instead of jams or honey.
Sauces (sweet chilli & BBQ) & dried fruit in muesli are the two most difficult to deal with.
Fortunately I’ve never been a ‘soft drink’ drinker.
So far the results are what I would call dramatic. I’ve lost 11 centimetres from my waistline over 2-3 weeks and it is clearly keeping going down.
The gut flora are definitely noticing a difference and it is changing the internal power balance right away from the sugar bacteria. Much more comfortable.
At the moment I’m finding it easy to do so am a bit wary about pushing it further to eliminate wine & beer & start reducing carbohydrates too (or even pay more attention to the glycaemic index of the carbohydrates I’m eating). However that is clearly the next step. Keeping bread consumption right down helps.
I have started buying salt & vinegar crisps instead of sweet biscuits (have never bought crisps before so this is a big step!). And we have quite a bit of cream.
I do want to get the dried fruit out of the muesli.
Have been snacking on cooked chicken legs cheese slices bananas nuts savoury biscuits and sushi.
In fact sushi is emerging as a real craving. There is a sushi bar at Great Western Super Centre at Keperra and I’m finding it keeps cropping up in my mind to go there and get a sushi. There is also a sushi bar at 500 George St (?400) – the big government office where DERM is – that is another ‘crave’ destination but gee! Parking is impossible. It definitely looks like craving the iodine in the seaweed wrappings.
Oh yes and my normal meat & fish & veges for meals. They are fine.
I had already reduced my fructose intake (mainly by switching the types of fruit I eat well away from apples & pears & stone fruit). One apple a day is as far as much as I will eat now. We are making blueberries or raspberries and cream our regular desert.
When my waistline is down another 11 centimetres I’ll be out of the red and celebrating big time.