Food strategies: change recipes or limit portion size?

Food
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For those who are low- or moderate carb, how do you limit your carb intake?

When our son was first diagnosed, I tossed out the whole-wheat flour and bought almond and coconut flour. Every single meal i tried to make low-carb using different strategies. It was exhausting and depressing because, and this is just my humble opinion, low-carb versions of carby foods like pancakes, bread and pasta are just depressing. They are never as good as the originals and don’t satisfy the same cravings. Plus they were such a pain to cook on top of everything else, i just cooking handle learning a bunch of new recipes.

We decided low-carb wasn’t for us, but there are still times that our son should skip or go easy on carbs because of his BGs. So nowadays, we actually eat the same foods but in different proportions.
Examples:

  • A half-portion of pasta smothered in lots and lots of sauce such as pesto or cheese and with the broccoli or cauliflower served first as an amuse bouche.
  • a half sandwich with many different sides of cashews, veggies, parmesan crisps and fruit.
  • Half a waffle with a lot of scrambled eggs and tomatoes.
  • Half the portion apple pancakes with a big side of sour cream, or half an english muffin slathered in avocado. Small sized buckwheat crepe filled with mushrooms and cheese, with chicken strips on the side.
  • Tortilla soup with just a few less fried tortillas.
  • Salmon with broccoli and sweet potato fries, with a moderate portion of the latter and a generous one of the former.
  • Fried rice with tons of veggies, chicken, tofu, egg in relation to the rice

Using this approach we can, with very little effort, keep his carb count down to about 15 g for any given meal if we need. I have basically given up on finding too many specifically low-carb food options, as it’s never worth the effort. We don’t aim for that level all the time, but once every day or two we have a meal under 15g to get blood sugars under control.

i guess I’m wondering if people who went low carb preferred to learn whole new recipes, or found it was sufficient to simply shift the proportions of foods on their plate to achieve their goals. Is this approach more challenging when you become a larger human who needs to eat double the calories of my son? And is it just too hard to eat certain types of foods in moderation when you’re trying to get below 10 or 15 grams for every meal?

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You are doing low carb. I also will eat small portions of high carb foods at times. I think a mixed strategy is great. If you set a target of say 50g/day that is still very low carb but it gives you a lot more flexibility.

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I can’t really do the “small portion” gig regularly and stay realistically below my practical carb limits for meals. Part of this is because I require an large amount of food to not lose weight: currently around 2,900 kcal per day; closer to 3,500-4,000 kcal per day when I start cycling again in the summer. So, for the most part, I eliminate foods. I have occasionally successfully replaced foods with lower-carb versions: fathead pizza hits the spot for me; low-carb cheesecake; cauliflower rice based stir fries; etc.

The one time that portion control works (sort of) for me is after intense endurance activity. When I’ve been hiking or cycling, I’m a bottomless pit for about two or three hours. Although I still eat mostly protein after a ride, I might eat as many as 40 or 50g of carbs total in that meal without adversely affecting my BG (thank you, glycogen depletion). But even with that, I haven’t had more than 100g of gross carbs in a day since two weeks after I was diagnosed in May last year. Normally around 60-80g gross, 40-55g net.

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Hi Brian_BSC, I wouldn’t say that we are overall doing low-carb, as my son eats somewhere between 80 and 125 g of carbs per day (he’s a preschooler so his eating habits are still somewhat erratic). It’s more like, there are just those meals where he’s super high and we want to be able to bring him down more quickly and not have him skip lunch.

Also, I’m not sure what counts as low carb if you only eat half the calories of an adult? I would say he typically eats 1,000 calories a day. The doctors said he should be eating about 1,200 per day at his age, though realistically getting him to eat that many is challenging. So when you are eating 125 g of carbs on a 1,000 calorie diet, that means that 50% of your calories are coming from carbs; at 80 g it’s 32%.

It seems, though, that our strategy is only feasible because he is so pint-sized and because we are not making every meal low-carb. I can see it would be more challenging if he was eating 3,500 calories a day like David.

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I do much the same strategy and would still consider it low carb. Low carb doesn’t mean no carb, and there is no “one right way” to follow a low-carb diet. And I think eating 50 grams or 80 grams of carbs a day (I eat around 80 total grams including fibre) Is still quite low carb compared to what the general population eats, but flexible enough to allow things like fruit. I tried really low carb (like 30 total grams a day) for a time, but it was not for me. Too restrictive on top of food allergies. I actually don’t mind the taste or texture of low-carb foods—low-carb bread and cauliflower rice and zucchini noodles taste great to me. But sometimes allowing a few more carbs makes a major difference in quality of life and ability to stick with it long-term.

One of the hardest parts of a low-carb diet for me is the fact that I have to make everything from scratch. Eating out or finding pre-packaged foods in stores that are both low carb and free of my allergens is almost impossible. The other day I researched on Google for over an hour to find a fast food place I could grab something at between work and seeing a movie. I finally settled on a very simple Subway salad (lettuce, spinach, green peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, chicken, oil dressing). I had an allergic reaction after one bite. Turns out Subway now puts potato starch in their chicken. Probably not enough to affect someone’s blood sugar, but enough for my immune system to detect and launch an attack. So I watched Rogue One drugged up on two Benadryl and it’ll be back to packing all my own food for a while.

Because of how difficult this is for me, at times when I don’t pack my own food, I do eat things like fruit or rice if those are the only safe options for me at a restaurant or conference. I also use some flours that aren’t low carb (e.g., oat flour, arrowroot powder) but that seem to help hold gluten-free recipes like pancakes and bread together and make them more moist even in relatively small amounts. It does mean that the low-carb bread recipe that was originally 1 gram per slice is now 5 grams per slice, but I don’t care.

I think finding the balance and strategies that work for you and your family is really important when eating low carb.

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Given the 1,000 calories per day, that does sound like a “moderate” carb diet. Not as high as most Americans. Honestly, I would really like to be able to eat small portions of “normal” carby foods if I could. I very much miss homemade breads, pastas, sweet potato and lentil based stews, and rice. I always ate “healthy” pre-diagnosis, but followed a pretty standard, ADA-style high carb low fat diet :slight_smile:

There is a little quiet voice in the back of my head that constantly whispers: “hey, once you’re on insulin, you can eat normally again!” If I were to follow that sort of diet, however, I’d likely be one of those folks that ballooned to 150% my bodyweight in a few months given how much I eat.

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What a good topic of discussion, @Tia_G!

Our son is 12 years old, and very independent. We have adopted an almost opposite approach from you:-)

My son does it eat low carb, but he eats lower carb - i am guessing an average of 130 to 150 per day: about 12 carb breakfast, 70 carb lunch (school cafeteria), 55 carb dinner (these are rough averages only with many exceptions). He occasioanlly has high carb meals (we recently tried, for instance, as an experiment, 2 slices of Costco pizza - see the story on the Flatliner thread).

We decided that we would not do low carbs with him because, like all pre-teenagers (he is basically a teenager to tell the truth, tall, very mature for his 12 years, stubborn and reactive to his parents), he likes carbs, and we were afraid that, if we deprive him of carbs, he would react by sneaking, or get into bad splurges.

So we let him pick what he wants to eat, as long as he doses, and we do the best job we can to dose, but we try to plan family meals (for all of us) that are lower carb (but not low carb). Lower carbs help him a lot I think, particularly at breakfast where they are the only way to avoid a sharp peak. We try to make sure that he always likes what he eats (within limits) so that he does not feel deprived, and that he always feels full.

We have tried (and are trying) lots of substitutions, but also somewhat different meal planning. We use huge quantities of produce and fiber to pack his stomach. We don’t eat potaotes often, or a lot of grains. We alternate different kinds of pasta: regular pasta (not often), whole wheat pasta, edamame pasta, vegetable pasta etc. We use grains with lower GI, such as whole wheat couscous or quinoa, mixed with tons of vegetables.

Some things we just don’t eat any more, such as morning cereals. We use low carb oat meal occasionally (rarely). We are trying lots of recipes for low carb pancakes right now - the low-carb one he likes best is with coconut flour. But we also found a mid-carb carbquik recipe he likes, which is about 1/2 carbs from a normal recipe. We use true 0-carb syrup. We never use sugar, and use a touch of honey rarely, to “finish” a dish sometimes.

This has worked for us. This interesting thread shows, again, how different all working approaches are - and how great it is to learn other practices and borrow from them:-) I really look forward to what people are going to write in this thread.

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What is low carb oatmeal? That could be lifechanging for me :slight_smile: I desperately miss oatmeal haha. And what kind of 0-carb syrup do you use? I haven’t found a good syrup substitute yet myself (although I’ve only looked halfheartedly…not a huge sweets fan).

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Quaker Oats Lower Sugar Oatmeal has 24 carbs per pack, of which 3 is dietary fiber. You can look at the nutrition info my clicking on “nutrition” on the left, middle of the page.

BariWise low carb oatmeal has only 8 carbs per pack but the packs are smaller (26 vs 36 grams). So, at equal weight to the traditional Quaker oats packs, it woud really be about 11 carbs - still very low.

My son likes the Quaker Oats lower sugar oat meal a lot. But even that makes him peak in the morning:(

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Yeah, I’ve found I’m better having my carbs at lunch than breakfast. I haven’t tried oatmeal at all since getting diagnosed. 24 grams isn’t horrible, though. I might try that and see how it affects me.

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Hrmm, yeah those wouldn’t work for me. I can handle a grand total of about 5-8 net carbs for breakfast without spiking higher than I want to. Chia seeds seems to work for me in the morning (thanks to @Terry4’s recipe), and is almost like oatmeal. Except it isn’t, at all ;(

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0-carb syrup:

They are expensive on Amazon, but we buy them locally for about $3.50 a pop.

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I tried the WF Caramel syrup this morning. Wasn’t exactly “syrupy” (too thin), but it wasn’t bad!

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Yes, none of them are:( All the 0-carb “syrups” we tried, including the Walden Farms ones, are too fluid.

Now that you mention it, i wonder if it is possible to add some xanthan gum or some such thing to thicken them some.

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While I am a fan of using xanthan gum in baking, when I’ve tried it in liquid preparations it ends up more like snot than anything desirable. It reminds me of chia seeds in that way. It’s just…difficult to reproduce sugar textures with non-sugar substitutes. Although, I’m curious over whether you can make an erythritol syrup: it browns like sugar and dissolves (although not as quickly), so it might be able to thicken into syrup as well!

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I wonder what your son’s doctors say about the number of carbs he should be eating a day. our son was diagnosed at 14 and they told us he should be eating anywhere from 180 to 280 carbs a day for his growth. He was swimming daily with a team at the time, so I don’t know what else was a factor in that recommendation.

When we left the hospital and started dealing with the reality of Blood sugar and high carb diets we were smacked hard. They only tell you indirectly that injected insulin is totally inadequate for controlling blood sugar for certain foods and meals with greater than 70 carbs. Luckily our kids honeymoon lasted just long enough for us to try Afrezza new inhaled insulin. You can read about that elsewhere on tudiabetes.

After realizing high carb meals were a hypo-hyper-glycemia roller coaster I found out about no carb and low carb diets. We had him on these for about four months but it seemed to be slowing down my son’s growth spurt. Might be we were not doing it right. Ideally you need to replace the lost carbs calories with more fats-ideally coconut butter.

You can google ketogenic diet for more on this theory. I tried the diet myself on myself first-it was quite illuminating. I will say this: it takes ENORMOUS resolve to stay on a low carb diet. I COULD NOT DO IT. And I would not make my son do it. He has always been thin and diabetes did not help, especially the four months we had him eating low carb. Sure it was the easiest blood sugar control since diagnosis; but in the end we told him to eat how he wanted and we would figure out the glucose control later.

That is where the most valuable lesson was learned: free to eat as he would choose again, we found him still afraid to eat carbs. All we had done was build a fear of eating into his mind. We worked on undoing that and now he will eat what he wants, within reason.

I think that beyond all other considerations Diabetics need choice. Not everyone can eat low carb. Try to watch what is important to your child and allow it, within the limits of healthy behavior. My son will limit himslef to meals less than 70 carbs most of the time because he does not like to lose control of his BG. He is still very thin.

More recently we acquired an off label prescription of Afrezza after long and deep research on its use and effects. You cannot go hog wild on carbs with it without some practice. And I don’t recommend doing so on a regular basis for my son or anyone else. But using Afrezza does return spontaneity and freedom to mealtime, with the side beneifit of keeping you in range and hypo free. And while I cannot link cause and effect, as soon as he started Afrezza he had a sharp growth spurt like we had never seen. and he is 17. Maybe its the extra carbs or the way real human insulin (Afrezza is human insulin) works on the metabolsm or just a freak event?

To sum: it may be important to observe and respect your kis dietary instincts. He/she will try many different diets and insulin regimens in his/her life. And certainly you want to train them to have good habits. But they will go through puberty only once.

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I’m wondering if I need to add a bit of extra information, which is that our son is two years old. So ideally he’s supposed to eat like 1,200 calories a day. Realistically, he eats less, based on his own appetite --try to get him to eat more and he will reject it. He is growing normally and at the same height/weight percentiles as before diagnosis, and he was always a shorty, so I suspect that’s part of why he eats less each day than their charts suggest he should.

I think people on here are thrown off by the absolute numbers. I think the definition of “low” carb versus “moderate” or even “average” carb based on the total caloric intake of the child. I don’t actually think eating 120g of carbs a day on a 1,000 calorie diet actually constitutes low carb at all.

I imagine at this point he has about as much control over his diet as the average 2-year-old. Most of the time, we let him eat whatever he wants from the options we give him (within reason – ie. don’t eat cake for breakfast or candy except as a treat and we make him take at least one bite of whatever we’re serving for dinner). But there are all sorts of ways you can alter what a two-year-old chooses to eat without making them feel like you’re restricting their intake. For instance, if he’s running high, we may preemptively offer a snack like parmesan crisps or bell pepper and hummus or almond milk, and if heading low more carby things like a banana, chocolate milk or grapes.

While I haven’t specifically gone to our doctor with a readout of his average carb intake and asked for sign-off, I think it’s probably well within the realm of normal as he’s basically eating the same rough diet he did before diagnosis, just maybe at different times. So yes, he still eats cookies, cakes, pizza, etc. etc…we just try to limit those foods if he’s running super high.

He’s too young for Affrezza, unfortunately; he probably couldn’t even figure out the inhaler.

Does that make sense?

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Silly me. Missed the bit about two years old.

You make total sense.

Your son is probably Way too young for Afrezza. I wonder if my son is old enough for afrezza sometimes? It does require mindfulness to use independently at school and such.

Take our experience for what ever value it may hold. Probably little until he’s older. Im sure there are other perspectives or evidence countering our suspicions about individual needs and growth. I hope it cost less for you to read than me to write.:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: And thanks for taking the time to respond.

Hoping there is a cure before your son has to even think about puberty!

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Whoa! I love the topics it gives me more drive to go for a low carb diet!

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I’m sure someone would have said this already, but if you are reducing the serves to cut the carbs, you are also reducing total calories. Not a good idea with a growing child.

The total calories need to be the same, if you reduce carbs, you add protein and some fats

I think you are right, 120g per 1,000 cal is 240 for an adult 2,000 cal, I wouldn’t call that anywhere near low carb, it’s a high carb diet.