low carb diet and sailing

[Birdseye]

Contemplating going onto a low carb diet for health reasons but really struggling to think of things to eat particularly on the boat. Rarely if ever eat red meat simply because I dont particularly like it, so my current diet is cereals for b'fast, things like ryvita and cheese and buns and biccies for lunch, and a 2 course dinner with bread or spuds or pasta and a desert. Lots of fruit but then they are high in carbs.

So for those who are type 2, what do you eat particularly for b'fast and lunch?

The clue to what I like is in the name I have chosen.

 

[francophile51]

Take look at Sten Ekberg on utube - doctor and former olympic decathlete. I've been on low carb for 6 months or so and have shifted 28 lbs. Breakfast for me is Greek yoghurt or eggs/ bacon/ mushrooms/ tomatoes. Lunch is based on salad with avocados, chicken, pate, cheese, fish. Packing in the bread, spuds and the rest is difficult but walking about without a 15 kg bag of cement does offer it's compensations.

 

[TernVI]

Salad, veg, fish, fruit.
Maybe don't go obsessively all the way with it.
Change sandwiches for salads. Dump the pasta and spuds 5 days a week and replace with extra veg.
For sure there are carbs in veg, but they are more varied.

'Salads' to be made on a boat don't have to rely on lettuce and stuff that doesn't keep.
Tins of bean salad, chickpeas, jars of olives, peppers etc.
Tinned peas can be eaten cold in a salad.
Or you can knock up veg soup etc.

Unless you spend many days a year on the boat, maybe don't worry about it so much. I eat what I like at weekends, just try to keep portions sensible and activity higher.

 

[Stemar]

I used to have a couple of slices of toast, one with marmalade or jam for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch and a good dinner until I started finding my clothes getting tight. I switched to a measured portion of Aldi's no added sugar muesli for breakfast (the measured portion's less than I expected, a great disappointment to a dedicated trencherman!). Lunch became a salad with some ham and/or a boiled egg, plus a couple of crackers and dinner's much the same, but smaller portions of meat and potatoes, and more veg. I've lost seven kilos in about 10 weeks - another five to go to hit my NHS-approved BMI.

I know BMI is a crude measure, only working for average folk, but I'm of average build, so it works, more or less, for me.

 

[Wansworth]

Wife was a nutritionist she told her patients to serve what they normally eat then scrape off half the quantity,apparently it worked,a balanced diet but smaller quantities

 

[st599]

Breakfast eggs, nuts, yoghurt or slow release carbs like porridge
To get rid of potatoes look at lower carb replacement snacks like savoury popcorn, lentil crisps etc. and eat a lot more veg.
One good easy one pan meal is bacon, broccoli and cheese/egg

 

[FlyingGoose]

Complex or simple carbs are 2 different types of food. One needs to avoid simple carbs. Bread buns. Etc were as rice and patoates can be a complex carb the body needs a balanced diet , as sugars and carbs are the preferred energy source of the body then protein.
You also get certain amnio acids from carbs.
The only reason people lose weight on protein diets is that the body cannot store protein in any amounts so you poo it out and lose weight . Which is great but you are denying your body a substance it needs.
To lose weight effectively and properly a balanced diet counting calories is the correct way avoiding processed food groups.
Yes you lost a lot of weight what happens when you start eating carbs again . The body craves then and stores then quickly .putting the weight back on .
Or you can stay on a no carb diet but . I guarantee your energy levels will be less and the brain does not work as efficiently.
Glucose is the brains preferred energy source.
I was in my younger day a sports coach. Instructor with a diploma and a degree in biology. Fad diets are what they are a fad ..... to keep weight of in the long run a balance of eating well eating less do not drink alcohol and exercise.

 

[newtothis]

You had me until...

do not drink alcohol .

This is a sailing forum, for God's sake!

 

[Jamie Dundee]

The Atkins diet suits me as I regard most non-meat products as garnish. Smoked salmon and Philly for breakfast, what’s not to like??

The alcohol bit was a problem but gin/vodka and water with a dash of Angostura (sp?) bitters seemed to work ok.

 

[johnalison]

You are just making problems for yourself by restricting variety. You'll probably end up starving and bad-tempered halfway through the night desperately hanging onto the helm and with a lump of biltong in your mouth. Food is to be enjoyed, not fretted over.

 

[Bluetack42]

This may sound counterintuitive but you should only eat the things that a million years of our hunter gatherer evolutionary conditioning has got the body used to.

In are: roots, tubers, leafy veg, grass fed meat, animal fats

Out are; simple sugars, vegetable oils, processed meat,

So be careful of fruit, when we were evolving it was only available for a few weeks each year, the same with seed oils, nowadays we are drowning in rapeseed, sunflower and soybean oil, very concentrated calories and almost no evolutionary conditioning. On the other hand we ate meat (and all the fat) the whole year round.

So eating sugary fatty cakes & biscuits are filling our bodies with alien substances, we dont know how to regulate intake or deal with them, obesity & type 2 diabetes is the result.

On the other hand its thought we have had at least a hundred thousand years to get used to alcoho!

 

[Deleted member 36384]

Rickets are back.

 

[dom]

This may sound counterintuitive but you should only eat the things that a million years of our hunter gatherer evolutionary conditioning has got the body used to.

In are: roots, tubers, leafy veg, grass fed meat, animal fats

Out are; simple sugars, vegetable oils, processed meat,

So be careful of fruit,....

On the other hand its thought we have had at least a hundred thousand years to get used to alcoho!

Evolutionary conditioned for alcohol and fat, but not fruit and olive oil - love it! ?

Although my wife doesn’t seem evolutionary programmed not to answer back - strange ?

 

[Bristolfashion]

Although the much vaunted hunter gatherers, I believe, typically only lived to 35. We are only starting to learn about optimum nutrition to live to a healthy 90.

Since time at the tiller is such a small part of our lives, without going bonkers, I suspect the answer to the question is to eat & drink whatever keeps you feeling alert and well-fuelled.

 

[newtothis]

This may sound counterintuitive but you should only eat the things that a million years of our hunter gatherer evolutionary conditioning has got the body used to.

In are: roots, tubers, leafy veg, grass fed meat, animal fats

Out are; simple sugars, vegetable oils, processed meat,

So be careful of fruit, when we were evolving it was only available for a few weeks each year, the same with seed oils, nowadays we are drowning in rapeseed, sunflower and soybean oil, very concentrated calories and almost no evolutionary conditioning. On the other hand we ate meat (and all the fat) the whole year round.

So eating sugary fatty cakes & biscuits are filling our bodies with alien substances, we dont know how to regulate intake or deal with them, obesity & type 2 diabetes is the result.

On the other hand its thought we have had at least a hundred thousand years to get used to alcoho!

My god, it is a miracle we've made it through the past 5,000 years of industrialised agriculture alive.
I'm sorry, but that eats roots and leaves malarkey has no basis in science. Your average neolith had a varied and quite high-carb diet. And also retired at 25 in order to be dead at 30. I shall not be altering my diet based on the romanticised notions of homeopaths.

 

[Buck Turgidson]

i was diagnosed type 2 about 5 years ago. I fixed it in 3 months with as close to zero carb as is possible and intermittent fasting. I have been diabetes free ever since. Your question is why I commented on the recent 2nd week meals thread. Pretty much all the suggestions were a diabetic nightmare! It's perfectly possible to cater for weeks with tinned meat, fish and appropriate beens. Just get in the habit of reading food labels and don't buy anything that's more than 20% carbs.
Sailing isn't that energetic unless you are grinding on a race boat so there is no need to constantly eat. Get out of the habit and it's amazing how much you save on cost, weight and bulk of catering.
Feel hungry? Make a brew with no sugar or drink a glass of water. if you really need a snack then cheese, olives or a handful of peanuts will do the trick.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

My god, it is a miracle we've made it through the past 5,000 years of industrialised agriculture alive.
I'm sorry, but that eats roots and leaves malarkey has no basis in science. Your average neolith had a varied and quite high-carb diet. And also retired at 25 in order to be dead at 30. I shall not be altering my diet based on the romanticised notions of homeopaths.

+1. We have also evolved since hunter-gatherer days to support a different diet - for example, lactose intolerance is common amongst people without stock rearing as a big part of their heritage (e.g. most Asians), but relatively rare in western peoples (most of us are descended from stock-rearing peoples). About half the Chinese I know have to be careful about milk products; although not unknown amongst westerners, it's rare enough to remark on. My own allergy to crustaceans is almost unheard of in sea-food dependent populations such as that of Hong Kong (when my relatives ask about crustacean content in restaurants for me, it is usually met with disbelief that there could be an allergy to prawns!); it's on the standard list of potential allergens in the West. Evolutionarily, the switch to cooked food made a BIG difference - it enabled our ancestors to gain more nutritional value from their food. We basically couldn't survive without cooking our food - many staple foods are either indigestible or have less nutritional value when uncooked.

 

[anoccasionalyachtsman]

Rickets are back.

They're mainly legs though.

 

[Zagato]

Tricky on a boat but exercise cures a lot of ills!

Cut out cheese, Ryvita also full of rubbish and lose the biscuits, not easy, just don,t buy it in the first place, saves me!

Porridge or Yoghurt with mixed fruit or just a banana for breakfast.
Sardines on toast for lunch with homegrown tommies and cucumbers, or peppers.
Tuna, chicken, occasionally steak or steak and ale pie with lots of veg in the evening to keep you going or just a veggie meal. I do have a few spuds or pasta with it. I only get meat from the local butchers now, not full of cancerous rubbish and reared properly. Trying to stay off the booze and puddings my kids like to make... not going too well that one!

 

[AntarcticPilot]

lose the biscuits, not easy, just don,t buy it in the first place, saves me!

+1!!!! When a teenager, I'd happily sit down with a packet of chocolate digestives and a book, and find, an hour or so later, that said packet had somehow evaporated or sublimed or something! So I just don't buy biscuits and have a fairly rigid rule that I don't each (much) between meals.