Re: low carb on a budget

[Guest guest]

On Tue, 05 Jul 2005 21:14:52 -0400 Sky writes:

>

> If you are so hard up that you depend on charitable organizations

> for your

> food...places like churches...how do you manage a low-carb

> lifestyle? There

> must be a way to be on a very tight budget, indeed, and still get

> some food

> that's decent for a diabetic. But how? Are there other organizations

> that

> will provide food other than cheese and bulk starches? Diabetes

> advocates?

>

> What does a person do when they really have virtually no money for

> groceries?

>

> sky

>

>

>

Hi Sky

I gotta ask, what are you replying to? I don't recall seeing a post about

this subject, help!!!

[Guest guest]

> What does a person do when they really have virtually no money for

groceries?

Here are some suggestions O'Mara made in the Four Corners book:

SHOP and buy bulk fresh foods and meats.

FREEZE in smaller sizes (berries, nuts, seeds, bran, meats, seafood).

COOK in bulk quantities (soups, stews).

COOK double batches of toaster pop-ins (waffles, pancakes).

TAKE leftovers to work.

STORE in convenience sizes.

MAKE your own yogurt and kefir.

FIND your own treats.

GROW your own foods.

I realize that if you have virtually no money for food, you're not going to

be able to do things like shopping in bulk. If you live in an apartment, you

can't grow your own foods. Low-carb *is* more expensive than a starchy diet.

Do you know anyone who has a garden? Most people with gardens have more

produce than they can eat themselves and they're happy to give it to

friends.

My grocery store sells chicken necks and backs for almost nothing. One can

boil them up and get a lot of broth plus a lot of meat for very little. The

same with salmon backs. You could ask a butcher if they would sell you this

type of meat for soups.

Even so, I'm sure it's difficult.

Gretchen

[Guest guest]

I wonder if people have really thought about how hard low carb is on a

low budget,my hubby is self employed, and boy can we stretch a dollar,no

insurance and we have to figure meds-grocerys-or lights but we are

blessed more than some so just keep on trying and some how we make it.We

have tomatoes and squash in a small place and I have learned to cook

low carb Its hard but not impossible so just keep trying and praying

Lynda

Gretchen wrote:

>>What does a person do when they really have virtually no money for

>>

>>

>groceries?

>

>

>

>

[Guest guest]

At 10:03 PM 7/5/05, Gretchen wrote:

> > What does a person do when they really have virtually no money for

>groceries?

>

>Here are some suggestions O'Mara made in the Four Corners book:

>

>SHOP and buy bulk fresh foods and meats.

>FREEZE in smaller sizes (berries, nuts, seeds, bran, meats, seafood).

>COOK in bulk quantities (soups, stews).

>COOK double batches of toaster pop-ins (waffles, pancakes).

>TAKE leftovers to work.

>STORE in convenience sizes.

>MAKE your own yogurt and kefir.

>FIND your own treats.

>GROW your own foods.

>

>I realize that if you have virtually no money for food, you're not going to

>be able to do things like shopping in bulk. If you live in an apartment, you

>can't grow your own foods. Low-carb *is* more expensive than a starchy diet.

>

>Do you know anyone who has a garden? Most people with gardens have more

>produce than they can eat themselves and they're happy to give it to

>friends.

>

>My grocery store sells chicken necks and backs for almost nothing. One can

>boil them up and get a lot of broth plus a lot of meat for very little. The

>same with salmon backs. You could ask a butcher if they would sell you this

>type of meat for soups.

>

>Even so, I'm sure it's difficult.

Yes, that's my thought, too. Difficult. If you have no money how do you buy

in bulk? How do you get a freezer to freeze stuff in? Indeed, if you are

low on money maybe you're working several jobs just to make ends meet, so

how do you even find the time for such cooking and preparing, even if there

is a freezer handy. It would be good for someone in that situation to see

if you have friends with gardens...that's something most could do. If they

live in an apartment, maybe not, though. I live in one and there's no room

for gardens here. If you knew folks in houses with gardens, though, maybe

that would work. I'd love to find someone with a garden!! (thinking of

fresh tomatos and squashes and all of that sort of thing). It seems as if

controlling diabetes is twice as much work if you don't have much money. I

manage but there are some who have it much worse than I do.

[Guest guest]

At 10:01 PM 7/5/05, Samante wrote:

>Hi Sky

>

>I gotta ask, what are you replying to? I don't recall seeing a post about

>this subject, help!!!

I'm not replying to anything. It was a new message but I started it by

replying to an old one so perhaps I left in the " re: " part accidently.

sky

[Guest guest]

At 11:35 PM 7/5/05, Lynda wrote:

>I wonder if people have really thought about how hard low carb is on a

>low budget,my hubby is self employed, and boy can we stretch a dollar,no

>insurance and we have to figure meds-grocerys-or lights but we are

>blessed more than some so just keep on trying and some how we make it.We

>have tomatoes and squash in a small place and I have learned to cook

>low carb Its hard but not impossible so just keep trying and praying

Lynn, how about sharing some of your techniques of dollar-stretching? I'm

asking for a friend who is in a very tight situation and really does have

to count on what churches and the like give. I don't know if this person

lives in a house or apartment. I know that with some large pots you can

grow some stuff even on a deck or patio.

sky

[Guest guest]

I have planted my garden but it takes time to grow. I can't wait to eat

fresh cucumbers and spinach and tomatoes and corn on the cob. Corn and rice

do not raise my BG. Potatoes don't do it too bad, it is the gravy on them

that does. I can eat a baked potato and it won't go real high but mashed

goes higher. I am still trying to find out what does and doesn't .

Kathleen

[Guest guest]

At one point when my kids were small we were getting US gov. Surplus

food. It did provide some canned meat products, peanut butter, cheese

& some canned veggies in addition to the starchy stuff. Also dry milk &

dry eggs.

cappie

Greater Boston Area

T-2 10/02 5/05 A1c: 5.3 = 111 mean glu

50-100 carb diet, walking, Metformin

ALA/EPO, ALC, Vit C, Calc/mag,

low dose Biotin, full spectrum E,

Policosanol, fish oil cap,

fresh flax seed, multi vitamin,

Lovastatin 40 mg/coQ10 100mg, Enalapril 10 mg

5/05:140 lbs (highest weight 309)

5' tall /age 67,

cappie@...

[Guest guest]

A point that you should know, the more processed any carb is, the faster it will

raise your bg.

Mashed potatows are already brokwn down from the original form, unlike a baked

potato. This lets

the starch get processed faster by the body and raise bg faster as a result.

Smae goes for almos

anything else.

I, and others, have found for instance that raw carrotss are fine while cooked

ones lead to a bg

spike all the time. Just the practical side of fiuguring out the differences.

Ted Quick

--- Dances With Eagles wrote:

I can eat a baked potato and it won't go real high but mashed

> goes higher. I am still trying to find out what does and doesn't .

> Kathleen

[Guest guest]

I lived in the city but I also had a small veggie garden out back of my

landlord's garage. In some cities they also have communitie gardens

on unused city property where many people can claim a small plot & grow

their own.

I was raising my 2 kids by myself, working & going back to college at

the time. I put myself thru school, & later my kids who also went to

college. As soon as my kids could reach the stove we all took turns

cooking & cleaning. We worked out menus making proper use of the food

we had & if my kids wanted sweets they used surplus oatmeal & flour &

butter to make oatmeal cookies.

I didn't drive so we walked or took the bus everywhere & that included

the grocery store & we lugged the groceries home by hand in a wheeled

basket & up 3 flights of stairs. My kids learned to shop wisely as we

all went together & counted pennies as we shopped our pre-planned menus.

'When my son wanted his first bike we saved real pennies till we had 15.

& found an ad for a used one for that price. My son enjoyed that bike

for years.

cappie

Greater Boston Area

T-2 10/02 5/05 A1c: 5.3 = 111 mean glu

50-100 carb diet, walking, Metformin

ALA/EPO, ALC, Vit C, Calc/mag,

low dose Biotin, full spectrum E,

Policosanol, fish oil cap,

fresh flax seed, multi vitamin,

Lovastatin 40 mg/coQ10 100mg, Enalapril 10 mg

5/05:140 lbs (highest weight 309)

5' tall /age 67,

cappie@...

[Guest guest]

: carbs may be all right for raising a low if one KNOWS what they

are doing. If not it is better to use a measured glucose tab to be more

precise.

Also the point I was making is that if one has limited money for

groceries then what one has shd be speant on good quality healthy stuff

like meat, veggies & fruit NOT junk which is both expensive,

nutritionally useless, harmful to diabetics, & leaves less money for

what is truly necessary for a well balanced diet.

cappie

Greater Boston Area

T-2 10/02 5/05 A1c: 5.3 = 111 mean glu

50-100 carb diet, walking, Metformin

ALA/EPO, ALC, Vit C, Calc/mag,

low dose Biotin, full spectrum E,

Policosanol, fish oil cap,

fresh flax seed, multi vitamin,

Lovastatin 40 mg/coQ10 100mg, Enalapril 10 mg

5/05:140 lbs (highest weight 309)

5' tall /age 67,

cappie@...

[Guest guest]

You are doing exactly the right thing, testing to see what works for

YOU. If you have high spikes during the testing, don't worry about it.

The long term benefit will outweigh any damage that may come from an

occasional high while you are learning.

> I have planted my garden but it takes time to grow. I can't wait to

eat

> fresh cucumbers and spinach and tomatoes and corn on the cob. Corn

and rice

> do not raise my BG. Potatoes don't do it too bad, it is the gravy

on them

> that does. I can eat a baked potato and it won't go real high but

mashed

> goes higher. I am still trying to find out what does and doesn't .

>

>

>

> Kathleen

[Guest guest]

Another thing to look out for now. Low-carb has gotten less popular with the

nondiabetic populations, so low-carb foods are selling for almost nothing at

food discount places. I just got a couple of boxes of LC bake mix, which

retails for $3 or $6 or something ridiculous like that and I'd normally

never buy. But they were 10 cents a box, so I figured I could use it instead

of protein powder.

They were selling Carb Countdown grapefruit juice for 50 cents a half

gallon. LC cookies for 10 cents a box. LC TV dinners for about $1. Etc. I

bought 10 cartons of grapefruit juice and put them in the freezer.

Gretchen

[Guest guest]

> I have planted my garden but it takes time to grow.

One thing to look out for if you live in a rural place is edible weeds. They

bear before the veggies, sometimes. My garden is already full of purselane,

which is a very health vegetable for us, as it's full of soluble fiber and

even has omega-3 fatty acids. In India they plant it as a food crop, and it

was Mahatma Ghandi's favorite vegetable. You can eat it cold in a salad or

cook it as a vegetable. In my garden it comes up spontaneously as a weed.

Unfortunately, it's not my favorite vegetable, although I like it stir fried

in olive oil with curry powder.

Another thing that keeps coming back is red amaranth, and that's already

edible. I planted it about 10 years ago for a dye plant, and it keeps

reseeding itself like a weed. You can eat the leaves in salad, boil them as

a vegetable, or wait until it matures and eat the tiny seeds.

One weed I love is pigweed, also called goosefoot or chenopodium. Like the

purselane, it comes up where the soil has been disturbed, and the Mohawks

call it " loves the village " because it tends to grow up along paths. So

there's always a lot in the garden and growing by the house. I actually like

it better than spinach when it's young. As it matures it gets pretty stemmy,

and I've found it doesn't freeze well; tastes like grass after being frozen.

I sometimes gather it at friends' houses because they say they've never

tried it and don't appear too interested.

You can also eat the flowers of milkweed, sort of like broccoli, and the

stems when they first emerge from the soil, like asparagus.

If anyone is interested in learning more, there are a lot of books on edible

weeds available these days, and I'm sure there are Internet sources of

information.

>I can eat a baked potato and it won't go real high but mashed

> goes higher. I am still trying to find out what does and doesn't .

Kathleen, this is the best thing you can do for your diabetes. Find out what

works *for you.* Listen to suggestions from other people, but remember our

motto YMMV: Your Mileage May Vary. What works for someone else might not be

the best for you, and vice versa.

Hang in there. You can conquer this!

Gretchen

[Guest guest]

you have ya purselane, in the south we have polk salad a real treat if

you fix it right!!

Lynda

Gretchen wrote:

>>I have planted my garden but it takes time to grow.

>>

>>

>

>One thing to look out for if you live in a rural place is edible weeds. They

>bear before the veggies, sometimes. My garden is already full of purselane,

>which is a very health vegetable for us, as it's full of soluble fiber and

>

>

>

>

[Guest guest]

> you have ya purselane, in the south we have polk salad a real treat if

> you fix it right!!

What is polk. Pokeweed?

Gretchen

[Guest guest]

At 08:21 AM 7/6/05, Rotramel wrote:

>You are doing exactly the right thing, testing to see what works for

>YOU. If you have high spikes during the testing, don't worry about it.

>The long term benefit will outweigh any damage that may come from an

>occasional high while you are learning.

We got no actual BG numbers, however, so we don't know what is being called

" a little high " or " higher " . We have no idea what the pre-meal numbers were

compared to the post-meal numbers and how long after the meal (let's say of

potatoes) the BG's were checked and if it was checked every 30 minutes

(which is what I do when testing a new food) until the numbers started

going down again.

To me, the time to test for potatoes and rice and corn are waaay after

you've gotten things under control with very limited starchy carbs and want

to try adding a few, NOT in the beginning when your numbers are mostly

sky-high or yo-yo-ing up and down from poor eating habits.

sky

[Guest guest]

The problem, of course, is that once these supplies are gone -

they'll be gone. And then we'll be up the creek without the

proverbial paddle!

SulaBlue

> Another thing to look out for now. Low-carb has gotten less

popular with the

> nondiabetic populations, so low-carb foods are selling for

almost nothing at

> food discount places. I just got a couple of boxes of LC bake

mix, which

> retails for $3 or $6 or something ridiculous like that and I'd

normally

> never buy. But they were 10 cents a box, so I figured I could use

it instead

> of protein powder.

>

> They were selling Carb Countdown grapefruit juice for 50 cents

a half

> gallon. LC cookies for 10 cents a box. LC TV dinners for about

$1. Etc. I

> bought 10 cartons of grapefruit juice and put them in the

freezer.

>

> Gretchen

[Guest guest]

> The problem, of course, is that once these supplies are gone -

> they'll be gone. And then we'll be up the creek without the

> proverbial paddle!

I agree. But while they're here, we can make use of the bargain prices. It's

possible that the better products will remain, just as the better low-fat

products have remained. Much of the real bargain stuff is LC junk food

sweetened with maltitol, which raises BG almost as much as sucrose.

Gretchen

[Guest guest]

> We got no actual BG numbers, however, so we don't know what is being

called

> " a little high " or " higher " . We have no idea what the pre-meal numbers

were

> compared to the post-meal numbers and how long after the meal (let's say

of

> potatoes) the BG's were checked

I think as " oldies " we need to remember that perfect control doesn't come

all at once. I was on the ADA diet for almost 6 months before I decided it

wasn't the best approach, but of course I'm a slow learner.

If someone has had postprandial BGs in the 400s (as I did), then bringing

them down to the 200s represents progress. Once they've reached that stage,

then they can start improving even more.

I agree that some experts now say it's best to start right off with insulin

to bring BGs into normal ranges as soon as possible. But not everyone has a

medical professional who believes in that approach, and it's not something

most newbies would want to undertake on their own.

I think nudging people in the right path, as animals do with their babies,

works better than trying to strongarm them there. Has anyone ever seen a new

mother ewe trying to nudge her baby in the direction of the teat? A gentle

push on the rear end and they usually get the idea, at least after a while.

Sometimes they seem retarded and I give in to temptation and try to force

them to drink. It almost never works. They just struggle and resist, even

when I put the teat into their mouth. If I go back into the house and come

out a couple of hours later, usually everything is fine and they're nursing

to beat the band.

Gretchen

[Guest guest]

At 12:36 PM 7/6/05, Gretchen wrote:

>I think as " oldies " we need to remember that perfect control doesn't come

>all at once. I was on the ADA diet for almost 6 months before I decided it

>wasn't the best approach, but of course I'm a slow learner.

I'm lucky, I guess. I was already doing Low Carb before I was diagnosed

with diabetes. And I'd been doing that (though went badly mostly off the

wagon for 2 years before DX) for 5 years. When I first read about low carb,

though, went on it immediately. No slow easing into it. I don't know how I

would have handled things if I had to go from sluggo-carb eating to

low-carb because I HAD to rather than it being a personal choice.

sky

[Guest guest]

Here they supply day old bread products, is all that I have found.

* At one point when my kids were small we were getting US gov. Surplus

food. It did provide some canned meat products, peanut butter, cheese

& some canned veggies in addition to the starchy stuff. Also dry milk &

dry eggs.

cappie

[Guest guest]

You have to apply thru the welfare agency altho you do not have to

receiving welfare you just have to under a certain income & asset level

for the size of your family.

cappie

Greater Boston Area

T-2 10/02 5/05 A1c: 5.3 = 111 mean glu

50-100 carb diet, walking, Metformin

ALA/EPO, ALC, Vit C, Calc/mag,

low dose Biotin, full spectrum E,

Policosanol, fish oil cap,

fresh flax seed, multi vitamin,

Lovastatin 40 mg/coQ10 100mg, Enalapril 10 mg

5/05:140 lbs (highest weight 309)

5' tall /age 67,

cappie@...

[Guest guest]

Some veggies can be grown in containers. I used the cheap lightweight

styrofoam (sp?) coolers & planted tomatoes, broccoli, some zuccini, snow

peas & miniature eggplant among other things. I lived on the 3fl of a 3

decker & put these on my back porch but a balcony would do or, as now, I

am growing tomatoes & snow peas right outside my front door in

containers.

cappie

Greater Boston Area

T-2 10/02 5/05 A1c: 5.3 = 111 mean glu

50-100 carb diet, walking, Metformin

ALA/EPO, ALC, Vit C, Calc/mag,

low dose Biotin, full spectrum E,

Policosanol, fish oil cap,

fresh flax seed, multi vitamin,

Lovastatin 40 mg/coQ10 100mg, Enalapril 10 mg

5/05:140 lbs (highest weight 309)

5' tall /age 67,

cappie@...

[Guest guest]

If you don't like 90% of the food you are a pickier eater than even I am

& I am a doozy.

What I did was look at recipes using the foods (read veggies) I didn't

care for & try to find something that sounded good or will disquise the

taste. Another thing is that if there is nothing else to eat in the

house except healthy good for a diabetic stuff, hunger will win out. If

you really try to eat something & still hate it so be it but that does

not give oneself permission to eat what harms a diabetic instead.

cappie

Greater Boston Area

T-2 10/02 5/05 A1c: 5.3 = 111 mean glu

50-100 carb diet, walking, Metformin

ALA/EPO, ALC, Vit C, Calc/mag,

low dose Biotin, full spectrum E,

Policosanol, fish oil cap,

fresh flax seed, multi vitamin,

Lovastatin 40 mg/coQ10 100mg, Enalapril 10 mg

5/05:140 lbs (highest weight 309)

5' tall /age 67,

cappie@...