BASICS
- EAT ONLY WHEN YOU ARE HUNGRY
- Eat only until you have had enough to be satisfied.
- Have the majority of your calories at the beginning of each day
IDEAS
- A large glass of WATER 30 minutes before each meal will distend the stomach so you will feel less hungry by the actual meal time. Having a GLASS OF MILK at the same time will give you enough glucose to kick in the insulin effect, even before you start the meal.
- A lot of times when you are thirsty, the brain registers that as hunger.
- Chew each mouthful – take your time to eat.
Have the majority of your calories at the beginning of each day.
- Breakfast like a king
- Lunch like a prince.
- Dinner like a pauper.
Breakfast
Cereals
- I avoid them as they are generally very high in carbohydrate.
- I make up a seed mix cereal as an alternative.
- If you are still wanting cereals then make your own mix. Try the aisle next to the cereal section in your supermarket. There are generally a wide range of whole grains, which can be mixedtogether. They essentially have 0% sugar content.
- Do not put dried fruit with it.
- Full cream milk is generally sweet enough.
Bread
- I avoid bread as is very high in carbohydrate. There are better sources of protein and vitamins.
- If you are still wanting bread then preferably grain and try and limit to 1 slice
Dairy products
- All good as long as long as no sugar, fruit or honey additives and you are not lactose intolerant.
Butter – love it!
Natural yoghurt
- Avoid the fruit yoghurts.
- If you want to make it into a treat add some double cream to it, which improves the texture and overall taste. Double cream is predominantly saturated fat.
Cooked breakfasts
- Bacon
- Eggs – recent literature supports the fact that despite the bad name of eggs being high in cholesterol, they do not increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. Cholesterol that you eat is not associated with higher cholesterol in the bloodstream. This is a change in conventional thought.
- Leftovers from dinner
Fruit
- Preferably limit yourself to one piece of local, seasonal fruit per day, whether or not you have this at breakfast, as a snack or at another meal time
Lunch
- Avoid convenience products.
- Salads
- Avoidance / elimination of refined grain products such as white breads – this is not so much anti-fructose as an anti-processed concept.
- Dairy products
Dinner
- Meat, poultry and fish
- Vegetables / salads
- Plenty of water.
- Dairy products
See meal ideas in the Recipes area.
Snacks
- Once you lose your hunger then snacking becomes less of an issue.
If you are hungry in between meals then look at that glass of water and if you are still hungry consider a glass of milk. The galactose component is rapidly converted to glucose and generally settles hunger.
Delay that snack, if you can, by half an hour. The hunger generally goes away. Snacking is generally a habit scenario.
If you are after a snack then consider:
- Vegetables such as carrots and celery, which are reasonably easily stored.
- Nuts are great; they still have a fair number of calories in them though.
- Popcorn is a great snack for children and treat and fills them up. Don’t worry about putting the butter on it as it is a saturated fat. There is a carbohydrate load but by volume it is a low percentage.
- Cheese
- Salamis which are food products which are generally low in sugar but there are other processed chemicals within them.
- Pate
- Fruits such as olives are low in fructose.
Treats
It is still okay to have a treat and if you want to indulge yourself in that chocolate, lolly or cake then do it with the knowledge that you are after the sweet hit and it is a chemical influencing your decision making.
Treat one piece of whole fruit as a treat – it comes with fibre.
Try smelling the sweets or dessert. It will trigger the same response in the brain but you are obviously controlling the caloric intake to zero.
Artificially sweetened drinks – In moderation and in short periods of time. I think these are fine. It probably took me 12 months before I didn’t really need them at all.
School Lunches
- Popcorn
- Sandwiches with Vegemite, meat and salad (stored appropriately)
- Cut up vegetables – carrots, cucumber, celery
- Skip all of those dried fruits
- Nuts – It is a pity about nuts being excluded from a lot of schools because of nut allergies.
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Some great ideas for children’s lunch boxes.
I am not against getting a bit of fruit in for the children’s lunch boxes.
http://beafunmum.com/2015/10/whole-food-lunch-boxes-paleo/
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SOME SIMPLE LUNCHBOX IDEAS from Sarah Wilson and ‘modified a bit’.
(Taken with permission from ‘I Quit Sugar’ by Sarah Wilson, McMillan, 2013)
- Cheese and seed crackers.
- A small container of plain yoghurt with frozen berries, which will keep it cool until mid morning.
- Celery sticks lined with nut butter. Nicole on my blog adds mung beans on top and calls it a celery log boat (I used to call it ants on a log as a kid).
- Lauren says, “I bake a sweet potato, remove the skin, then add avocado, cinnamon, coconut, even cocao powder. I give it a quick spin in the food processor and my one-and-a-half year old goes crazy for it.”
- Sweet coconut chips: Coconut flakes lightly toasted with cinnamon (great for after school snack, too).
- Hard-boiled eggs.
- Wrap slices of ham around a pickle, cucumber or avocado.
- Seaweed snacks. You can find these little packets in Asian grocers – great for a “something in a packet” fix.
- Kimberly suggests guacamole (just mash avocado and lime juice) and vegetable sticks. She gets her sons to mash the guacamole.
- Connie makes Vegemite mixed in with cream cheese or ricotta.
- Sugar snap peas.
Kids Cooking
Some great ideas from Sha Ragnauth http://www.sugarfreekids.com.au/
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‘Starving’ Teenagers and What to Feed Them
This question keeps coming back to me. Teenage years are rarely perfect and you are not going to get their diet right – that’s the reality.
Mums wanting and doing the Low Carbohydrate and High Fat (LCHF) option for their family struggle to feed hungry teenagers and particularly boys. I was one of those teenagers migrating from refrigerator to refrigerator, house to house, carb load to carb load.
I was raised on sugar, carbs and polyunsaturated oils and in retrospect this was a long term disaster – fluctuating weight as a child but lost a lot of that weight as a very active sports ‘teenager’.
I was ‘starving’ all day and eating carbs like no tomorrow – cereals, fruit juice, pasta, rice and ice cream come to mind. I used to knock back, just at home, 4 litres of ice cream every week. I think that massive carbohydrate load had a lot to do with all those pimples (acne) I had growing up. Interesting that acne was virtually unheard of in isolated communities until the introduction of the ‘western’ amount of simple carbohydrates.
What to do now with the knowledge I have now about a NoFructose life decision – LCHF and no polyunsaturated oils.
The first is education and leading by example as a parent. I know that sounds easy but if the whole family are on board rather than just one parent it is easier.
Remember that if you start the day with a sugar and carbohydrate load then your teenager will be hungry through the day and have started the yoyo of blood glucose and insulin responses which tend to drive the hunger response.
Get the breakfast right. Get up early and cook that breakfast. Last night’s leftovers of meat and vegetables with some eggs and of cheese thrown into an omelette is a huge energy dense food start.
We have a flat omelette maker and I can make mine in the time frame of making a cup of tea in the mornings. So for teenagers it’s probably going to be twice the size of my omellette.
Add in plenty of nuts and seasonal local fruit.
A glass or two of full cream milk is perfect if they are not lactose intolerant. If that is an issue then the Greek yoghurts may be a better option with a few berries. Keep that milk intake available all day and night for those ‘hunger crises’.
Lastly look at the cereal grains but aim for the high fibre ones which will have less of a blood glucose spike than the refined ones with higher sugar contents. Definitely skip the ones with dried fruits and ‘natural’ honey!
Lunch boxes are tricky but look around the nut options (nut allergies seem to be less of an issue in late high schools), popcorn, cheeses, whole fruit and wraps rather than sandwiches. Look for the wraps with higher fibre content. They are there but requires looking at the labels.
You can see that carbohydrates are sneaking in here but so be it – teenagers are an imperfect science.
Afternoon tea is a bit like lunches. Having EASY access to cut up fresh vegetables, cheeses, milk and nuts. These options require a bit of preparation but that’s why we have refrigerators. Popcorn is a huge filler and lather on the butter.
Dinner is back to normal LCHF and in our house that is generally meat and plenty of vegetables.
We have substituted cauliflower rice for rice and zucchini spirals for pasta. Very little carbohydrate but adds bulk and size to the plate. We have had quite a few teenagers through our home recently and they have survived.
If you are caught out still needing to supply some ‘traditional’ carbohydrate into that ‘starving’ teenager, then look at the wholemeal pasta and brown rice options. Again the higher fibre content slows the glucose spike and insulin response.
Dessert is no longer a regular part of life. Out come the nuts and cheeses in our house.
Good luck and remember that it is just a phase of life! When they are adults they might just realise that you were wiser than they originally thought. Welcome to parenting.
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More Food Tricks
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MORE INFORMATION
In principle the plan is to cut out the refined and simple sugars and drift towards the more complex sugars and carbohydrates. Having a diet high in protein, moderate in fat and low in carbohydrate will develop. You still need maintain the fibre and consider these principles with each meal. I have a preference for avoiding the refined and highly processed flours.
Eating Out
When you eat out you can have a meal of fish and chips and a beer and invariably feel full and not go back for ‘seconds’.
You can go to a Chinese banquet and continue to eat through the evening without significant satiety. When you look closely at the Chinese menu in a Western Society then you are often given Sweet and Sour sauce at the beginning of the meal which is up to 50% sugar. Most of the dishes have sugar as a seasoning agent to cover for the high amounts of salt within the dishes. The Fructose component of the sugar in the doses that come in the food remains there as an appetite stimulant and continues its effect, often with people still feeling hungry at the end of the evening.
Nobody likes to be conned. When you ingest sugar half of it goes to your brain as glucose and tells you that you are full and when you have the fructose component it goes to the brain effectively and keeps you hungry for the next 24-48 hours. This susceptibility varies from person to person.
Decide if this is a ‘treat’ meal and you can have a bit of sugar. Beware that you will feel the effects of it for a lot longer than the meal.
I look hard at the menu when I eat out.
Avoid anything with a sweet sauce, honey or fruits.
I tend to go for the savoury side of meals and stick with the fish and meat proteins.
Avoid the pastries and refined flours.
No desserts unless you want to smell them. (See Smelling Desserts in Food Tricks)
Enjoy that Cheese platter if you are still truly hungry at the end of the meal. Chances are you will not need it.
Alcohol
Red wine ~0.3% Fructose. About 1 teaspoon sugar or 2 grams Fructose per bottle.
White wine ~0.6 -1.2% Fructose depending on the sweetness.
Beer 0% Fructose as the Maltose is metabolised to Glucose.
Remember that 2 good sized glasses of any of the above has nearly the same number of Calories as a hamburger! Would you really eat a hamburger before dinner?
Alcohol is still a toxin on the liver but the good news is very little Fructose. It was fermented off in the processing.
Download Free NoFructose Starter Handout Sheet 8 2013 PDF
Please add information by going to Contribute to NoFructose.com
ARTICLES
The causal role of breakfast in energy balance and health: a randomized controlled trial in lean adults
James A Betts,etal
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/100/2/539.abstract
Abstract
Background: Popular beliefs that breakfast is the most important meal of the day are grounded in cross-sectional observations that link breakfast to health, the causal nature of which remains to be explored under real-life conditions.
Objective: The aim was to conduct a randomized controlled trial examining causal links between breakfast habits and all components of energy balance in free-living humans.
Design: The Bath Breakfast Project is a randomized controlled trial with repeated-measures at baseline and follow-up in a cohort in southwest England aged 21–60 y with dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry–derived fat mass indexes ≤11 kg/m2 in women (n = 21) and ≤7.5 kg/m2 in men (n = 12). Components of energy balance (resting metabolic rate, physical activity thermogenesis, energy intake) and 24-h glycemic responses were measured under free-living conditions with random allocation to daily breakfast (≥700 kcal before 1100) or extended fasting (0 kcal until 1200) for 6 wk, with baseline and follow-up measures of health markers (eg, hematology/biopsies).
Results: Contrary to popular belief, there was no metabolic adaptation to breakfast (eg, resting metabolic rate stable within 11 kcal/d), with limited subsequent suppression of appetite (energy intake remained 539 kcal/d greater than after fasting; 95% CI: 157, 920 kcal/d). Rather, physical activity thermogenesis was markedly higher with breakfast than with fasting (442 kcal/d; 95% CI: 34, 851 kcal/d). Body mass and adiposity did not differ between treatments at baseline or follow-up and neither did adipose tissue glucose uptake or systemic indexes of cardiovascular health. Continuously measured glycemia was more variable during the afternoon and evening with fasting than with breakfast by the final week of the intervention (CV: 3.9%; 95% CI: 0.1%, 7.8%).
Conclusions: Daily breakfast is causally linked to higher physical activity thermogenesis in lean adults, with greater overall dietary energy intake but no change in resting metabolism. Cardiovascular health indexes were unaffected by either of the treatments, but breakfast maintained more stable afternoon and evening glycemia than did fasting.