Ruth's GI Diary

ruth frances

Full Member
Brekkie: 50g porridge (half water half skim milk) with dollop of sugar-free jam. Just discovered porridge last week after always hating it, and now loving it!!! Sometimes i have a small bowl as an afternoon snack!

Mid-morning: Mixed berry smoothie made with half a small tub of sugar-free low-cal yoghurt and skim milk

Lunch: baked beans on 2 slices low-GI grainy bread with spinach leaf salad

Afternoon: slice of grainy bread toast with butter spread (i know, not great!)

Dinner: Chicken breast with Nicola potatoes (the only tatters to have a low Gi (58), and they sell them in my grocers!!), carrots, broccoli, cabbage and gravy

After reading Prof Jennie Brand Miller's book, i've also got into the habit of having a glass of water with plenty of lime/lemon juice in it with every meal to reduce the overall GI even more. Apparently the acidity delays gastric emptying which slows digestion and hence decreases the GI (same principle for vinegar)
 
quitting smoking today, as a prelude to having an operation tomorrow. Bit worried about sticking to the diet. Plus I'm sure hospital food can't be all that great! Any tips?
 
brekkie: porridge with jam, seed mix and linseeds.
Last ciggie post breakfast....
Lunch: Large bowl of split pea, lentil, barley and veggie soup with 1 slice of grainy toast with lowfat spread
Mid-afternoon: had small bowl of leftover soup as cig cravings++. Probably not a good idea to start eating when feeling particularly cravy : ( Finding it difficult to maintain willpower to not eat crap and not smoke... I WANT CHOCOLATE!
We'll see how the rest of the day goes...
 
Hi Ruth. Lots of luck to you on your diet. It must be very hard to start it AND give up ciggies at the same time. I've never smoked but understand that it is awfully hard to give them up. So good luck with your efforts. Also hope your op goes well.
Are your menus from the Book you have been reading?
That's a good tip on the lemon juice with water. You should post it in the tips & tricks thread in the stickies section.
Keep a close eye on portion sizes. Even if the foods we eat are good choices, too much will contain more cals than we need.
Personally, I love gi/ GL as a way of life.
Good luck for your hospital stay. One tip I read from dr rob Thompson is to move all the white stuff( potato,pasta, rice, bread) to one side of your plate. Eat the other food first and then eat just a little of the white stuff. Apparently, we will start to feel full eating the protein and less starchy veg etc so we will then eat less of the higher starched foods.
Have a good week and keep posting.
 
Hi Molly, thanks for your encouraging comments - the tip about eating the veg/prot first is a good one! And portion size is something I'm definately going to have to cut down on- I always eat huge portions of everything!! I just need to be eating healthy, appropriate amounts. I'm not particularly heavy, being at the upper end of 'normal' BMI, but over the last 7 years I've been gradually increasing from the lower end upwards - if I keep adding 5 BMI units every 7 years then it isn't going to be too long before I'll have a problem; this needs to be sorted out now!
The recipes are just things I make up myself, using the glycaemic index database for guidance on values - They're usually not high-cuisine but I like them!
Hope you have a good week too Xx
 
stopping smoking, an operation, and an overnight stay in the hospital - very un-diet friendly couple of days. Even whilst strung out on morphine, I managed to text my husband,requesting that he bring some crisps in!!
Anyhow, decided a couple of days of relatively poor choices isnt the end of the world as long as i get back on track today.
 
Glad you are ok after hospital. Well done for getting back on track quickly. I think you are fab to be quitting the ciggies at the same time as dieting. Keep it up!!!!
 
I hope you are feeling better after your op. Hospitals are extremely difficult places to keep weight off in if you are well enough to eat. I'm holding mine largely responsible for my 1 1/2st weight gain (it OBVIOUSLY wasn't me putting the food into my mouth that did it :D) since January as I pretty much lived there for 3 months. There was nothing healthy in the canteen, apart from some tired looking fruit salad, and if got food from outside it was usually of the comfort variety.

Now I'm out it is so much easier to organise my diet and eating. Best wishes to you :).
 
yesterday-
brekkie- porridge with jam
lunch- roast chicken and veg tinned soup with 2 x grainy toast with low fat spread.
Then things disintergrated a bit...
Dinner - epic-sized chicken burger and chips.
Snacks- handful of chocolate wafers. piece of toast.

Vowed to do a bit better today. Its been difficult not to comfort eat as I'm mainly lying round the house, feeling sorry for myself, taking painkillers, and wanting to smoke. However, I am feeling pretty proud of myself on the not smoking score: day 5 of no cigarettes, compared to my previous 25-30/day habit!!:D

Brekkie- porridge and jam ( I'm now addicted to this)
Lunch- Roast chicken and veg tinned soup with 2 pieces of toast
Snack- wholemeal pita bread wedges with homemade hummus
Dinner- undecided yet- maybe chilli beef and beans con carne.

looking back on the day so far I see I need to cut down on the bread- especially toast which is big weakness...:sigh:

Update:
Dinner - herb chicken breast with broccoli, carrots, cabbage and gravy.
 
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Well done on staying off the cigs. Keep it up.
Foodwise, I agree that there is too much bread in your menu. Try a couple of rye crackers instead. Try having some celery and carrot sticks with hummous instead of the pitta bread. From a GL perspective, the less wheat and processed food you have then the less likely you are to cave in to cravings.
Overall you are doing so well so keep at it.
 
Last couple of days haven't been too bad; not amazing, but not terrible. I've been fairly limited by the fact that my right wrist and fingers are in a cast after the operation, so i can't prepare most food, or hold cutlery to cut- can't wait to get the plaster off, it's driving me mad!!!

Sunday:
B - porridge with no sugar jam.
Followed by half a bar of green&black dark chocolate that my friend dropped round as a 'get well soon' pressie.
L - Chilli beef, bean and veggie con carne with basmati rice
D - we had friends over and my husband had made middle eastern-style finger food for everyone. I had 2 wholemeal pita breads, about 6-8 homemade falafels (oven baked), salad, hummus, salsa, 1 bottle beer.
Snacks- 2 handfuls homemade salty popcorn


Yesterday
B- Went out for brekkie with a friend. Was limited to having a farmers omlette with roast toms bacon and potatoes by the fact it was the only thing on the menu I could eat one handed. That was a real hardship.... as it was extremely scrummy! It also came with a piece of sourdough multigrain toast which i topped off with some butter then wolfed down.
V naughty

L- ham sandwich with grainy bread (nothing else in the house to eat!)
D- pasta with tomato/veggie/chicken sauce.

realised couple of days ago that I won't be able to weigh myself properly for a couple of weeks because of the weight of the cast. Weighed myself this am in PJs (too cold to get undressed!) and cast, and was about 3/4 of a Kilo great than my last weigh in - I'm guessing that probably equates to about a STS for this week. Fairly happy with that given the hospital/smoking/unable to prepare food.

This week coming I need to be more active in getting the right sort of food into the house, and then bossing my husband into preparing it!
 
Ruth, despite everything, you are doing very well. It would be easy to say sod it and eat as you please at the moment but instead you are doing your best to eat as well as you can. How are you doing without the cigarettes?
 
Hi Molly, thanks for your lovely comments. You're right- it's so easy to say sod it, I'll put off the diet until life calms down, but there's always something going on and there's always an excuse... this time I was determined I wasn't going to let things get in the way.
Now at 7 days no smoking! It has been hard, but not as hard as I thought - I think because I have firmly fixed in my mind that failure is not an option. I haven't been out for a drink or out with any of my smoking friends yet - I think those will be the hardest.
How are things going for you in getting back on track?
 
brekkie- porridge yet again as i'm in love with it

lunch- was out shopping when i suddenly felt really queasy and hungry. there wasn't much gi friendly stuff available at the fast food cafes in the shopping centre. opted for a pesto chicken pumpkin pasta salad as was probably fairly low gi if not low calorie. Ate about 1/4 of it (enough to get rid of queasy feeling) then had a minestrone soup when I got home.

Dinner - mexican chicken (in recipe section) with green beans and rice/quinoa mix. First time I've tried quinoa ---> it was yummy!

Snack - largish bowl of low fat frozen yoghurt

I went into our local health food shop today to see if the quinoa was any cheaper than in the supermarket (it wasn't) and spied some bags of rolled rye flakes and rolled triticale flakes, so I'm looking forward to trying some oat/rye/tritace porridge tomorrow.
 
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I love porridge too! Any day I don't have it will definitely be a day where I eat the wrong foods. I'm pretty much back in charge and I'm cutting out the naughties!!
Well done on managing your lunch time crisis. Carry a bar in your bag and you can always have it with a coffee somewhere. Those Carman bars are a fab Gi choice. They are Australian so you should get them easily enough.
 
RAARRR! Just wrote a fairly long winded post which took forever (so slow left handed) and then promptly managed to delete it !!!! Don't have the heart to rewrite it now, maybe later:cry:
 
Oh I know the feeling!!! I hate when it happens. Hope you are doing well.
 
I did find some yummy museli type bars called fibre fix. unfortunately they're burning a hole in the cupboard as i keep eating them...
Looked at the Carmen ones which look totally delish, but were fairly high cal compared to others.

wed:
B- porridge-oats/triticale/rye mix ; it was yummy, a denser nuttier taste than regular porridge
L- leftover mexican chicken and rice/quinoa with green leaf salad
S- fibre fix bar
D- Hubby and I were feeling lazy so we made pizza (a few months ago i found these great thin wholemeal bases in the supermarket, the brand is 'Bazaar' and they're in the pita/wraps section, don't know if they have them in the uk too). On my half I had tomato passata with herbs base, onion, red pepper, few bits of ham, cannelloni beans and a small sprinking of lowfat mozzarella. Served with a few oven baked lowGI potato wedges and a green leaf salad.
S- fibre fix bar

Yesterday
B- porridge (I'm so predictable!)
L- Don't know where the middle of the day went, as suddenly realised at 3pm that I had to go out and hadn't had any lunch. Grabbed a fibre fix bar on the way out the door.
S - skinny latte at a cafe. Half a small bag of sweet potato crisps.
D - Hubby was busy so I cooked the only thing I'm able too - heating up leftovers! So yet more mexican chicken with rice. Had a large portion as was hungry++ after missing lunch
S- bowl of low fat frozen yoghurt.

Today so far....
B- slice of homemade multigrain toast with low fat spread.

Trying to figure out what to have for lunch as hubby is at work, there are no more leftovers in fridge, and there's barely anything i can prepare myself. There's a really nice tin of minestrone soup sat in the cupboard but I won't be able to get it open! It might have to be porridge....
 
Ruth you are doing great. I must look up those fibre fix bars and see if we can get them here. The carman bars have a few more cals but there are no added sugars in them. I often split one in two and have just a half bar. I look at the ingredients on all the bars now!! If it has many sugars ending in "ose" like dextrose, sucrose etc I leave them. Many of the low cal or low fat bars have a lot of added sugars which are so bad from a blood sugar aspect. I really notice the difference when I have one of them. I love the Nakd bars for this reason alone, no added sugar of any kind.
Hope the wrist is improving. When do you get the cast off?
Have a good weekend.
 
I love those nutty/museli type bars though- I would never stop at half!
The fibre fix bars are made by ' fontelle'; I found them in the health food section at the supermarket. they're an aussie company, but you might find them in H+B or similar. They do have some sugar, but it's right down the bottom of the ingredient list. i was drawn to the fact they have 8.5g fibre each! I don't think we have Nakd bars here - i haven't seen them anywhere.

stitches came out yesterday and it was sooo amazing to have the cast off for 5 mins so they could come out. But cast promptly went back on again- boo. hopefully just one more week to go!

So rest of yesterday-
L - perseverence got me into a can of campbells roast chicken and winter veg soup
s- 4 no sugar sweets
D- Kangaroo and juniper berry stew with lowGi potato and butter bean mash and steamed veg. Probably ate about 2 portions worth as it was extremely yummy. glass of low-cal wine. Bottle of light beer. (we had a friend over)
 
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