I’ve completed the 8-week plan and lost 2 stone 3 pounds and a reduction in my blood sugar level from 6.8 to 5.2. So I’m pleased. I made all the recipes the the blood sugar diet book (yes all 98 and took photos!), and spent a fortune doing so. Most of the recipes were absolutely delicious but I can’t keep spending that much on food. Does anyone have any advice about adapting the recipes for a tighter budget?

Haven’t you finished now that you have done the 8 weeks Nat.,or have you more to lose? Hope your GP has OK’d another 8 weks!

To be honest I haven’t used any of the recipes in the book, just used my own and used MyFitnessPal to measure cals and carbs per portion size

`I’m like Ziggy, I haven’t used any of the recipes, just cut out the carby stuff and kept calories around 800ish – it’s fairly easy to do, just lots of low carb vegetables instead of rice/pasta/potatoes, and tons of greek yogurt instead of desert.
Your weeks of following the recipes should have given you a good feel for what is low carb and low calorie – use calorie counter or myfitnesspal to keep track of what your eating.

Good luck

I still need to use the recipes on 5:2 just wondered about adapting the recipes. So I’m probably on the wrong bit of the forum. I’m not very confident about creating my own meals. It seems reading other posts that most people don’t do the recipes. I learnt a lot about cooking/flavours/ingredients through doing them.

Wow! Nat, I’m impressed that you cooked all those meals in the book. That’s incredible. Is there a particular meal that you really enjoyed?
I’m like Frog and Ziggy in that I’ve only ever made up my own meals and used MyFitnessPal to look up cals etc. Omelettes are always good, as is chicken salad and soups! Baxter’s soups are really quite yummy and I used to pour a tin (anywhere from 145 cals to 192 cals) on top of some beautiful veg, Broccoli, Cauliflower and sprinkle 1 oz of cheese on top – oh boy! That’s super yummy!!

My favourites: passion fruit and almonds, no carb bircher, skinny kedgeree, prawn pho, warm halloumi salad, grapefruit and manchego salad, courgetti prawns, harissa chicken, stir-fry chicken with lime and coconut milk, spicy turkey and apricot burgers, creamy smoked salmon scrambled egg, lamb chop with pecan crunch, peanut butter dip and guilt-free brownies.
If I had to pick one, my absolute favourite is spicy turkey and apricot burgers.

My go-to ingredients have been vegetables (either fresh or frozen), tomatoes, spring onions, lettuce, COURGETTES (in capitals because, surprisingly, they’re so yummy), baby spinach.

I don’t eat meat, so I’ve been having fish – cod fillets (fresh or frozen), salmon fillet, tuna

I have also added chillis to a lot more food, and lots of garlic and ginger.

Stir fries are a god send, and eggs!

Sadly a lot of the cheapest things are the ‘fillers’ the refined carbs.

Oh that’s a shame. There seems to be a lot of nutty things in there Nat! MM never mentions people with nut allergies and what they can eat instead of nuts. I like the sound of the warm halloumi salad (love halloumi) and the skinny kedgeree! Mmm I could eat that right now!
Spicy turkey and apricot burgers eh?! I’ll have to have a look at those 😉

IGOR? Do you have cod fillets on their own or are they wrapped in something?

Re the cod fillets, Nursebean, I’ve been doing a sort of topping for them, which is
1 spring onion
6 baby plum tomatoes
10g red pepper
1 chilli pepper (about 5g)
all fried gently together in olive oil (not much needed) with some garlic and ginger (also tried some black mustard seed the other day which was good). You could add cumin or other spices if you like.

Then I put the topping on salted and peppered defrosted cod fillet (also good with salmon fillet or any other firm meaty fish) and wrap it in foil and cook in the oven – about 15 minutes.
Serve on bed of baby spinach with 20 or 30g of feta cheese.

Spicy and lovely.

Oh my word! That sounds positively delish IGOR – thank you!! 🙂

Thanks for all the great advice.