We just started the BSD on Sunday, could someone please give some advice with the following issues?

A) my husband who’s a diabetic seems to think he needs 2 snacks during the day in case he has a dizzy spell, I’ve been giving him a small amount of nuts and a boiled egg, or 2 lettuce leaves filled with some turkey or ham and red pepper slices – of course this is taking the calorie allowance over the 800. This will obviously make weight loss slower, will the diet still work to reverse his diabetes?

B) There’s not a huge amount of recipes in the book that appeal to my husband, and he does not like chick peas, avocado or beans of any sort apart from baked beans. Quick lunches to take to work, and evening meals are a bit of an issue; can anyone recommend or point me in the direction of suitable recipes to use in this diet please?

Any advice would be much appreciated – many thanks

I’m diabetic. The nuts are a great little snack but the other things are more of a meal, from what I can tell they need to come out of his calorie count (so do the nuts 52 cals for 6 cashew nuts) I don’t think it would hurt to go over by some but not more than 25 cals I would have thought. Has he spoke to his doctor? How medicated is he? He really needs to be monitored, he may find that once his fasting blood sugar is a reasonable number that he could talk to his doctor about reducing his pills. There are other diabetics on here that are doing this and the book is written for type 2 diabetics, so if your husband buys in to the diet fully he may find he doesn’t need to go over and that he’s just worried. Which of course you would be worried but he should stick to his 800 cals, if he wants to reverse it, he has to be sold on it. that’s my thinking. I hope it helps. But others may shed a better light on it. Good luck and I really hope you and your hubby find wellness.

As for your second question, stick to meat, fish & veg. If you take a look at some of the recipes, I’m sure you’ll find something he likes. I had scrambled egg and bacon today, I’m sure that would appeal to him. veg is very low cal so you can have a plate of them with chicken on them. Does he like bolognaise, meat balls etc. Make him some, you’ll find that putting bolognaise with green beans is just as satisfying. is he a curry man? do him a curry with cauliflower rice. There are loads of ideas knocking about on these forums. I was reading the forums the day before I started and I wrote a list of 48 things that I like and none of them were in the book, they were all on here.

I’ve grown quickly attached to spirallized courgette with my bolognaise 🙂 and I agree there are lots of recipes here, as well as looking for other low carb recipes online. Ask him what he would like to eat and then look at ways to adapt it, that’s mostly what I do for myself. If you can’t think of a suitable adaptation post here asking if anyone else can. Not sure what to suggest about the snacking but if your husband can’t commit to this fully perhaps he could do the 5:2 day approach where he would only be on 800 two days a week and this may be more manageable for him.

I had a thought while making my dinner, are his dizzy spells, hypos where his blood sugars are getting low? He may find that when he is on a low carb diet, his blood sugars won’t spike up high like they do when you eat carbs. Once he stops eating, rice, pasta, potatoes & bread, his blood sugars will be on a more even keel and may not dip so low. So for the first week, he could carry around his glucose tabs but I doubt he’ll even need those after a week or two. I think he’s worried like everyone was when they started that he’s just going to be to hungry. For a few days he will be, but you get used to it and then you start feeling the benefits.

Hi does your husband suffer from regular low sugar readings.
If so he should see the doc about reducing his meds. If not he shouldn’t have anything to worry about.
Do tests between meals to confirm.

Could the dizzy spells be low blood pressure?

Hi, and thank you all so much for your kind wishes and helpful replies.

In answer to the medication question, my husband takes metformin for diabetes, prevastatin natrium for cholesterol and perindopril for blood pressure (hope I’ve got those in the right order). So not sure the dizzy spells are due to low blood pressure. He doesn’t self test by the way, his diabetes councillor doesn’t think it necessary (and at the moment she’s on holiday), I don’t know if things are done differently here in Holland, but maybe I should just get him a monitor anyway – I’ve been looking at the mobile Fastclix system on Amazon.
Obviously our aim is to get his weight down and be healthy enough to come off all meds.

To give an idea of his working week, he’s up at 04.30, eats breakfast at work round 07.30; and because he doesn’t get home till 7pm he eats lunch at 1pm. Today around 11.30am he started to feel queezy and light headed – if this feeling carries on he gets double vision, so he had a Diet Coke, then lunch as usual at 1pm – so as you can see, the long gaps between eating can be a problem, and I don’t know how to solve it.

Are snacks allowed if within the 800 cal daily allowance? Is it also the case that if he doesn’t stick to 800 cals his diabetes won’t be reversed – or can this still happen if he eats slightly more calories but takes longer to lose the weight? I’m a little confused to be honest.

Many thanks in advance

Many thanks for the meal ideas. He does indeed like bolognese, meatballs, steak, chicken and the like. He’s even eaten the courgette spirals. He loves the lettuce fillings and the no carb ploughmans which he’s taken to work. Sunday he had the cheesy beans on mushrooms and enjoyed it.
I will check out the forum for more ideas though.

He’s really determined, and although I realise 4 days isn’t long, Im so proud of him sticking to this diet since Sunday. He used to weekend snack on rubbish.

Anyway, good luck to all, and thanks once again for all the help and advice given