Wanted! Tips, ideas, recipes, daily plans/weekly plans, for the Low Carb Mediterranean Diet, please!

I have reversed my Type 2 Diabetes recently, by following the recipes and 2 lots of the delicious 4-weekly plans at the back of the 8-Week Blood Sugar Diet book only. I also gave up drinking completely for the 8 weeks, which I thought would be really difficult, but it wasn’t.

I now want to maintain my weight loss and have been doing the 5:2 diet successfully for a couple of months now. However, I would like to try doing the low carb Mediterranean diet, without fasting, but there isn’t a specific Mediterranean Diet book by Dr Michael Mosley, with weekly meal plans, which would be so useful, so I wondered if anyone cares to join me on this forum, with a daily or weekly plan that they may have been following with success, for maintaining their weight loss.

I think the Med diet is just the same as this one but allows more calories and some small servings of carbs like a small portion of brown pasta or brown rice, even an occasional glass of red wine. By the way, congratulations on putting your T2 into reversal or remission. Try looking at the thread about the maintainers, there might be some ideas there. Also do a search on the internet for recipe ideas but basically eat as well as you have done on the 800 Fast but a little more.

EDIT I have just googled Mediterranean diet and it came up with a site called Mediterranean Diet 101; A Meal Plan and Beginners Guide. Happy reading.

Thanks, sunshine-girl. I will have a good look at the Med Diet 101. Always good to find new recipes. I have looked at the Maintainers forum too. I also just found a book called Painless Low-carb recipes for Lazy people.

i will have to look at that book. I have just done my weekly menu and feeling a bit jaded as to what to eat differently. Need to jazz it up a bit.

This is my favorite Mediterranean cook book….it is published in the US so hoping it is available elsewhere. It is 400 pages and has wonderful soup, salads, veg, seafood, and meat recipes…..unfortunately you will need to skip over the pastas (30 some pages) and dried beans (also about 30 pages) and breads (only 20 some there). Beautiful photos and great directions with a lot of variety. With the pasta dishes, you can alwasy sub spiralized vegs (like zucchini, use spaghetti squash, or my favorite, daikon radish that has no flavor once heated).

Found on Amazon among other places….

https://smile.amazon.com/Complete-Mediterranean-Cookbook-Vibrant-Kitchen-Tested/dp/1940352649/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1518384244&sr=13&keywords=mediterranean+diet+cookbook&dpID=61PTr4ZT0nL&preST=_SX218_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch

I love that Amazon allows you to “open the book” and browse some of the available pages to see if you like it.

It also lists all the nurtitional info of each recipe in an index at the end so you can browse for low carb ones (or sub out for lower carb ingredients for the ones you really like).

Hope this is of some help.

LTC

Wow, I just found that If I click on the book it brings it up and allows you to scan through the pages. Neat. I hope that is not just available for me since I bought the book. Fingers crossed it works for you.

Hi Sunshinegirl,

I know the feeling, I am getting a little bored with repeating the same few dishes. I have a few low carb cook books (I help out at a local book charity, where people donate books and anyone can go in and pick up 3 books for free so I get a chance to pick up a range of books each week). The problem I have found is that so many ‘low carb’ meals come in at 30 to 40 g of carbs.

I think the issue is the difference on the rate the carbs are processed. So something that it takes the body a long time to break down such as pulses is counted as low carb in these books, but if you are just counting the g’s of carbs and aiming for under 20g they are off the menu.

Has anyone seen any research into the relative impacts on fasting and types of carbs? I have been trying to eat 16:8 and have been wondering if I were to have one meal a day with slow release carbs could I still benefit from the positives of fasting.

Hey, luv2cook, thanks for putting the book up here! I tried downloading it to my Kindle app, but only got a short sample of it, but when I clicked on your link above, I could read it all, to the end of the book. Great stuff! More ideas. Thanks again.

The book for lazy cooks (above) has only 4 or 5 ingredients for each recipe and very little preparation time.

Some great ideas coming out here. Thanks to everyone.

Just an update of how my maintenance and 5:2 Diet is going.
We have recently been away to beautiful Torquay in Devon, UK, to see my family there. As we stayed in the Premier Inn there, I did 2 days of 800 calories before we went, but then managed to put on 4 pounds in as many days! I did another 800 calorie day as soon as we got back and, although I ate “normally” yesterday, I tried to limit my calorie count. I had a big bowl of porridge for breakfast, made with water and salt, (The Scottish way), rather than milk and sugar. Then a hearty can of bean soup for lunch and stuffed aubergines with lamb mince for dinner. I’ve lost 2 pounds in 2 days, so as long as I keep being sensible, the other 2 pounds should disappear in a few days’ time. So, the moral of the story is, if you eat more calories than you should and put weight on, get back to eating sensibly, with low carbs, as soon as you can and you’ll be able to maintain your weight. You be in control of it. Don’t let it control you!

Hi All
I have found a website with an app attached.
http://Www.eatthismuch.com
Eat this much.com
You can input your dietary preference. Eg Mediterranean and how many calories per day; eg 800 .
You can add in nutritional goals eg how many grams of carbs, protein, fibre etc.
You can choose how many meals/ snacks over the day.
It then generates menus ( and recipes) you can scroll through. You can swap, or interchange. But I just use it as a prompt for alternate menu/ food ideas.
Good luck

Hi, Searchingrockpools,
Thanks for the new website. It looks really interesting.

Thank you for the link to the website, Its providing an interesting source of suggestions for alternative meals. –

For the benefit of others, Once you set up a profile you can go to the browse food option on the website without having to enter a credit card.

I tried to specify both vegetarian, and less than 40g of carbs, but here are a lot of meals popping up in the 50 – 90 g carb range, and a lot of meals in the list containing meat or fish. However, there is a long list of meals which I can scroll through and open up just the recipes that I can eat. –

Don’t think I will bother paying for the service.

Depending on how low-carb you want to go, cookbooks on Greek cooking are good as they have plenty of vegetable dishes in them which can be main course meals. One title that might be available on Amazon is The Food and Cooking of Greece, by Rena Salaman and Jan Cutler. It was published by Hermes House and Anness Publishing in 2005 and 2011. Each recipe has a nutritional breakdown, incl. carbs, but the list doesn’t make it clear whether it refers to portion per person, or to each 100g of made up recipe. However, the recipes do emphasize fresh vegetables and salads, and variety, so it’s interesting, and if you’re already familiar with foods and amounts to use, then the recipes can be adapted.

As a person who has reversed blood sugar count, it will be particularly important to have a suitable maintenance diet, and I would take professional advice on that. Research is on-going regarding carbohydrates and their effects, and so there’ll be more information to come.

Hi, Michaelmas daisy, The Greek recipes sound delicious. We both love Greek food and I’m in love with grilled halloumi and courgettes, with olives, chilli powder, lemon zest and rocket, spinach and red pepper salad for a very moreish lunch. Any leftover Marinade goes over the salad. It is delicious and is in MM 8-week BSD book.
The 5:2 diet of 800 calories on Mondays and Thursdays, is working well for me. I average 9st. 0lbs every week now, so am enjoying food and wine in moderation too on the other 5 days. I have another Diabetes checkup on 19th April, which will be 6 months since I came off all medication. My fingers are firmly crossed.