Hi All,
We actually eat fairly well already. Butter not Marge. Olive oil for cooking & no pre-packaged salad dressings. I also frequently add pureed veg to thicken soups & casseroles instead of flour. We eat plenty of fruit, salads at least four times a week.
BUT. My husband is Italian and was brought up with the ”food=love” attitude. He expects bread, rice or pasta with every meal & feels neglected if he doesn’t get it. He is VERY active, being a bricklayer, but still has a “beer gut” despite the fact that we don’t drink alcohol at all.
All this means that even when I make a delicious healthy bolognaise with pureed lentils & carrot etc. it ends up being poured over an enormous plate of pasta! The kids have grown up with this (my youngest is 11) & now see it as normal, but they will adapt easier than he does. We have eight mouths to feed & have always bulked the meal out with carbs because they’re cheap. That will be my challenge.
However as I’ve just discovered, once you’re not in the blood sugar spiral you need so much less food overall that I believe it will balance out.
I’m serving up the cauliflower rice and replacing some of the pasta with spiralized zucchini. Smaller serves of potatoes have been easier, I’ve bulked up the other veg instead & nobody even noticed.
I think Bento Box lunches have solved the problem of sandwiches everyday for lunch. They actually prefer having a selection of fruit, veg, cheese, sliced meats (I’m doing an extra roast on Sundays & slicing it up for the week).
I have found one dessert alternative that so far everyone loves (we only have dessert about 3 times a week anyway).
I peel a couple of bananas and freeze them in a zip-lock bag where I also have frozen berries & any apples or pears that had started to look questionable in the fruit bowl. At dessert time I blend the bananas & whatever fruit I decide to use in a high speed blender with Greek style yogurt & just a drizzle of milk. You have to pulse it for a few minutes to get it smooth, but you end up with an almost ice-cream like substance. It has to be eaten straight away or the fruit starts to brown. BUT it’s delicious and there’s no added sugar. A little banana (two bananas between eight people) now & then can’t hurt & it really provides the creamy bulk the kids are looking for.
I haven’t discussed the changes with the kids although they know I am dieting, I’m just replacing things & so far there’ve been no objections (at least from the kids) . Hopefully it will just become a new kind of normal!