One of the problems that most people find with going on to a diet is the portion sizes and the lack of variety in the meals.
Over the years I’ve tried a number of diets which restrict a food type or replaces a meal, these are find if you can cope with the replacement or lack of that food type, but is not sustainable over a long period – i.e. months, leading to years.
Doing the blood sugar diet or more accurately the “Fixing Dad” version of this diet from the book Fixing Dad was all very well and did what i personally needed which was a clear picture of what i can and cannot eat, with a menu for a number of weeks for me to follow and recipes. All those things allowed me to follow the principles of the diet with the minimal of fuss.
But after 8 weeks the meals were becoming “samey” and we had removed a number of meals that just didn’t work for us; which meant Linda and I had to innovate where we could and work out how we could still stick with the principles and the portion sizes, but give us some more flavour for our meals.
Below are some of the meals had that work with the principles of the Blood Sugar Diet. While i am not giving our measurements here, as you can find them in other books, if you make sure that you use a bowl/dish that you know gives the correct portions you should be good when it comes to the calories – pictures to follow, as i spent too much time immediately eating them rather than taking a photo of them.
Lasagna
– Make the lasagna meat mix to your own tastes
– Replacing pasta sheets with Butternut Squash (sliced)
– Add a layer of baby spinach that has been steamed with the zest of some lemon to increase the flavour.
– Layer meat mix, then Butternut Squash, then Spinach, then another Butternut Squash sheet and then cheese (small amount of Cheddar and Parmesan)
Lasagna Pie
– Make the lasagna meat mix to your own tastes
– Mash up the cooked butternut Squash and also add mashed cooked cauliflower
– layer the meat mix, add Spinach again if you like, then add the mash mix – top with cheese as before
Tomato Bake
– Half a tin of chopped tomatoes – our preference is the chopped tomatoes with basil
– Mix in some crushed chilies
– Add spinach on top (season to taste – lemon is always good)
– Top with ricotta and Parmesan cheese mix
– Bake for 25-30mins until the topping is a light brown
Chicken Pie
– Make the filling with chicken chunks, mushrooms, creme fresh, tarragon, chicken stock and whole grain mustard (adding nutmeg is also good)
– For the top, replace the pastry with a mix of mashed cabbage, leaks and cauliflower
You have two options here which we both use depending on the week:
1) Mix some Parmesan cheese and paprika to the mix and then top the pie with the mix
2) add the topping to the dish and then grate the Parmesan on to the top and as a final hit of taste add paprika
I hope some of the above ideas give you inspiration and if you have others, please comment below. As we come up with other alterations to make our diet more interesting I will be adding them here.
