SCIENCE said:

Michael V said:

Bubblecar said:

It did sound to me as though Michael was thinking he had to restrict his range of foods more than is normally advised.

I think I am starting to get my head around things a bit. It was quite overwhelming to begin with. And still is at times. I have always treated my diet as “averaged out” rather than “per meal”. And I don’t always have three regular meals. I often miss, or have a very late breakfast.

I have also recently gotten into some bad habits, such as using white rice, and eating the very yummy white bread that is made here, and using way too much butter. I also served my Asian-style meals as 50% rice and 50% stir-fry – mostly veges. That’s easily changed to 25% rice with the same amount of sauce – and the portion is then controlled better, too. Similarly with Mediterranean-style meals. I will cut the pasta back to 25%, and I will use wholemeal pasta, either bought or home-made.

I have never been much of a fruit eater, so I have to work on that. (Most fruit smells awful to me.) I don’t mind citrus, Granny Smith Apples and grapes, so there are some options.

I rarely have dessert, so that doesn’t need any attention.

I make a meal fairly regularly for Mrs V’s low kJ days that is dominated by potato. I’ll need to revise that. I think it is doable, but may not come completely within the guidelines.

I do find some of the recommendations perplexing. eg: “Instead of peeling potatoes, use them washed, but unpeeled”, as though the 1% peel could make a measurable difference. And the completely nonsensical recommendations for coconut cream substitutions – things like low fat milk. These people have clearly not eaten a south Asian curry. The coconut flavour is important.

I’ll get there. Eventually. Sigh.

don’t know if regular meals is that important, intermittent fasting seems to do good things

rice, one of our relatives switched to basmati with good effect, we find that 100% brown is very bowel bulking but going 1:1 with white is actually very tasty

definitely go citrus

don’t know about potato peel, might have some chemical that helps but we agree with the scepticism

we thought carbohydrates were more problematic than creams

Ta. I like brown rice. I just sort of stopped using it.

Coconut cream has a high oil content.