Coming to Low Carb, High Fat

My journey into a low-very low carb diet, while hard at first (and I'm not there yet!), is not really all that surprising when I sit down and reflect on a question that oh-so-many people are asking me right now - WHY??????

I basically grew up on what is now very commonly known as a Mediterranean diet. We didn't eat this way because it was fadish or popular at the time, but because my mother had an intense love affair with all that was the Italian and more widely, Mediterranean culture. Her music, food, clothing and even sleeping patterns (I'm talking afternoon naps, late nights and a good red wine...though maybe that's just the life of a Type 1 parent) all lived, breathed and emulated the essence of Italy. I wouldn't be surprised if she even dreamt in Italian. I should point out here that we are not Italian.  I don't even have a distant relative that is Italian (that I know of). And until I was 17, I'd never even been to Italy. Mum's travel plans always involved Italy, and she even had me taking Italian language classes at Uni.



So as you might imagine, our diet was full of green leafy vegetables, full fat dairy including cream, milk, butter and cheeses, olives, lots and lots of extra virgin olive oil (we even went on an olive oil tasting tour when we did finally get over to Italy!), fish, lamb, even a bit of wine. Growing up in the country we always had miles of tomatoes, herbs and avocados. When I did eat fruit, it was mainly strawberries, apples or bananas (I'm a tropical North Queensland kid through and through). The things that were high carb in my diet though, was, of course, pasta! So many different kinds of pasta. And on the weekends, especially if we had guests, there would be lots and lots of freshly made sourdough bread from our favourite Italian lady, Josephine, over the hill.

Thank goodess for being a kid living on a few acres to (attempt to) burn it off on!

Being an Aussie kid though, my go-to breakfast before I was diagnosed was Weet-bix. 3-5 of the golden goodies, lined up (crammed) beside each other in the perfect bowl. Drizzled with honey so that the top was covered perfectly. Then the milk was poured in so that the bottom became soggy while the top remained slightly crunchy, encased by the honey. Perfect.

Yes, its probably safe to say that my first break up wasn't with a boy. It was with Weet-bix.

I tried cutting back to three, then no honey. But it just wasn't the same. The day came where I had to make the decision - Go hard or not at all. So diabetes, and the insulin I was on then (act-not-so-rapid) decided that the later option was for me..... though sometimes I got lucky and was a bit low at breakfast...

We naturally began cutting back my pasta and bread intake for the same reasons as the weet-bix, it just wasn't working for me - or rather it had my body working really hard for it! I'd get so fatigued and have to sleep after a high carb meal. If I did still eat pasta and bread I would try to have it slowly over the course of a long meal  - not gorge all at once. I still wasn't really doing this to cut carbs though - I just knew it made me feel awful - now I realise that was obviously because I was having a major BG spike!

In high school I further cut back, just girl pressures really - but I was really just cutting back on food, I still wasn't specifically singling carbs out.

Then rather ironically on a trip to Italy we discovered I was gluten intolerant. Oh yay...yeah thanks Diabetes for your appropriate timing and all!

Ten years ago gluten free options weren't as easily accessible as they are now, so it really forced me just to choose more and more natural. More vegies, more salads, more olives, cheeses, fish etc and just skip the grains, pastas etc. By the time gluten-free goods became more accessible in local supermarkets, I'd started to moderate my carb intake, but not so much with a focus on fat.

I should also mention that my family was never big on so called 'low-fat' goods. Mum seemed to think that they were basically the devil, and that over processed, packaged low fat goods would be the downfall of our society....but I will leave that at that for now!

So really I'd gotten to a point where, before this year, whether conscious or not, I very rarely ate over 130 carbs in one day (Christmas and my birthday don't count right? :-P).

So I thought - 'why not reduce this and see what happens?'

I started making sure I generally ate below 90g a day. I immediately had less blood sugar swings AND with that came less mood swings... in particular less anxiety. Extra bonus - it was suddenly easier to maintain my weight and I still had the same amount of energy at the gym. This was something that actually felt like it was really working for me. Win.

Feeling good about this, I thought 'why not halve my intake again and see if I can feel great?'