For Rainbowchild and others

Rainbowchild asked about the regime that the EFG is using for her weightloss. I am sharing it here, but feel free to ask questions if you want.

I will say now that I am not opening up a debate about the health, safety, scientific proof, efficacy or anything else of this particular regime - I am JUST sharing information.

The rules we are following work like this:

• Fruit only on an empty stomach (first thing in the morning or at least a couple of hours since the last food eaten)
• Carbohydrates eaten only with non-fat foods. NOT with proteins or fats. Carbohydrates should be wholegrain, so we are using wholemeal pasta, and wholemeal bagels/bread. I would be using brown rice if the EFG would eat rice!
• Proteins can be eaten with fats, and with vegetables. NOT with carbs.
• There should be at least three hours between meals of different sorts - so between carb based and protein based meals for example.
• No sugar.

So a typical day for the EFG might go like this:

• Breakfast - omelette made with a couple of eggs, cheese and bacon.
• Mid morning snack - fruit
• Lunch at school - smorgasbord collection of raw veggies, salad stuff and cheese/cold meat type of meal
• Snack at home time - a re-run of lunch as a salad on a plate, perhaps lettuce, tomato, cucumber, cress, hard boiled egg.
• Tea with the family - whatever we are having modified slightly - bolognaise (mince, tomatoes, mushrooms, garlic, onion, etc) but with veggies instead of with spaghetti; roast meat (chicken, pork, etc) with veggies; etc
• Supper - wholemeal bagel with Quark and chopped onion; wholemeal bread with salad and fatfree dressing; wholemeal pasta with salad veg/veg and fatfree dressing.

There are a lot of vegetables and salads, a fair amount of protein and fat, and not that much carbohydrates in this case.

It works for the EFG and we will continue for a while with this regime. On Friday evenings we get home from gymnastics at about 8pm, and she is allowed to have whatever she wants for her tea, and a sweet treat if she wants one.

If something like this helps others, good luck. At the moment we are following this pretty strictly and using simple recipes. I know that there is a lot of scope for using more interesting recipes to develop this as a longer term lifestyle. It is likely that the EFG will have to avoid sugar as a lifelong choice in order to help her insulin levels. I just hope that when the doctor reviews her again, he notices the difference!