An Unfit Mother: How to get your Health, Shape and Sanity back after Childbirth. Kate Cook

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СКАЧАТЬ for thick and fibrous and/or protein

      If you want your blood sugar to remain stable, you have to eat foods that are heavy and dense and thick—these foods take longer to digest and therefore the sugar goes into the blood stream in a more sustained way. A good example of a thick, fibrous food would be the humble lentil. If you took a single lentil and put it under a microscope you would see that it is very dense and fibrous with no air holes. If you had a machine that could enlarge the lentil into a giant lentil the size of a rock, you would notice that it would be very heavy too. A lentil also happens to be full of protein. So, a lentil would be an ideal slow-burn food.

      Natural muesli is a heavy food as compared to Rice Crispies. Anything brown or with a skin on it is going to be heavier than the white version of it (brown rice, brown pasta, whole, unprocessed foods.) Most green vegetables are going to be fibrous and fruit with skin on it is going to be higher in fibre than the peeled version. So far so good?

      Lower the blood sugar

      If you want to lower the effect a food is going to have on the blood sugar, then add either protein or fibre.

      * If you had an apple (which is a bit sweet, but it has skin so is fibrous) and ate it with a small handful of nuts, which are protein (any natural nuts such as cashews, Brazils, almonds, hazelnuts, or walnuts), your blood sugar would not rise so fast.

      * If you had a baked potato and hollowed out some of the middle (white and fluffy) and added in some protein—organic, no sugar baked beans or some cottage cheese, for example—you would lower the burn.

      Things like carrots get a bad press for being sweet once cooked but when was the last time you had an entire plate of cooked carrots? Once you add fibre and a bit of protein the burn will be sufficiently lowered—so just don’t worry about it.

       The slow and fast burn game

      Here are the rules: take a look at each of the foods and say whether you think they are either fast burners (i.e. white, sweet or fluffy) or slow burners (i.e. thick, fibrous or protein). There are 500 points available (non-redeemable) if you guess correctly. The answers are given at the end of the list.

      1 Fruit juice

      2 All whole grains—stuff like brown rice, real, thick porridge (but they musn’t be processed)

      3 Quinoa (whacky South American grains)

      4 Tropical fruit

      5 Inside of a baked potato

      6 Meat, fish, chicken, nuts and tofu

      7 Candy

      8 Biscuits

      9 Chocolate

      10 Potatoes

      11 All green veg

      12 Other brightly-coloured stuff, such as peppers

      13 Cauliflower

      14 Chickpeas, lentils, pulses and beans

      15 Rye breads or real artisan heavy wholewheat bread

      16 Mueslis made with whole grains

      17 Honey

      18 Real, natural yoghurt with added English, sourer-type fruit

      Don’t be afraid of carbs

      Somewhere out there in the darkness of the deepest darkest forest is the spooky carbohydrate monster—this monster makes you put on weight by just looking you right between the eyes. Thwack! A love handle is formed and only the protein angel can save you from this wickedness—hmmm, I don’t think so.

      The thing is, we have apparently developed a fear of all known carbohydrates and people don’t really seem to know the difference between the crappy old carbohydrates—the refined type with no vitamins, minerals and no fibre—and the great carbohydrates that give you energy and goodness. They are all tarred with the same brutally wicked brush. Everything, sometimes including fruit and veg, is all lumped together in one manifestation of evilness. This is plainly quite bonkers as fruit and veg and whole grains give you a helpful dollop of nutrients.

      Don’t get to the desperation stage where you will try anything to shift poundage—fatty meats and cheeses are not the way forward, whatever they tell you in the best-selling books—the only thing you will be successful at is having a constipated bottom, smelly breath and no friends. Carbs give you energy and boy do you need energy when you are the mother of a newborn—starches and sugars are your body’s primary source of glucose, providing fuel for your brain, your blood and your nervous system.

      Primarily, good carbs are things that are covered in skin, like brown rice, other whole grains such as rye, barley and oats, sweet potatoes and leafy green vegetables. In just a few days that constipation will have disappeared on a diet full of fruit and veg and whole grains, and you will be back on the invite list for the party set, now that your breath is sweet again.

      Rules 2: Whittle down the wheat

      Everything in moderation, including moderation itself, but it is absolutely amazing how much wheat we can potentially shove in to our mouths in one day. The following menu is a real diet that I took from a real patient I saw yesterday. By anyone’s standards this is not varied enough.

      Breakfast

      Weetabix with milk (clue in the title) Latte coffee (dairy) Apple juice (sweet, while we are at it)

      Snack

      4 rich tea biscuits (wheat) Latte and biscuit (dairy and wheat) Strawberry yoghurt (dairy)

      Lunch

      Cheddar cheese sandwich with tomatoes (wheat and dairy)

      Snack

      Lots of mini-chocolate rolls and polished off kid’s dinner of pasta shapes (wheat)

      Dinner

      Pasta with pesto and green salad (wheat, dairy-Parmesan cheese—well done for including a salad!)

      Once you learn to look around for other alternatives to wheat:

      * You first realise that there is a massive choice available to you.

      * Second, you realise how much rubbish food contains wheat.

      It doesn’t take much to vary the diet until it becomes second nature.

      Wheat is present in a wide variety of foods, from the obvious sources such as bread, cakes and biscuits to sauces, seasonings and many processed foods, and it is one of the most commonly eaten allergens in the UK.

      An intolerance or sensitivity to wheat is a common cause СКАЧАТЬ