Low Carb Diet For Daughter.

[Juliebove]

Not only does she have food allergies but she was recently diagnosed with Hashimoto's Thyroiditis and a high level of insulin and insulin resistance. So sort of like diabetes but she doesn't have the high blood sugar yet. The Dr. wants to nip it in the bud so wants her on a low carb diet. She is also on Metformin and a thyroid med.

Now I realize this (low carb thing)doesn't mean much. I have looked online and the amount of carbs varies widely. I have cut back on the amount of carbs she eats, although I have caught her sneaking food. But I probably haven't cut back enough.

The problem? She's a picky eater and has additional food allergies. Hers are IgG allergies and she has outgrown some of them but we were told she needs to have these foods only once or twice a week at the most or the allergies could come back. The twice a week foods would be bananas (not low carb I know) soy and dairy. Eggs were borderline so she can have those only once a week. Soy is an additional problem because it messes with the thyroid. So I only allow soy lecithin and soybean oil. We do not use soybean oil in our house but many restaurants do use it. So she gets it there. She is also allergic to wheat, peas, lentils, almonds and peanuts.

She is not a big meat eater by any means and really only likes chicken. She doesn't like most vegetables. She doesn't like any nuts or seeds. And doesn't like most fruit.

Her favorite foods are rice, potatoes, pasta, corn, popocorn, etc.

To compound my problems I recently bought a chest freezer and stocked it with things like gluten-free breaded fish, chicken nuggets and other gluten-free foods that are not low carb. I can not afford to get rid of these foods and buy new at the moment. I can eat some of them myself but some contain eggs and I am very allergic. So for the time being I am having her cut back on the carbs as best we can but she is still eating a serving or two per meal.

In addition I am diabetic but I can't eat low carb because I have gastroparesis. My stomach has really been acting up so I have been eating white bread, white pasta and mashed potatoes in limited amounts because they are the only foods that don't cause me stomach pain. It's very tough for me to get my diabetes under control. I am on two meds and 4 kinds of insulin. I hate eating these things in front of her because I know she wants them.

So my quandry is... How do you put a picky eating kid on a low carb diet when they don't like low carb foods? This will be even worse when my husband is home because he goes through tons of ice cream and chips. I have bought her low carb ice cream and she really doesn't like it. And the low carb dessert I made for her was something she didn't like at all.

[Jestgar]

Isn't she around 13? She's getting to the point where you can't make her do anything. You can start explaining the benefits of eating certain ways, and refuse to support her eating poorly (don't buy her crap), but she needs to start making her own choices.

If she doesn't want to eat something, she'll be hungry until she does.

[Jestgar]

hmmm, I just looked up gastroparesis and the (one) reference I looked at said that a low volume, nutritious diet is best. Run your food through a blender and all that. You could skip the mashed potatoes and make yourself a smoothie instead.

[domesticactivist]

A low volume, nutritious, low carb diet is what we're doing. None of us have diabetes, but I've always had trouble regulating my blood sugar and this diet has solved that problem. I also don't eat most of the things on the list your daughter has to avoid.

Just to give you some hope... my daughter (12) was a very, very picky eater. When she was 4 she decided she was vegetarian. I gave her nutritious vegetarian foods, but she ended up basically only wanting to eat white rice, white bread, and white pasta with nothing on it, oh, and cheese, and anything sugar. She'd go through phases where she would only eat one source of protein... peanutbutter for a few months, then lentils for a few months, then black beans for a few months, then plain tofu for a few months. She'd take a very small bite, I mean a shaving of her food, and she'd keep it in her mouth with a look of disgust for about five minutes, and sometimes spit her food out.

We tried to feed her healthy things, but she went back and forth to her dad's house every 3-4 days. She actually told me she just wouldn't eat at our house because she could eat whatever she wanted there. When we started keeping track of food (my mom swore she was anorexic and so we kept track), I found out that a (ONE) typical day at her dad's house included ice cream, store-bought pie, cookies, milkshakes from fast food, AND popsicles. When I told him this was a problem, he just stopped keeping track! I'd go drop them off and see plates of cookies and cakes and pies on the counter. She was getting no nutrition and was (still is) tiny for her age... not even on the charts, and she is even small for a kid three years younger.

We talked to our daughter about her choices, asked her if she wanted to grow and be healthy, and maybe even improve her Tourette's... she did. And we got serious about making her try healthy food when she was at our house. Some nights that meant she ate nothing, but she was basically doing that already. We asked her to give her reasons for continuing to be vegetarian. (My partner and I both have been veg in the past, and her dad was vegan, so we had sympathy.) She did not have a solid answer or strong conviction... instead, it had become a part of her personality and identity, and something to control. We told her if she could make a good case for it and agree to a nutritious vegetarian plan we would support her, otherwise she had to try meat.

We slowly started giving her one small bite of whatever meat (always very high quality) we were having at dinner. At first she was disgusted. But it turned out she actually liked some of the choices. One day she accidentally got her brother's hamburger instead of her veggie burger at BurgerVille. She ate the whole thing. Normally she'd only eat about a third of her veggie burger. When he took a bite he noticed! She swore she hadn't known, but we knew better. She was starting to eat meat willingly!

So... then we realized our son had celiac disease. At first that just meant that at her dad's there was more processed crap, this time with a gluten-free label. But no-one was feeling good. We ended up getting him to agree to the healing diet we wanted to try: GAPS. This was a huge change, since it starts off in stages, is very meat based, and eliminates all grains and sugar. The diet does eventually introduce eggs, nuts, white beans, cheese and lentils, however I don't eat eggs or cheese, only have nuts in moderation, and we just introduced white beans after 7 months on the diet. We haven't tried lentils yet.

Anyway, I've posted about it all over and have posts about it on the blog linked from my profile so I won't get into the details, but the amazing thing is that both the kids are now much better eaters than they used to be. They can still get picky (if I have to watch them pull the fat off their meat one more time I will scream!) but they actually like most of what we serve. Our son's IgG's are not problems any more, either.

I recently read an article about picky eaters. It talks about our food culture of feeding kids crap is to blame, and I believe it. Open Original Shared Link

[AMom2010]

You might consider getting rid of EVERYTHING in the house that could sabatoge her diet, including your husband's goodies. If it's not there, she can't eat it. He can always go out for ice cream, or take the whole family once a week for a special treat if she's been trying her best to adhere to the diet. I agree that she has to learn to make good choices, but it will be much easier for her at home if she's not set up to fail. Good luck!

[Juliebove]

Isn't she around 13? She's getting to the point where you can't make her do anything. You can start explaining the benefits of eating certain ways, and refuse to support her eating poorly (don't buy her crap), but she needs to start making her own choices.

If she doesn't want to eat something, she'll be hungry until she does.

Yes she's 13. I don't know if that hungry thing will work for her. It certainly doesn't for me. I went for 3 days once eating nothing more than a few candy bars that I sneaked out to buy. I was about her age. We were staying with a great aunt and uncle. I did not like her food at all. She would only serve bland, mushy things because she said it was what her husband liked.

[Juliebove]

You might consider getting rid of EVERYTHING in the house that could sabatoge her diet, including your husband's goodies. If it's not there, she can't eat it. He can always go out for ice cream, or take the whole family once a week for a special treat if she's been trying her best to adhere to the diet. I agree that she has to learn to make good choices, but it will be much easier for her at home if she's not set up to fail. Good luck!

I can't do that because then I wouldn't be able to eat. Because of *my* medical issues, I often have to eat that which she can't. I don't eat ice cream. Don't even like it. I don't know if we even have any ice cream in the house now. If we do it isn't a lot.

My husband doesn't live here now. He's in the military. But he usually comes home every month or so. There is no way he would ever go out for ice cream. He would just be really surly until we brought it home for him. That's how he is. Going out once a week for it is not an option for her either. The diet is not for weight loss. It's for medical reasons. That would be like telling a celiac to go out for wheat once a week.

Because the Dr. was so vague and didn't give us a limit of carbs per day I guess I can just wing it as best I can. I don't think it would be prudent for me to eliminate all carbs since she is a dancer. I think she would need some for energy. So maybe just one or two servings per meal. For now. Until he tells me otherwise.

I checked the Teff wraps. They have 30g of carb per. I guess that will be okay for a meal every now and then if she doesn't eat any additional carby foods with the meal.

I have looked online and the reason for the low carbs is to lower the insulin resistance.

It is also possible (I'm just guessing here) that if she does lose weight the IR could go away. It did for my SIL.

[AMom2010]

Please forgive my ignorance, but if you are diabetic and your daughter is pre-diabetic/insulin resistant, shouldn't you both be eating a low carb diet? In the same breath you said you eat white bread and mashed potatoes but can't get your diabetes under control. Try eating a low volume nutritious diet like some others have suggested. You may find that after eating those kinds of foods and allowing your body to detox from all the processed stuff that you will prefer a more nutritious diet.

[Juliebove]

Please forgive my ignorance, but if you are diabetic and your daughter is pre-diabetic/insulin resistant, shouldn't you both be eating a low carb diet? In the same breath you said you eat white bread and mashed potatoes but can't get your diabetes under control. Try eating a low volume nutritious diet like some others have suggested. You may find that after eating those kinds of foods and allowing your body to detox from all the processed stuff that you will prefer a more nutritious diet.

I can not eat a low carb diet due to gastroparesis. That is nerve damage to the vagus nerve in the stomach most likely caused by diabetes. That means I do not digest fiber or most meat. I have a severe egg allergy so can not eat that. I can not eat much in the way of vegetables because they will cause me stomach problems and they will then come back up. Also I am at risk for a bezoar if I do eat such things. That is a food ball much like a hair ball in a cat. Must be surgically removed.

My Gastroenterologist knows I am diabetic. My Endocrinologist knows I have the gastroparesis. So there is no one diet that is ideal for me. I just have to take it a day at a time and eat that which will stay down. The processed stuff is generally what I do have to eat because it will go through me. At the time I was diagnosed, I was on a raw, vegan diet. This is contraindicated for such a problem. However my Gastroenterologist told me I could continue this as long as it was working for me. Meaning no throwing up and no D. That's the other problem I have from it, sometimes both at once. It's not a good thing. It's not a good thing at all.

The last time I ate a big salad it was at my parent's house for Easter. I believe they were serving ham and I don't eat ham. So I said I would just have salad. I love salad. It's one of my favorite foods.

Well not long after dinner I began to feel unwell. I told my daughter to go tell my parents that I needed a bucket or something. Now I don't know if my symptoms are typical but when the gastroparesis acts up I don't usually feel nausea or stomach pains. I just get the feeling that something is not right. And then I feel the saliva backing up in my mouth and then it's as if the flood gates opened. Undigested food comes violently back up and or out the other way and sometimes both at once.

The normal diet for gastroparesis is liquids like Gatorade, regular soda and fruit juice. I really can not have those things because not only do they provide no nutrition whatever but they are sure to spike my blood sugar.

I can handle white bread (I have no gluten issues), white rice and mashed potatoes with no problems in limited amounts.

But there's another weird thing. I have noticed from the start (was diagnosed with diabetes some 14 years ago now) that I do better in the blood sugar department if I eat more carbs. Not too many carbs but more than the dieticians have told me I could safely eat. I have been having extreme trouble with my blood sugar in the past few years, most likely due to the gastroparesis, but I am not sure of the cause because now my dad and brother are having the same issues. So once in a while I just get frustrated, say "screw it" and just what I want. And when I do that, my blood sugar drops to normal range.

Some years ago we were making a cross country move and I couldn't get my blood sugar under 300. I tried to do the low carb diet thinking it would help. I didn't know of my food allergies then. I ate only eggs, cheese, meat and low carb veggies like green beans and salad. This did not help me at all. Unlike what other diabetics reported to me, my blood sugar stayed around 300. Only after I added more carbs back into my diet did my numbers fall. I do believe the high numbers were partially caused by a severe sinus infection that took months to get rid of. I now know it was probably in part caused by the food allergies.

Also a recent post to the diabetes newsgroup indicates that a small portion of diabetics do better on a high carb diet. Here is the link to that.

Open Original Shared Link

I do believe I am one of those people.

I have the book put out by Joslin every few years that is intended for Drs. I hoped it would shed some light for me about diabetes. I didn't understand a lot of it, but it did say there are over 300 variants to diabetes and yet we all get lumped into either type 1, type 2 or maybe MODY, LADA or GD.

No Dr. has said my daughter has pre-diabetes. I have asked. She does not seem to have the higher numbers seen in pre-diabetes although her one and only A1c came back at 5.7 and that (according to some sources is pre). Random finger sticks over the years have always been 91. So very stable there.

Her main symptom now is acanthosis nigricans (darkened skin) often caused by insulin resistance. And her C-Peptide did bear this out. Whether or not the low carb diet will help with this remains to be seen. I only got the letter from the Dr. two days ago. And it will be several days until she gets on the correct dose of Metformin.

As for my own diet, I just have to take it day by do and do what I can do to keep from getting sick with the gastroparesis and then try to fix my blood sugar accordingly. It certainly isn't easy.

[Juliebove]

A low volume, nutritious, low carb diet is what we're doing. None of us have diabetes, but I've always had trouble regulating my blood sugar and this diet has solved that problem. I also don't eat most of the things on the list your daughter has to avoid.

Just to give you some hope... my daughter (12) was a very, very picky eater. When she was 4 she decided she was vegetarian. I gave her nutritious vegetarian foods, but she ended up basically only wanting to eat white rice, white bread, and white pasta with nothing on it, oh, and cheese, and anything sugar. She'd go through phases where she would only eat one source of protein... peanutbutter for a few months, then lentils for a few months, then black beans for a few months, then plain tofu for a few months. She'd take a very small bite, I mean a shaving of her food, and she'd keep it in her mouth with a look of disgust for about five minutes, and sometimes spit her food out.

We tried to feed her healthy things, but she went back and forth to her dad's house every 3-4 days. She actually told me she just wouldn't eat at our house because she could eat whatever she wanted there. When we started keeping track of food (my mom swore she was anorexic and so we kept track), I found out that a (ONE) typical day at her dad's house included ice cream, store-bought pie, cookies, milkshakes from fast food, AND popsicles. When I told him this was a problem, he just stopped keeping track! I'd go drop them off and see plates of cookies and cakes and pies on the counter. She was getting no nutrition and was (still is) tiny for her age... not even on the charts, and she is even small for a kid three years younger.

We talked to our daughter about her choices, asked her if she wanted to grow and be healthy, and maybe even improve her Tourette's... she did. And we got serious about making her try healthy food when she was at our house. Some nights that meant she ate nothing, but she was basically doing that already. We asked her to give her reasons for continuing to be vegetarian. (My partner and I both have been veg in the past, and her dad was vegan, so we had sympathy.) She did not have a solid answer or strong conviction... instead, it had become a part of her personality and identity, and something to control. We told her if she could make a good case for it and agree to a nutritious vegetarian plan we would support her, otherwise she had to try meat.

We slowly started giving her one small bite of whatever meat (always very high quality) we were having at dinner. At first she was disgusted. But it turned out she actually liked some of the choices. One day she accidentally got her brother's hamburger instead of her veggie burger at BurgerVille. She ate the whole thing. Normally she'd only eat about a third of her veggie burger. When he took a bite he noticed! She swore she hadn't known, but we knew better. She was starting to eat meat willingly!

So... then we realized our son had celiac disease. At first that just meant that at her dad's there was more processed crap, this time with a gluten-free label. But no-one was feeling good. We ended up getting him to agree to the healing diet we wanted to try: GAPS. This was a huge change, since it starts off in stages, is very meat based, and eliminates all grains and sugar. The diet does eventually introduce eggs, nuts, white beans, cheese and lentils, however I don't eat eggs or cheese, only have nuts in moderation, and we just introduced white beans after 7 months on the diet. We haven't tried lentils yet.

Anyway, I've posted about it all over and have posts about it on the blog linked from my profile so I won't get into the details, but the amazing thing is that both the kids are now much better eaters than they used to be. They can still get picky (if I have to watch them pull the fat off their meat one more time I will scream!) but they actually like most of what we serve. Our son's IgG's are not problems any more, either.

I recently read an article about picky eaters. It talks about our food culture of feeding kids crap is to blame, and I believe it. Open Original Shared Link

I come from a family of picky eaters. In some cases it is a psychological thing. Daughter and I both have issues with meat that has bones or skin on it. We can't eat it and I usually can't cook it. Oddly she does like chicken drumsticks and will sometimes eat them but then other times the psychological thing kicks in and she can't bring herself to do it. Which is why I gave up on those and won't cook them for her. But if we happen to find them pre-cooked that she can eat (Winco does carry them and Hormel had them for a while) and she sees them and asks for them, I will buy them. She also has a similar issue with lamb. She loves the lamb kebabs at Central Market but they are $4 each. She likes to eat two of them. The last two times I bought them for her she said through her tears, "Oh the poor little lambs...", and couldn't eat them. They were thrown out because my husband and I do not like lamb.

Growing up I came from a very mixed home. My mom was big into healthy food. She shopped at health food stores and really limited what we could eat for snacks. Mainly pretzels, popcorn, apples and carrots. My dad OTOH did and still does love his junk food. He knew every day old bakery and candy outlet in the South Sound. He would bring this stuff in and sneak it to my friends and I before dinner.

I did go through a phase of eating junk food in high school. Mainly frozen burritos and canned ravioli. *shudder* But mostly I prefered vegetarian meals and healthy food. I have been told I was a big meat eater when I was really young but in 2nd grade is when the psychological thing kicked in with me for the meat. I would happily be a vegetarian now but I seem to go anemic if I don't eat red meat twice a week. I have tried iron pills but I seem to do better with the meat. We'll see how that goes now that I am 52. I am not in menopause quite yet but let's just say mother nature has cut down on the really heavy periods I had been suffering from for years. So I may well need less iron now.

Angela said she wanted to go on a raw vegan diet. I did try that for a while for myself. I didn't force anyone in the house to eat it but she did like to try what I made. It was a royal pain to make the stuff though because of the long hours of dehydrating things at low temps.

I probably should try to work some of those things into our diet though. Such as the onion bread. Everyone I have given that to has loved the stuff. Even my mom who normally has issues with onions, peppers and tomatoes. There is no wheat or gluten in it whatever. Just sunflower seeds, flax seeds, onions and a couple of other things. Original recipe does call for Nama Shoyu (raw soybean oil) but I omit it and add a bit of sea salt. I would make these into little sandwiches with Swiss nut cheese (made of cashews I think), lettuce and tomato. Angela doesn't like tomato so I would leave that off of hers. They make a good healthy, filling meal. She also liked the nacho nut cheese made with macadamia nuts and peppers.

As for the other picky eaters in the family... As I said, my mom had issues with not only onions, peppers, tomatoes and wheat. Why she has these issues is beyond any of us. At times she says some of these things affect her GERD. At other times she says some affect her arthtitis. Yet she will eat things that have those things in them. Such as waffles. I will remind her that there is wheat in the waffles and she will try to tell me there isn't. And I know they're not gluten-free waffles. She wolfs down gaucamole even though it contains tomatoes. And she has a problem with any and all soups. No specific reason why. She just makes a gaggy noise if you mention soup. She also has issues with any and all cereals. She would feed us cereal when we were kids and make gaggy noises and then tell us she didn't know how we could eat that stuff. Oh. Nice!

My dad is afraid of trying new foods. He has to know anything and everything that is in his food. He has never been tested for food allergies and never will be. He will soon be 80 so we have given up on that! But we are pretty sure he has at least a dairy allergy. He goes through Kleenex like mad just like I did before I knew of my dairy allergy. I have since outgrown that allergy. But I digress... He will sniff his food and pick it apart with a fork if he sees so much as a speck of a spice that he can't identify. And then he will demand to know what it is. He is afraid of potato skins. Thinks they are poison. Yes, I know about solanine and all that but nobody can convince him that it is safe to eat the skin unless it is green.

My brother has textural issues with foods. Mushrooms are really bad for him. He can not eat them at all. Neither can he eat peas for the same reason. And he will not eat any food that looks like a brain. That includes walnuts, pecans (they don't look like a brain to me) or cauliflower. I'm sure he has additional issues. I just can't think of them. But he eats a VERY limited diet.

When I was Angela's age I ate the same thing for lunch every day for a year. I just didn't want to eat anything else. Hopefully she will find that one thing that she likes. She seems to need more variety than I did/do. I can still eat the same thing day after day. And eventually I will get burned out on it and switch to something else.

I am just sad for her that her diet will have to be so limited. We learned of her food allergies when she was 6. That in and of itself is hard enough for her to deal with, especially when we have family get togethers at restaurants where her options are limited. And worse still when we go to my parent's house for dessert after. Used to be there would be 2 or 3 options for her that I could make or buy. But now I think there will be none.

I don't personally like sweets so it doesn't bother me not to eat them. But it is hard for me to have to sit there smelling everyone's stuff. My mom doesn't just have one dessert. She will buy a special dessert for each person at the table. Except for my daughter. I have to do that because she doesn't seem to understand the food allergies or know where to buy her stuff. So now I guess she will just have to make do with maybe a baked apple or some sugar free applesauce because I really can't seem to come up with any other dessert type options.

[domesticactivist]

It sounds like all that picky eating in the family could likely be due to the underlying allergies, intolerances, and conditions you all are dealing with. Since doing our new diet, I learned that I really am intolerant to the things I never liked as a kid. It can be tough to tell what's lack of exposure to good food/too much access to crap and what's intuitive for our health!

It sounds like when you've tried vegetables they haven't been very cooked, and you say you have a problem with the meat... have you tried pureeing? For the most part, I HATE soft textures like pureed things, but both the kids love it when we puree soups. On the GAPS diet everything is very, very cooked at first, which was why I didn't want to try it!

You make bone broth and put veggies in it and cook till they are mush, then take the bones out, leaving the soft tissues, marrow, and whatever meat was still on the bone. Then you can puree the whole thing. (We've purreed rabbit meat or chicken meat into soups like that, too.) Going heavy on carrots or squash gives a nice sweetness and helps the texture. Add ginger if you can do that and that gives a nice balance to the flavors.

From what you've described it sounds like something like this might be more digestible than raw veggies and traditionally prepared meats, and more nutritious than mashed potatoes.

[Juliebove]

It sounds like all that picky eating in the family could likely be due to the underlying allergies, intolerances, and conditions you all are dealing with. Since doing our new diet, I learned that I really am intolerant to the things I never liked as a kid. It can be tough to tell what's lack of exposure to good food/too much access to crap and what's intuitive for our health!

It sounds like when you've tried vegetables they haven't been very cooked, and you say you have a problem with the meat... have you tried pureeing? For the most part, I HATE soft textures like pureed things, but both the kids love it when we puree soups. On the GAPS diet everything is very, very cooked at first, which was why I didn't want to try it!

You make bone broth and put veggies in it and cook till they are mush, then take the bones out, leaving the soft tissues, marrow, and whatever meat was still on the bone. Then you can puree the whole thing. (We've purreed rabbit meat or chicken meat into soups like that, too.) Going heavy on carrots or squash gives a nice sweetness and helps the texture. Add ginger if you can do that and that gives a nice balance to the flavors.

From what you've described it sounds like something like this might be more digestible than raw veggies and traditionally prepared meats, and more nutritious than mashed potatoes.

I can't eat pureed foods. They make me gag. And I can't deal with bones. It's a psychological thing, I know.

I can digest ground beef and I can digest chicken. I just don't like chicken unless it's little bits of it and it has to be mixed with rice, pasta or potatoes. Daughter doesn't like ground beef at all.

I do like roast beef but it makes me very ill even if I chop it up into tiny bits. I figured mincing it that way would make it more like ground beef but apparently not.

Tonight I tried to make turkey burgers for my daughter. She said they were just okay and maybe needed ketchup. I think I didn't cook them right. They came frozen and I tried to cook them from the frozen state. Someone has told me that they needed to be defrosted. I couldn't get the paper out from in between the patties and by the time they were cooked it was a mishmash of meat sheets and chunks. I didn't eat them. I tried ground turkey once and that was enough to make me know that I didn't like it.

I must get more raw veggies tomorrow. We are out of salad and daughter has been snacking on the carrots and celery. We both like raw veggies but not cooked ones so much. We both like canned green beans. I like green beans pretty much in any form but she only likes the canned. I can eat cooked tomatoes and although I can eat cooked carrots I very much prefer them raw. We also don't like squash of any kind although I do put baby food squash in my meatloaf instead of eggs. I do use some gluten-free oatmeal in there but not a lot and I put in a lot of veggies that Angela wouldn't normally eat. She knows they are in there and she will eat the meatloaf. We also don't like ginger.

I grew up eating a pretty bland diet. My mom used salt and pepper for a time but then quit using those. She used cinnamon for some things and chili powder for others. She also used dried onions for some things and she did use a lot of parsley. But rarely any other seasonings. She had a spice rack that was a wedding gift and it was full of jars of spices that had gone bad. Someone gave her another filled spice rack in the past few years and she still hasn't used most of them. She doesn't cook a lot. She and my dad go out to eat a lot. I grew up eating things without sauces and when they order things in restaurants they often order them with no sauce or the sauce on the side.

I do try using a lot of different seasonings. I just don't like a lot of them. Garlic gives me stomach pains. It's not an allergy. I have been tested. Husband and daughter both LOVE garlic. I like Italian seasoning. And I love Mexican seasonings. But I don't seem to like most Chinese, Japanese or Indian foods. And I don't think I would like Thai foods based on what I see in the recipes for those things.

[T.H.]

I don't know if this would help, but it sometimes works for us if we make the cooking an experiment. We're out of luck in the processed food department and so are pretty much making almost everything except the oil and salt, at this point. And I'm not that great a cook, so it's...well...not that exciting of a diet, most days, LOL.

But one thing we've done is make contests or experiments out of our foods. Like, pick random ingredients out of the fridge and say: okay, what can we make that uses THESE. And just go crazy. If we have me do one, and each kid doing one, we come up with some wild stuff. We can consult the web, look at other recipes that might use the foods together, whatever.

Or we experiment to try to make the same dish, but adding or taking away random ingredients, or baking, boiling, frying, and grilling the same thing, that sort of thing.

The benefit so far has been that my daughter (the picky one) will TRY everything so that she knows how it tasted, at least. And sometimes she comes up with stuff that just makes me blink, like stir-fried mashed banana - she loves this funky little recipe she came up with, and honestly it would make me gag, but she loves the stuff, and it's healthy, so it worked out.

Oh, and for the carbs you bought that your daughter can't have now? I'm not sure how the low carb needs to work for diabetes, so this might be a completely unusable suggestion, but can you use the carb foods in little tiny amounts? Like, instead of making chicken nuggets for dinner, have a veggie burrito inside a lettuce wrap and chop up just one nugget to add to it, or sprinkle one chopped nugget over a salad, that sort of thing? Then they wouldn't go to waste, but she wouldn't get too much at one time.

[Juliebove]

I don't know if this would help, but it sometimes works for us if we make the cooking an experiment. We're out of luck in the processed food department and so are pretty much making almost everything except the oil and salt, at this point. And I'm not that great a cook, so it's...well...not that exciting of a diet, most days, LOL.

But one thing we've done is make contests or experiments out of our foods. Like, pick random ingredients out of the fridge and say: okay, what can we make that uses THESE. And just go crazy. If we have me do one, and each kid doing one, we come up with some wild stuff. We can consult the web, look at other recipes that might use the foods together, whatever.

Or we experiment to try to make the same dish, but adding or taking away random ingredients, or baking, boiling, frying, and grilling the same thing, that sort of thing.

The benefit so far has been that my daughter (the picky one) will TRY everything so that she knows how it tasted, at least. And sometimes she comes up with stuff that just makes me blink, like stir-fried mashed banana - she loves this funky little recipe she came up with, and honestly it would make me gag, but she loves the stuff, and it's healthy, so it worked out.

Oh, and for the carbs you bought that your daughter can't have now? I'm not sure how the low carb needs to work for diabetes, so this might be a completely unusable suggestion, but can you use the carb foods in little tiny amounts? Like, instead of making chicken nuggets for dinner, have a veggie burrito inside a lettuce wrap and chop up just one nugget to add to it, or sprinkle one chopped nugget over a salad, that sort of thing? Then they wouldn't go to waste, but she wouldn't get too much at one time.

Yes I have decided with the high carb foods she can have just one serving or 15g of carbs at a time. Exception being the Teff wraps. They are 30g per wrap.

The thing is the Dr. didn't say how many grams of carbs she should have per meal. And low carb diets vary widely. I don't want to cut the carbs back too much because I think she is is still growing and I think she needs the nutrition. But she was for sure eating too many carbs at once. Especially with things like rice.

[T.H.]

Will she eat quinoa or amaranth? If I remember right, because these two were seeds, they are lower in carbs than the regular gluten-free grains. Might be more usable in a recipe, perhaps?

[Juliebove]

Will she eat quinoa or amaranth? If I remember right, because these two were seeds, they are lower in carbs than the regular gluten-free grains. Might be more usable in a recipe, perhaps?

She eats quinoa in things like pasta but doesn't like it in and of itself. I can't eat it in and of itself because it spikes my blood sugar very badly. We've never tried amaranth nor have I seen it for sale anywhere. Where do you get it and what do you do with it?

[pinkylee1953]

I love smashed cauliflower fix it the same way you fix mashed potatoes they are awesome, a great alternative to all the carbs.

[Juliebove]

I love smashed cauliflower fix it the same way you fix mashed potatoes they are awesome, a great alternative to all the carbs.

*shudder* I do not see how people can eat that. I can eat a bite of raw cauliflower and so can my daughter. We don't particularly like it but we can chew it and it will go down. Not so with cooked cauliflower. We like it about as much as we like cooked broccoli which is not at all.

[Apache]

It sounds like your daughter is carb addicted. The things you mentioned that she prefers to eat are nothing but simple carbs with little to offer. Simple carbs are addicting because they not only trigger the brains reward center, but also only provide energy in short bursts. The idea that you need carbs is totally false. They will also do nothing to aid in proper development. Your body will operate much more efficiently when getting your energy from fats. Fats from animals and things like coconut and avocadoes. Buy your meat grass fed and free range to provide the proper omega-6 to omega-3 ratio, which is 4:1 to 1:1. Avoid things like vegetable oils, including canola oil. Also, the lectins in beans in grains are very bad for your digestive system, not to mention other things.

I really think you should check out the paleo diet for her. It does involve eating meat, but maybe you could convince her to try it. Don't let the vegans and vegetarians tell you anything. They all survive on high amounts of carbs. If something is harmful to the body, should you really be eating it? Carbs make people fat and cause inflammation throughout the body. You should read about why grains and legumes are bad for you, as well as dairy.

I have a theory on why your blood sugar didn't normalize when eating low carbs. I'm not a doctor, and this is just a theory. When you begin a low carb diet your body begins to use up it's sugar reserves. I wonder if your liver was releasing glycogen in an abundance. Again, I'm not a doctor and I don't even know if this would cause a blood sugar elevation. I'm sure you know more about it than me, but I thought I would throw that out there.

As for they way you should eat, I think if you can eat meat you should. Since carbs seem to be okay for you, my opinion is that you should have a meal of meat and carbs, without overdoing it on the carbs. And I wouldn't worry about grains in your case. I read somewhere that balancing your blood sugar can reverse nerve damage cause by diabetes. Maybe a dietician could help you with this.

[sariesue]

Since you both are avoiding foods due to psychological reasons have you tried desensitization? It works with fears/phobias and might be useful. You also seem to say we a lot. Have you considered that your daughter's psych issues with food come from your issues with food? Children model the behavior that they see. She sees you eat high carb processed foods and shun most other foods and from your posts it's evident she is doing the same to the extent her allergies allow.

Can you eat the majority of your high carb foods that she cannot eat when you are not in front of her? This can be done by having breakfast before or after her and lunch while she is in school? Then it's only dinner that you have to deal with. Personally, even as an adult I find it very hard to watch people eat foods that I like but can't eat. I can't imagine trying to live like that all day everyday. If you need help figuring out a low carb diet that works with her allergies a nutritionist might be helpful. It may even be possible to get insurance to pay for it.