What I eat in a day with reactive hypoglycemia

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I have a lot of people ask me what I eat in a day to help manage my reactive hypoglycemia. As I mentioned previously, I have found being on a low fat high carb diet has really helped me to manage my symptoms and keep my blood sugar levels stable. While that is working for me now, I have since had a meeting with a dietician and she has advised me that medium to long term, I need to start reintroducing small amounts of complex carbohydrates for the sake of my microbiome. That is going to be a very slow process or trial and error! But until now, this is typically what I eat in a day.

Breakfast

I have experimented with lots of different things here but I find that these three ones are the options that help keep me the most stable until my mid morning snack. I usually eat this around 8am and it keeps me going til around until my mid morning snack at 10.30am.

• Cottage cheese pancakes made with coconut flour – served with a knob of butter and a side of sauteed spinach or other vegetables e.g. cucumber, radishes etc
• Almond flour muffins made with blueberries or lemon served with a side of steamed asparagus
• Two eggs scrambled with spinach and/or mushrooms, served with a side of veggies as above

Mid morning snack

I tend to rotate this to include:

• Homemade granola bars
• Half an avocado
• Boiled egg
• Celery sticks with peanut butter

Lunch

This often tends to be leftovers from dinner the night before – be sure to always make more! But if not this tends to be:

• Courgette spaghetti with pesto, cream cheese and turkey slices
• Homemade crustless quiche
• Cauliflower rice with salmon or mackerel and veggies, or a stir fry

Afternoon snack

Most afternoons I will opt for a Quest protein bar at this point. If I feel like I haven’t had enough fat for the day, I will also blend up a coffee with a tablespoon of butter and MCT oil. Usually I can feel it in my body…it’s like it’s asking for something more.

Dinner

Dinner tends to be a low carb version of whatever the family is eating. For example:

• Lasagna – my half made with courgette or aubergine slices instead of pasta sheets
• Oven baked fish and chips – my chips made from turnip or celeriac instead of regular fries or sweet potatoes
• Chicken or beef stir fry with noodles – my noodles will be the Shirataki noodles which are low carb. I bought a massive box on Amazon!
• Cottage pie – my half made with cauliflower mash instead of potato mash
• Then with anything else I will just always switch the carbs for cauliflower rice instead of normal rice, courgette noodles instead of pasta and the Shiritaki noodles instead of regular noodles. It makes things pretty easy once you’ve got in the groove of regular substituting.

Pudding

I have discovered a super quick and delicious way of making a low carb chocolate mousse which I treat myself to every night after dinner. I also made a massive tub of no churn coconut ice cream. Failing that if I’m eating dinner out I’ll take a bar of Nick’s chocolate with me – which is low carb. But be sure to check the carbs on the individual bars as they are not all the same!

Bedtime snack

The only time I do have carbs is before bed when I eat one Nairn’s oatcake cracker. By the end of the day, I find it doesn’t matter, and it helps me get off to sleep as too little carbs can interfere with your production of serotonin and therefore melotonin and sleep. As someone who has had problems with sleep on and off for the past six years that is definitely not something I want to get in to!

Drinks

In some ways this has been the hardest part but I have learned to get around it by:

• Making my own low carb, alcohol and sugar free mojitos
• Dropping Twinings Tea Infusion bags into my bottle of waters
• Herbal teas – leaving them to steep a long time for flavour
• Making low carb and sugar free hot chocolate, tea and coffee without regular milk – only almond milk or heavy cream
• Buying a Drinkmate so I can make healthy fizzy drinks at home

So that’s what I eat in a day! I must stress, I am not a dietitian or nutritionist and am just sharing with you what has worked with me in stablizing my reactive hypoglycemia. I plan to publish some recipes for the above so stay tuned! And I’ll let you know how I get on with reintroducing some of those complex carbs and berries too….