It also means ‘time freedom’. If you are as busy as most of us, you probably won’t want to come home after a tiring day and start preparing a whole host of weird and wonderful ingredients before you can even start cooking! Tina and Deborah have made sure that they have included lots of quick and easy recipes with this in mind.
We’ve designed a simple low-GL template for your guidance so that you can slot in whatever recipes you fancy. Choose from our ‘fast and friendly’ selection for quick, throw-together no-nonsense cooking, or from the host of veggie-friendly recipes. Our vegetarian friends are so often forgotten when it comes to diets, so we’ve taken some interesting ingredients to give you anything but the normal humdrum veggie selection.
And then, for when you have the time and inclination and feel like pushing the boat out a bit, we’ve got some delicious foodie-friendly recipes for keen cooks. Maybe you fancy a lazy breakfast and have a bit more time to prepare it, or you have friends or family over for dinner? We at Diet Freedom HQ love food and get a real buzz out of preparing good food for the people we love, so we hope you’ll find the foodie-friendly recipes great for those special occasions.
Bon appetit!
Nigel Denby
Registered Dietician
RD BSc Hons
Chapter 1 HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
First and foremost we want you to enjoy this cookbook.
The last thing we want is for you to get hung up about working out or counting up the GL scores of foods, or weighing out every ingredient, so don’t do any of that. Counting is boring and stressful and can lead to overeating in itself.
The basis of all the recipes is that we have swapped high-GL ingredients for low-GL ones. So if the recipe contains carbs, we have replaced the FAST carbs with SLOW ones.
We’ve also put together all the other pieces of the ‘healthy eating jigsaw’ to make sure that your low-GL diet is nicely balanced and full of lots of good, healthy and nutritious foods.
Rather than giving you very prescriptive plans and menus (‘you must eat this today for breakfast and that for lunch tomorrow’), we’ve given you a basic template to help you plan your own low-GL healthy eating a week at a time. The template will help you make sure you eat regularly, eat a good variety of foods and, of course, choose the foods you love.
Now, because we’ve done everything we can think of to make using this cookbook as easy as possible, we want you to do something for us. We want you to ‘think natural’ and try, wherever possible, to start with basic ingredients, follow a few simple steps and end up with a delicious, natural, healthy dish. We’re talking about cooking from scratch, not fancy cordon bleu stuff, just simple ‘back to basics’ cooking.
We are passionate about cutting back on highly processed foods because they can be full of hidden sugars, salt, additives and unhealthy trans fats. The bottom line with all of our recipes is that you start with a bunch of natural ingredients and combine them together. This means you are in total control over what you consume, with no hidden ‘nasties’ to worry about. We have also given you lots of short-cuts to help save you time and effort, without compromising on any of the health and taste benefits.
Weight Loss and A Whole Lot More
Low GL is about a lot more than weight loss. That’s why more and more national and international health organizations are joining together to recommend a low-GL diet as the most appropriate for good health. Diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, some cancers and the symptoms of hormonal disturbances like Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS), premenstrual syndrome (PMS) and the menopause can all be prevented or eased by a low-GL diet.
Let’s Get Down to Basics
OK, so now we know why following a low-GL diet is so good for weight control and general health, let’s get on with it! The basic templates (pages 15 and 19) will help you with balanced menu planning and shopping. We’ve based the templates on the basic principles of a healthy, balanced diet.
For instance, most of us know we should eat some oily fish every week, have five portions of fruit and veg every day and include dairy foods, which are a good source of calcium for healthy bones. The templates show you how to organize healthy low-GL eating by thinking about your day, deciding how much time you’ve got to prepare food, whether you’ll be eating on the run or eating out, and balancing your foods throughout the day. If you have meat for lunch, you probably don’t need meat again for dinner. Or if you struggle to eat a substantial breakfast, make sure you have a decent mid-morning snack to help you stay in the driving seat till lunch time.
The templates will give you the confidence to know that you are not only lowering your overall glycaemic load (GL) but also eating a good balance of food and nutrients at the same time.
The Principles of Healthy Eating
Can I Follow the GL Diet if I’m Vegetarian?
Vegetarians can follow the same healthy low-GL principles as meat-eaters, choosing foods from each of the major food groups, high-protein sources, cereals and grains, dairy products (or soya substitutes), vegetables and fruits. Obviously the more restrictive the diet, the more difficult it becomes to ensure all the body’s nutritional requirements are being met. Deciding to follow a vegetarian diet means ensuring that nutrients usually provided by meat or dairy products are obtained from other foods. With some careful consideration, this is easily done.
Calcium
Aim to include three servings of dairy per day. If you don’t eat dairy products, choose calcium-enriched soya or tofu, dried fruits such as apricots, green leafy vegetables and nuts and seeds to help meet your calcium requirements.
Iron
Non-meat eaters have to be careful about their iron levels, since the type of iron found in red meat is particularly well absorbed in the body. Other sources of iron include bread, pulses, green leafy vegetables and dried fruits.
Protein
Vegetarians substitute meat with other protein foods such as pulses (lentils, chickpeas and beans), dairy products, eggs and nuts. If you don’t eat dairy foods, soya, tofu and Quorn are good protein alternatives.
Vitamin B12
People who exclude all animal products from their diet may develop a deficiency of vitamin B12, so should take a good-quality multi-vitamin and -mineral supplement which includes it, as this vitamin does not occur naturally in plant-based foods.
Zinc
Meat and dairy products are rich sources of zinc, and if you don’t eat these you may wish to consider a good quality multivitamin and mineral supplement which includes it.
Main Points to Remember