The fruit is a good thing, anyway. Branch out there. Pineapple, berries, plums, peaches and so forth are sweet without being bad for you unless you’re diabetic. As long as you avoid the syrup packed stuff it’s hard to go wrong with fruit.
Personally, one of my favorite foods ever is boneless, skinless chicken breast. It takes almost no effort to cook it, either. You just can’t wait until you’re starving to start cooking it since it takes a while. Here’s how I do it:
Put a big enough piece of foil to more than cover the chicken breast in the bottom of a pan. Place chicken breast on foil.
Douse with light teriyaki sauce or light parmesan dressing. Fold foil over so there will be no leaks.
Place in oven. Go watch TV. Retrieve it in ___ minutes (varies if it was frozen or fresh). Check to see if it’s pink in the middle. If not, it’s cooked.
If there’s a veggie you like - I like corn myself - eat that with it as a side dish rather than pasta or rice.
This seems so hokey, but I love my Foreman Grill. I can whip up a chicken breast in a few short minutes. I have it down to a routine: in the morning, I’ll put a frozen chicken breast in some marinade and pop into the fridge to thaw, once I’m home the meat goes onto the grill while veggies go into the microwave, and, in a few short minutes, I have dinner! It takes less time than waiting in line at the fast food drive through or carryout.
You can also make a pretty decent burger on the grill. Be sensible about the burger size and toppings and substitute a salad for fires, and you can have a healthy meal.
Do some experimenting and find out what tastes best to you. I love spicey things. Salsa and hot sauce are great “toppings” that are as good to me as cheese, sour cream, and butter. Pepper and lemon juice also add some zing to an otherwise boring dish. Raisins and cinamon add sweetness and taste to many items. Sweet potatos can go in the microwave and are delicious! You don’t have to put marshmallows on them.
You can still eat fresh fruit if you’re a diabetic. And fruit in light syrup. In fact, if you want something sweet, you’re encouraged to pick fruit over cake and candies, and definitely encouraged to eat it over the stuff the OP has listed.
Where did you get the idea that diabetics aren’t supposed to eat fruit?
If you’re looking for even less prep time, but don’t mind spending a little more cash, you can try chicken cutlets. Basically, they’re chicken breasts (boneless, skinless), cut in half, horizontally. They cook in half the time. If you’re really opposed to white meat, skinless boneless chicken thighs, while not as low-fat as the breasts, are pretty healthy, too. Here’s a fave boneless skinless chicken recipe (I use the thighs, because since my weight loss surgery, the fat is actually better for me):
Four pieces of boneless, skinless chicken
1/3 C brown mustard
1/2 C apricot preserves (I use Polaner All Fruit; no added sugar)
10 scallions, whites finely sliced (I save the greens for making stock)
1 TBSP olive oil
Heat oil in large skillet over medium heat; add chicken pieces, and cook 5 minutes on each side (I salt and pepper the chicken as it’s browning); remove chicken to serving dish. Put mustard and preserves in same skillet; mix with a whisk until preserves start to desolve and the whole thing gets bubbly; add scallions at the last minute; pour apricot sauce over chicken.
This is delicious, takes less than 20 minutes, and makes an impressive dinner for company, or excellent left-overs. I serve it with brown rice and a veggie.
Cooking isn’t difficult, takes less time than you might think, is an enjoyable avocation for many and will save you tons of money over living on prepared foods. I live alone and often cook in large quantities, soup, chili, stew, casseroles, etc… Then I freeze, or refrigerate the dishes in smaller quantities and all I have to do is pop them in the microwave.
Get yourself a good basic cookbook, I’d recommend the one from Better Homes and Gardens, and you will soon be cooking up a storm, eating well, impressing your friends and saving lots of money.
One of my friends is diabetic, and she’s not supposed to eat much fruit because of the natural sugars are enough to spike her blood sugar. Googling shows that she’s not alone in being given that advice by doctors, though they’re probably in the minority.
Here’s something that helped me with my diet.
I made a rule with myself. I’m free to eat what ever the hell I want but before I do, I have to shovel down all the crap that is required by the Food Pyramid.
The thing about this is; once I’ve eaten all that’s on my chart; I’m not really craving those double cheese burgers like I used to. -And even if I do it’s in lot smaller quantities. (And less often)
I’ve been a diabetic since I was four, and fruit has always been a part of my diet. Three to four servings a day, encouraged as snacks. I’m not supposed to gorge on it, but nobody is. Fruit is still allowable, you just have to do it reasonably. Like with everything.
Sorry. It just rankles me when people start saying diabetics can’t eat this and that and pretty soon you’re left drinking ice water with a packet of Nutrasweet stirred in, until they take that away, too.
Sattua is right about the rotisserie chicken thing. Ignore the skinless chicken breast thing others have suggested, though. They are just about the blandest thing on the planet, and your present diet suggests you like fairly strong tastes. Hello Again is right about Trader Joe’s. Go there and go nuts. If you’ve just started exercising, I suggest just small changes to your diet, pleasure-wise. Drastic changes will only encourage bingeing, since it’s hard to be in a mode conducive to self-denial after a hard workout. Once your workouts plateau (workout improvements slow down or level off) after, say, 4-6 months, then start focusing on your diet.
You know what’s good? Avocado. I’d never eaten an avocado in my life until a month or so ago and now I find them strangely delicious.
They’re full of nice healthy fats (which fill you up) plus all the vitamins of a fruit.
I find them to be pretty bland - but I’m eating 2-3 of them a week now, in salads. They’re just a refreshing change to a lifetime of mundane eating. And they fill you up more than any other fruit or veggie will.
I wanted to second this, we go through a ton of salsa. In frequent dinner rotation is a taco salad: spinach or lettuce, red pepper, onion, olives, some heated up low fat/vegetarian “refried” black beans, ground turkey with taco seasonings, avocado, whatever you’d put on a taco but skimp on the sour cream. Instead of salad dressing I pour salsa over it, a cup or more. We eat a lot of gringo-style “Mexican Food” --NajaHusband puts the fillings in a tortilla or eats with chips, nacho style. I can cut a couple hundred calories out of the meal just by skipping the tortilla or chips, upping the lettuce ratio, and eating it like a salad.
One of my other favorite quickie comfort-food meals is a baked potato rubbed with kosher salt–this takes thirty seconds to prep and stick in the oven, wander off to browse the 'Dope for a while–split open and pour the salsa on. The thing is, salsa is just spiced up veggies, so you can eat as much of it as you want. We can’t get enough of it.
As far as fruit goes, a favorite quickie breakfast for me is cottage cheese with half a drained can of cherries, blueberries, or any other out of season fruit, or whatever I can get good and fresh. I know cottage cheese is supposed to be eye-rolling diet food, but I love the stuff. I love cheese of any kind and good cottage cheese is good cheese, while being decently low fat and low cal. Stick to the serving size and choose low fat or skim varieties, or not–even regular cottage cheese is going to be a positive choice over an egg mcmuffin, and in the beginning I (personally) don’t think drastic changes are always the best choice. There’s only a difference of twenty calories between the skim/1% and regular cottage cheese and to me that twenty calories makes for a much richer-tasting and more “mentally satisfying” breakfast. Twenty calories wasn’t much to squabble about when I was coming off a fast-food diet, but YMMV and all that .
I really enjoy the live-culture, fresh cheese flavor of Nancy’s, which is even lower calorie than the skim versions of most brands, but I like really strong-flavored foods and unsweetened live-culture milk products often take some getting used to. Other brands are sweeter and milder and very yummy.
Stop me now or I’ll start preaching on about the joys of cottage cheese and a ripe tomato with a sprinkle of black pepper.
If they ever find a correlation between huge quantities of Spicy V-8 juice and dropsy in mice, or something, I’m totally screwed. I live on the stuff. Add a hunk of crusty french bread and a little piece of criminally sharp (white) Vermont cheddar cheese and you have my meal of choice.
For dessert? Berries. Just wash 'em and eat 'em. Strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries. Yum.
I too am a big fan of this, and all the other cool new V8 drinks , however here in Australia they are grotesquely overpriced. I make the Apple, Carrot and Ginger juice in my juicer (in fact I was making it before them). For the hot and spicy vegetable juice I just buy any old tomato based vegetable juice and add lime juice and peri peri sauce. I used to use D L Jardine’s Blazing Saddles, because its base is carrot juice but I can’t find it any more.
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