My 8 year old daughter is a Type 1 and I am overweight and trying to lose weight so I do not become a Type 2.Type 2 runs on my dads side of the family.My grandmother and her 3 brothers has Type 2 and another brother had Type 1 and he died at the age of 16.My father is a pre diabetic.I need to lose weight but I want to do the carb counting way but I am not sure how many carbs I should be eating a day.I am a female 5’9 and I weigh 197.I lost 40 lbs. last year but I was on a no carb and no sugar diet.And I can not get back to that diet.It burned me out on just salads and meat,And eggs and bacon every morning.Can anyone help me?
Type 2 doesn’t run on anyones side of the family, its related to being over weight and out of shape. Generally speaking, if you stick to 60 carbs per meal and 20 carbs for snacks and under 2000 cals per day you will lose weight.
Ermmm… Type 2 can be maturity-onset too you know! Like my 64 year old dad who’s Type 2 but is stick thin and plays tennis 4 times a week, badminton twice a week and swims daily - he’s fitter than me and would be a bit upset at being told he’s Type 2 due to being over weight and out of shape!
Type 2 actually does show a genetic predisposition. It’s a myth that it’s all the patient’s fault, though certainly lifestyle factors can bring it on sooner or stave it off.
I think that 60g of carb per meal is way too high for weight loss, personally. I have never thought of carb counting alone of being a very accurate method for weight loss.
Ginny, you may get a thousand answers and opinions here, but what’s important is that you find what works for you.
I was up to about 180 and my BMI was over 30 and needed to come down significantly. So I started Weight Watchers. I have lost 25 lbs in 6 months (and my mom has lost 63 lbs in the same amount of time) on their system. I find it very easy to work with. It balances caloric intake, fiber, and total fat in its unique little POINTS system. I’m a type 1 and it has really cut my carb intake down from the 60g per meal I used to do. Now I probably eat a quarter of that amount at breakfast and 30-45g at larger meals. My last educator wanted me to take in 1000-1200 calories a day for weight loss, but I found 1400-1500 much more sustainable and still successful. I was able to reduce my insulin by 25%.
My husband, on the other hand, lost 80 lbs in a year (went from 240 to 160) by doing small meals and snacks throughout the day of just a couple hundred calories. He ate about 1200 calories a day and did very low carb. Sort of a mixture of the abs diet and ‘clean eating.’ Lots of veggies and grilled chicken and nuts. A little boring, but he certainly got results. I met him right after he’d lost the weight and don’t even recognize old photos of him.
Find what works for you.
The low carb route works for me as well, but it can be hard. The South Beach Diet book might be helpful…he recommends healthier carbs, not total carb restriction, which is possible for T2’s. Dr Bernsteins book might be useful in caring for your daughter as well as watching your carb intake, although he is very srtict.
I agree with what others have said about a heredity factor in some T2’s. Some people are more prone than others regardless of lifestyle. Good luck.
I was going to also suggest Weight Watchers or The ZONE as possible systems to follow.
I have written a whole page about the genetic origins of diabetes and the environmental factors that bring out these genes. It is at http://www.phlaunt.com/diabetes/14046739.php.
60 grams of carbs a meal is too much for me even with insulin. If not injecting insulin, I would eat no more than 12 g when losing weight. With insulin, I can cover up to 30-40 easily, but without ANY weight loss. I was able to lose weight with 12 g at meals and only basal insulin this past spring.
Another thought: I lost weight when I was using Novolin R insulin, which you have to time one hour before you eat. When I switched to the analogs, I started to gain, pretty dramatcally. I don’t know if it is something in the insulin or just that the analogs can be injected right before you eat. Whatever it is, you might try switching to R insulin and see if that helps.
Oh, Andrew, this is misinformation. Where did you get this idea? Type 2 is definitely genetic!! There are many people, like me, who have exercised all their adult lives, watched diet all their adult lives, and still gained weight (one major and frustrating and only recently understood symptom of insulin resistance) and eventually gotten Type 2. At least on this forum, let’s stop blaming people for what they can’t control.
(By the way, If I ate 60 carbs for meals and 20 for snacks and “under 2000 cals per day” I would most definitely not lose weight!)
Have you looked into glycemic index and glycemic load. I can control my BG better by using it than counting carbs
Ginny, I learnt from a great bariatric consultant the secret to lose weight, if you start with decreasing you’re whatever calories you take by 500 cal/day, you will lose weight but you have to do 20 min exercise daily. You eat balanced food. Then you start decreasing more calories. Weight watchers diet is also super, balanced diet of every thing.
Yes, unlike when you “just” do exercise for fitness and weight loss, when you do it for blood sugar control it is INSTANT gratification. 
Makes it feel way more worth it.
And Renee, I’m glad you and your son finally got to Joslin. I know you were looking forward to that.
However…for some people exercise does not decrease weight. It never has for me. However, it is well worth it for the other reasons (fitness, blood sugar control).
Sohair,
That is exactly the kind of advice people give to others when they themselves have no personal experience of weight loss.
Because metabolisms slow when we reduce calories, it is quite possible to reduce calories by 500 and see no weight loss at all. I have done it.
Similarly, if you cut calories but eat enough carbohydrates to raise blood sugar, the additional insulin secreted may block weight loss. This is one reason why there is research showing people losing more weight at the same calorie intake level when they eat low carb diets.
Weight “experts” typically brush off patient reports by explaining that the patient is doing something wrong or is noncompliant. However, there is solid research to back the fact that once a person loses significant amount of weight their metabolism is far more efficient and weight loss becomes far more difficult.
If the experts would stop blaming patients and do more research into the very complex metabolic issues surrounding weight loss, more people would lose weight. For now they blame patients for not losing when their own advice doesn’t work.
I am at a normal weight, just barely, for my size, but I have weighed every bite I have eaten on a food scale, logged it in software, and seen myself stay completely at the same weight eating only 1100 calories for an entire months. This is what happens to a busted metabolism, especially one with diabetes!
Dear Sohair.
Cut 500 cal/day and loose weight is only true if they keep you in prison. What will happen is that the body will revolt and you will not only regain the 5 Kg you have lost but another 5 Kg to prepare for future starvation. If on insulin and you eat a lot of carbs you will end up at 150 Kg or dead which ever comes first.
Of course the great bariatric consultant is theoretically correct the first law of thermodynamics always applies: Energy input - energy output = fat accumulation.
But since many of our ancestors starved to death in the last 10,000 years the body has developped mechanism to cope with starvation. It is not jjust a matter of willpower as my friend Dr. Cox (he is also a children’s doctor) has a lot of that and cannot loose weight. Both he and I could stop smoking and drinking but eating you are fighting the primeaval forces of nature.
Ginny…reading back over this, I see we have not given you a lot of practical advice. What I would add to all this great info is to try eating less carbs by cutting the carb serving you usually eat in half. Completely cutting them out doesn’t work for me. Just have one slice of whole wheat bread with your egg or half a sandwich. Make soup with smaller amounts of beans or barley. I can’t deny myself completely, but I can live with limiting serving them at home, and only having treats when at a gathering or a special meal out. It’s hard with a young family, but limiting meals out is important, for me. I have found lower carb ways to make some favorite things by exploring recipes. I suspect that low carbing just needs to become a habit, like any behavioral change.
Good luck and keep us posted.
You have a lot of will power to do the no carb sugarless diet. It takes even more will power to allow yourself a little carbs because then they’re in your cupboard and you SEE them. How about restricting the kinds of carbs you see in your cupboard to what you can see and not eat or see and leave alone! Then decide on what low carb food you CAN eat ONE AT A TIME for each meal. Be creative. If you like Swirl bread, put that in your frig - not cupboard - it’ll last longer, never allowing yourself more than one slice at a time (15 gms). If you like sweet potato, let 1/3 - 1/2 cup of that be your supper carb. My belief is that seeing and having a lot around creates an impossible environment.Your daughter doesn’t need to see any too many carbs around, either. But for you, choosing one item to have for each meal at a 15 gram amount can be changed each week or two, and is satisfying at the same time. Then unless you pig out, weigh yourself & see what it does over a month. Meanwhile, you can make a great chart of various foods that total 15 grams and decide what you will get when your present food has been eaten. Don’t EVER get tostidos into the house. Salty things are hard to stop at 15 grams! What kind of diet is your 8 year old on? How many carbs per meal?
I guess I need to add that 120 grams daily is supposed to be needed to feed the brain. Ever hear that one?
And the experts think that most of that glucose for the brain is supplied anyway by gluconeogenesis. We REALLY don’t need much carb grams AT ALL!
Well for 10,000 years the Inuit had sharp enough brains to survive in Canada’s worst and believe me it can get bad. They ate no carbs. Now with carbs they are no doing so well.