You are so right there. When I first was diagnosed I was away from home long-term, and I asked the doc I saw there what diet I should follow. He brushed me off with: “Whatever diet makes you lose weight.” Duh. If I could have found such a diet I would have done it 20 years earlier when the insulin resistance (I know now) first began putting the weight on. When I got home, every dietician I saw said I was doing the right things (I had, for years, been loosely following my mother’s “diabetic diet”). And the one my husband and I recently went to, I had to correct her twice–both times she admitted I was right, yet she still gives the old ADA song and dance (“as we get older we tend to put on extra weight and then we get diabetes”) and she actually didn’t know the purpose of metformin, to fight insulin resistance. I am still disgusted that she is blaming people for their own diabetes (gently said, but still blame). Yuck.
Twix, I think we are on our own. I am still furious that “our” organization, the one all the fight-diabetes dollars go to, is feeding us misinformation, and we have to figure this out on our own. Thank God for sites like this one where we can at least help each other!
Dear Twix.
Can you get someone to write you a prescribtion for some slow and fast acting insulin. I think these are now produced by genetically engineered bacteria and are indentical to human insulin. So no nasty side effects since it is a naturally occuring substance in the body. The long lasting ones are slightly fiddled to be long lasting but still not a problem.
Metformin is great if you can tolerate it, in my case I dont feel well is I take it for more than a week. My friend Dr. Cox said you can live with diabetes but you cant without a liver. I am not sure what metformin does to the liver. Anybody any thoughts?
Once you learn to dose you insulin a bit less difficult than learning to drive, you can control you BG quite well. You could start by using the fast acting insulin and injecting small amounts evry few hours for a few days to find what your total daily insulin needs are and after this is established you can start with half the amount as slow acting and the rest as fast acting and perfect the receipy from there. I found with the oral medication there is no control whatsoever unless you are a very mild diabetic and it is possible (and likely not to be diagnosed by the Doctors) that you are a type 1.5 and need insulin. All Doctors assume that late onset is type 2. Not always so.
Injecting insulin is not painful at all if you have ample tummy grease as I do. Pricking the fingers is not fun.
The only problem is possible weight gain which we need as a hole in the head. But if you can do it, the Dr. Richard Bernstein insulin regime and diet ( very low carb and very low calories) would surely counteract this and even permit you to loose weight…
You are so right.
Yet, all the “Diabetic Educators” out there think the ADA is the ultimate source.
Why should I eat cookies if I don’t want them? They say, “Only eat 2”…I say that will set me up to want more. Why eat something my body simply doesn’t need? Is it too hard for them to understand that if I eat a small amount of something, it is like an appetizer?
They told me it was a myth that diabetics can’t have sugar or candy or desserts.
We all know that sugary foods are highly concentrated in carbs whereas a huge salad isn’t and it is much more food and more nutritious.
Yes, I have encountered the same thing.
I wonder who really funds the ADA.
I learned years ago that a hypoglycemic diet was better for me. I remember eating a stack of pancakes and feeling tired, almost nauseous later. When I ate a whole omelet, as the hypoglycemic diet suggested, I felt great for hours. I remember my grandmother, who was diagnosed as hypoglycemic, making a porkchop for her breakfast.
You are so right.
They are protecting their status in order to make money off us. They won’t ever admit that, but being “advocates” for us is ridiculous. I am tired of being treated like I have been sitting on the sofa my whole life and eating potato chips.
I agree about those groups. I never hear the American Cancer Society, who promotes eating 5 fruits and vegetables a day, telling agribusiness to stop spraying our foods with pesticides and herbicides, because they cause cancer. Nope…
Money rules it all, and it is a rare find to find someone who really knows. I know the Atkins books are a thorn in the side to dieticians. I tried to get some to tell me just why they dislike the Atkins diet.
"Too much protein, not enough carbs!"
Yeah…they want us to eat more carbs, go figure.
It’s insanity!
For the holidays, we ask our families to make donations instead of gifts. Don’t need more stuff. Good thing my in-laws mentioned this before they did it because they were going to make a contribution to the ADA for me. Told them NO!
I agree. I would tell them to put some money in the name of a child in an orphanage in a trust fund, so that when the child is 18, then have some money toward college, a car, whatever, to get on their feet. This way, the money is in the child’s name and the administrators can’t take a chunk of it.
I am glad to see it wasn’t just me who got that stuff from the ADA. They don’t like me very much at all. I told them they are keeping people sick.
First of all I am new to this site and this is my first posting/reply. I can totally sympathise with what you are going through. For me it took finding a new doctor. My old doctor told me everything was my fault. I invited him to come home with me and look in my kitchen and to tell me that same thing again to my face. He laughed at me. I had been gaining so much weight my sister knew before I could tell her that my meds had changed again! I felt so yucky inside and out for so long. Then I found a miracle worker of a doctor. Here is what I did and it might work for you. I had years ago given concideration to the gastric bypass surgery and went to several seminars of a local doctor who performed the surgery which lead to an appointment. At the appointment he told me I wasnt a canidate since all the diets I had been on could not be proven for the insurance companys. In other words I had never been on Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig to show paper proof. He referred me to a doctor who could help me, but if it didnt work out for me he would do the surgery. It worked and I have yet to concider the surgery since. This doc is the best Endo I had ever been to since I was diagnosed in 1995. I meet this doctor in December 2002 and had lost 150lbs in a little over 1 year and needed to lose more. Then I had to go off the diet because I foolishly moved and couldnt find a doctor who would follow the same program. So in turn I had gained back 75lbs due to wrong meds and doctors. Since then I returned home in February 2007, but now I have no insurnace due to no job. But have lost 58 of the 75 I had regained as my doctor at least keeps my scripts filled for me.
So try finding a doctor who does the gastric bypass surgery and see if he could refer you to a good Endo.
How often do you come back to the Cleveland area? This is where I live and noticed you are from here also. Pending how often you come this way I could give you his name and number. Maybe you could work something out with him for when you are here? Sorry for rambling.
I don’t need gastric bypass surgery. I am not overeating. I eat healthy foods. My insurance would not pay for that anyway, but I don’t need it. I don’t have a problem controlling the amount of food I eat. I am glad it worked for you, but I don’t believe making my stomach smaller is going to solve my problem. I can eat 1000 calories a day and not lose weight. I am very good at controlling myself. I wish you luck!
Txicookie,
I learnt that if we decrease our usual daily calories intake by 500 cal only,with brisk walking we start loosing weight,then we maintain the new amount of calories for weeks then we decrease it again by 500,we start loosing weight.I did that with daily walking,lost 7 kg in a month.Weight watchers diet,using exchanges is great,but inbetween we have to increase the calories to maintain weight when we stop losing,to go back to 1200 cal to lose more.
Im not saying you need surgery. What Im saying is that a doctor who performs this would likely know of a good Endo to refer you to. I never had the surgery. It was all diet and an excellent doctor.
I have to go on one on my plan. There are 2 endocrinologists in my area. I saw one, who gave me about 2 minutes of his time, didn’t talk about food, diet, exercise, nothing. Just wrote a script for Metformin. The other endocrinologist here has a dead phone line.
A good internist should be able to handle diabetes. But I have a very limiting insurance plan, and cannot just go and do whatever I think is best…
I have tried reducing my calories to 2000, 1800, 1500, 1200, and finally 1000, and saw no results. I don’t lose weight on calorie reductions or from exercising. I will say on the 1000 calories, it was hard to exercise.
I used to walk and run 3.25 miles per day.According to the physician’s scale, I never lost weight. I kept that up for 6 months, then stopped it. It was insanity.
I refuse to count calories anymore. My doctor said the insulin resistance is what is making it hard for me to lose weight.
Yes, me too Twix. I have always exercised and eaten carefully. I can lose 5 pounds on any diet (but only the FIRST time I use that diet) and then stop losing, while still dieting. Those of us with insulin resistance can finally let go of at least the guilt about our weight, which to me is huge. Although we are still being told, even by diabetic dieticians, that it is the other way around, that we get fat through our lazy sloppy ways and then comes the insulin resistance. It makes us crazy, we go over in our minds…maybe I’ve ben fooling myself all those years and all those diets? No. We are not at fault. If in some way we can lose some weight, yes, it helps, but the insulin resistance is what is working against us.
You are so right. I blasted one dietician on the phone who told me I don’t eat enough carbs. Well, I am going to be eating LESS carbs!
You’d think with what the Metformin does to my body, I would be skinny now. I eat, and I go.
I really believe the ADA is funded by drug companies. No one would tell people with diabetes to eat refined carbohydrates and say it’s okay. "Just in smaller portions!"
Yeah.
Getting real help with this disease is becoming a joke. I have been trying to find a diabetic educator “On My Plan” who can tell me more than "If you have diabetes, you need to diet and exercise."
My patience is running out and I am getting really mean with them.
Heck, I wish someone paid me to tell other people what they can find free online or in books.
Best book I have read yet is Atkins Diabetes Revolution. I am going to the store to try to find foods to eat on that plan.
I don’t know what else to do. I would respect dieticians if they would say, “You know, we really don’t know what to tell you what to do, because we can only basically tell you to do what you have already tried.”
I work in medicine, and I am extra nice to heavy people. I am tired of the media telling us how fat Americans are, and how it is our diet and lifestyle. While that may be true for some people, some of us know we have really tried to be healthy!!
Dear Twix.
You are absolutely right about food making you hungry. The idea of us eating one cookie is analogous to an AA person having only one drink which in principle is good for you.
I think the basic problem with diabetes is that no matter how much you eat the body thinks it is starving. This is probably because some cells are deprived of glucose. Eating more is actually counterproductive as it increases the glucose resistance. If God had made a simple negative feedback loop that when the blood sugar is high you dont feel hungry all of this would not be a problem. This is the case when BG is low you get the munchies but when it is high it does not shut down the appetite.
The problem with dieting is that you will gain it back and more.
I noticed I have to go to bed hungry, with my stomach actually growling, to see a weight loss. I hate that. If I go up enough in food to not have that hunger, I don’t lose.
Steak and whipped cream are healthy for people with diabetes. Have you tried an Atkins diet or the Protein Power diet, doing the diet exactly as described in the 1990s version of the books and avoiding all bogus “low carb foods?” If not, give it a try. You may amaze yourself.
I gained a lot of weight when my blood sugars went out of control and the low fat “healthy diet” with 1200 calories a day which I followed for a whole month during which I was straving to the point of craziness. I lost 1 lb which came back the day I put something in my stomach. Subsequently, I lost 20 lbs in a few weeks on the Protein Power diet eating the classic high fat low carb diet with cream, meat, cheese etc. I have since found that the ONLY way I can lose weight is with low carb dieting. Two years ago I did a month at 1100 calories with a higher carb intake when I was using Januvia which destroyed my appetite and normalized my blood sugar. I still lost no weight (and Januvia turns out to promote the kind of cancer I’m a survivor of, so no more Januvia!.
But I still find low carb will take off a real pound or two in a month of low carb eating for me which at my age and size is pretty good. And I can eat a lot more food so I am not as likely to feel deprived.
If you are a “Low carb virgin” it is well worth a try. The people I know who stall out eating low carb diets are usually people who have done them a couple times–it gets much harder to lose on an LC diet once your body gets hip to the tricks, but the first low carb diet can take the metabolism by surprise and work wonders. (And subsequent LC diets work too, they just take more time.)
But here’s one really important point: If you cut the carbs down dramatically and are still hungry, and if your blood sugar isn’t under 100 mg/dl ALL the time, you may need insulin.
Also, are you on Metformin? I found it really helped me lose weight even though it didn’t do much for my blood sugars, as it took away my appetite and keeps the liver from dumping glucose which can lower blood sugar a lot when you are low carbing especially.
Hi Carl from phoenix. I know what you are going through. Please go to this web sight it will help every one
www.lifestylecenter.org I went to the seminar if works Remember one thing if you don’t put you health 1st nothing else matters.