She does use a CGM and I agree that the most successful management of overall BG is done by motivated people with diabetes management informed by their CGM trends. You can learn a lot in the beginning from some medical professionals but the really important lessons come from the customized glucose trends provided by your unique CGM data output over time.
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OOPS, missed that - sorry
I can totally appreciate your perspective, and thankyou for elaborating, there’s a lot to digest here. I will certainly take your warnings on board and look further into the cholesterol story. I assume from your profile picture that you have some Asian admixture? This might speak to what I was referring to earlier, despite any European background. It’s the expression of genes that tells the story, which is different for each and every one of us but can be heavily influenced by our heritage.
Fortunately I don’t experience the symptoms you have with low-carb and I’m sorry to hear you did, you have clearly made the correct choice for yourself to wonderful effect! We must all listen to what our own bodies at telling us.
Factory farming is not really a thing in Australia, other than with chickens, or imported food (which we don’t have a lot of, what with being a food bowl ourselves), although you’d have to be a massive jerk to choose those very cheap poultry or imported options as there are plenty of friendlier, safer and still affordable alternatives, but there’s always someone who will buy them so they still exist. We don’t suffer from the same kind of lack of nutrition and cruelty that seems so common from factory farming practices elsewhere which is why Australian food is world renowned for quality.
Carnivore can easily meet our nutritional requirements (which plant-based can’t: i.e. heme iron, which cannot be replaced with non-heme iron as the propaganda will tell you, but I digress), but like a plant-based diet it must be done thoughtfully, and include organ meats etc. Dr Bernstein’s diet advice is inadequate with respect to that level of nutritional detail (not surprising for a doctor), but he wrote it early on in the low-carb game, and we know a lot more now. Also it would have to be 600 pages plus to include all of that 
I don’t follow his guidance strictly, just use the carb limits as guidance for how I normally eat if I do eat carbs at all and I feel totally fine for it.
I was vegan as a teenager (I’m in my 40s now), so I’m aware of those kind of reasons for being vegetarian and after taking in a lot of US and EU propaganda (I don’t mean that in a negative sense, it’s just what it was) I went vegetarian, then vegan, but I realised as an adult and doing my own investigations that those arguments just don’t bear out in Australia. Animals are raised and slaughtered to a high ethical standards, you simply can’t sell meat from terrified animals as it is spoiled by cortisol etc. Our people will boycott unethical treatment of livestock, hence stopping live animal trading to Indonesia back in the day (controversial as to how much that achieved, but we tried). Personally, I am totally fine ethically with where I am in the food chain, it is entirely possible to respect the life of an animal while taking it, but each to our own. I was very careful with meeting my nutritional requirements as a vegetarian/vegan/plant-based/whatever you want to call it now, but it was only after I went back on meat I realised I felt a whole lot better for it.
I also happen to now live in the food bowl of my state so I see those practices upfront, cattle and sheep here are grassfed and travel a very short distance to the local processing plant, and it’s entirely possible to work with regenerative farming practises to improve soil fertility rather than harming it like broadacre monocropping (i.e. grains) does. There’s no burning down stubble when you’re raising livestock either which is a hideous practice, no soil erosion, etc. What vegetables I eat, I grow myself for those reasons, hopefully in time we’ll be growing our own meat too. There are positives and negatives to both sides, we must all make our own decisions as they work best for us individually in the environment we find ourselves in.
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Hi Samantha, thank you for all of your thoughts. I have no Asian blood, and have never before been told I look a bit Asian. Must be the photo.
I will be 72 in January and will be starting my 64th year as a type 1 diabetic. At this point I am doing what I need to do, so that my husband and I can continue to live healthy and happy lives without more cancer and hopefully without heart attacks or strokes. I have always lived a non mainstream life and I analyze everything, so I am well acquainted with the range of cholesterol beliefs that are out there. It was easy for me to believe that statins are bad and that cholesterol is not a problem. I read the books and listened to the speakers. Even after getting stents I kept following Dr Bernstein’s advice, because of how well it was helping my diabetes. It was a huge mistake to just ignore the cause of my need for stents. I was on the diet several years before I started having episodes of passing out and suffering with complex migraines. I actually didn’t leave the diet until I started gaining weight. I feel soooo much better now. I also have much more energy.
I am very happy to hear that Australia has laws in place for how animals are treated. I know folks who dearly love their cats and dogs, but totally ignore how abhorrent factory farming is in the US. Eating meat, because they like the taste, is much more important to them than giving any thought to how the animals they consume are treated. Many give it absolutely no thought. When I was eating meat, I ate meat from free range animals and bought only free range eggs. I now realize that unless you know the people raising the animals, that the animals are probably suffering. It is best to raise your own animals and grow your own food, but realistically that will never happen for many reasons. I live on land that we share with up to 70 turkeys, with many deer with occasional visits from moose and bear, but we don’t allow hunting. Our son grows much of our produce, without using chemicals, at his house.
I have read the results about how well vegan eating works for the 7th Day Adventists in Loma Linda, Calif. They are among the longest living people in the world. They are vegans, who don’t drink or smoke and get plenty of exercise. They eat grains, lentils, legumes nuts and seeds, and plenty of fruit and vegetables. They also don’t suffer from Alzheimer’s.
We all need to eat in ways that suit our bodies and personalities, for me that means a healthy low fat plant based diet with almost no processed foods. If I lived in a country that did not have factory farming, I might eat some meat.
If we want to continue this conversation, we should probably do it through private messaging. I have enjoyed our discussions so far.
Marilyn
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I stand corrected re: the genetics! It’s wild how easy it is to misinterpret images or concepts based off a small amount of information.
Yes, we are very much off topic, a discussion on vegetarianism certainly has no place in a thread about exercising while carnivorous.
All the best to you and your family, and all the wonderful creatures in your care!
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C-peptide test normal range starts at 0.5, so you are actually pretty close to normal range, and far from having “toasted” beta cells. Speaking as someone who was diagnosed as T1 while a teenager decades ago, it sounds to me like you are still close to the beginning of your diabetes journey.
I do consider exercise to be an important part of managing T1 diabetes well, and I run or row (hard) several times every week. There are many of us on this board who are dedicated exercisers, but as far as I know, none of us eat an ultra low carb “carnivore” diet. Like Eric, I consider eating carb an important part of exercise performance, and like Marilyn I consider a diet containing veg, fruit and whole grain the best model for long term health. Unlike Marilyn I include some meat and fish as well as fats (olive oil etc) in my diet, which in my case is roughly modeled on the Mediterranean diet.
Personally a “carnivore” diet would be about the last diet choice I would make, because it frankly sounds repellent to me. But if you think it works for you, then have at it - everyone needs to find the diet that works best for them. I am, however, curious what kind of “carnivore” propaganda (as you said, it’s just what it is) you are listening to if you believe all the things you’ve written about vegetarians, vegans, heme, livestock, etc. Wow.
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That’s encouraging to know about C-peptide, I appreciate the update, and you’re quite right, I was diagnosed in July this year, so I’m still definitely a noob to diabetes (and not surprised my doctors steered me wrong on my numbers). However, I am not a noob when it comes to diet debates - I have decades of knowledge and experience in the full spectrum of that realm.
Frankly, I find debating about diet extremely tedious. Vegetarianism/eating vegetables/whatever should never have been raised in this thread, it was specifically and purposefully excluded by the subject, yet here we are. I replied to @Marilyn6 because, despite her trying to divert the thread, she was respectful, so I thought it might be an amusing diversion to air out a little bit of the debate for a lark, however disinterested I am. One can only assume that anything I wrote would fall on deaf “ears” so to speak due the nature of proselytisers, so I knew it was pointless, but hey, I had a little time, so what the hell. That’s my mistake, and I’ll be careful not to make it again.
Where @Marilyn6 was respectful, you have not had the same finesse, so I feel comfortable responding in kind.
Personally, I cannot emphasise the extent to which I could not care less about how other people choose to eat: I would never tell you, or anyone else, how to eat, or balk at the validity of anyone else’s opinions, and I’ll appreciate you doing the same in future. I’ve done all the things, I’ve held all the opinions, and I understand how anyone can come to any of the conclusions, because I’ve already been there, so I know there’s no point to telling you (or anyone) what you should do or believe because we all need to arrive at our own decisions, so I will only concern myself with my decisions. I could reply to your assumptions, but idgaf, so…
Given how my first experience of this forum is to have my thread subverted by the clique, I won’t bother asking the other questions I have on this forum, there’s clearly an agenda to propagate “the one true diet faith” so outlining a scope for a thread is not only pointless, but will invite more of the same as what’s happened here. How droll…
The scope of the original post has been asked and answered, so from here on I won’t bother to engage with anything other than what addresses the actual question at hand, and let’s face it, in all likelihood I won’t come back at all, so the clique can rejoice: the enemy has been routed. Well done.
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I’ve been participating here for a long time and the diet choices people make are not monolithic.
I’d be sorry to see your intention to leave so quickly but I understand. I wish that all members would be kind in their comments but alas that is an unrealistic expectation in almost any forum. I find that this forum tends to keep rude comments to a minimum. Rudeness is a choice I just don’t get.
I’ve enjoyed your articulate, balanced and well-thought out comments.
By the way, I think that the original poster has more latitude in widening the discussion. Your respectful disagreement about conflicting diets was artfully and respectfully done.
I’m disappointed in the likes that the rude comment got. I think that people don’t understand what the carnivore way of eating means. There are actually people who have suffered for years with debilitating mental health but have made astounding recoveries adopting the carnivore way of eating.
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Your post was OK, but would have been better without this last bit.
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Please hang in there. Many of us will be sorry to see you go and lose your carefully elucidated perspectives. This forum is all about learning from each other. We read about what works well for one member and then evaluate and make a decision if we want to try and see if it works for our individual case. Yes, there are members that heavily proselytize certain opinions and that is fine as long as it is in terms of what works for them. It crosses the line when it goes from this works for me to “you should or you must or everyone needs to etc” My understanding is that nobody on this site has the right to either give medical advice or tell another member what they should or should not do.
A few others cross the line by stating “that’s a fact” when it is merely hearsay of something they heard from someone else maybe including their doctor which they may have misunderstood or maybe is a fact only for their particular case. When these types of statements are made, they should either be backed up by relevant linked published articles or disclosed as an opinion and who holds that opinion.
Please reconsider and know that as a group we crave and have a huge thirst of knowledge for everything diabetic and diabetes-related. So if you leave, it will not only be our loss but most likely your loss in the long run as well.
Relax and enjoy the holidays!!!
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That’s a fair point, I probably should have just ignored all the misinformation. She’s the one who called Marilyn’s belief in vegetarianism “propaganda”. I just didn’t take kindly to her attacking Marilyn, who in my opinion was simply trying to sincerely warn her about her own experience. That Asian thing was not a good way to start.
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Look, don’t run away, no one is trying to chase you off. Just keep in mind that the people you are interacting with on this forum have a very long history of living and thriving with diabetes. So joining to push your personal extreme diet agenda with misstatements about other diets is not going to go unchallenged.
Is that unfair, is this really an extreme diet? Let’s see - carnivore diet, proudly referred to by practitioners as beef/butter/bacon/egg diet. Meat and nothing but meat every day for every meal, with zero vegetables or fruit or grains or nuts. And you seriously state that “Carnivore can easily meet our nutritional requirements (which plant-based can’t)” Really, vegetarians cannot meet their nutritional requirements? Maybe you should tell the 15 - 20% of the world that eats a vegetarian diet.
Be that as it may, no one here wants to convince you to change the way you eat. I do not care what you eat. Keep in mind, I am not even a vegetarian. But YOU raised this issue, and you attacked vegetarianism, even though you claim you thought it would “be an amusing diversion to air out a little bit of the debate for a lark”. Sorry but that came across as a diatribe, not a diversion, and it didn’t come across as a lark: I viewed it as an attack on Marilyn. If that wasn’t your intent, then accept my apology.
So stick around, you are early in your diabetes journey, and there are lots of people here with a lot of experience in dealing with this disease every day, day after day.
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Please @Samantha8 don’t give up on the forum. There are many, many people with a lot of insights to the ins and outs of diabetes.
I am always so fascinated by the passion about a person’s diet choices. This is not one of my favorite topics because of the bickering back and forth about what is better for you.
The reality here is, only each person can decide what is best for them. You can read the post and take the info in or you can skip over it and find another post to read. I read about peoples successes with low carb, high fat, high protein, high carb, high fiber and find it interesting how we all have different ways we deal with our diabetes. And what works for me, will not work for everyone.
I am all for sharing ideas but I hate when we start bickering. I just take the info and if it can work for me, great and if not, I move on. I have stopped pushing my treatment plan on others. I always say, this works for me but your diabetes will vary.
So please keep asking questions and don’t give up on all of us. Just tune people out. I don’t read all post, I don’t answer or reply to post that I don’t have enough knowledge to help or I don’t want to open a huge can of worms.
Most of us are pretty open minded to realize we are all different. Hang in there @Samantha8 with your new journey. It will get easier and you figure out the work around that work for you.
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