Mary, great work! and Yahoo ! that u have a doctor interested enough to even give you a diet to work with. Thanks for sharing that with us. I use chicken or turkey to make soup with & there is no fat to scoop off the top. No fat in the homemade soups but i love Italian seasoning in my soups. It’s that darn “high fructose corn syrup” that is seemingly everything that i have to watch out for ( among the other stuff). Made my day when i had to get some new winter clothes becos the old ones are too big. It took me quite some time to begin to shed some pounds. Turns out some medications i was on for other things were helping keep the lbs on ! Well won’t keep you. TY Mary 
Read Gary Taubes and stop worrying about fats!
Hi Hana,
thanks for the info.
I googled Gary Taubes and one the first things I found was this:
Why most of us believe that exercise makes us thinner—and why we’re wrong
- By Gary Taubes
- Published Sep 24, 2007
Hmmmm this sounds like something i’d like to believe but no matter how much I’d like to believe it I really don’ t think it’s true.
Anyway I’ll keep searching to see what he says about diabetes & diets but so far I am not impressed with what he’s had to say.
Read his book Good Calories Bad Calories where he cites all the evidence .It’s pretty densely packed and all the references take up several pages in the back. There’s an interesting bit in Atkins too and if you google “diabetes and low fat diets” you may come up on the Swedish University study, that is brilliant.
My own evidence is that I’ve been eating low carb, and quite high fat for 6 months and lost 30 pounds. My cholesterol and triglycerides are very low too.
Execise will make you thinner only if it’s pretty extreme. That doesn’t man that he says not to do it, but to do it for general fitness and wellbeing, rather than to expect to get thin. the thinnest people I know hardly move, so it can’t be that simple. My weight loss has stalled, but I’m not gaining and my Diabetes nurse is sure I’ve put on muscle mass, because I have dropped nearly 3 dress sizes. I exercise an hour at least 4 times a week and I’m over 60. I also walk everywhere I can. In fact I’m just going to walk up to our village centre in the rain!
Just wanted to let everyone know my progress so far. I have NOT taken the metofomin but am trying very hard to control this with diet. I do not like taking meds so this is my last attempt to control this with diet and i am doing GREAT! so far. I found for me breakfast used to be 4 poptarts and 2 LARGE glasses of OJ. Today some dry bacon and 1 glass of oj and maybe 1 single rice crispy treat. After about 2 hours i am back to 95 to 110 . for lunch i eat 10 peices of deep fryed chicken (I cook myself in veg oil) and 1 Coke 8 OZ with BBQ sauce. The coke is to give me some sugars as the chicken has 0 and there is no or little colestoral as it is veggitable oil i am cooking it in. Usially for dinner sence i sleep 8 to 12 hours i eat whatever i want i treat myself to something i probbly should not have like BK or WENDYS or something with a lot of carbs and sugars so i can make it till morning. and at morning i am back to 90 to 110 … Wendys and BK are only once and a while not every day but i used them as an example and so far so good. I use spenda a LOT sence i love tea and drink like 1 gallon a day. NON-Cafinated.
Another question i have about this is DOES ANYONE HAVE BELLS PALSY with this and how does that effect you
as i have it and i dont know if its the sugars effecting my BP
John, I just met a woman who is recovering from Bells Palsy which she claimed was a result of her high BS…she has had T1 for 14 years. I had never heard of Bells Palsy as a complication, but she said it was all related to nerve damage. Congratulations on your getting control of your #'s. I would say that maybe a bit of broccoli or spinach might be called for…
Hana, I have just started reading Dr Bernstein so I will get more info as I go along, but one worry I have about going very low carb is not getting the nutrients in whole grains and beans. Maybe I think I know some about nutrtion, but like you, my thoughts will change. Is it just a matter of the bad out weighing the good?
Congratulaions on being so in control…you and the other successful, knowledgeable people on this site are such inspiration.
Elaine,
The only vitamins you would miss on a very low carb regimen is B vitamins. An ordinary multivitamin supplements that.
I ate a low carb diet for over 6 years without difficulty.
I’m back on a very low carb regimen right now, thanks to a bunch of problems that developed with my last insulin regimen, and I’m getting completely normal blood sugars. It took a few weeks to adapt but after 3 weeks I’m feeling great and very energetic.
I know many other people who have eaten low carb for years quite healthily. The most significant thing is that none of them are developing any of the classic diabetic complications. Bernstein’s claims about that are completely true.
There’s nothing in the main carbohydrate foods that’s essential and can’t be got elsewhere. Some of the B vitamin group you need to watch though. Bernstein, Taubes, Atkins and Mendosa have all the information between them. Mendosa is on-line. the others are mainly in books. the great thing about Bernstein is that he’s had hundreds of patients for dozens of years and definitley shown that it works in the long term as well as the short term. The diabetes symposium, which you can also find on-line ( you need your sound on) is wonderfully enthusiastic, informative and life-enhancing…
I keep in control MOST of the time, but I do have slip ups. It was hard at first, but it grew on me. I’ve been desperate about my overweight for years and nothing seemed to work. I followed the Low fat Healthy Balanced diet and walked and ended up with diabetes and a stroke. This present way of life has given me hope that now in my late years, I might escape from those surplus pounds. The weight gain was triggered by a Thyroid gland blip in my 20s.
I have never been a regular user of convenience food. I cook from scratch almost all the time. I think I buy about 2bags (2kgs each) of sugar per year, mainly for my son-in-law tto put in his tea and coffee or for other visitors.
Here in England most people don’t sugar their tea any more. It definitely tastes better without. Essentially, for anyone. Whatever keeps those numbers down is good for you. I couldn’t do it on what you’ve written that you eat. I also think Metformin is wonderful and safe. I think we’ve had it in Europe longer than the US.
I hope you are proud of your hard work, dedication and success. I too, am glad to eat and cook healthfully, for the most part…I guess I will be learning a new way to think of what is healthy. Thanks for your thoughts.
Jenny, I envy you the energy! and congrats on the great #"s…You know, it helps so much just to have you more knowledgeable members spell it out. I guess your last point says it all. The bottom line is avoiding complications. Thanks for the information and good luck to you.
Elaine,
This will be my 10th year after diagnosis (though I probably had blood sugar abnormalities all my life, just didn’t know it.)
Probably the most important thing I’ve learned–which none of the books tell you–is that what I do for control constantly changes. I will do one thing for a few months, and then something will change, then I’ll do something else, so it’s always a work in progress.
But as I go along, I learn all the different tools that are available and what their plusses and minuses are.
People tend to think there is ONE way, but for me there isn’t. My dad was a guy who ate the same meal for breakfast and lunch every day of his life for maybe 50 years. I can’t eat the same stuff for three weeks!
But if you keep those healthy blood sugar targets in mind, and do your best, accepting that sometimes you’ll do great and other times stuff comes up and you don’t, but you keep on going.
It’s the KEEP ON GOING part of diabetes that is the challenge, and I tend to oscillate between great and good enough with occasional excursions into could be better. And I’m realistic now after almost a decade to accept that long term success means being able to make room for some foods that would give Dr. Bernstein hives. Did I mention, he really reminds me of my dad?
WELL I certainly couldn’t eat like that! I had to make changes that included cutting out he corn syrup, hydrogentaed or partially hydrogenated oil, cut out fried foods altogether, go on a low carb food program and change over to splenda which i use sparingly. I also have had to eat on a time schedule and start getting some excersise. All i can say is the best of luck to you and i’m certainly glad to hear your BG is more normal.
Jenny…you are great. As mentioned, I am reading Dr B with hopes of finding some inspiration. I really appreciate your encouragement and realistic approach. I have enough self knowledge to know that I need to have the freedom for hive causing cheats, or I’d never be able to commit. I just hope that I accept enough of the premise for it to be effective…I can see myself wanting to break more rules than I stick to…just as I have been doing all along, actually. Time to get serious…
Is Dr B reminding you of your dad a good or bad thing? If it makes you feel young and rebellious, it could have possibilities…
If you read Bernstein, Taubes and Atkins, you will certainly re-think what is healthy. I managed today to have only a tiny bit or the roast potatoes I did for lunch. I was VERY restrained. I did eat some fruit for dessert though. My daughter and son-in-law came for Sunday Lunch of Meatloaf, roast potatoes, brussels sprouts, beetroot and gravy followed by fruit salad and cream. I ate left over red cabbage this evening. It was delicious with a scrap of left-over salami.
John,
Check out the website: www.mendosa.com for tips and info. Also, check out my site: http://healthychangesforlife.blogspot.com - I show you what eat and what my readings have been each day.
I no longer eat junk food or salted or fried foods. I make 98% of my meals at home and measure out portions. You think this is easy, but it’s not. I have been doing this since Dec. 07 and slowly I am seeing change.
Look at the sites I Mentioned. IF you have a question, email David Mendosa. He will gladly respond.
Note that these changes take time to do. Take it one day at a time. Step by step, you will get to your goal.
I concur on contacting David Mendosa. I have corresponded with him fairly often . He’s, helpful, knowledgeable and charming.
Also for me, besides this web forum, David has been the most supportive to me.
I have a little book with all the nutritional data. I also have an electronic food scale, with a tare option. Being in Britain, I don’t need to caculate availble carbs. We only measure those. Indigestible carbs go in as Fibre. Being a scientist, I tend to work in percentages with rounded up numbers… This morning I had a portion of Greek whole-milk yoghurt. Portion was 84 grams and at 3% carb, that’s 2.4 grams. I added a little raspberry jam at 70% carbs, my 5g teaspoonful, estimates at 3.5 g carbs.
It’s all very easy. delicious too and so much better than those sugar filled, low-fat so-called Healthy yoghurts. I’ve been investigating the availability of the Da Vinci syrups here too, so they can flavour my yoghurt.
I’m trying to keep to Dr. Bernstein’s 6: 12: 12.
For John; Get the Dr. Bernstein book it will enable you to work everything out