I’ve mostly been lurking on TuDiabetes (so many sites, so little time), but I’d like some help.
I’m the author of “The First Year: Type 2 Diabetes,” and I’m considering writing a new book that would focus on nutrition. So I’m wondering:
If you wanted to know more about nutrition, what topics would interest you the most?
Thanks for any help.
A " chapter" for those, who do and do not have diabetes and forget to" push away from the table " , when it is time ???..one can call it " mindful eating " …I am paraphrasing the nutritional educators I have met along the way . .
nel, I find this “just push away from the table” explanation of obesity a form of blaming the patient. Thin people often eat more than fat people. What we need to understand is why some people eat too much. It’s difficult not to eat when you feel that you’re starving.
Jeffrey Friedman, who discovered leptin, said at an obesity conference last fall that concept that the main problem is that fat people eat too much and don’t exercise enough (as if it’s just a matter of self-control) is “a view mostly espoused by thin people.”
But thanks for the input anyway. Everything helps. And I know there are some people who eat because of emotional problems.
Another thought: Do thin people have higher basal metabolism rates, and higher body temperatures? And do they excrete unused calories, where fatter people metabolize every last one?
I suppose my Netherland background , 1940- 1945 , including the Hunger Winter of 1944 taught me something about real " starving " !!! …another story .
I got lazy in the seventies, when I drove to work instead of walking to work , had a milkshake ( I owned a milk shake gadget then ) after my meal , gained some weight , saw the light and changed my mode of operation , pushed away from the table …cut out the shake and started to move …I still do both
I am not " blaming the patient " …just trying to tell how it worked for me so far. I know, if I for what ever reason can’t move as well as presently , I need to take in less or else I will need a new ward robe .
I am familiar with all the stats you just wrote. But still information trickles down to these groups. Information and education is the only way to try and break down some of these time honor traditions and myths about diabetes in these communities. There are belief systems in different groups that can only be explained by members of that group. I don’t like lumping everybody together as if we all don’t have our own diabetic story to exhibit.
Telling me stats doesn’t prove anything especially since I already know the information. Most of the groups you mentioned are on the bottom of the economic ladder. If I remember correctly you wrote an article about hard it was for disadvantage people to take care of themselves while being diabetic. These groups are whom you are taking about.
I am sure we wish we could be like your Vermont neighbor and eat a box of cookies. I remember those day of eating 3 bags of chips in one sitting…
Emmy, I want a superfood that will make me tall and willowy.
I would second the fact that good blood sugar control has A LOT to do with ME doing the food preparation.
Given that I am a type 1 diabetic on a pump, I have found that tight blood sugar control can come from moderate (but not even low) carb intake (up to 50g per meal) combined with very accurate carb counting with a scale in my kitchen.
There is no good substitute for food prepared by me!
In Europe, fiber is not even listed as a carb on nutrition labels. Through some discussions that I had on TuD, I also learned that people have very different experiences about whether or not to count fiber as a carb. I subtract it out, which seems to work for me.
I would be curious to know more about the glycemic index and how much it really matters (and for whom!).
I am a type 1 diabetic on an insulin pump. My endo and dietician convinced me to pay attention to GI and to only eat maximum 10g of fast acting carbs at a time. I am currently 8 months pregnant and I found that this was the secret to getting my postprandial blood sugars to stay under 140. It could eat 40g of low GI carbs without a spike! Many other type 1s here tell me that GI doesn’t matter for us, but limiting high GI carbs (without severely limiting carbs) has worked well for me.
Kristin, The late Ron Sebol, an engineer, devised a spreadsheet in which you would input your carbs, their GI, and the amount of arginine, which he thought was especially important in protein (not sure I agree with the latter), and I think some other things, and it would calculate units of insulin. I think you can get the spreadsheets at the Diabetes Self-Management e-mail list site:
DSM-L Website http://tbinet.org/dsm
With his system, he got great A1cs, but then he also died from a heart attack, so who knows whether the system is a good one or not. He continued to eat things like pizza.
Thanks Gretchen! I will check it out!
Not sure how anyone could come up with a formula that would provide uniform insulin dosing, since we all have very varied I:C ratios based on a number of factors. I personally find even John Walsh’s information (which I, like many of us, highly respect) is less universally applicable when it ventures into formulas. There are just too many personal variables. I apologize I haven’t read your first book as I’m Type 1, (though I’ve heard very good things about it) but I believe acknowlegement of the number of variables and giving ideas of how to determine one’s individual system based on these variables is important in any book about diabetes (nutrition or other topics).
Kristin, that’s great! Do some googling on ‘glycemic load’ too.
Yeah I think glycemic load is far more valuable and a better indicator than individual glycemic indexes.
I think Ron’s spreadsheets included personal factors lie I:C. He spent more than 6 months working with one woman to determine some factors. But I never tried to use them because I wasn’t injecting bolus insulin and his explanations were often not clear.
I only looked at them for a few minutes & did not really play with them (yet), but I was impressed that he was at least bolusing for protein.
Thanks for the tip!! I hadn’t heard about this. I have been eating a fixed number of carbs at each meal and snack during pregnancy – so I think that I was effectively using glycemic load, but I will be more intentional about it now!
I use the glycemic index/load protocol …the difference between eating mashed potatoes( high GI ) and boiled potatoes with skin( much lower GI ) is the difference between day and night , so to speak …to put it more bluntly : if I have a low BG mashed spuds could be used as a treatment to get number up !!!
PS I use Dex4 pills 