I agree that I’d much rather use Insulin than other drugs if I need it…and doing low carb helps me to take as little as I can.

My doc is totally supportive of low carb diets for diabetics, which is not the norm for this area.

I lost about 55 pounds when I first discovered the diabetes using Protein Power…got my AC1 down to 5.5 but after my compulsary visits to dieticians who were horrified about my diet…I added in more carbs…which added in more weight. Which added in more Insulin…which added in more weight.

Now we have decided I can skip the dietician classes and do what works for me!

Sorry for the ramble…just some pent up frustration with the dieticians I guess.

Ressy

You’ve learned a valuable lesson: avoid dietitians like death.  In all my years of practice I’ve come across only a couple who appeared to have good sense.  Their training totally fills their heads with idiocy.

I don’t know if the Protein Power program ever actually goes so far as to say that carbohydrates aren’t really a food (certainly high fructose corn syrup isn’t!), but my determination is that essentially that’s the gist of it. I am trying to get myself to look at substances like sugar and white flour, not as a food, but more like something akin to cocaine–it can go into your body but what does it do when it gets in there? The people you speak about here may as well be eating mounds of dirt, or sand, or sawdust; they’re eating and eating and eating and their body is sitting there waiting and waiting and waiting for some real food to come in. It’s not getting it, so it keeps signaling “I’m empty!” Unfortunately, the “non-food” that they are eating is one that the body can store as adipose tissue. But give them some real food that the body craves and they will won’t have to ingest so much and suddenly even a rather small portion will feel like a lot.

You’ve hit the nail on the head.  It’s hunger at the cellular level that is important and that drives the body to seek food and decrease the metabolic rate.  If the cells are starved – even in the face of a lot of food calories – the hunger signals go out.  And you’re right that carbs tend to feed the fat and not the non-adipose cells creating a hunger even in the face of plenty of ‘food.’ 

If you are insulin dependant diabetic type 2 does the process of adding more insulin to your body make it even more difficult to lose weight? Or is the use of the insulin to keep numbers in a more normal range, which helps one to feel better and be more active, a good solution.

thanks

Ressy

In my opinion the best solution is to follow a low-carb diet with the help of a physician who understands how low-carb diets work.  If the low-carb diet doesn’t almost immediately solve the blood sugar problems a little insulin isn’t problematic.  I like insulin in very small doses better than any of the oral drugs that are available. 

It seems I can gain pretty quickly when I eat a diet low in protein and high in carbs. Even if it is just a few sugary items each day I grow. I always gain on a low fat high carb diet. My doctor put me on Phentermine and I gained 10lbs. I ate less but all I craved was carbohydrate. Of course I stopped taking that crap.

Since then I have had a terrible time “staying on track” and feel I’ve lost my way a bit and have gained an additional 10 lbs in 2 months. Mostly from having a muffin with my coffee, some rice or corn with my dinner, skipping lunches, having flax cereal for dinner. Very random eating. But it has been low protein high carb. And it is a downward spiral for me.

I know if I eat more calories, albeit adequate protein and fats, I lose weight rather quickly. Why is this? It seems hard to eat the quantity of food required to get my protein requirement in. I know this will work. I have lost 50 lbs this way and felt wonderful. I ate a tremendous amount while losing it.

I am certain if i ceased to eat completely I would lose weight, but that is something that i am afraid to consider. As a young woman it is a tempting thought. It is terribly painful being overweight sometimes.

Hi Marcella–

No a calorie isn’t a calorie isn’t a calorie.  The idea that it is is nonsense.  A calorie represents a precise amount of energy contained in a food but doesn’t tell anything about the hormonal consequences of eating that food.  Carbohydrate calories are much more fat inducing that fat and/or protein calories, which is why you did so well on a higher protein, higher fat diet, and is why you’re having so much difficulty when you consume the carbs that you’re now consuming.

I hope you switch back to the protein and fat.

Best–

MRE 

Regards,

Charles

Interesting.  I never really thought about how retailers would stock clothes today. Must be a real pain to be ‘normal’ sized. 

Hi Pablo–

My thoughts…

You are young and you are extremely active.  Both of these situations allow one to eat much more carbs than one who is old and sedentary.  I was the same way when I was young and active, but, believe me, it catches up with you.  I always had trouble gaining weight despite how ever much I ate.  Now I have just the opposite problem.  If I’m on my normal low-carb diet, I’m great; if I go on a carb debauch for a long weekend or during vacation, here come the pounds.  What I don’t know is if I hadn’t eaten so many carbs when I was young, would I still have the difficulty I have today?

Hope this helps.

MRE 

I don’t know why her doctor would be any different than most of them.
“You’re a liar, you just eat too much and lie about it.”
Diabetics hear that all the time, even the ones that _can_ manage to stick to the high carb, low cal, low fat ADA exchange diet. They hear it if they are still gaining weight and they hear it if their BG is still out of control. They must be lying, it couldn’t be the diet, after all, calories in, calories out. . . No wonder some diabetics say, “The hell with it, f ‘em all, I’ll eat what I want.” The local diabetic educator here, an RN, has been labeled noncompliant. God forbid somebody recommend one of those ‘dangerous high protein diets’ that she warned me against in her class.

Yeah, I’m bitter. The last hundred pounds I gained could have been avoided if a doctor would have just explained to me why I was so hungry all the time, and I did ask.

For the last half century or so the medical profession has been in the grip of the eat-less, exercise-more mentality, which does not work.  People trying to lose weight on low-fat, high-carb diets are doomed to failure, yet medical professionals continue to put their patients on these diets despite the vast literature that they don’t work.

Low-carb diets reduce hunger in the majority of people who follow them.  There is no doubt that there exists individual variability in how much carb reduction is required to reach the no-hunger state.  I’ve had some patients who got their with a fairly modest reduction, and I’ve also had some who had to cut carbs to the absolute bone (so to speak) to reach the non-hunger state.  It can be a tricky business, and it’s a real shame that most practicing physicians are so woefully ill informed as to how to successfully treat the overweight.

Best–

MRE 

Comparisons to camps where people who were starved were skin and bones is a very bad one I think. All those people in the camps were skinny – but you wouldn’t call them healthy would you? Many of them died of malnutrition.

I can’t for the life of me understand the rationale of those folks who want us all to have BMI’s under 25 when it’s those in the 25-30 range that have the best mortality rates. Skinny doesn’t equal healthy and overweight doesn’t equal unhealthy. Sure the morbidly obese have a lot of health problems – but that doesn’t mean everyone has to be a size 6 to be healthy.

I agree that the rise in obesity correlates with the rise in bad dietary advice, i.e., to follow low-fat, high-carb diets, which have never been shown to bring about permanent weight loss. 

The concentration camp example was to show that if people don’t eat, they lose weight.  The inmates of Dauchau certainly weren’t healthy, but they did lose weight.

I’m not sure there is reliable evidence that those in the BMI range you cited had the best mortality rates.  And since BMI is such a lousy way to measure anything, I wouldn’t believe anything using that as a standard anyway.

Cheers–

MRE