"Wheat Belly" by William Davis MD

[Magisham]

Has anyone read this book and, if so, have you tried what he is suggesting to reverse type 2 diabetes? How easy did you find it and was it successful? It goes against everything the dieticians tell you about eating plenty of wholemeal bread, pasta, etc. Thanks.

 

[NoCrbs4Me]

I stopped eating wheat about a month ago. The only carbs I get are from whole milk and fresh non-starchy vegetables. The wholemeal thing is a load of **** - for me, anyway. All that stuff raises my blood sugar, just like rice, potatoes, and any other carbohydrate. By cutting carbs to around 50 g a day my blood sugar seems to be pretty close to the low end of prediabetes levels. I found it pretty easy to switch to a low carb high fat diet. Don't really feel hungry much and lost about 8 pounds over 3 months and improved my lipid numbers. I went on a 20 km hike on the weekend and only ate about 80 g carbs all day (I decided to eat a bit more than usual given the amount of exercise I was doing) and had no problems.

 

[JTL]

Has anyone read this book and, if so, have you tried what he is suggesting to reverse type 2 diabetes? How easy did you find it and was it successful? It goes against everything the dieticians tell you about eating plenty of wholemeal bread, pasta, etc. Thanks.

Many of us here have given up that kind of stuff.
No bread wheat pasta rice spuds lots of fats and the weight is coming off energy levels up blood pressure down blood sugars under control.
Low carb high fat ... my doctors don't like it but can't argue with the results.
Telling you to have weetabix and other cereals for breakfast is dicing with your health.
Ideally they should say ... eat these two weetabix and then test.
As for the picture of the healthy plate ... utter tosh.
See what's right for you though.
From what I'm seeing around me ... the people who take the official advice seriously struggle with diabetes ... often getting worse.
The people who come here and read absorb listen and try a different approach ... a different approach that has science medics etc on side and results ... are the ones ... like me ... who start seeing improvements almost straight off.

 

[JTL]

Have a looky here ... http://www.dietdoctor.com/lchf and have a look in the foods diets section of this place.

 

[Magisham]

I stopped eating wheat about a month ago. The only carbs I get are from whole milk and fresh non-starchy vegetables. The wholemeal thing is a load of **** - for me, anyway. All that stuff raises my blood sugar, just like rice, potatoes, and any other carbohydrate. By cutting carbs to around 50 g a day my blood sugar seems to be pretty close to the low end of prediabetes levels. I found it pretty easy to switch to a low carb high fat diet. Don't really feel hungry much and lost about 8 pounds over 3 months and improved my lipid numbers. I went on a 20 km hike on the weekend and only ate about 80 g carbs all day (I decided to eat a bit more than usual given the amount of exercise I was doing) and had no problems.

 

[Magisham]

Thanks for that. Any time my partner has carbs his sugar goes sky high. The hospital said to cut right back on fat, but he seems fine on bacon and eggs and stuff like that. We've had a couple of barbeques where he's had loads of meat, olives, hummus, and even a couple of whiskys, and he's been fine every time. Still at the trial and error stage.

 

[JTL]

Thanks for that. Any time my partner has carbs his sugar goes sky high. The hospital said to cut right back on fat, but he seems fine on bacon and eggs and stuff like that. We've had a couple of barbeques where he's had loads of meat, olives, hummus, and even a couple of whiskys, and he's been fine every time. Still at the trial and error stage.

I have lots of butter cream creamy sauces and the occasional tipple and I'm doing very well.
I dread to think what I would be like by now if I hadn't found this place.

 

[NoCrbs4Me]

I used to eat bran flakes with skim milk for breakfast thinking it was healthy for me. Now I eat a 3 egg cheese omelette with bacon or pork sausage for breakfast because I know it's healthy for me.

 

[JTL]

I thought stuff like Ryvita was healthy but noooo ... look on the label and the carbs are sky high.
Carb hunting is now my main label reading exercise.
Alpen ... no way!

 

[Magisham]

Thanks for the replies. Does the fat do any harm do you think because he had a triple heart bypass 3 years ago so I don't want to clog his arteries up again. Everyone on this forum seems to have ditched the carbs and eat more fat. I bought a couple of diabetic cook books, but glancing through them, I reckon his sugar would go sky high on most of the recipes. The book I mentioned in my first post is by an American doctor who disagrees totally with the "eat plenty of carbs" philosophy. The way he put it was "If eating all these carbs made you fat and diabetic in the first place, how is eating more carbs supposed to help things? It's like trying to put a fire out by pouring paraffin on it." He is advocating cutting down on the carbs, but cutting out wheat completly. It's too much to go into in detail here, but his reasearch indicates that wheat has been super modified over the last 50 years, which has resulted in a massive increase in diabetes and other illnesses. A lot of what he says seems to make sense. I have been trying to cut down on the wheat as much as possible, though bread is a sticking point for him. I use Burgen Soya and Linseed as that has the lowest GI of all the breads (36 as opposed to an average 75 for wholemeal). Breakfasts are a bit of a problem as he likes his cereal. I do stuff like scrambled eggs, but worry sometimes about too many eggs. We've asked to see the dietician on our next hospital visit in a couple of weeks, so I want to get as much information as possible to discuss with her, though I know now what she's going to say ......"lots of carbs, low fat".

 

[NoCrbs4Me]

From what I have read, high blood sugar is really, really bad for the heart and there appears to be no correlation between natural saturated fat and heart disease, but that's my opinion.

 

[JTL]

This is what a lot of us swear by and our doctors condemn even when they see you standing there slimmer more vibrant bloods under control weight going down cholesterol going down.
http://www.dietdoctor.com/lchf

 

[AnnieC]

Thanks for the replies. Does the fat do any harm do you think because he had a triple heart bypass 3 years ago so I don't want to clog his arteries up again. Everyone on this forum seems to have ditched the carbs and eat more fat. I bought a couple of diabetic cook books, but glancing through them, I reckon his sugar would go sky high on most of the recipes. The book I mentioned in my first post is by an American doctor who disagrees totally with the "eat plenty of carbs" philosophy. The way he put it was "If eating all these carbs made you fat and diabetic in the first place, how is eating more carbs supposed to help things? It's like trying to put a fire out by pouring paraffin on it." He is advocating cutting down on the carbs, but cutting out wheat completly. It's too much to go into in detail here, but his reasearch indicates that wheat has been super modified over the last 50 years, which has resulted in a massive increase in diabetes and other illnesses. A lot of what he says seems to make sense. I have been trying to cut down on the wheat as much as possible, though bread is a sticking point for him. I use Burgen Soya and Linseed as that has the lowest GI of all the breads (36 as opposed to an average 75 for wholemeal). Breakfasts are a bit of a problem as he likes his cereal. I do stuff like scrambled eggs, but worry sometimes about too many eggs. We've asked to see the dietician on our next hospital visit in a couple of weeks, so I want to get as much information as possible to discuss with her, though I know now what she's going to say ......"lots of carbs, low fat".

As your partner has had heart surgery he really should check with his medical team before he makes drastic changes to his diet especially with the fat

 

[Patch13]

There is currently a podcast with Dr William Davis speaking to Jimmy Moore on Jimmy's Livin-la-vida low-carb show. You might want to give it a listen if you're thinking about getting the book.

 

[Magisham]

Thanks, I'll try to listen to it. I've already got the book, I'm about half way through it. I am reading anything and everything at the moment, trying to increase my own knowledge. I think I'm probably coming out on the side of a low GI diet with some carbs, but preferably not from lots of bread, potatoes, pasta, etc. Funnily enough, he's been eating loads of hummus as he loves it and it fills him up and that's about the lowest thing on the GI index, at 6. His bloods are coming out at about 6 to 8 on average now, with a couple of 5s and a couple of 9s. It's better than it was.

 

[photognut]

If you are battling cardiac problems too, this book gave me the courage to take an alternative route
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=reverse heart disease now&tag=googhydr-21&index=stripbooks&hvadid=29185042573&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=7516599748236290292&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=e&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_70a5eujw4y_e
It is written by two practising American Cardiologists who have opened their minds to adopt a new therapy along with the traditional drugs. Many Cardiologists are adopting this in the USA.

Books, research, information are there to inform providing you with options, which door you walk through, practice you adopt and find faith in is your decision.

I'm sure my Doc, who already views me as the anti Christ will be hiring an exorcist now for adopting a low carb diet on top of my other Satanical Rituals

 

[Nyxks]

My mom had gotten her A1C down to non diabetic levels though having 172 grams of carbs a day for the past two decades and in effect wasn't considered to be diabetic any longer (though ya she still was till the day she passed) and I'm similar for my glucose control I'm between 150 and 300 grams of carbs with a A1C of 6.2 (still room for improvement) but all my carbs come from Fruit, Veggies n some rice nothing from gluten (I've got celiac) its what's been working for me for a while now ... the idea of high fat just doesn't work for me to many sources of that stuff that I can't have to do allergies that its not an option

 

[jack412]

atkins was a cardiologist and his LCHF diet was for his patients, I really understand someone with CVD or CKD going,,,WHAT you want me to eat fat..are you NUTS?
it's going against the last 40 years of high carb low fat, everyone needs to read up and make up their own minds

@Nyxks I think your mum had the better diet of 175g, 300g with your A1c are far too many IMO
I would try around 175 for a month and see what your bloods are doing, you have a home meter?

 

[Magisham]

Well, I've given up on the wheat free thing to a certain extent. It was so difficult because I bought products marked 'wheat free/gluten free' and then found out that many of them were made from tapioca flour, which was worse for the sugars than the regular products. We don't eat much made from flour anyway as we gave up biscuits, cakes, puddings and things like that years ago because of the heart problems. So I have started him on a low GI diet. This is more or less what we were eating anyway, so I've only had to make a few changes e.g Alpen instead of Weetabix, sweet potatoes instead of regular potatoes. We were already eating Burgen Soya and Linseed bread instead of white. It seems to be doing the trick. He is getting many more readings in the 5s and hasn't been higher than about 8.6. He is averaging about 6 to 7. And I have lost about 4lb in the week and a half since we started it. It's so close to what we were eating anyway that he asked me the other day "When are we going to start this new diet then?" He'd been on it a week! So I'm hoping that this is the way forward. Fingers crossed.

 

[Magisham]

Not doing too bad on the low GI/low carbs. Just putting a quick post because there was a programme on TV last night that did an experiment with pasta. Regular cooked pasta pushes your sugars up. If it's cooked, then chilled, it doesn't push your sugar up quite so much. However, if it is then re-heated and eaten your sugar only goes up about 50% of the amount when it was originally cooked. This worked on 100% of the people in the trial. I haven't tried it yet, but will the next time I do pasta.