IF or TRF?

Winnie53

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AloeSvea if I had a stronger ability to smell and taste food, I'd be a foodie. My husband is a huge help. He helps me adjust recipes. I love food.

How do you use the A1c and C-peptide? Do you have them done together or separately? And when do you do the c-peptide? I've never had the latter test so have no idea how much insulin I'm producing. My last fasting insulin was 3.8. Right now I'm trying to build more root vegetables into my diet in small amounts with meals in the hope of forming a mutually beneficial partnership with my gut bugs. :)

I also am stuck in the low to mid range of pre-diabetes and trying to lose weight. It will be easier when we're on the other side of berry and cherry season.

Glad to hear you're wearing your blue blockers. I need to ask my husband to order me a pair. :)
 

AloeSvea

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AloeSvea if I had a stronger ability to smell and taste food, I'd be a foodie. My husband is a huge help. He helps me adjust recipes. I love food.
How do you use the A1c and C-peptide? Do you have them done together or separately? And when do you do the c-peptide? I've never had the latter test so have no idea how much insulin I'm producing. My last fasting insulin was 3.8. Right now I'm trying to build more root vegetables into my diet in small amounts with meals in the hope of forming a mutually beneficial partnership with my gut bugs. :)
I also am stuck in the low to mid range of pre-diabetes and trying to lose weight. It will be easier when we're on the other side of berry and cherry season.
Glad to hear you're wearing your blue blockers. I need to ask my husband to order me a pair. :)

I get my C-Peptide tested at the same time as my regular blood test for HBA1c, blood lipids etc. They just draw extra blood.


This is a good paper on the use of C-peptide tests -
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3748788/


Your measurement is the US one - if I have understood correctly - which is ng/ml? And mine are measured in pmol/l - so the number looks very different indeed! I'll let you gaze at measurement tables and put your own pancreas under the microscope :).

Aotearoa/NZ is a socialised medicine country, so I do have to make a case for having this test, as it is not a cheapie, but I make a good case. There is no denying I am a longtime insulin resistant person, as I was diagnosed with PCOS, like many of us type two gals, in my 20s, three decades ago. With metabolic dysfunction our ability to reproduce most efficiently is the first thing to go, it seems, as young insulin resistant women will attest to, and older insulin resistant men?

I usually just ask for it before and after an intensive treatment (like the 2nd VLCD I did last year), but my doc kept it in my regular script for blood tests, which I am happy for. It has been interesting, if depressing sometimes, for me to track it.

Good gut bugs are great!

And I hear you on the difficulty of keeping carb-counts down in berry and cherry season. We are hardwired, it can be argued, to eat such in large amounts when in the very old days we chanced upon them on our wanderings in the great outdoors, and stocked up while the going was good, because it would be a long time before it could happen again. I understand how hard it is not to keep eating cherries for instance. (like popcorn! And crisps!) (in the bad old pre-diagnosis days, of course.)

Just to remind this-thread-readers that one of the big benefits of fasting is to keep production of insulin low, or at least lower, in folks who create too much of it in response to food and their body's own overproduction of glucose, ie, are insulin resistant.
 
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Winnie53

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Thanks AloeSvea. When I get some free time again, will read that paper on c-peptide testing. Very much appreciate it. :)

You'll be pleased to know that I limit my cherry intake, only 5 cherries, chopped, after dinner with heavy cream and a small amount of shaved chocolate. I'm being good. ;)
 

ianf0ster

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I have been doing 1 or 2 days per week of TRF (but I have always called it IF) since my T2 DX was confirmed in may (2019).
I didn't have meter back when the first Hba1c showed me in the diabetic range, but I did cut down drastically on carbs and increased my Fat intake, during which time I lost about 8lbs though I was barely overweight in the first place. Since then I got the feeling that LCHF alone (in my case a lot of fat - since I didn't restrict Calories at all), was not reducing my weight at quite the same rate - thus I introduced the occasional skipping of breakfast. Note that I hate most forms of exercise, so I have not increased that.

It isn't that I can't do a so-called real fast since I have to do that for my regular colonoscopies, but I am rather grumpy at the best of times, and fasting for 36hrs to 48hrs just makes that worse. I don't want to inflict that on my wife unless absolutely necessary!
 
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Winnie53

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Ianf0ster, congrats on starting the keto diet and TRF, and the weight loss that followed. That's s huge accomplishment.

I only skip breakfast 3 to 4 times a week and am slowly losing weight. So far I've lost 12 of the 18 pounds I regained over the last 3 years. Slow but steady.

What's next for you? What do you want now, or are you still thinking about it?
 

ianf0ster

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Type of diabetes
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exercise, phone calls
Ianf0ster, congrats on starting the keto diet and TRF, and the weight loss that followed. That's s huge accomplishment.

I only skip breakfast 3 to 4 times a week and am slowly losing weight. So far I've lost 12 of the 18 pounds I regained over the last 3 years. Slow but steady.

What's next for you? What do you want now, or are you still thinking about it?

Since I started I have lost around 23lbs (I have weighed in a couple of weeks at a 25lbs weight loss, but not currently at my lowest). I just eat to my meter and hunger - no deliberate calorie restriction, indeed sometimes being a little greedy - though only with low carb food. I'm quite content with my current weight so I see a plateauing weight loss as a good thing.
I was TOFI to start off with. So my aim is to move from the 'pre-diabetic range' into the 'normal BG range , say an HbA1C of 39 would be comfortable.
I would like to achieve this by March/April to coincide with 1yr since diagnosis, but as my visceral fat, liver fat etc. drops then so should my Dawn Phenomenon and thus my fasting BG. So long as it continues in the right direction I don't mind if it takes me longer than I expect, because this is my new life - it is a marathon , not a sprint and the prize is to keep my eyesight and my toes.
 

Indy51

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I haven't listened to his stuff much.
Another member of the club here for two reasons (1) his podcasts are beyond long and (2) the reason they are so long is that he hardly ever shuts up for more than 5 minutes to let the interviewee speak without him directing the conversation into only the direction he wants it to go. My blood pressure suffers too much while I'm internally screaming at him to STFU for a while. I recently tried again after a long hiatus for his interview with Katherine Eban on her fantastic book on the chicanery behind generic drugs. Absolutely fascinating story, if he'd have just let her tell it without constant interruption :arghh:

I find that Schliffer guy from the Sapienz podcast similarly frustrating though he's more like an overly enthusiastic puppy slobbering his own agenda all over the show, unlike Atttia who seems to be completely enamoured with proving he's the smartest person in the room :rolleyes:

/rant over :D