Newcastle diet in response to new diagnosis

[Fraddycat]

Dazzer, I think you need a bit of obsession to be successful at weight loss - well I know I do. I am quite obsessive at the moment, reading loads and doing lots of research. I think my family is getting a bit annoyed with me so I tend to keep quiet. I'm glad to have you guys to talk to!

 

[Fraddycat]

In fact I was obsessive when first diagnosed and lost nearly 2 stone. Its when I got a bit blase and took my diabetes for granted that I put it back on, and my numbers went back up. Now that I am obsessing again I am back in control.

 

[dazzer1975]

Catza, WOW 70lbs, that is absolutely brilliant, may i ask how you have done it, is it through general good diet and exercise?

I used to do a lot of walking in rural areas (not many people about lol) but I can't do that at the time being so my activity levels are as low as they can be. I have been thinking about trying to get out again and doing some walking in the middle of the night lol a path of a 1000 steps is started by the first etc. I think I am waiting and hoping that a stone or two will drop quickly on this diet and then i will have the energy and movement to get started.

YES definitely in for the long haul, unfortunately (wish i could click my fingers and all the weight is gone lol) I have more than you to lose!

I have done it before so i will do it again... thats the theory and hope anyway :thumbup:

Fraddycat, i am loving the fact there are people here all going through the same thing, even just creating a thread to chart your journey can be a powerful tool to keep you on track. I am hoping that will be the case for me, hence this one.

Absolutely re obsessive, it is the only way really, ultimate control (of the food and drinks we consume) requires it, it is oh so easy to let your guard slip, have something you shouldn't and then think blow it, the day is ruined, or the week even and just let it all go to pot... thats my usual modus operandi.

p.s. just seen your last post, completely agree with you, exactly how I feel that, it is very easy to push things to the back of your mind and be blase about everything, obsessing is a good thing :crazy: :lol:

 

[catza]

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh, I to do 'obsessive' really well.

I came at my diabetes taming diet on my own. When I first suspected I was diabetic I bought myself a meter and started testing. Surprise, surprise I found my "healthy" diet of baked potatoes and Wholemeal bread were giving me high counts. I had always felt that neither the Potatoes nor the wheat products agreed with me. I always felt bloated and uncomfortable after a so called healthy meal. So I started to experiment and within a couple of weeks had trimmed down what I was eating. I then discovered this wonderful forum and realised that I was amongst friends who didn't consider I was risking my health by cutting down on the vast majority of carbohydrates I used to eat. Keeping the protein low and fat high was a leap of faith and I wouldn't have done it without the support of the guys on here so now I am one of the LCHF brigade.

I was so obsessi.... I mean focused on getting my levels down that I didn't realise at first how much weight I was loosing so I don't actually know how much I lost in the first couple of weeks, all I can say is everything started to get very loose but I do know I have lost at least 70lbs by eating to my meter.

As for exercise. I do try to have a walk everyday and as my weight has reduced I find staying physically active a lot more enjoyable. I bought a shake it dumbbell http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=140823034996 which looks sooooo innocent but is actually an instrument of torture and my groans of pain have brought my husband running more than once.

My other investment has been a Vibrating Plate machine, I bought it with the intention of just using it for a year whilst I get my weight down but not only have I found it makes my exercise routine more effective it has also proved to be a great way of improving the stability of my husband's knees so I think I may be keeping it a fair bit longer than I anticipated.

 

[dazzer1975]

Hi Catza,

lol at obsessing, it seems to be a common thread here :lol:

I have long known carbs aren't the be all and end all of a healthy diet, but I too have always used malted granary bread and broke out the jacket potatoes as part of any diet I had embarked upon. I crave starchy carbs so badly, this whole diabetes thing will be such a challenge, hence the very strict and severe diet now. I feel it will help me break from food and give me time to come to terms with everything and then once I am back to eating i will have a better understanding of what to eat, how much to eat and allow me to build a new relationship with food.

I am struggling with this high fat thing, but after having seen another thread about the horizon programme (eat, fast, live longer, or something like that) I am rethinking my high protein ideas. I have in my mind a kind of Mediterranean diet would be good, but again, early days yet with lots to research and experimentation.

On the exercise front, as said i used to really enjoy walking and hope to return to it as soon as possible, but a couple of months ago I bought a rowing machine and I have a bit of a history of weightlifting so dug them out of the garage and turned the back of the house into a mini gym. It remains unused as of yet :thumbdown: in a week or two hopefully things will start happening in that regard.


While i am here i may as well post my readings for the day.

13.9 fbg
13.7 pre-lunch
11.3 +2 hours biggest loser bar
10.1 pre evening meal at 7pm
10.0 +2 hours bigest loser bar

as evening meal was so late i don't think I will take a bedtime reading tonight.



p.s. Love your saying "eat to your meter" that is a concept that struck a chord when I first read it and intend to do just that.

 

[l0vaduck]

Hi Dazza

your determination is an example to us all. I just have one question about the shakes - I understand that you are on a very low calorie diet, and I assume that the shakes are a way of getting essential nutrients in as few calories as possible. My question relates to the fact that I have found, and been advised, that carbs in liquid form are the fastest acting of all, and therefore a high carb drink would be a certain road to high glucose levels.

I think I understand that the idea of the diet you are on is to restrict calories to an extreme degree in order to improve the body's ability to deal with carbs, but I'm a bit surprised that using a liquid meal replacement is the chosen option - I would have thought a solid meal replacement would be better for glucose levels and therefore easier on the pancreas?

I'm not criticising as I have no experience of this at all, I'm just genuinely curious!

 

[dazzer1975]

Hi L0vaduck,

I am having the same considerations myself regarding the shakes "I" am using, hence the two bars today as they have less than half the carbs and ten times less the sugars. I have also just looked at Tesco and Asda shakes and one uses maltodextrin (sweetener derived from starch) and one uses fructose (the same as the sweetener/sugar found in the shakes I am currently using).

I believe Defren used the atkins shakes which I think are sweetened with aspartame and/or acesulfame k

As said, i am not over happy with the carb levels, and even more disappointed with the sugar levels, however, (the shake used in the Newcastle Study) optifast strawberry milkshake has 22.5g of carbs per serving (18.2g sugars) and chocolate and vanilla have both 15g carbs and 9.2g sugars. Additionally The Newcastle team state explicitly that any of the meal replacement shakes available from the supermarkets will be suitable.

I am using the diet for two reasons, and not SOLELY for bg control, although it is a very big part of that, I would also use these kind of diets o kickstart a weightloss diet, it just so happens, fortunately for me, that Professor Taylor suggests this kind of diet can benefit the newly diagnosed diabetic.

There are lots of links on page 1 of this thread, also check out this programme, it is fantastic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pfna7nV7WaM

p.s. what I do know, is that +2hrs my old diet (lunch before my meter arrived in the post), my reading was 24.8, it's been lower since, thats all I need to know for me to continue.

 

[l0vaduck]

Thanks Dazz, I suppose the short term blood results are less important than the long term improvement due to weight loss, but if it were me I'd like the encouragement of getting the levels under control, especially as high levels, as you've found, can be very uncomfortabe at times.

Thanks for posting and sharing your experiences.

 

[dazzer1975]

Hi,

yes, well, obviously both are important, but I am not at a healthy weight or anywhere close, so drastic measures are needed to kickstart this into action, and it is having a very positive effect on my bg readings.

 

[Fraddycat]

How are you doing today Dazzer?

 

[dazzer1975]

Hi fraddycat,

full speed ahead on the diet, I am doing a 3 day fast as of right now in response to that horizon programme eat, fast, live longer.

Today, quite aside from the diet has been pretty **** ****. Depression overwhelmed me hard and i had to go to bed for the duration of the day to avoid everything so my readings are a bit hit and miss, plus with not having any meals etc I have only done two readings today.

Morning FBG was 13.0 I then took a reading at 14:45 just to see how things were progressing and it was 12.5

I will probably just do the same over the next 2 days purely for my own amusement to see whats happening with the numbers and then once the fast is completed will return to the diet.

I have not long been awake from my afternoon/evening nap / avoidance sleep lol but I feel physically pretty **** good. Alert, awake, fresh, more energy. I have recently read about diabetic fog and i can firmly say mine has lifted.

I have been thinking about going out later tonight for a walk... but thats still a massive step psychologically for me so we will have to see about that.

 

[Fraddycat]

Sorry to hear you felt depressed today, you sound a bit better now, I hope you feel it. You are doing brilliantly, you are braver than me, I don't think I could fast. I am sure it will have great results, good luck!

 

[dazzer1975]

Well, if it doesn't have results i am literally stumped, obv will carry on with the weight loss, better diet and introduce exercise but I am very impatient and want results yesterday lol

I do feel better, the sleep probably helped a lot, not that i really needed it as such :?

 

[xyzzy]

I am struggling with this high fat thing, but after having seen another thread about the horizon programme (eat, fast, live longer, or something like that) I am rethinking my high protein ideas. I have in my mind a kind of Mediterranean diet would be good, but again, early days yet with lots to research and experimentation.

Yes the high fat thing takes a bit of a leap of faith but those of us who have adopted it have achieved excellent results. I was diagnosed around 8 months ago and have been doing low carb high fat since then. The result an HbA1c reduction from 11.3% to 4.9% and a normalisation of my cholesterol and blood pressure levels. My doctor has even allowed by to give up the Simvastain statin treatment I had been on for around 30 months. I have also lost in excess of 50lbs. The link between fat in your diet and cholesterol is remarkably unproven as far as I have researched. I avoid trans fats but do consume both saturated and unsaturated fats. My diet is roughly 15% carbs, 20% protein, 65% fat. The vast majority of the 15% carbs comes form vegetables, fruit and yoghurt and hardly any comes from any starchy carbohydrate source. The key to a low carb high fat diet is to ensure it is low carb. If you do a high carb high fat diet it will kill you dead. Your idea to do a Mediterranean diet is also quite valid and is one of a number of regimes recommended by the Swedish Health service as are low carb high fat diets. It also has the advantageous that alcohol is included in the regime

Effectively the reason you up the fat is two fold. Firstly you may well find that on a low carb diet you might be eating far to few calories and end up on a starvation diet. I add full fat yoghurt, real butter, cream, cheese and eggs to what would otherwise be a low calorie diet so that my calorific intake averages around 1800 a day which is coincidently the number of calories recommended in the Horizon program. The second reason to add fat is that it is the food substance that will trigger your brain to tell you that you are full. Many carbohydrates actually suppress that trigger which is why lots of people never feel satiated on high carb low fat regimes.

This is one of the leading Swedish doctors recommended regimes. A lot of her ideas were adopted by the Swedish Health service. Sweden has the 3rd lowest rate of diabetes in the industrialised world (behind Iceland and Luxembourg) and has what is recognised to be the worlds best state run health service.

http://blogg.passagen.se/dahlqvistannika/?anchor=my_lowcarb_dietary_programe_in

Also take a look at

http://www.dietdoctor.com/lchf

A high protein diet can lead to kidney issues so I would recommend caution. The RDA for protein is round 16% I think. If you analyse what the Horizon program was saying it amounted to low carb high fat and not low protein. The insulin IG1 suppression it talked about i.e the stuff that is supposed to make your body swap to "repair" mode and therefore make you live longer is largely down to low carb rather than the low protein that was mentioned. The response has been known about for years and it works because low carb regimes limit the requirement for your body to release insulin and its that insulin release that goes onto to also trigger the IG1 response that stops the body entering its repair mode.

 

[dawnmc]

Xy, please tell me what you eat in a day. I'm still confused, I'm one of those folk who buy diet books because I'm a bit prescriptive.

 

[xyzzy]

Xy, please tell me what you eat in a day. I'm still confused, I'm one of those folk who buy diet books because I'm a bit prescriptive.

Hi Dawn.

So for breakfast: Around 40g of raspberries mixed in 60g of plain Greek yoghurt. I buy the frozen packets of raspberries and at other times will use strawberries or blueberries or a summer fruit mix. The yoghurt is Fage full fut Greek yoghurt which we get from Asda. It is somehow both low carb and low fat. Carb wise it is 3.8 / 100g but it's still only 2% fat. Recently I've started to mix the raspberries and yoghurt with around 15g of flax seed that you can get from Holland & Barrett and a sprinkling of white Chia seeds which you can get off eBay. The flax and the Chia will swell up and make the whole thing like a fruity creamy cereal which is remarkably filling and will give you a good dose of fibre along with some reasonably researched proof that flax and chia are good at lowering bad cholesterol. Remember the quantity of fruit and yoghurt is simply set because that's what my BG's can cope with. I find the sharp but fast acting spike the sugar in the fruit produces rapidly lowers my irritatingly high average wake up level. Sunday breakfast is usually the traditional bacon and eggs which gets done in just enough olive oil or lard to coat the bottom of the frying pan. I nowadays avoid highly processed oils like sunflower oil. Alternative breakfasts I have now and then are 2 egg cheese omelettes or sardines on a slice of buttered Burgen.

For Lunch: Luckily I work from home so I can prepare stuff but appreciate those who go out to work find this the hardest meal to do. I would guess if I was in a similar position I would try and find the time to prepare some salad based something (ham , cheese etc) to take in a container. On days I am out and about with work and haven't had the time to prepare then I'll pick up some kind of seafood or meat based sandwich done with brown bread. At home though my current favourite is a good sized plateful of salad (lettuce, cucumber, celery, radishes, olives etc.) with a grated carrot, around 100g of grated cheddar or an equivalent amount of cubed stilton, then either some sliced up ham or a tin of sardines. The salad gets a good dose of full fat salad cream. Other winter based lunches are cheese and ham omelettes, bacon, egg and mushrooms or a piece of cheeseburger pie (see low carb diet recipes) with around a third of a packet of stir fry veg.

Dinner: Most standard main meals are green veg and something. So I end up with around 250g of veg in some form (mixed veg, cabbage, brocilli, cauliflower, beans, peas or a combo of those) On the veg I will personally put a good sized knob of real butter. With the veg will be something like a salmon steak or chicken or cold meat left over from Sunday dinner etc. Other things MW does is a lasagne where the layers are separated with cabbage leaves (sounds weird but is actually very tasty) but we also love doing meals that go well with "chips" where the chips have been made from sliced courgettes dipped in parmasan cheese then roasted in the oven. Those with a nice steak topped with stilton with some mushrooms is a brilliant treat. We still do a Sunday roast when the family comes over and again MW does Yorkshire puds done with a combination of flour and soya flour so that each one works out around 6g of carbs. For a roast its always roast potatoes as then I find I can have a couple. Although we don't overtly buy fatty meat we never cut the fat off ham or chops or the rind off bacon etc.

Pudding with dinner is where I get the majority of my fresh fruit intake. Standard pudding is 150g of fresh fruit salad done as a 50/50 mixture of rhubarb and whatever fruit is around. 150g is a good amount and the rhubarb mix means that quantity normally works out at around 8g of carbs. We have that with some sugar free jelly and always with two or three heaped desert spoons of whipped double cream.

Snacks: If I really am hungry last thing at night I will have a slice of buttered burgen toast with some sugar free peanut butter on it. Alternatively half a dozen buttered Ritz craters with some cheese. Chocolate we get the 80% content stuff but neither of us is particularly fussed about sweet things so that's quite rare.

Takeaways: Indian is best. Effectively anything not sweet curry wise but avoid Nan bread and I restrict to a heaped tablespoon of pilau rice. Do plain pilau rice as opposed to a rice that's based on boiled rice as pilau rice is fried rice and wont hit your BG's as much. Bhaji wise then mushroom or spinach and I find I can manage onion bhajis but like the rice only do bombay potatoes (sag aloo) if your BG's allow it. To give myself a decent amount (you should enjoy a takeaway as its a treat) then I will buy a chicken tikka starter and add that in place of the rice I've dropped. Chinese is difficult but I have found Chicken Green Pepper and Black Bean sauce is ok and again do it with a small amount of fried rice or a small amount of chow mein (too may noodles otherwise).
Pub Meals are generally easy. Starter would be something like Whitebait, for main I'll do steak and chips but say "no chips just top the steak with some bacon and a fried egg instead". With the steak I'll have peas, a few onion rings and mushrooms. Desert will be biscuits and cheese.

If you don't mind alcohol and you aren't driving then if you want to be "bad" do so after drinking a G&T or two as alcohol tends to suppress your BG's rising in a lot of people. I have successfully eaten rich sweet birthday chocolate cake and hot cross buns using that method.

Hope that all helps and shows you that lchf isn't half as "evil" as many try to paint it as. In reality it is quite close to the meals my mum use to prepare when I was living at home in the 60's and 70's.

 

[dawnmc]

Thats pretty much what I eat apart from the meat, I have started eating a bit of fish. Do you exercise? I lost a stone eating that way, but have put it all back on when I stopped using my kettlebells. So it would appear that i need to get off my butt and work it.

 

[xyzzy]

Exercise wise I walk around 3 - 5km most days when I take the dogs out. My mate borofergie says walking is an ideal form of exercise as its a natural fat burner because it can be powered off fat and not glucose because its less strenuous. My attitude to exercise is that yes it is good for you and everyone should do some but its value as part of weight loss may well be over rated. It would seem the amount of calorie burn you get for an hours strenuous exercise can easily be simply discounted by the extra food your brain will tell you to eat because the exercise has made you hungry. I do believe calorie restriction is probably more effective than exercise. For the general population if you do calorie restriction as low carb high fat or high carb low fat it doesn't seem to make much difference although lchf has been shown to be more effective than hclf in the initial months. If you are a diet only T2 then lchf is obviously more attractive (in my opinion) because it will control your BG's as well as get you to lose weight.

If as a T2 you are overweight then it should be a primary goal to reduce it by whatever means suits you. I don't believe that a lot of T2's got overweight because of bad lifestyles as advocated by the "fat lazy" or "the food in your mouth" brigade but that doesn't mean a T2 who is overweight shouldn't try and get back to a healthy size as a priority. Reducing weight will reduce insulin resistance and reduce the chance of heart attacks and strokes etc. Loosing weight is all part of recognising what T2 is and taking responsibility for your future actions regarding yourself and your loved ones.

 

[dazzer1975]

Ok, bit of a haphazard and chaotic last 24 hours owing to my afternoon sleep yesterday.

I woke around 7pm and went back to bed at about 6, so i took the opportunity to do some through the night bg readings. Not knowing wether the dawn phenomenon was linked to your circadian rhythm or in response to when you "actually" slept i wasn't sure if the readings would tell me anything. It turns out is connected to the circadian rhythm, or at least to my mind it is as I believe my readings clearly show my liver is dumping glucose between 4 and 8 am. Here are my readings for yesterday.

On waking yesterday morning the reading was 13.0, at around 14:00 the reading was 12.5 I went to bed soon after this.

I awoke at about 19:00 and took a reading at 21:45 which was 10.4, then 12:30 (past midnight) it was 10.8, 02:15 was 10.4, 04:15 it was 9.9

By 6am it was 11.5, quite a jump from 2 hours previously.


Today I have just woken more or less and my reading is 11.8

It is probably a bit hard to follow given my formatting above, so I will write out again my readings from day one in a list simply for my own amusement again to see how things are shaping up over time.

21st August:
24.8
18.4

22nd August
21.6
20.2
13.7

23rd August
16.0
15.0
15.2
13.9


24th August
13.5
16.6
15.0
13.4
10.9

25th August
14.1
15.8
12.5
11.7
10.7

26th August
13.9
13.7
11.3
10.1
10.0
9.8

27th August
13.0
12.5
10.4
post midnight results/early hours of 28th August
10.8
10.4
9.9
11.5

Additionally i have something to report regarding my weight. As I have mentioned i bought a rowing machine at the end of april/start of may, I weighed myself using two scales to try and ascertain how I figured in relation to the max user weight capability of said rower. I don't tend to weigh myself owing to the inaccurate nature of using two scales, however, it affords a reasonable estimate to work from.

Last night i chose to weigh myself again and thought this figure is very close to the limit on one scale and felt a bit confused as I didn't feel like i had lost a lot of weight, definitely felt to have lost, but the figure seemed a bit strange, but didn't dare try ione scale to verify and left it for a while. Later on i thought ****** it and tried using one scale, it worked, and it turns out I have lost circa 62lb since the end of April/start of May (I was trying to eat healthily with the odd blip). Unfortunately I have no idea how much i weighed at the commencement of this diet/diagnosis, but 4.5 stone and being able to be weighed on a single scale is a massive thing for me and I am pretty chuffed with it.

still gutted my bg readings seem reluctant to get consistently below 10, but hopefully as I lose more weight, do more exercise and continue on this diet then fingers crossed they will start to respond.

I am on day 2 of the complete fasting, the diahroea has ceased (with the help of imodium) and everything feels ok, after day 4 I will return to the Newcastle regime.

 

[dazzer1975]

xyzzy,

thank you very much indeed for your input and advice, this is invaluable in my building a better picture picture of this whole area and of course people's own personal experiences provide an insight that being newly diagnosed I feel I need.

Yes, this fat thing is a big issue to try and get my head around, I understand fat and protein and fibre can aid the slow release of glucose into your bloodstream, but a diet high in fat goes against everything we are told and led to believe. That is going to be a challenge for me but I suppose we do have the advantage of being able to monitor exactly what our diets are doing via finger prick testing and ha1bc tests so at least we are not going blind into something. Under those conditions it is something i would definitely feel comfortable exploring and definitely will as I move onto the next phase of building a diet suitable for me.

I will follow your links too and have a good read, on a slightly separate note i have long since admired the ethos of the Scandinavian countries regarding their social structures and attitudes.