This 8 week 800 calorie a day thing

FloraDora

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Big day tomorrow - I go for a three month HbA1c. I will see the DN for results next Wednesday. Will be interesting to see the results. Hoping for 45 which will be 5 points lower than last time. Considering I started at 103 some 6 months back, I've come a long way. Mostly thanks to all the information and links provided on this site. Thank goodness, it's a total life saver.
 
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Jamrox

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Wow people the successes are great . It's keeping me going. My daughter is taking me out for tea so I might be nearer 1000 today . Maybe the 5:2 will be better for me if I'm honest . Will try and keep this going and as before add an extra day . On a more positive note my carb intake is back where it should be ... Lower lol.

Well I behaved . Had salad to start with , then some curry ( tiny bit naan and no rice). Had veg on the side .
Had a couple of shot glass desserts .

Ok blew the 800 but not much and I walked around the shops for 3 hours .
 

SlyFox

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I did it 2 years ago. I would say that it worked in respect of reducing hba1c and weight, but at a cost.

I am now cold all of the time. I need to wear thermal undergarments all the time, and need the room to be about 24 degrees c to feel right.

I researched what I had to do in terms essential nutrients, levels of protein and the correct balance. I did this right by the book and still have 'other' problems now. It is far more complicated to do this safely than you think.

It is absolutely vital that you do not do as I did and go into this without getting a doctor to advise and monitor your progress. You may have a condition that could be very dangerous if you do this.

Be warned, be smart find out everything you can from professionals and then decide. This is not a diet it is an extreme therapy.
 

Jamrox

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@SlyFox I am colder than a corpse in a morgue lol. A cuppa warns me up.

Most of the time I am eating what I ate before but cut right back on the carbs( didn't eat much anyway for the passed few years) . I've found it pretty easy to stick to about 850 Cals most of the time , a little meat and loads of veg.

When you say you have 'other problems' would you mind explaining what they are and what to look for .
Thankyou
 

poshtotty

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Jamrox

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I would never consider anything this extreme for fear of playing Russian Roulette with my metabolism so have no personal experiences to share. I have tagged @zand as I know she has her own theories which she expressed on another thread today: http://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/thr...pe-2-diabetes-study-finds.96547/#post-1085033

So you haven't actually done it ?
So you haven't actually had any side effects .

I have to say that I am not starving myself , I'm not doing the shakes. I am eating really healthy nutritious food .
Not a lot of carbs and not a lot of fat , loads of veg and some lean meat , Greek yoghurt and berries .
Oh and a little bit of dark chocolate for my supper.
 

Brunneria

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So you haven't actually done it ?
So you haven't actually had any side effects .

I have to say that I am not starving myself , I'm not doing the shakes. I am eating really healthy nutritious food .
Not a lot of carbs and not a lot of fat , loads of veg and some lean meat , Greek yoghurt and berries .
Oh and a little bit of dark chocolate for my supper.

I spent well over 2 months on a very low calorie diet in my late teens. Am convinced it wrecked my metabolism (i have seen it referred to as 'switching on your thrifty gene').

I completely agree with @zand and @SlyFox

People always seem go into diets wanting to lose weight FAST, but it trips the body into starvation mode, with knock on effects that can last years. Mine have - and for me it was before diabetes appeared. Expect it would be worse now.

My personal view (which i say repeatedly here on the forum) is that the slower weight loss is, the better. The safer. The kinder to the body. It avoids most of the risk of rebounding, and 'falling off the wagon', and it gently teaches new eating habits and cooking techniques. It is why i encouraged you to do the 5:2 instead of this.

I realise that we 'slow dieters' are in a minority on the forum, and many think we are 'failures' (i had posts of this nature aimed at me earlier in this thread, which were unpleasant enough to be removed by moderators) but the reality is that we 'slow dieters' have learned by bitter experience what the long term effects of these starvation diets are. That is why we speak up.

Obviously not everyone has these consequences. But i have a sad expectation that there will be quite a few people posting about problems in the months and years ahead - especially if the fashion for them continues.

I suppose all diet fads go in cycles, and we will just have to wait this one out too.
 

Jamrox

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Hi @Brunneria I wasn't aware of any hassle you had which led to a post being removed . I hate it when people can't accept other people's views.

I don't want to loose weight fast , in fact I agree with you that loosing weight to fast often just leads to an increase in weight in the long term if people don't keep up healthy lifestyle .

I feel that I have to clarify something to everyone .
I already lost 2 stone slowly with lower carb and being active . I did put 7lb back on over last winter but more or less have maintained just under the 2 stone mark loss, been diabetic for around 3 years , well diagnosed for 3 , I control it through diet and activity alone , have never needed medication .

That was until I hurt my knee about a 5 weeks ago .
I couldn't get out and be active . I sat feeling sorry for myself and found myself doing what I do best , comfort eating . I put 2lb on in a week.
I was terrified that I was going to undo all the hard work and knew I had to do something to stop more weight going on ..... as s short term measure until I could be active again , not as a quick fix weight loss regime .
I heard Michael Mosely on Jeremy Vine and he seemed to be speaking to me .
I bought the book and it made sense , in fact I think it is common sense . It is a well balance plan . Ok the 800 calories may not sound a lot but believe me I am eating a lot , filling my plate with lots of green veg is not hard .
I have had a few lapses , actually not lapses because I like my Friday freedom tea . I am human .
At the end of the 8 weeks my knee should be back to normal and I will be active again and not have to watch what I'm eating apart from watching the carbs.
Before then if I want a blow out I will , although if tonight is anything to go by I will think about what I eat when I go out . Tonight I saw skinny Chinese people with plates piled up with veg and huge white people with plates piled up with well chips , pasta , rice , onion rings and loads more . I know which one I want to be.
 

FloraDora

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I reversed my Type 2
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Hi @Brunneria
I bought the book and it made sense , in fact I think it is common sense . It is a well balance plan . Ok the 800 calories may not sound a lot but believe me I am eating a lot , filling my plate with lots of green veg is not hard .

I agree, it does not feel like an extreme diet. With careful planning, eating 'real' food, my plate is full enough. For me, the only difference between this diet and my previous LCHF regime is that I am no longer baking muffins etc. with nut flours, no high protein bread, no sugar-free jelly (whatever was I thinking eating that rubbish!!!!). I had not cured my sweet tooth, in truth I dont think I ever will, but the 800 diet has cut out the snacks and the unnecessary extras. It feels right for me at the moment. My weight loss had stalled, and this has got me out of the obese range, into 'over-weight' and well on the way to safer levels. It has steadied my BG, especially my early morning fasting level which had been rather stubborn. At the end of the 8 weeks I will happily segue back to LCHF.
 

SlyFox

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@SlyFox I am colder than a corpse in a morgue lol. A cuppa warns me up.

Most of the time I am eating what I ate before but cut right back on the carbs( didn't eat much anyway for the passed few years) . I've found it pretty easy to stick to about 850 Cals most of the time , a little meat and loads of veg.

When you say you have 'other problems' would you mind explaining what they are and what to look for .
Thankyou

Curt answer, yes lots :)

Long answer; (yes I talk too much but figure more info is more helpful)

Remember this is 'my problem', and may not necessarily be yours, but is here to inform both yourself and a wider audience. My wish is merely to forewarn of a potential problem should you go down the CR route.

I was forced down that route by circumstance and had I known this all before hand would probably have done it anyway.

Being cold all of the time is a minor inconvenience to the out of control hba1c I had at the time, as I had no other way of getting it under control. Why that came about is a long story, but it is done now. The equation in my head at the time was CR = low HBA1C and probable good health, high HBA1c = probable loss of sight, feet, legs, kidneys.... Go figure. That was a very dark time for me.

The fact of the case here is that just after I started loosing weight on 'my' newcastle diet, I started getting cold, where I was formerly hot all the time. That cold has not changed Since ~ June 2014. There was a permanent switch from hot all the time, to cold all of the time ~ 10 days into the ND. this effect was published in teh daily mail article when that reported tried it for himself.

In all likelihood I have damaged my metabolism in a subtle and permanent way. Either due to CR, or it was a little damaged anyway but pushed over the edge by CR.

The cold intolerance is probably an effect of a misfiring metabolism rooted in the Thyroid / Pituitary / Adrenal glands. My suspicions are that I now have a reverse T3 issue. The NHS will not test me for this.

What we are talking about here is the most mind bogglingly complicated system of chemical control outside of the brain. I have been learning about it for 2 years and reading everything that was written on the subject I mostly read scholarly articles (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/) and try and understand them, and I think I now know what my problem always was and what caused my diabetes to hit me when I turned 49. However, I cannot undo what I did, and there is probably no fixing it, only understanding it and dealing with it.

My GP used to think I was wrong (barking mad actually), but, after a 2 hour talk with him two weeks ago he now agrees that I may be right, and is at last, open to helping out to research this privately at least. The NHS won't help me do this, period and official. It will support the treatment of my diabetes but wont help me find out what is really wrong!

I shall tell everyone here what I finally find out. One day.

Perhaps of further interest to you all, there are over 400 medically recognised symptoms of thyroid problems. I have suffered at some time many of them. I have a spreadsheet listing them all. There are more for women than men. Thyroid is a major component of the metabolism, and the metabolism is the major fault line of diabetes. They are intimately bound up in a chemical hormone dance. Insulin is one of those hormones. BTW: I collect sort rationalise and analyse data for a living, which helps a bit.

To answer your question in bullet points, some of the problems I have (and still have) had that may be a factor;

  • I have suffered urticaria all my life in one form or another.(Immune system)
  • My immune response is drastic to insect bites. (Immune system)
  • I have shorter that average legs (Linked to diabetes,and cardio vascular problems via the caerphilly study)
  • I have shortened 5th metacarpal (Pinkie) (which is linked to insulin resistance type A, and hereditary pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism)
  • I have acquired a low libido (linked to thyroid problems)
  • I have lichen sclerosis (since 1984) (self diagnosed, but linked to thyroid problems)
  • I have a terrible stress response. (Adrenaline and cortisol get significantly perturbed (yet to prove this))
  • I am cold all the time. (Linked to Thyroid problems)
  • I have trouble sleeping, either too little or too much. I wake at 3 am bright as a button or 10 am like death warmed up, or cannot shut down to get to sleep. (Linked to Thyroid/Adrenal problems)
  • Both my sisters have age onset hypothyroidism, and all my nephews have the same blood sugar control problems I did at their age. (Probably makes it hereditary then)
  • My heart rate will sometimes bounce from 80 bpm to 130 just by standing up, or getting into a car as high as 180. (linked to stress response, adrenaline)
  • I suffered for years from IBS (linked to Thyroid, but 'cured' by going through the newcastle diet!).
  • I have GERD all the time now (Linked to hormone imbalance, may be stress induced).
  • I used to suffer acute and chronic migraine, now cured by dietary liquid magnesium therapy. Magnesium is a big layer in the hormone system. They come back if I stop the LM therapy.
I only take medication for my GERD. It got really bad in January.

I no longer take Metformin because it triggers IBS after a week. (There is another story here)

I suspect that this was caused by two instances of glandular fever when I was 8 & 11. Six months after the second time I suffered my first 'false hypo'.

All of these metabolic calamities (lol) upset my glucose control for 40+ years before I became diabetic, and still do, and the 10- 20 self tests with my new JAZZ meter that I do a day show it clearly. I have the dawn effect on my glucose levels expressed every day in numbers.

The newcastle diet is not a 'free' cure but it helped me a lot. I think I may have been lucky. You might be as well. So that is why I say learn what you can, but please talk to the professionals before making that choice. Show them this if you need to.

Based on what I know (and haven't the space to tell) is that my personal recommendation is to stay above 1200 Kcal / day and make sure your vitamins and minerals are good or more, keep your protein levels UP. Then wait it out.

Here's some last thoughts for you. I was 96 Kg at Jan 2014, by July 2014 I was 73 Kg. I am still around that (73.8 Kg) this am but sometimes consume 2500-3000 Kcal a day for days on end (I sit down for a living) and my weight sometimes goes down when I do that! Something is not right about that. My metabolism is very strange and almost unpredictable.

Whatever you do,

Good luck and be well.
 

AndBreathe

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I didn't do any of these named diets or planned, but if I am totally honest, I will have had short periods, when I was modifying my diet, following that special sort of feedback on the meter, that I may have had a few days, or even the odd week on VLC; unwittingly. I think many, many newbies do.

Those who arrive here, rabbit in the headlights, like most of the rest of us, looking for some insight from folks already walking the path, are given pretty straightforward guidance; Reduce Carbs. My meter helped me, quickly, to understand that made sense. If you want to bring down and elevated score, and can identify the score elevator, then it makes sense to address that (in my case, head on). I didn't immediately add fats; and to this day, I don't suggest that to new folks, because I think dealing with one food group at a time is enough, and can itself lead to a, hopefully brief) period of body and mind adjustment to the new regime. Throwing a load of double cream (delicious though it is these days) into the digestive mix could have been tricky for my syatem to handle. I'd never been a consumer of cream of any sort (in fact, I would have said I didn't care for it), and had, like so many, for eons before, concentrated on Flora and the like for spreads for breads.

So, I think what I'm saying is, I think lots and lots of folks do a variation of this diet, and/or a real food variant of the Newcastle Diet, without attributing a label to it.

I know my luuuurve handles vapourised pretty rapidly, and I'll never know if that would have happened if I had been topping up my fat intake from an earlier point.

Every single one of us has a risk dial we set and reset hundreds of times a day; whether it be crossing the road, eating a bag of scratchings or rejecting a bap with a burger. Most of the time we don't think about it, but this condition makes us significantly more mindful, initially at least.

I think the for and against debates are healthy. In fact, I think those debates are essential, so that we all make informed choices about the changes we make, and so that those undertaking the changes have a grasp of what they are doing and why.

We know one size doesn't fit all, so I'm content for folks to set their own risk dials wherever they like, provided that when making major decisions they do it mindfully.

Here endeth my sermon. ;)
 
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Jamrox

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Walking up steep hills
@AndBreathe your sermon was spot on Thankyou.

@SlyFox Thankyou for your story . It is food for thought .

I have had an under active thyroid for 32 years , my mam had an under active thyroid and my daughter was born with it .
My Dad had type 2, my gran had type 2 and I have type 2. I put the coldness down to my liver not having to work as hard.
 

Donnadoobie

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I have finished the 8 weeks 3 days early, as the GP advised me to not lose any more weight! I am off to see my youngest daughter who is at Uni in Manchester and celebrate a 21st birthday party of a friends son while we are there. Low carbing all weekend but wine will flow! I will do a a 5:2 500 day on Monday and an 800 on Tuesday as my blood tests are on Wednesday and from then on I will be doing 6:1, trying to maintain my weight under a BMI of 23. (it is 22.1 at the moment)
I will let you know how the blood tests go.
 
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AndBreathe

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I have finished the 8 weeks 3 days early, as the GP advised me to not lose any more weight! I am off to see my youngest daughter who is at Uni in Manchester and celebrate a 21st birthday party of a friends son while we are there. Low carbing all weekend but wine will flow! I will do a a 5:2 500 day on Monday and an 800 on Tuesday as my blood tests are on Wednesday and from then on I will be doing 6:1, trying to maintain my weight under a BMI of 23. (it is 22.1 at the moment)
I will let you know how the blood tests go.

Bearing in mind you had three days to go, and a generously healthy BMI, on what basis didn't your Doc want you losing any more weight? Do you feel well at the moment?

I have no axe to grind, I'm just curious.
 

Donnadoobie

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No worries @AndBreathe I think she just felt that I had lost quite a lot over a short period of time and just advised not to lose any more as she felt it was ok. I have also felt that I look a bit scraggy, and old so not bothered about it. I planned the 8 weeks with the goal of ending this weekend but always knew It would end on Friday as we were away this weekend. Have been eating a little more the last couple of days anyway. Feel good, slim, and just where I want to be weight wise. Blood sugar's, well I think I am destined for a steady but high normal average!
 
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SunnyExpat

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No worries @AndBreathe I think she just felt that I had lost quite. A lot over a short period of time and just advised not to lose any more as she felt it was ok. I have also felt that I look a bit scraggy, and old so not bothered about it. I planned the 8 weeks with the goal of ending this weekend bit always knew It would end on Friday as we were away this weekend. Have been eating a little more the last couple of days any way. Feel good, slim, and just where I want to be weight wise. Blood sugar's well I think I am destined for a steady but high normal average!

Excellent result. I was the same, you lose so much weight, everyone starts to think you're ill!
 
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Donnadoobie

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@AndBreathe, Also, if I had been half way through I think I would have just kept going to the end but with only a few days to go, weight down to a very acceptable level and blood sugars not going any lower but stable. I am not sure what else I can achieve, or need to prove. Sometimes it is best just to accept that it is the best you can do!
 
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