Ellen Ripley Reporting from the spaceship Sulaco – a ‘teeny-keto-VLCD regime’

AloeSvea

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I loved DreadCaptainRobert’s ‘Captain’s Log’, as a Star Trek reference, so I thought I might take her lead, as in
beloved ‘Alien’ movies, seeing we are both here reporting and logging a Very Low Calorie Diet (VLCD) around the same time.

The first spaceship in the ‘Alien’ series was the Nostromo, and in early 2015 was when I last did a VLCD, a mini-Paleo regime, ie a moderate carb way of eating, when I reported on that journey in this forum.

Last time it was referred to as a deviated Newcastle Diet, using real food – Dr Michael Mosley had not come up with the Blood Sugar Diet doing exactly that, at that time. Absolutely you could see Dr Mosley as your very own Captain Hicks! Both are honeys. Professor Taylor for me could be more in line with Bishop. A hero too after all, in ‘Aliens’, and scientist-professors are very logical as a rule, and Bishop was also very ethical and people-focussed even as an android. Dr Fung is a (benign!) ship-computer – his theories omnipresent :).

The Sulaco is the second spaceship to go onto the planet with the aliens. (There may be more space adventures in the future.) (And like the Alien movies - not in close intervals!)

And I am perfectly happy to see going low-cal for a period as basically a ‘fighting aliens on a distant planet’ type of thing to do!

I am an LCHF and Keto eater normally, for 3-4 years now, it makes sense to me to just eat teeny tiny Keto and LCHF meals while doing the underfeeding-over-two-months thing.

My goal this time round is to hopefully permanently lower my levels of abdominal fat, and hence alter my free fatty acid secretion and glucose production from my liver, which is still deranged and giving me significantly high fasting blood glucose and still post-meal glucose that takes too long to come down again.

Along with my blood glucose levels, I am tracking my own insulin production (high normal usually, started diet at a little over high-normal), by testing my c-peptides at the point of the VLCD, and will test again at intervals after. The goal is to have more normal insulin production.

The goal for me is not general weight loss, but rather targeted weight loss – the fat cells in my abdominal cavity and in my fat cells/adipose tissue, particularly I imagine – in my liver. But of course I lose weight on a VLCD. But not at a fast or dramatic rate.

This is about the waist not the weight.

The science behind it is around the twin-cycle theory of course, intestinal hormone activation (upper gut versus lower gut, the lower being the desired one for healthier carb metabolism), AMPK activation, and interest in Free Fatty Acid reduction in secretion (and a positive effect). And of course – the discourse around high/healthy fat, also with regards to providing energy via ketones, and low carb food consumption.

I am an ardent follower of Dr Fung and his T2D theories, while understanding about mucking up my metabolism with low cal (compared to fasting regimes), even so I believe the low-cal route suits me as a SIRD better, as I need the longer period of time to tackle the insulin resistance as a now normal weighted diabetic person. I cannot no-food fast long enough to make the same impact I can on a VLCD. Two months on 800 cals a day of food is WAY more bearable than one month or two months would be on no food, for me. (And the longest I have no-food fasted is 10 days – was the most I could bear.) For me choosing a VLCD is a no brainer. I can live a pretty normal life, my VLCD-spaceship is coasting on low gear as it were, just being hungry mainly at a small meal’s end, but not starving, on 800 cals a day, for 8 weeks.

Post diet – planning on a 5:2 IF regime (thanks again to Dr Mosley/Captain Hicks!)

After 25 days so far, my morning waist measurement has well reduced 3-4 cm and my waist/height ratio has gone down two points from 49 to just inching into 47. Good. (50 is the cut-off point – over that is considered a dangerous waist size for your height. I want a bigger buffer zone.) And along with the waist and tummy, so my FBG lowered as expected – it was a healthy 4.7 one morning. This last week the average was 5.5. Yay.

5 more weeks to go.
 
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Mbaker

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Good luck with your mission. It is exceptional that you have considered all of your options and decided with knowledge what is best for you.
 

AloeSvea

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Thanks @Mbaker. And you too @Pipp - I have followed your thinkings about redoing a ND of course in here, and have always appreciated your thoughts and words on NDs.
 

Pipp

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I like your thinking, @AloeSvea . A pragmatic approach to finding an individual approach to suit your own circumstances.
Currently, I am doing my own searching for my own solution, as the tried and tested is not working too well.

Edit: I seem to remember @bulkbiker following a regime of Very low calorie keto as an experiment using bacon and eggs.
 
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AloeSvea

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And @Mbaker - reading your signature, I notice you use the exercise component of the 'diet and exercise' a lot too, as I do.

I have been interested to note that the heavy-lifting component of my normal regime has been unaffected by having way less food. I keep that up without a problem, except when lifting something heavy and going up stairs! Then a noticeable increase in the huffing and puffing department. But as I believe strength-resistance training is very important for insulin sensitivity in my own treatment at least, with the muscular body type I have, I am grateful for the muscles in my arms and legs to be still holding strong. Walking has been cut in half though. Just can't walk the way I usually do, although when I have eaten a 'decent' amount - ie 250-350 cals with lots of fat and protein, I can usually get cracking on something physical that has to be done, including a walk. But only once a challenging walk (up a serious hill) during low-caling (I miss that).
 

AloeSvea

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I like your thinking, @AloeSvea . A pragmatic approach to finding an individual approach to suit your own circumstances.
Currently, I am doing my own searching for my own solution, as the tried and tested is not working too well.

Edit: I seem to remember @bulkbiker following a regime of Very low calorie keto as an experiment using bacon and eggs.

Yes I read that with interest :). Absolutely! I love bacon and eggs - but not enough for that alone for 8 weeks! I have experimented a bit with a Meat, Eggs, and Dairy only diet, but I missed the greens too much. And I felt way too sad about having to skip zucchini and broccoli, and berries, as well as all that other carby stuff! But I am not adverse to considering it in the future. (I tend to take a while to get used to new regimes. Change is hard!)

I have found that eggs are a fantastic way to have a good morning or afternoon. Especially as I am not supplementing with a multi vitamin and mineral, so want to make sure I get my nutrients. Eggs really are a wonder food, imho. Unusually filling.

I have got into a food routine now that suits me well, which is to get through the morning without eating at all, and having as small an amount of whipped cream in my first coffee, as my cal allowance dictates. Because my FBG is unusually good, the rise I usually have without food in the morning is much abated, where it will only rise .2 or something ridiculous like that while underfeeding. Then I have what is a pretty decent lunch. Which my empty tummy is telling me is coming up in an hour! (and I left out the cream in my coffee so I could have a better Sunday lunch with my partner today.)

Thumbs up and all the power to you Pipp for searching for your own solution! I really do understand how hard and how much brow beating goes into this path. (me doing this again follows many years talking about it and groaning about it with my partner, and my family. And reading in here.)

Reading about the likes of us really brings it home to me how individual we all are, even with the same general disease/dysfunction (re type two IR based diabetes). My belief is treatments for T2D will be much more individualised in the future, as we understand the complexity of T2 more and more. This is my hope at least.
 

AloeSvea

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Last night I reached the halfway mark, which in my (limited) experience, is a good 'where am I now?' generally and with regards to goals moment to have during these longish-term food restriction regimes.

My longterm HBA1c and impaired fasting blood glucose (FBG) levels' stability had been disrupted, due to an experiment that went the wrong way (too many carbs and 'bad carbs' in particular in a few family and friend feasts over a six month period) - so my FBG averages were high in August and September, pre VLCD. 7.1 and 8.0 respectively. Well in the diabetic range!

But there is nothing like food restriction to bring those FBGs back down again. And for someone like me - the FBG is the key to the rest of the day's BG control (ie if FBG is raised, so are all the subsequent BGs). (Four years of BG metering! Comes in handy for knowing how your body works. How to otherwise? Just a plug for the all important BG metering here.)

Physical exercise and activity does impact my BGs normally, in a good way, but this big health-contributor is taken almost entirely out of the picture during any food-restriction treatment. (I just don't have the energy to do anything on top of normal functioning/chores/work on half/more than half the normal calories. Or 'energy from food', to avoid the 'calorie' word.) (When I am particularly physically active, 800 cals would be a third of my energy from food requirement. On a rare sedentary day, around half.)

Anyway.

Average FBGs:
Week 1 = 6.5
Week 2 = 5.9
Week 3 = 5.3
Week 4 = 5.4

It would be more dramatic, but for a couple of sleepless nights which brought about markedly higher FBGs after two occasions. (Calorie restriction affects female rats in this way too, apparently. I would post the link but I am too hungry to be bothered looking for it!) (It's the morning and I have not had my coffee with a dollop of whipped cream in it. My way of getting through the morning without breakfast - a standard keto technique that does indeed work rather marvellously I find.)

I feel inspired to order another HBA1c and C-peptide test, because, well - numbers and curves on a graph can be fun! (OK, not that much fun for me, as I only have them when someone else does them.)


 

AloeSvea

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And now to the de-fatting the liver/common-garden-variety weight-loss halfway mark results.

I am way too shy to post pics of my own actual body! And I am an avid waist/height ratio plotting person. So I post those instead, images/results from my favourite, health-calc.com.

My body does not actually look like that in silhouette, as I have no butt to speak of, and very little waist hip differentiation normally (the classic rectangle/brick body shape) but the waist-size thing is pretty spot on.

The interesting thing is watching the fat come off feet-first, as it were! Really weird. (I am normal-weighted normally, since going low-carb and wheat-free four-ish years ago post diagnosis.) Waist-reduction was gradual and consistent - down 4cm, which is on target. This is an average of 1cm a week, although that is an average and not actually the rate of change.

As an aside - one realises how having fat on one's face plumps out the lines for an older gal. As, along with the more exposed clavicles on my torso, my face is looking distinctly more lined. (I'm coping!) (just!)

I tracked the bmi as well, although I don't usually take notice of bmi, except in passing, but I thought it a good way for readers, if anyone is interested? to visualise the weight thing.

Please note that the goal is hopefully going to include the 'buffer zone', ie when reinstating eating normally, normal physical activity, and scheduled IF days (a 5:2 I am thinking), this would be the upper level for maintenance. So at VLCD's end it would be better if the goals are exceeded, to account for the almost certain weight gain post the semi-starving. So the goals are the hopefully stable ones, and only some time post the VLCD, will be known.

And, this may not happen. But I am happy for any improvement in my health. As a SIRD, I may not get to normal BG levels until all my previous-WOE sick fat cells have been replaced with health/ier ones (six years to go! None of that wonderful three-month low-carb remission thing for me.)

Do I live in hope? Yes.

Does the GP 'overseeing' (and I use that word broadly) this VLCD concur? No! "Ambitious" was his word exactly. And I don't think he used this word in a good way. Oh well.

 

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AloeSvea

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I had a social lunch out yesterday - and it went way easier than I thought it would. This is to do with: eggs, and chicken salad :).

I had three eggs scrambled with a wee bit of parmesan for taste to load up nutrition-wise in the morning. This has worked very well for me during this low-cal/too little food for usual decent energy thing. I walked there and back. All good. I did get a bit grumpy in the afternoon, post social-lunch, reminding me of pre-LCHF days, when my BG was going up the wonk. I kept the grumpiness in check. (Herr Svea is very good but even he has his limits!)

And I have become a fan of chicken salads, no dressing. It must be noted that I had never 'dieted' before the diabetes - I know - extraordinary! But as I got T2D I cannot say it with the enormous pride I used to, more is the pity :). But, that is why I had not discovered what every wo/man who has ever 'gone on a diet' must have known - chicken salads, no dressing, are a gift! Especially for eating out. (you can even get them at McDonalds! Goodness gracious! 170 cals apparently.)

Just in case anyone, but anyone, on the diabetes-planet is at all interested in going low-cal on a LCHF/Keto diet. I am basically throughout the day, peeing out some low levels of extra ketones. (Which is what the ketostix measures?) I don't have a meter to monitor ketones in the blood, which is why I don't identify as a fullblown Keto-eater. Ketostix are a poor cousin to a blood ketones meter, but I am a poor LCHF cousin! But I have gotten up to a '4' one evening. I am never at '0', but in the morning it can be 0.5, up to 1.5, as the measuring goes on the ketostix. It goes up during the day.

I see ketosis as something you go in and out of, and I do not aim for permanent ketosis, hence me, again, not identifying as a keto eater wholeheartedly. (I like the way Brunneria has talked about ketosis, as a spectrum.) My carb tolerance is very low, so I eat as little carbs as possible, but often have blueberries, or strawberries in season. On a low-cal, very very few. As in - 2 blueberries in a day. Or one strawberry (it is early summer now where I am.) I have a sweet tooth (I know - and me with diabetes - what a surprise!:happy:.) And the berries are a little piece of divinity I like to partake in still.

Anyway, my lunch date (she is great - we have looooonnnnnng discussions about malfunctioning body parts and alternative treatments and such), asked me how I did it - this only eating 800 cals a day thing.

I answered - "Much easier than when I did it 3 years ago!" Which is absolutely true. And, that, dear readers (if I have any?) is due to re-training my body and eating with frequent IFing and no-food fasting, and LCHF/Keto. Compared to no-food fasting - getting by with eating 800 cals is a piece of p***.

A little whipped cream goes a very long way? Yes. I have found. (With my dairy tolerant body.)

As does as much protein as my teeny-tiny servings allow. And I eat good quality meat, poultry, and tuna, and sardines. Looking forward to being able to eat more of it again. (I do very well with decent amounts of it. I lost my initial diabetic-weight by going paleo/moderate carb after all).

As I say - if you are doing a ND with real food, or on the lovely-Hicks/Mosley Blood Sugar Diet plan - just see it as three very very very small meals, that don't really fill you up, if you normally have a hearty appetite (as I do).

I have also been leaning rather heavily on konjac root 'noodles' with white wine vinegar to taste, as a very low cal filler. (When I ate 'too many' cals at breakfast and lunch usually.) Vinegar is of course, a bit of a wonder food for good gut health and lowering blood glucose levels, due to that effect probably. So the vinegar is good.

And eggs. I am such a big egg fan. Did I mention that? :happy:
 

AloeSvea

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Doing my regular waist measure this morning, I discovered in the four days I have been away from home (and not measuring), I have reached my ultimate target of a .45 waist height ratio. This is the beginning of Week 6.

This is the ratio I want it to ultimately settle at, once eating LCHF/Keto normal amounts post low-cal-ing (with two low-cal days, or one fasting day a week - I'll see how it goes). So I have three more weeks to provide, hopefully, a decent buffer zone (so I can 'come up' to the .45 waist height ratio on eating normally). I have no idea what that buffer zone will be, of course. (Or if I will be able to maintain .45 longterm.)

Wonderful what you can do with cheese, cream, chicken wings and chicken skin, olive oil, coconut oil, butter (in my case - eaten in small "enough" quantities) - for the diabetic-waist line! Hopefully as in getting less diabetic, if one can say that.


Broccoli and cauli, mushrooms and carrots roasted have been great (swimming in the meat fat.yum).

Is it still hard not eating as much as I want to be full, with a roast chicken parked on the stove in the kitchen, last night? Yes. But it's only for a few weeks more. Not that I am counting. (Yes, I am counting!)
 

AloeSvea

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Yesterday, on Day 40, I found very difficult.

The most difficult days are the ones I don't resist morning hunger, and have a calorie-loaded breakfast. This means by afternoon I have a very small balance of calories left, say 200 or less, and getting through the afternoon and evening is very tough.( If this was a forum in Spanish or French or Italian, or Greek, I would write with a lot more emotion on that one! But in English - well - to say "very tough" is emotional enough? ;):).)

I had breakfast yesterday because I had a piece of business writing to do, and needed to have some brain synapses firing (or whatever they do) for a business exchange via email. I really couldn't do it well on just a coffee and cream, like I am getting through this morning, and other mornings, with. I can really only work part-time doing this low-cal thing, and I admire folks HUGELY who can work fulltime semi-starving (and admire their workmates? I work at home, alone. I can't imagine it otherwise.) I am not an overly productive person on 800 calories a day. I see it as largely taking time out of being a productive person. Then, yes, two months is a very long time. And why it took me a very long time to find 'the right time' to do this again.

Ditto on not being able to walk like I usually do (up and down dale etc). I just can't do it much. As time passes in this two month period - at all. (Just some mild walking for 15 minutes.) I watched a youtube about the classic Newcastle the other night, and shook my head in wonder at the folks going low-cal AND keeping up an active physical regime. I just couldn't do that. I am very physically active normally, fit, I would say, but I need the full complement of energy from food in order to be that. (But I am normal-weighted, and muscular, so maybe that is the difference between having lots of fat stored, rather than 'just' sick fat cells in the wrong places like I do?)

I have been able to keep up 'strength resistance training' (for me - I make a point of lifting heavy things in my daily life, which I prefer and is rather practical, over lifting weights). My muscles are still good - on my legs and my arms. Some ab action. And the fat-stripping makes my muscles much more defined, even in a post-menopausal older broad like me. Herr Svea remembers this happening during 'the Nostramo' low-calorie diet a few years ago. So I can see that I am not losing muscle, significantly at least.

As on the Nostramo (the paleo low-cal diet in the subarctic), my butt has gotten uncomfortably lacking in padding. Sitting in the bath on the hard surface is very uncomfortable. I need cushions on hard seats when out at cafes. (I have a classic type two fat storage thing going on - I don't put weight on around my butt, my hips and thighs like many - healthier - women, but on my belly, straight out in front. My legs are the last thing to have fat on.)

But having healthier blood glucose readings is a dream. It makes it all worth it. And why I am doing it, after all. For how long it will after post-Sulaco I have no idea. We shall see.
 

AloeSvea

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Day 42, feel that it is important to add that falling rates of energy and mental capacity seems to be cumulative. ie, on Day 42 I am weaker and less able to carry out things requiring energy, even in the morning, which is my best time.

I am VERY pleased that it is getting nearer to the magic end of VLCD, in two and a half weeks. Marking off the days on my calendar where I do my FBG, and seeing the end in sight is getting more important, in order to keep on going.

Yesterday I noticed that opening the fridge is getting more painful, as in seeing the wonderful contents. Lots of meats and meat and cheese brimming, just brimming to overflowing with lovely morsels of food I can barely touch. I believe my body, just to see it metaphorically as a separate entity here, is crying out to me, "Why deprive me? When there is all this lovely food? What are you doing to me? Halt! Desist! Stuff me with food!"

Do I think this is related to it being six (ish, I don't have the energy to be exact!) weeks in, on way less food?

Yes. Body thinks it's Just. Awful.

Did notice a first this morning. I am forcing myself to not eat in the morning, in order for the afternoons and the evenings to be more bearable. This is the first morning where I had a slight reduction in my BG from my FBG, in the presence of no-food, as it were. Only slight. But it is an absolute first. (FBG - 5.7. BG three hours later at 5.3.)

Could this mean my liver fat cells aren't spitting out lots of FFAs? (Because the cells aren't so/too full of fat so need to spurt the excess out?) And so then my pancreas isn't getting the message to load up on the insulin? So lots of insulin isn't messaging my liver to create extra glucose? (quite erroneously of course! Hence the constant hyperglycemia). It would be nice if that is what is happening in there. (Hello liver and fat cells in abdominal cavity, hello pancreas - what IS happening in there? Wouldn't it be nice to know!)

Just a note. I do note that no-one but no-one is interested in a Keto VLCD in the forum. Particularly its effect on severe insulin resistance (as a person with SIRD). Not even my fellow space traveller, doing a classic ND, is interested! My spaceship Sulaco metaphor is entertaining absolutely no-one. Oh well! I decided to keep posting anyway, for posterity's sake. Maybe someone in the future might think, "Hey! Wouldn't it be great to do a Keto VLCD to help right the wrong of the reversed twin cycle. Has someone else done it? Oh yes - look - there is Aloe/Ellen Ripley in there, and she says she felt like cr** in the sixth week. That's good to know..." Something like that.
 

AloeSvea

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Here I am, Ellen/Aloe reporting again for posterity. (And it seems that in Keto VLCD-space - no-one really does hear you scream :D.)

(Except poor long suffering Herr Svea of course! And my daughter via text.) (Bless them both!)

It seems that whilst I was suffering over the last couple of days my body has consumed 1.5 kg of stored fat, or stored something! I was very surprised when I saw the scales. Such a big drop in one day, essentially.


Naturally I hope it was from my abdominal cavity, and the tape measure seems to indicate it is, as my actual tummy measurement has seen a significant drop in cms (2 of them!). My waist has not gone down in two days, but my well padded tummy has. So I am only off by .2 on my goal bmi. Good. (Of course the lower I can go the better, in order to have a reasonable buffer zone when I go normal eats and drinks again - yay. My FBGs will determine what is reasonable or at least desirable, I am supposing.)

Which was in the high 4s this morning - always a delight for 'significant DP'-me to see a 4. something of a morning.

I am extremely happy to see only two weeks and two days to go.
 

AloeSvea

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Again for posterity: This morning, FBG=4.8. Three hours later after no food = BG 4.8

Oh this is a rare event. Like - has it ever happened before? Since diagnosis, naturally. I don't think so. No change, as in no rise of a morning without food. I don't think so!

I take this to mean - no gluconeogenesis! After no dawn phenomenon. No erroneously creating and spurting out too much glucose due to a faulty signal that there isn't enough glucose there.

This is wonderful, if that is what this means. For today at least!

For me, a normal FBG means close to normal if not normal BGs the rest of the day. I mainly have impaired FBG, and some impaired glucose tolerance, that can be well controlled by eating LCHF, is my understanding of my own diabetes (officially called intermediate hyperglycemia).

Interesting that this happened, this great morning BG event for me, after a big drop in weight, and particularly a couple of cms around my tummy. (Waist was the same.)

I am not sure if that happened on the Nostramo/last VLCD experience. I will have to consult the notes to check it out. I didn't know enough then to know to test and look out for it though, so I don't think that information is in the notes. (I loaded up then at breakfast on the Nostramo. I hadn't had all the IFing, window-of-eating time periods, and no-food fasting experience that I have now.)

Who knows if the 'normal FBG, no food and no BG rise in the morning' will be maintained over the next two weeks. (Hope so!) Or on the re-establishment of a normal energy from food intake. (Hope so!) Or for how long after that good BGs in the morning will be maintained, if at all. Lots of waits and sees.
 

bulkbiker

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Again for posterity: This morning, FBG=4.8. Three hours later after no food = BG 4.8
Nice.. well done.. just to show that someone is always watching!
I did my BEND for a week but don't have quite your staying power..
Keep it up..
 

zand

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I'm loving this thread! Thanks for posting. :) Not ready to follow you just yet, but maybe one day when what I am doing stops working. :)
 

Dr Snoddy

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I have really appreciated following your admirable efforts - particularly as you are reaching targets!!! Well done!
 
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AloeSvea

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Only ten days to go. Thank goodness.

I am very aware these days just how much food gives you energy to perform tasks - both mental, and physical, absolutely. I need to time my eating with performing at whatever task needs to be done, as in just before. Then I have the energy, and I work until the energy runs out. Which is quicker than it would be normally, for sure.

I really notice it with yardwork. My capacity is more than halved, more like a third, and seems to fit the reduction in energy from food pretty exactly. Heavy lifting is all good. I just make sure I do weight-lifter big grunts to help me psycologically! It's the amount of physical work I can do, other than lifting, that has changed hugely.

But I find myself now planning both physical work and mental work that I can do post this semi-starvation regime. When I have a normal life again!

I describe it to those not in the know as an 'extreme diet for two months, to help treat my diabetes', so folks get an idea about it. Otherwise I just come across as someone suffering from anorexia - as being on an extreme diet when you are lean-looking will do. And me being a woman and all. Because I am closer to lean-looking now, than normal weighted-looking. (Yeah. You have my word. 6-7 weeks of never eating enough to fill you up will do this.) I say 'looking' because I have always been heavier than I looked, due to the lean muscle mass, which is part of my natural body type. Immediately after 'the Nostramo' VLCD in 2015, I was in a group of folks with diabetes been given a talk, I even had an endo ask me if I was type one. I said, no, I am a type two, but I have a very low personal fat threshold, more is the pity. (Oh dear me is it a pity!) And I am very happy to advertise the ND's theory of personal fat thresholds. I now have the knowledge about severe insulin resistance which I did not have back then. But I don't want to bombard people with intimate info about my poor old insulin receptors and my cells!


BGs, the waist, the tummy - going good. For an office-Aloe work appointment I had to buy a new pair of office trou, a size down (just a bit of girlie-talk here), ditto bra! Two sizes down on that actually. Ah yes - body fat. Hmmm. They were very reasonably priced, as in cheap, which is good because they might have to be put away when I resume eating normally, never to rear their lean-lined clothing-heads again? I don't know what is going to happen post this 'extreme diet for helping manage my diabetes' time.

If I was going to lose more around my waist and tummy, perhaps the amount I would need to lose to be in normal and healthy BG range, permanently if there is such for me - it would have to be the same again, I am thinking. (5kg per two months to be exact.) So another two months VLCD on top of this one, to be as lean as I was in my early to mid 20s. Good grief. But. And it is a big but. I just can't give up another two months of my normal life, no matter what Dr Fung and Prof Taylor think about fasting and VLCDing respectively - there is no way this is anything like my normal life. (And that is normal as a type two diabetic using physical activity, LCHF and Keto food and IFing to treat it.) I think they say it is 'just' 'easy' or 'not hard at all' from time to time to promote their theories and treatment, which I quite understand. But I do not think it reflects reality at all. No.

Please let me go on record saying - I do not ever think it is just boring at worst (one of Prof Taylor's more optimistic comments on VLCDing) - deliberately making yourself NOT eat the food your body and your mind is saying you want, and you need, for two months. Nothing merely tedious or easy about that at all. I use all my OCD-ish parts of my nature to be able to do it. Which is how I do it. But I could not do this for four months in total. Not now anyway. I have a normal life I want to live. Properly LCHF/Keto fed. Sigh.

Did I mention I am really pleased there is only ten days to go?

 
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AloeSvea

Well-Known Member
Messages
2,051
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Other
Been thinking some more about liver-fat (and pancreas-fat) stripping, and the 'SIRD' state. Well, my SIRD-state.

After thinking about the math (2.5 kg per month on a VLCD) and figuring out that another 5 kg could possibly do the trick re really healthy-normalising BGs (via cutting out/down gluconeogenesis, which is my sick fat-celled FFA/insulin/glucose downfall). And try and stay being a lean (yet muscley) older lady? Good grief. ('Normal' is easier - I promise you!) But of course - how hard that 'last' 'extra' 5 kg would be to lose. I may be able to get a much lower HBA1c from this VLCD, immediately post-diet, but I doubt it will stay there. (Because I have been there/here before.) I am of course hoping it will be low 40s at least, or getting there. It would be great if it stays around there.

That's the sick fat-cell theory at any rate. If the beta-cell death in the pancreas theory is the correct one - I am screwed, forever T2D-wise. But my answer to the later one is - if my beta cells are permanently damaged - how then am I creating/spurting out, still, lots of insulin? As indicated by my C-peptide result, which is high end normal if I low-carb enough, too high if I don't keep a lid on that. Well, I am going with the sick fat cell theory. And the bariatric surgery success rate, as in folks get normal BGs even before weight loss, pointing to the importance of those two incretin hormones in BG/insulin etc regulation (GIP and GLP-1 - the latter being the one that you want to be activating apparently, as opposed to the upper intestinal GIP.) (The upper intestine is the part that gets cut out in bariatric surgery, therefore deactivating GIP, and redirecting that stage of digestion to GLP-1 which is the healthier non-frankenfood bodily preference, if my understanding of the procedure and nutritional science is correct.)

I have warned poor long-suffering yet patient and supportive Herr Svea that it looks like I will try and do the 4-month VLCD some time in the future, if my HBA1c starts creeping up again, which it could very well do. Assuming it has gone down! (How can it not have gone down....my BGs during these weeks have been great, well, good.) (It takes 10 years for fat cells to completely be replaced. I have six long years to go - if that theory is indeed correct!) Bearing in mind, due to an experiment that went the wrong way (silly me!), my HBA1c did not creep, but leapt up! With adding carbs, even in relatively widely spaced increments, I thought.

I reassured him that the I will not re-enter space in a number three spaceship any time soon! (These diets of course affect those folks around one, whether it be workmates or housemates and friends, or all of the above.) Maybe another three years? Depending on what my HBA1c does (in reflecting the health or ill health of my poor ol organs and tissue). Or in four years? She says, wondering about what four whole months of this extreme diet regime would be like.

Egads.