The low cal diet is a long term one. In the study quoted by @ Ronancastled it lasted 5 months and in other similar studies a minimum of 3 months. " maximum rate of insulin secretion increased from 0.58 (0.48 to 0.81) at baseline to 0.74 (0.54 to 1.00) at 5 months,"
This is a diet where you have to patiently wait for results and not expect them the minute you reduce your calories. I would not expect my exhausted beta cells to leap up from their sick beds and immediately start dancing.
Hi
@Tannith , a few points -
I Googled the nutritional breakdown of the typical Newcastle diet plan and believe the first three months protocol of 800 cal (500-600 from liquid shakes and 200 from greens) should be approximately 50% carbs, but at this level of food intake the absolute amount of carbs pretty much falls into low carb territory anyway. Then next two transitional months gradually adding back more calories/different foods until you find your personal "sweet" (pun intended) spot of cal/carb tolerance that will keep both weight and BG levels stable. Is this what you are planning?
But from what I understand of Prof Taylor's results even after 5 months this only normalises BG levels for the future PROVIDED THAT your post "formal diet" eating habits are modified to prevent ANY regain of weight and even then will not necessarily 100% guarantee no increase in insulin resistance and possible T2 in any given individual's future. If it works for you, brilliant!
But do you have a plan B? You have done enough research to see what might be the timeline to potentially maximise your beta cell recovery, but what do you plan to do to ensure they do not immediately start to degrade from your diet changes in the future, post next Newcastle round? Pragmatically this dilemma is the source of health and soul destroying yoyo dieting for almost everyone.
Also, who diagnosed your beta cells as "exhausted" (apologies if this was in a much earlier post)? For me this was a diabetic endocrinologist specialist after reviewing a clinically administered OGTT on diagnosis, followed by 3 months of exogenous insulin reducing my AcHb1 to semi respectable levels - sadly his hope was wrong - my C-peptide (very accurate marker for our own pancreatic insulin production) was too low, but antibodies too high - my pancreas wasn't suffering burnout - it was under autoimmune attack. Hopefully you never need to deal with this. But C-peptide is a critical test for T2 as well, as it is the main clinical test for endogenous insulin levels and very helpful to identify insulin resistance. Try to get this test if you haven't already had it. Direct insulin levels are almost never measured outside of formal clinical research trials (maybe sign up to one if you can?).
You are spot on in identifying that it is visceral fat (especially pancreatic fat and liver fat) that are most dangerous and very much more so than subcutaneous fat. I have plenty of the latter that I hate! But also sadly some of the former - fatty liver diagnosed through ultrasound. You seem to be very focused on measurements - have you been able to access any visceral fat assessments? There are no good home users proxies, but could be highly motivational if you can afford abdominal ultrasounds and body fat Dexascans.
You appear to put a lot of energy into managing your health. But in your research efforts for what to do next please be very careful about 'confirmation bias' = only focusing on data that supports your current opinion - this is really hard for anyone to neutralise!!! Also 'false precision' - biological science is horribly complex and horrendously messy to measure - applied (clinical) science is even worse - results may be okay at estimating likely effects in a population of a million, there are zero hard and fast rules at the individual level.
Finally, perhaps consider starting a new thread under the Low Calorie Forum to share how you get on with your second attempt using the Newcastle Diet - I suspect this could have an appreciative audience on how this diet works in practice.
Good luck and best wishes.