Okay, I'll try to cover everything, but it's a lot so I may miss something, so do forgive me if I do, okay? Yes, fat weighs something, but I have a feeling you're thinking you need pounds and pounds of it to inhibit the organs' function. If the fat is marbled throughout the organ, maybe just 100 grams worth, I dunno, maybe less, rather than just packed upon it. It's not so much the amount and weight of it, just that it's
there. Doesn't have to be a whole lot, maybe just a slice of bacon or less worth, but it's just not supposed to be there, wrecking your insulin sensitivity and the functioning of the organ. And both the liver and pancreas are very important to a diabetic or prediabetic, we need to get them working properly again without wearing one out (pancreas) or piling reserves you don't need on the other (liver). You can be built like 80's Arnold Schwarzenegger with not a gram of fat, seemingly, and still have a fatty liver. And if it's combined with prediabetes, you can be pretty sure the fat is coming from stored carbs. You can't burn them efficiently, because you're insulin resistant, and with no insulin helping you sort the glucose the carbs turn in to, your body has to put it somewhere.... So it puts it in fat cells. In your liver. Which you won't feel until it gets pretty bad. By the time mine was discovered, my liver was rock-hard, and I couldn't bend over to put my shoes on with the pain of it. Was I massive? Heck yeah. But it started long, long before that, and because I had a bunch of succesive locum specialists, no-one bothered to go over my blood test results and connect the dots. (The doc who discovered the ovarian cysts that caused my insulin resistance, wasn't the same one who gave me the news. So no-one bothered to check my HbA1c, liver function etc, and I was basically probably diabetic, going by my symptoms, for about ten years before diagnosis. By then, I was morbidly obese, yeah.).
Cauliflower is happily a very versatile thing. Can be a mash, can be a rice, can be very welcoming to real butter or massive amounts of grated cheese, and whatever herbs/spices you like. Kind of like nature's chicken, really, it can taste like whatever you want it to, and I do love me some (in my case, due to issues with cow milk), goat's cheese. Keep in mind that whatever fats you add to bulk up your meal, that they're not overly processed. Seed oils and such are generally not a good idea. Butter, ghee, coconut oil, olive oil are fine, as is lard. And like I said, cheeses! Lean meats provide protein, yes, but the fattier cuts are more filling and give your body fuel to go on to replace tha carbs. (Fats are metabolised faster than protein. The latter'll help built/maintain muscle-mass though.) So go for the chicken with the skin on, the pork belly, the fatty ground beef. Breakfast? Maybe invest in a hot plate and make yourself some scrambled eggs with bacon, high meat content sausages and whatnot.
The whole glycemic index thing... Let it go. Your body is gearing up to become a type 2, not a type 1, so it's not particularly relevant. The glycemic index lets you know whether the carbs, or the glucose they turn in to, are fast or slow ones. That's nice to know if you have to stagger your insulin intake for instance,or need something fast to help with a hypo, but it's not relevant for non-insulin dependant T2's and prediabetics, really. (Some of us are on insulin, and then it does matter, but you're nowhere near that stage and we can hopefully avoid it all together!) Whether you get a big, short spike due to a high glycemix index, or a very long, somewhat more moderate one which is stretched out over hours because it's low, doesn't matter: It's still a spike/rise, and your body'll have to deal with it, one way or another. Which it can't. It's still a kick in the head, no matter which way you turn it. So index doesn't matter, the carb load however, does.
Taking myself as an example again: I was told to cut the fats and eat massive amounts of carbs. Thanks, hospital dietician: that got me to 105 kilo's. It's when I switched it around that things changed. I went for high fat, low carb, and I could go shopping for a new wardrobe a few months in a row, because the fat was falling off of me. Perks of that, I no longer had wounds that wouldn't heal, no more boobthrush, suddenly there was emotional stability, and oh my, I had energy! Where first I couldn't lift a fork, and sometimes my knees would give our due to muscle weakness, I was now walking long distances with rather heavy camera gear. So yeah, fats, the healthy ones, are most certainly my friends. They don't raise my blood sugars, they keep me full, and they keep me active. Haven't really discovered a downside yet, but if I do, I'll let you know. (And no, my cholesterol's fine, the bulk of it is something we make, not what we consume anyway.).
Just salt water? Nothing with also magnesium, potassium, calcium? Because you needed those supplemented, too... You say you felt like dying, could you be more specific? Because if your heart was doing loop-de-loops for instance: when you're low on potassium, you can end up in hospital with a heart that goes absolutely bonkers. Pounding, arrythmia, all of it. Been to hospital with my mom more than once because she was on diuretics that made her potassium go too low, and she'd sometimes forget to take her potassium supplements.
I think that covers everything for now. But might I suggest you read Dr. Jason Fung's the Diabetes Code? He answers a lot of your questions and may be more medically thorough than I could ever be, with my annecdotal stuff.
Good luck!
Jo
