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Newbie trying Newcastle diet.

Don't be silly, Pipp - you didn't 'miss me off' anything :)
Well, the Newcastle dieters are becoming so many it is not easy to keep track of everyone.

It could get a bit lonely before, often felt a bit of a crank, so the more of us the less weird I will seem.
 
Hi all

@The little white hen you are coming to and end soon. Such a long journey for you.
Really hats off to your efforts.
Time just flies but these 8 weeks I am sure that they are not that easy
@AloeSvea are you going to continue after 8 weeks?

Hey there!

Keep going after 8 weeks? Hell no! :). Only two more days to go.I am SO looking forward to not calorie counting I can't tell you how much!

(OK - I'll give it a try ;).) I am SO looking forward to eating nuts by the handful, rather than counting them out! I am SO looking forward to being able to have TWO eggs, because at 75 calories an egg on a VLCD and a LCD - I have only been able to have one. I am SO looking forward to having a proper meal size portion of a roast rather than the mini roast meals I have been having once in a while in the last nearly two months. And eating sweet potato again. More than one tiny piece, or two tiny pieces. Bliss.

And cheese. Oh dear me - don't get me started. (You can see here I am not a strict paleo eater. I do eat moderate amounts of cheese, and some full fat greek yoghurt)

And eating and not being hungry afterwards! More bliss!

In short - I am SO looking forward to eating around 1,600-2,000 calories again! Instead of half that.Every day. Day after day. :) (And I did mention that I am longing to forget all about the calorie content of food? I did didn't I?) (Oh to be able to just focus on nutrition, taste and satiety!)

But yes, saying this, I have a plan for how to re-integrate a normal diet back in (Aloe-style normal) to help maintain my new leaner body. I am a paleo-gal, or at least - a modified paleo eater. (I, for instance, don't want to live in a dietary world where I can't sprinkle parmesan cheese on my zucchini 'pasta' strips and homemade tomato 'pasta' sauce and sardines, so I do eat it.) The first month after my 'Deviated ND', ie from Wednesday - I will go 'all you can eat paleo', but with no nut flours. The second month after - I will reintegrate nut flour back into my diet, and make baked goods from nut flours again, but keep an eye on my body composition. (With an especial eye on the waist, bearing in mind that the most dangerous fat is belly fat.) I will also keep banana consumption down, and dried fruit down for a couple of months at least. By the third month I should be back to my pre D-ND modified paleo eating plan. (Ohhhh - dried apricots and dates in recipes - yay!)

With more food and energy, and more sun in the subarctic spring (yay! sunlight! much welcomed), I will be able to go on longer walks. Even use some of those outdoor gyms that are everywhere around where I live.

In any case - that's the plan.
 
Hey there!

Keep going after 8 weeks? Hell no! :). Only two more days to go.I am SO looking forward to not calorie counting I can't tell you how much!

(OK - I'll give it a try ;).) I am SO looking forward to eating nuts by the handful, rather than counting them out! I am SO looking forward to being able to have TWO eggs, because at 75 calories an egg on a VLCD and a LCD - I have only been able to have one. I am SO looking forward to having a proper meal size portion of a roast rather than the mini roast meals I have been having once in a while in the last nearly two months. And eating sweet potato again. More than one tiny piece, or two tiny pieces. Bliss.

And cheese. Oh dear me - don't get me started. (You can see here I am not a strict paleo eater. I do eat moderate amounts of cheese, and some full fat greek yoghurt)

And eating and not being hungry afterwards! More bliss!

In short - I am SO looking forward to eating around 1,600-2,000 calories again! Instead of half that.Every day. Day after day. :) (And I did mention that I am longing to forget all about the calorie content of food? I did didn't I?) (Oh to be able to just focus on nutrition, taste and satiety!)

But yes, saying this, I have a plan for how to re-integrate a normal diet back in (Aloe-style normal) to help maintain my new leaner body. I am a paleo-gal, or at least - a modified paleo eater. (I, for instance, don't want to live in a dietary world where I can't sprinkle parmesan cheese on my zucchini 'pasta' strips and homemade tomato 'pasta' sauce and sardines, so I do eat it.) The first month after my 'Deviated ND', ie from Wednesday - I will go 'all you can eat paleo', but with no nut flours. The second month after - I will reintegrate nut flour back into my diet, and make baked goods from nut flours again, but keep an eye on my body composition. (With an especial eye on the waist, bearing in mind that the most dangerous fat is belly fat.) I will also keep banana consumption down, and dried fruit down for a couple of months at least. By the third month I should be back to my pre D-ND modified paleo eating plan. (Ohhhh - dried apricots and dates in recipes - yay!)

With more food and energy, and more sun in the subarctic spring (yay! sunlight! much welcomed), I will be able to go on longer walks. Even use some of those outdoor gyms that are everywhere around where I live.

In any case - that's the plan.


Hello AloeSvea

I'd be really interested to know how deviated your results are post-8-weeks from not following the strict ND guidelines

I looked at many ways of varying & deviating from the strict ND plan but in the end decided that its only for 8 weeks so I'd follow Prof Taylors guidelines ridgidly and not deviate in any way

I sure miss eggs and could 'kill' for cheese :) but I want the full ND benefits, not a variation or deviation thereof

Post-ND, my breakfast, especially when I'm working, will still be a shake (water based) as I find that fits in best with my lifestyle. I've never been a big 'eater' especially when I'm getting up at 04:00. A shake and 400ml of black 'proper' coffee on my 45 min commute sets me up for the day and I'm good for several hours before any next meal.

Lunch will probrably become some variation of green smoothie. At weekends when I work I'm on 12-hours either 06:00 - 18:00 or 18:00 to 06:00 and we don't 'officially' get a meal break. A green smoothie / gazpacho / soup to have at my desk will be a nice easy meal and one that I can load with taste & good fibre.

Evening meals will be my main meal, as they always have been - I'm really looking forward to seeing what I can make LCHF (or perhaps more moderated fat) which I can make 'in one go' that both myself and my wife can eat as a joint meal.

I've bought a new kitchen appliance (yep, I love my kitchen gadgets) -- the latest is a Kenwood Chefette, its kinda like a small version of a full size Kenwood mixer.

It has a powered rotating bowl, a splash cover over the bowl and 5 speeds and will mix bread mixes (with dough hooks), baking mixes and particularly egg white for making Ooopsies.

Because its small (only a 3 litre bowl), the 'head' unit detaches to become a standard hand-held mixer, so after doing the egg whites for Ooopsies, I can take the head unit off and use it to blend the second bowl with the egg yolks, cream cheese, whatever else

images


It's reduced at the moment from £70 (and even thats a good price for what it offers) to just £45

I whips up 4 egg whites to a stiff mixture which won't fall out even when the bowl is turned upside down, in about 4 mins

I 'tried' doing the same last week with just a hand whisk and gave up after 10 mins with my wrist aching !!!!!!!

Again, like my Nutri Ninja, I'll do full reviews of both in a few weeks once I've got more experience at using them both

I've already played with the Ninja for making ice cream with fruits only (sorbet) and fruit/yoghurt mixes (creamier) so as well as making main post-ND meals I'm looking forward to seeing what deserts I can come up with.

Summer deserts are obviously easy, winter deserts will be more of a challenge (we both love fruit crumbles & custard) - so making these 'low carb' will be fun experimentation.
 
Hello AloeSvea

I'd be really interested to know how deviated your results are post-8-weeks from not following the strict ND guidelines

I looked at many ways of varying & deviating from the strict ND plan but in the end decided that its only for 8 weeks so I'd follow Prof Taylors guidelines ridgidly and not deviate in any way

I sure miss eggs and could 'kill' for cheese :) but I want the full ND benefits, not a variation or deviation thereof

.

Hi Moonchip - I enjoyed your kitchen gadgets and food talk very much! (Especially as I have just had a late breakfast due to a post-overnight fasting blood test for the 'post D-ND' HBA!c. (I know - two days early - but this one was a freebie and tied in with a 'Diabetes education' week I am on next week and had to be done today. Very exciting!) (Probably not - but one should go for enthusiasm in life...) And as you will know by now - I am always hungry on this ND! And your talk of fruit crumbles delighted... (Can't venture into the custard, although I am sure there is a paleo substitute involving coconut milk...)

OK - serious talk about deviated or nae Newcastle diets. Indeed. I totally understand you wanting to stick to the meal replacement method. There are some very good reasons for it, involving practicality - especially regarding the fact you only need to be weighing veggies and so on for one meal a day, and at home. (I will not miss popping a little carrot, or two and so on on the kitchen scales in order to be able to count the calories.) But as you know there is no scientific reason for the food being in processed liquid food form outside of a controlled study (they needed to be able to uniformly quantify, quite simply, one imagines, and there may have been another reason which I won't go into).

As for deviated results - those be fighting words! :)

I am getting together weights and results and figures etc to post something that will be easy to read for future folk, and analyse, and I will put my results into some perspective (even found out how to start my own thread! Goodness! ;)) . But no, I cannot report that I am one of the people who clearly dropped their HBA1c and FBGs to a post-diabetic level already by the end of the eight weeks. (Oh to be one of them! ) That has not been the case for me, although my results (or so says my mathematician and science minded partner) are quite respectable. But if I was one of 'them' I would probably have gotten there already by weight loss and diet and exercise alone, and I did not (before deciding to embark on semi-starvation for a couple of months). I say that as I lost between 15 and 20kg in the 6 months from diagnosis, and before starting my D-ND. I seem to be a plodder, in the glycated platelet department, and in the realms of restarting my beta cells and insulin sensitivity. I may just be one of these people who it takes a year or two or even three? To get where some get in 2 months. I don't know.

But moonchip, I am not the least competitive, so I will say - this is not a race or a competition. The stakes are too big for that! (For each of us - our health as individuals.) And even though our goals are broadly similar, as we are different, and our lives are different - so is the way we approach a VLCD! (Seems well and truly to be the case! :).) What works for you would not work for me, and vice versa. And Prof Taylor has been very clear - the key to his bi-cycle theory is weight loss - defatting the liver and the pancreas at least, and he has said that either the time period, or how you lower your calorie count, does not matter.

I have taken to heart some of the other folk in the forum who have shown how they became post-diabetic over a longer period of time, using 'real food'. I hope that is me. And in the meantime, the D-ND has given me a base to keep on plodding with (the base being lower FBGs in the pre-diabetic range). Whatever happens in the future, I will have better control of my BG levels. (And I may never get an HBA1c of 40 and below. I hope so! But it may not happen.)

I can't say there was never any question of me eating meal replacements - I did think about it. Enough to research it thoroughly. And I was very grateful for talking with other folks about that in here. But I decided to opt for real food, and quality nutrition. Although, as I say, I totally understand opting for something as close to what the original study-folk experienced as possible.

And I listened to my Diabetes Nurse when she suggested I up my calorie count so I could go out into the snow easier (which was necessary to get whatever little rays of sunshine there was - I have a vitamin D deficiency, which is a major risk factor in T2D.) That was not an easy deviation to make, as I was no longer then, on a VLCD, at the half way mark, but merely a LCD.

Also, I am on "sick leave, without leave" - I can and do cook at home. I don't have the same practical pressures that working-outside-the-home NDers have. I am very impressed with folk who work whilst hungry and fatigued - if that is how semi starving affects them. For me, learning about nutrition and cooking has been a major part of my 'T2D journey' - so it is natural that it continued to be so when I deliberately semi-starved myself. Which lest we forget - is precisely what a ND/VLCD/LCD IS.

Talking of which - it's lunchtime! (Whew.) I go to my kitchen to concoct some tinier than I would like paleo lunch. (Now for only one and a half more days!)
 
I, for one, can say that reading your story in particular is what convinced me to start. The path towards the Newcastle diet for me (over six weeks in as of last Thursday!) went

1. Started researching T2 immediately upon diagnosis
2. Found a video presentation discussing the two-stage theory of T2, and discussing a "cure" for the previously incurable disease
3. Reading the Newcastle study one night (with my iPad in my lap, looking up every other term (what the hell is glycemic clamping?) AFETR finding Doughtery's story
4. Researching VLCDs like a madman
5. Finding this forum, and Pipp's stories in particular (along with Andrew and someone else)
6. That next day having a follow up doctor appointment, and talking about it with him(and bringing the Newcastle printouts, as I correctly assumed he would have never heard of it.
7. Getting started, before even fully knowing what I was getting myself into, only knowing that I had to try.

The difference between "let's research this to death" and "3-2-1 jump!" Was finding Pipp's forum posts. If not for those posts, I truly honestly believe I would still weigh 250 pounds, have unhealthy fasting glucose levels, and would still be wondering "what about that Newcastle diet? Eh, maybe someday."

I cannot express my gratitude enough - the naysayers had my ear until I read your story. And that was what prompted me (four days in) to chronically my own journey, first in a reddit "diary" and then later (when I workd up the courage) to join this forum and start a blog here. I hope everyone who is sharing theirs stories continues to do so, and that more join in . . . and that someday, more than anything, the whole world adopts a f&$#ing universal method for reporting blood glucose values :)

But seriously, thanks.

Thanks for making the group stronger, true, tell all stories with the good and the bad bits in can only help real people make real decisions.
 
14 days to go a counting, only a small loss of 2lbs this week and no inch loss for last two weeks. I am however right in the middle of my healthy weight range, so I don't know if that has anything to do with it. My body fat has decreased over the past 6 weeks and my body shape changed. Feel good and glad to be on the home stretch. Read the blog at http://www.thelittlewhitehen.com/blog/facing-life/on-the-home-stretch/ if you would like the full details.
 
Well, thanks to you all for your input on this forum. My liver scan is on Monday and it will be two weeks approximately before I get the result. If all is well I then intend to see my DN and start the ND. As I am sure most of you know by now I really need to put on weight rather than lose it as I am underweight but I will work on the fact that I am "thin outside/fat inside". My diabetic nurse isn't keen on my doing it (although she really doesn't know anything much about it) and I have had friends say I will die!!!! Don't think so. Anorexics eat less than the ND allowance, weight less than me and go on for years so eight weeks should be fine.

A good friend's sister has been diabetic for years ans has had a lot of problems recently and will be starting a new drug soon (when her Dr can get it) and she is very interested to see how I get on as she had never heard of the ND so we may have another one joining the ranks if I am successful. She is a lot younger than me and, although not fat, quite a lot heavier.
 
14 days to go a counting, only a small loss of 2lbs this week and no inch loss for last two weeks. I am however right in the middle of my healthy weight range, so I don't know if that has anything to do with it. My body fat has decreased over the past 6 weeks and my body shape changed. Feel good and glad to be on the home stretch. Read the blog at http://www.thelittlewhitehen.com/blog/facing-life/on-the-home-stretch/ if you would like the full details.

I didn't ND, but have got skinny over time, since diagnosis. I noticed that at the end of my trimming my shape has really changed. My waist almost, suddenly, shrunk. Now, I wasn't measuring waist, or any other dimensions, and bloods have always been my focus, but I can tell by my profile and how my clothes fit I have a much more defined waist than ever before (and I probably do mean ever).

I never carried a lot of weight, but if I gained, I always felt it at my waistband. If only I had fully understood the potential significance of that.
 
I didn't ND, but have got skinny over time, since diagnosis. I noticed that at the end of my trimming my shape has really changed. My waist almost, suddenly, shrunk. Now, I wasn't measuring waist, or any other dimensions, and bloods have always been my focus, but I can tell by my profile and how my clothes fit I have a much more defined waist than ever before (and I probably do mean ever).

I never carried a lot of weight, but if I gained, I always felt it at my waistband. If only I had fully understood the potential significance of that.

By making the point here and getting the message out about fatty middle and the danger with regards to diabetes, you are helping others see a better path. If the choose to walk down that path is up to them but know it is there can only be a good thing.
 
In all honesty the hardest thing I'm finding about the ND .....

Getting through 3+ litres of water a day ! That, for me is singularly the most difficult part of it.

I used to drink (pre -D) enough coffee to sink a proverbial battleship. I pretty much always had a brew on the go.

Its not that I dislike chilled filtered water - its just a lot every day
 
In all honesty the hardest thing I'm finding about the ND .....

Getting through 3+ litres of water a day ! That, for me is singularly the most difficult part of it.

I used to drink (pre -D) enough coffee to sink a proverbial battleship. I pretty much always had a brew on the go.

Its not that I dislike chilled filtered water - its just a lot every day

I drink boiled water with about 1/4 of fresh peeled lemon and a small slice of ginger in it. If you make it in a pot like tea it adds great flavour and no calories and is a nice hot drink. I make up a litter and drink at my desk.
 
I drink boiled water with about 1/4 of fresh peeled lemon and a small slice of ginger in it. If you make it in a pot like tea it adds great flavour and no calories and is a nice hot drink. I make up a litter and drink at my desk.


Thanks LittleWhiteHen, nice idea, I'll give it a go - lemon & ginger sounds lovely, hot or cold
 
In all honesty the hardest thing I'm finding about the ND .....

Getting through 3+ litres of water a day ! That, for me is singularly the most difficult part of it.

I used to drink (pre -D) enough coffee to sink a proverbial battleship. I pretty much always had a brew on the go.

Its not that I dislike chilled filtered water - its just a lot every day
Ok, for the water consumption... I would have 4 x 500ml bottles filled with water. One would by by my bed, so I would drink some if I woke at night, then make sure I drank the rest of that bottle before I got up in the morning. At breakfast time I would have a mug of green tea, or peppermint tea. Make sure I drank another of the bottles of water with breakfast shake. Mug of black coffee mid-morning. Sips of water from 2nd bottle throughout the morning and early afternoon. 3rd bottle with 'lunch' around 2pm. Unlimited green tea, until evening meal /shake. 4th bottle of water after evening meal, and green tea or soda water in the evening. Enough liquid intake. I also had about 500 mls soda water throughout the day. Often extra water too.
 
Can you have diet coke on nd? No calorie drink. Sorry to ask a stupid question.
 
Can you have diet coke on nd? No calorie drink. Sorry to ask a stupid question.

You can have anything you want if you want to 'vary' the diet

The plan says water - pure and simple

You can have tea & coffee, green tea, herbal tea whatever, but no milk & obviously no sugar

Personally, the only use I have for cola (or any sort) is a cheap alternative to degreasing solution. Cleans metals wonderfully, god alone knows what it does to your insides
 
In all honesty the hardest thing I'm finding about the ND .....

Getting through 3+ litres of water a day ! That, for me is singularly the most difficult part of it.

I used to drink (pre -D) enough coffee to sink a proverbial battleship. I pretty much always had a brew on the go.

Its not that I dislike chilled filtered water - its just a lot every day
I had trouble too, and here's what helped me: I bought a couple of .65 liter Thermos bottles (clear plastic) with a leakproof lid that snaps shut. At home, I always have one with me and one cooling in the fridge-when I am not at home, I leave with both of them full and always try to keep the one I'm not drinking topped off. It quickly became a habit, and now I'm comfortably drinking about 5 liters a day.

I also make sure to slam a bottle before bed; I always have to wake up once in the night to pee (reminds me of pre diagnosis, sadly) and after I'm done I slam the other bottle. I pee strong again when I wake up, and the first thing I do wake up is drink another bottle. Sleeping can be very dehydrating.
 
@moonchip I am going to stick to the ND, not deviate so Roger that, plain water it is. Thanks a lot.
The Newcastle plan originally used stated 3 litres of water or calorie free beverages a day.
I found using soda water for some of those drinks helped with tricking me into believing I was not doing anything unusual. Also was good when out in social groups when the others were drinking to have soda water. Made me feel less isolated. Let the others include me in the round of drinks.
 
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