appreciate the help guys, brilliant posts, job for this weekend is get a glucose metre and cream wise, can it be any cream such as the elmea full fat? or single from asda or a specific type? tried cottage cheese for the first time yesterday and nearly puked, not my cuppa tea lol, anyone use green teas and similar at all? im not really a hot drinks person either but can help with loosing weight i have heard,
i guess holiday and desert time, is an excuse as a father now to eat the left overs from the wife and kids. That way i wont over indulge.
im usually a wrap and burger person too, so need to find alternatives, i guess steaks and meat and veg and salad. maybe a blob of mash too with it.
Ok sorry this took for a few days to get back been busy at work:
With diet, I found the only way I could cope in first few months was to go “cold turkey”. I really would describe refined carbs and junk food as an addiction for me. t was really hard for the first couple of weeks, then got so much easier and was really easy for a few months.
Then I went away for the weekend and had some drink, pasta, cake, bread etc over a weekend – fine for a treat I thought. What I found was that the next two weeks were super hard again as I was craving all those things again – just had to gut it out and was fine from then on.
The issue you will find, is that your numbers are low now, but statistically if you don’t change your life style your very likely to end up with much higher numbers and on a downward trajectory – its not a progressive illness if you change but it is if you don’t.
So: Key points as discussed above – get a meter and check. Loads of posts on here above types of meters and how to check but that’s really useful. It will also give you a good idea of what sort of things you need to cut or cut down on. In this context portions are key, because I also reduced significantly my carb portions even while keeping them on the plate. So, a curry that used to come with a huge pile of rice and a whole naan bread, might now come with a small portion of bulgur wheat and a few pieces of naan but perhaps with a veggie side dish. Or a big portion of cauliflower rice and a bigger portion of Naan (But not both the larger portion of Naan and the Wheat).
Exercise I started at 3x 30mins a week and built up to 4/5 30 – 90mins a week. Just make sure what your doing is sustainable, going to hard too soon can lead to injury or burn out.
Two or three sessions I did HIIT (High intensity interval training) – The beauty of this method is that its great for diabetics as it is a good way to flush glucose and glycogen from your body (and liver in particular). This effectively leaves space for more to be absorbed form food rather than staying in the blood. (If you like group sessions I serious recommend doing to gym circuit training classes or “boot camp” type things they may do – that’s basically HIIT spending a min at a station and then moving onto the next)
Principle is that you do 30 seconds to 60 seconds of very high intensity exercise followed by rest (or recovery as you get fitter. So high intensity means that you’re working at the most you can do “chased by a bear mode” and it can be any exercise.
So tread mills as an example: a HIIT on a treadmill (or out door run) would be setting a program or doing it manual where you sprint for 30 seconds as fast as you can, then catch your breath for 30 – 60 seconds while walking. Repeat 10 times.
Or doing body weight exercises like pushups, squats etc – go full pelt for 30 seconds then recover -repeat.
I started doing to above, but rapidly gained fitness so now my “recover” is what used to be my max. For example, running I used to do a 10km/h “sprint” on a 2% incline, followed by a 5km/h walk as recover. Now I do a 15km/h sprint on a 5% incline with a 9km/h jog in recovery. I get the same benefit as before, but as you step it up based on your fitness you’re always working hard.
Another good one i like mixed body weight exercise combined with a cardio machine (like a rower). So 300m casual row, jump off and do 30 squats, 250m row/25 star jumps, 200m/20 squat thrusts, 150m/15lunges, 100m/10 press ups, 50m/50burpees. (Do the same on a bike of cross trainer, again mixing it up with a given target followed by a number of what ever exercise)
The “body weight exercise are done as fast as you can do them (when I started for example, I could only do the squats in sets of 10’s with a breath and leg shake in-between). Now I also sprint the rowing and go back up from 50m-300m – the point being that this type of exercise calibrates to your level of fitness and there is no upper limit.
These sets only take 10 or 15mins to do but make such a difference to your overall fitness and do a good job of clearing your system.
In addition, weights are really good – again I would recommend the “cardio” approach to weights and make sure your doing a good mix of muscle groups as muscle stimulation and strength reduces insulin resistance. Rather then going for very heavy weight and large sets, do 8, 6, 4, 4, 6, 8 reps, where you start on a comfortable weight on the 8, then add one peg as you go down the reps (for the heaviest weight your own doing 4 reps), then reduce the weight as you go back up.
Aside from general machine exercise, Dead Lift, Weighted Squats and bench press are kings for working your whole body – but if you’re not an experienced lifter, get some guidance on how to dead lift properly or you can hurt yourself (Getting posture right is king – I have been at it for months and I have only just started adding much weight as it took me a while to get the posture right – I haven’t been injured or pulled a muscle once since I started in August). Again, I used 8 6 4 4 6 8 sets for these.
I do think that losing the weight and increasing activity can have a drastic affect on your body’s ability to process carbs. It cannot work for everyone – I know lots of people on here are pretty clear on this - and who knows if it will be a long-term thing for me. But I had pasta for tea last night – first time in a long-time spaghetti carbanara (a smaller portion with a side salad rather than a massive bowl but still). Last time I ate it in September, my bloods went to 15. Last night I maxed at 6.2, this morning I was at 5.1 so I processed that meal without any fuss. That’s not drugs or being low carb, that’s my body doing what it should because I have helped it remember how or need the energy through my activity.
Good luck with your journey, feel free to PM me if you want to discuss further - seems were in similar positions
Edit: Also if your going for weight loss.. weight yourself every week, at the same time and take the reading as correct. Record it and tend it over the time (use an app or do a spread sheet). Then set several goals at intervals for treats, but make the treats things you will enjoy but not carb blow outs (or you will suffer for it from my experience). So i had goal lines set every 3 or 4kg of loss, (set for nice round numbers, or for crossing BMI thresholds). My Treats were things like going out for a Nadoes, where i knew i could eat half a chicken and some nice sides without having a load of carbs but still feel like i had a really nice treat. Or getting a 16oz steak from the butchers - lovely treat but not all the carbs. Key here is if the weight loss stops or goes up, you have to keep measuring and logging it, stopping logging because you dont like the number is the road to failure for sure. Some weeks it wont go up or down becuase of whats in your gut, but over 4 measurements in the month the average will be the telling line you should care about.
