18 months in Hba1c 34 5.3% from 92 10.3%

Had my official blood test check up today. My story - I lost 30 kg from 115 to 89 at the minimum, but found maintaining that hugely hard, every where I turned my body seemed to want to increase again. I decided to stop worrying too much about the actual weight for a while and instead focus on keeping the diet good quality, eating just two meals per day, sometimes only one, the odd fast.

The result has been that after the first month when weight increased to 94, I have kept weight stable for about for the first time in my life without actually calorie counting or trying actively trying to " slim". My goal being to see if I could keep my weight stable but eating more quality food as I do not want to spend my remaining years permanently watching every calorie I ate.

My goals over the period were - see if I can improve Vit D, get official Hba1C well under 42, do something about 20 years elevated Urea levels, and bring B12 into a normal instead of elevated range.

Over the last couple of months I added in a lot more red meat to my diet.

I got my blood results today - I had 57 blood tests done - inc apo A/ apo B. The main ones are listed in my signature - but overall the amazing parts - Hba1c now down to 5.3%, Vitamin D doubled , only 1 out of 57 is outside normal range (Lymphocytes a tiny bit elevated ) - this compare to 15 out of 52 on the day of diagnosis.

My vitamin D levels have always been low, my uric acid elevated for as long as I can remember - both now normal.

Overall this seems to illustrate to me that even those of us encountering stalls - if you simply stick to a good quality LCHF diet then the overall health benefits will continue even if you (like me) would still like to be slimmer.

For all of us - personal food preferences will affect what we choose - for me good quality equals beef, tuna, salmon, prawns, cream eggs,cheese, eggs , avocado, red wine whisky, mixed nuts, spinach , onions mushrooms, tomatoes, with the occasional leafy green stuff thrown in.

I have thrown out permanently - nearly anything consisting of seed oils or that someone else could put into a box !

Thanks for all the help on here to follow through on an LCHF diet .

DCUKMod said:

Hi Cheery - Great news on your tests. It certainly sounds like you've found your groove with your new way of living. That always seems an important step in these things.

I'm mildly curious about where your weight has stabilised. Many people report to having found their weight place, where maintaining is easy for them. I'm one of them.

Have you been measuring/monitoring your visceral fat (VF)? I'm interested if you know if any of your regain went to VF, and the proportion of it, if you know that? I appreciate that last bit might be impossible. Certainly I don't think I would be able to ascertain that from my records or scales.

If any did go back to VF, it certainly doesn't appear to have re-breached your Personal Fat Threshold. Well done.

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I'm still way overweight currently 94 kg - should be closer to 67 kg ( I'm 5.5 female aged 60) . The visceral fat showing on my Tanita is still giving a score of around 11-12 - still have a big morning liver dump, but foods in general seem to keep me under around 6 . I rarely eat anything before around 2- 3 pm and I try not to eat after around 9 pm. Lately I've notice that if I do have the odd " dreadful thing" - e.g. a couple of jelly sweets in the cinema, or a bit of someone's desert nothing happens.

My clothing size dropped to a size 16 which is about the lowest I've been since aged about 14 . In practice the extra few kilos don't seem to have stopped anything new I bought fitting. I can jog 5km reasonably easily, I can walk straight uphill for a mile ( including carrying 50 eur of shopping ! ) or so without stopping or indeed breaking into a sweat chatting as I go. I can swim until bored rather than tired ( i.e. about a mile ) and I can outlast most twenty somethings at any social event with ease.

Funny story - I was at a two day conference by Gary Taubes last weekend in the UK. At 4.00 pm they announced that the dinner was cancelled as the restaurant had flooded. I stuck my hand up, asked how many had paid for the dinner, abut 20 to 30 hands shot up. I have a place not far away . I said - no problem - I will cater.

I shot off to Waitrose and bought enough food to sink a battleship, abut £400 worth carried that back (with a helper). A friend of mine kindly set up a dining table for 25 while I cooked. In the end 27 people came along, I did a three course meal and it was ready by about 7.30.

It is the easiest thing in the world to cater for a low carb crowd.
Smoked salmon and mackerel, avocado, eggs, macadamia plus pates, dips to start
Ribeye steak or salmon steak ,mushroom onion red wine cream source or tartare sauce- salad main
Berries with cream and dark chocolate mousse

Champagne, red & white wine and tequila or whisky lol

Amusingly my helper was the only vegan in the crowd. A lovely lady doctor. Nothing at all against veganism but as she was merrily throwing pulses and bean salads into the trolley I could feel myself thinking that most of that would be going in the bin ( it did) on the other hand there was zero left of about 20 rib eye steaks including all the fat ! ( and they ate all of the smoked mackerel - these people know their stuff !)

I had to laugh whilst doing all this that frankly it was " just a slightly hectic" two or three hours of effort. I then happily joined in the party which for many of us lasted well after midnight before the morning session the following day. I think Gary Taubes was more well used than me !!! - Now THAT shows very precisely how much energy a proper diet can give you.

All in all if anyone had told me 18 months ago just how " well" I would feel by simply changing my diet I would have thought they were utterly mad.

I'm off trekking Japan with my twenty something nephew in a few weeks. Last time we did stuff together he conked out first, (he was only 11 lol) now he's a slim, fit real food low carber so this time might be more of a challenge.

For anyone just starting this journey - You CAN do it too. We are all different and we all have our different capabilities but there is no need to assume that because you cannot do something now, that won't get better.

18 months ago I used retire to bed most afternoons for a couple of hours not through choice, through necessity. I used to get tired trying to wash the dishes. Standing for more than about ten minutes made everything ache, bending down made me dizzy, I sat down in the shower, baths frightened me in case I couldn't get up. It was generally like wading through molasses. It was becoming hard to use my computer because of carpel tunnel syndrome and locking fingers, I coughed , a hacking cough all day long ( my friends thought maybe cancer). I could not stay awake through any TV program but I couldn't sleep at night at all. Carrying anything at all from the shops was a complete no no. ( Thank God for home deliveries).

I watched this video yesterday

This woman only began working out in her 50's. Look at her go now. aged 80.

The human body can be remarkably self healing if given the chance.

For me that recipe was - under 30g carbs, mainly above ground vegetables, mainly onion mushroom tomato and spinach
No fear of saturated fat or red meat, seafood - salmon, tuna , shellfish - prawns, mussels, crab, oysters, eggs, cream,butter, avocados, pork scratchings, nuts, spices, ( my special spiced coffee). making bone broths, using the fat from boiled bones ( beef, chicken, turkey, lamb, pork), making soups from prawn shells. Eating offals - liver ( calves, lamb, chicken) kidney (beef, lamb), oxtail, heart, pigs trotters. All of the old fashioned foods I recall my grandma making.

I've ignored the " faux carb keto foods" - I decided just sticking with stuff I could recognise and not trying to pretend I could still eat the same things was just easier.

I never specifically added much fat to things, just ate the stuff that came with the proteins and cooked with butter or the boiled fats from my bone broths. If I simmer the vegetables I drink the water rather than throwing it away. I get cheap bones from the butcher ( chicken carcasses - beef bones) . I buy the cheapest possible cuts of meat.

Here in Malta - all the parts of the animal are still on sale in the main supermarket ( heart, liver, kidney, tongue, tripe even the actual pigs head) - rabbit is the local delicacy ( not that I've tried cooking one yet) So much for a "Mediterranean diet " being low in meat. The local supermarket has a cafe - the choice of lunch includes - rib eye steak, rabbit, mussels plus burgers and pizza - no " healthy whole grain low fat salads" in sight! ( The Maltese are one of the fattest people in Europe - but they are also prodigious drinkers of sugared drinks - some of them 2 -3 litres per day and their kids have succumbed to the fast food craze just like everywhere else)

I have no idea what will come next for me in terms of health. longevity or slimness. however I do know that whatever happens I am NEVER deliberately going to eat seed oils ever again . I think they are the work of the devil and they probably explain the current health crisis more than anything else.

I will do an update to my blog on that and hyperinsulinaemia when I get the chance based on some of the interesting new stuff that has come out recently.

Thank you for the info and inspiration this website gave me. If my post gives anyone currently starting out some inkling of the benefits that might accrue to them if they just give this a proper go - then great.

shelley262 said:

Excellent results well done you great news. Love that we eat all the good stuff !

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Congratulations - you have done amazingly well - just not quite as verbose as me

Rachox said:

Well done! Excellent results!

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Well done to you too -youv'e got a lot further than me on the weight front - though frankly I've been above 90kg for donkey's years so I'm not that surprised my body doesn't know what normal actually is !