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A bit of a rant - sorry

PamJHS

Active Member
Apologies for posting a rant, but I just need to get it off my chest.

DESMOND - grrrrrrrrr

Went to a full day DESMOND course last week, which was all about getting us onto a traditional weight loss diet, with hardly any mention of lowering carbohydrate intake at all, apart from one exercise asking us to guess 'How many sugar lumps are in these foods?' There were numerous exercises using plastic food items aimed at us learning what was 'healthy'. We were repeatedly told 'We never say 'no' to anything, but all the usual advice to cut fats in order to cut calories was built into the course.

I left feeling very disheartened, and it was very hard to refocus on low carb eating, despite having had such a good result from my first couple of months. (HB1ac down by 5 and 3 kg weight loss).

I won't even attempt to describe the 1:1 session I had with a health adviser the very next day (by complete coincidence) as part of the 'Healthy Living' course. Same message - 'You have made yourself ill' and 'You must lose weight by eating what we tell you'.

The emotional effects of a diabetes diagnosis were mentioned both times, but apart from a few sessions of counselling through IAPTS, there is no emotional support on offer.

I've got nearly 40 years of traditional dieting behind me, the overall result being that I've almost doubled my starting weight. I feel so discouraged that this is all that's on offer, and completely insulted by being given plastic food to play with as if I was at primary school!
 
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Yours is an all too familiar story. And currently because it is an all too familiar story I am trying instigate change where I can. The more of us that can get in amongst these people and “sort them out” the better.
 
So sad and frustrating that the DESMOND course is still pumping out the same old rhetoric. (I really want to write something other than rhetoric!). On the plus side you have made your way into this forum and have the confidence to question or ignore the dietary advice given. After 40 years of yo-yo dieting and steady weight gain I was diagnosed with an HbA1c of 104. Thankfully I stumbled into this forum, have followed a LCMF diet for 6 years and have had an HbA1c in the 30's for over 5 years. My surgery regarded me as a shining star until recently when I told them how I was achieving those figures! My weight has been completely stable during that time -something that I have never experienced before.
Do continue to rant - do it at your next review when you have great data to feed back with!
 
I have recently become weary of hearing reports such as yours. DESMOND advocates need to tell their 'teachers' that, actually, they are not seeing any stalls in the progression of complications and drug prescriptions are still rising.
Someone needs to ask these advocates just how many patients they have put into remission, how many have lowered their dosages of drugs/insulin and how many of their patients develope complications within, let's say, five years after doing the course.

And I would dearly like to know how many DESMOND courses are run by the private sector on behalf of the NHS.
 
Hi @PamJHS "You must lose weight by eating what we tell you" - surely coercion? Some years back I was within half a mile of the hospital when a taxi drove into the side of my car. After the "discussion" I was late for my appointment and ran quite some distance from the car park. When I got there a nurse went to take my blood pressure and I said "Probably best not to do that now, I've just come out of a car accident just down the road".
"Oh it'll be all right now".
It was so not all right that an unfamiliar doctor put me on additional hypertension tablets - I was already a kidney patient! I was handed the prescription which I put in my pocket and shredded when I got home. Nobody ever asked me why I wasn't taking them because my blood pressure returned to its usual level.
If you are able to make some effect with LCHF before your next visit they need not know the secret of your success. It is awful how open minded doctors are still a rarer breed.
 
My 'educators' sat with my results in front of them and deliberately sidetracked me getting to tell how I'd done it - they really do not want to be bothered with the people who get better.
 
Please, please, please have a rant, I will join you. This is our wellbeing at stake. This is what appears on the DESMOND strapline for their website:
https://www.desmond-project.org.uk/

Lowers HbA1c...……… Comprehensive...……... For the NHS
by one per cent...……... Evidence base ………….by the NHS.

If their expected targets are to only achieve a one percent reduction in blood control, it is little wonder they say D2 is a chronic, progressive disease. When I saw (via a trailer on the screen at my GP surgery) that they had invested financially in plastic food, I cancelled the place they had reserved for me.
 
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I'm sure that the people running these courses are sensible people and there fore if they became diabetic would not follow their own advice though this is just my opinion and I could be wrong.
 

Your experience is only too common. I asked in here about DESMOND before I decided whether to book it.
After the comments I received I decided that:-
At best it would be a waste of my time (though I would be labelled as non-compliant at my GP Surgery).
At worst I would be biting my tongue all day, or involved in arguments with the 'educator'.
 
Rant away, @PamJHS - it's sadly what most of us experienced, especially if we found this forum, and have done well on LCHF before getting on a course meant to "help".

I walked out of my local equivalent of DESMOND after 15 minutes as it was abundantly clear it was going to be similar to your experience, and those running the course admitted I really wasn't going to learn a thing. (Mind you, the fact I halved my body weight as a result of not, in fact, being T2 and had been misdiagnosed is a bit of a red herring - I've noticed since I've been on insulin that my weight remains stable if I don't eat too many carbs, especially grains, and it shoots up if I eat according to current NHS dietary advice when my preferred kinds foods aren't available.)
 
I'm still working on what the acronym RHETORIC could stand for!
 
Hi. I have often said on this forum that I would not recommend any of the NHS diabetic courses as there have been too many posts showing how crazy some, but not all, are. This website is the most reliable source of diabetes knowledge I have found and it's sad (and even scandalous) that some of these NHS courses provide information that will make the patients' condition worse. I expect more from professionals when the evidence is there for them so see.
 
Good to know I'm not on my own!

When the male presenter (I say 'presenter' because it really was like Blue Peter) started off, he asked us

"Now then, what does DESMOND stand for?" and then prompted us to guess. All I can remember is 'diabetic something something mumble newly diagnosed'. I don't think it's vital to my recovery to know that!

I brought home my feedback form to fill in when I had time, and said to my husband 'I don't want to be negative'. He encouraged me to be honest about how I felt, so I was and now I am mustering the 'oomph' to send it off.
 
I often get asked how I can draw such conclusions when I haven’t been on such courses and it is posts like these that underline that one does not have to have been on these courses to know they can be as useful as a chocolate teapot .
 
I’ve never been on a Desmond course or any other. Would actually like to go on one now so I could tell them what I have achieved and how! Followed nhs guidelines for 9 years after diagnosis and medication gradually higher, bs levels also gradually higher.
3 years ago discovered this forum and low carb now normal bs levels. Why won’t they learn?
 
I found this forum before I went on my desmond course. At the introduction stage I mentioned I was low carbing. At lunch, out came the bananas, white sandwiches and fizzy drinks. I looked on in absolute horror! Unable to keep my mouth shut, I started to talk to people. Some were not interested, fair enough, their eyes, their toes. A couple did listen to me though. Told them to look for this site and do their own research. I think I did get a couple of people interested, no way to find whether they followed it up though.

The most interested person there was a young, overweight, prediabetic observer. I do hope that she joined this forum.
 

No apologies necessary!
Firstly, I'm not diabetic, however I was misdiagnosed as prediabetic then T2!
I have been given so much dietary advice about what is healthy and what I need to reduce weight and the most healthy complex carbs that will help me get my (misdiagnosed) T2 better.
For instance;
Breakfast, porridge!
Lunch, baked potato with a filling typically baked beans!
Dinner, Lean meat, starchy cooked vegetables and gravy. Or a roast dinner!

I was told I could have a treat in the evening, a pudding or sweet, a fruit yoghurt and so on.
I could have whole wheat toast, jam, because I'm lactose intolerant.
I could have grilled meat with the fat cut off, I bought a fat reducing grilling machine,
Need to eat carbs with every meal!
The famous eat well plate was continually thrust my way!
Told to exercise more!
Told to eat less animal fats, less meat, more wholesome food, more vegetables!
And, of course, a pint socially should not do much harm!

Every time I would have this 'healthy food' and follow this advice, I would put on weight, symptoms would get worse and my health would worsen!

I recognise that I do have a dietary condition and have to be careful with everything that I eat, but I just wonder how many others who have a similar condition or like me misdiagnosed, have been given this ' healthy advice'! And how much damage considering the cost to the NHS and to the lives of those affected by these courses.

The reality is that those who are given the task of trying to give this advice, don't have the knowledge how it can really effect those who have an intolerance to certain foods.
How, depending on how it effects your health and changing your dietary intake to less carbs, good control and health will improve your future health.
And more so, our doctors, are giving us advice and putting us on these courses and the like, when they themselves need to read up and receive up to date knowledge on how carb laden diets, do more harm than good!
Those who have battled their way through this quagmire of ignorance and bad health management by their doctors, and come out of this in better health because of good control and management, know that there is good advice and a different way to approach these conditions and they do work!
The word is slowly getting out there!
There are healthcare practitioners, that are doing their best to promote and advocate a different dietary approach. And had huge success!
But there is still too many, that really have no idea what harm they are doing!
Part of the Hippocratic oath is, first do no harm!

I was lucky, to get a referral to a specialist endocrinologist who recognised what was going on, it took over ten years. I dread to think, what would have happened to me, if that didn't happen. How many haven't been so lucky?

Rant on!
 
xfieldok said:
I found this forum before I went on my desmond course. At the introduction stage I mentioned I was low carbing. At lunch, out came the bananas, white sandwiches and fizzy drinks. I looked on in absolute horror!
Click to expand...

Yes, I did wonder if our lunches might be critiqued - but they weren't. I found it very funny that along with the plastic food there had apparently been a tube of real fruit pastilles, but these had mysteriously disappeared
 
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