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Type 2 Anyone on this forum that has reversed/controlled their diabetes without going very low carb?

Is low carb the only way?

  • Yes

    Votes: 14 41.2%

  • No

    Votes: 20 58.8%
  • Total voters
    34
H

HeathKick2017

Member
Messages
22
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Hello! I’m a newbie here and have spent about two months just reading everyones inspirational stories and adapting it to my life. I have reduced my carb intake and upped my physical activity. I have a lot of weight to loose at least 40kg. I found that 90% of the success stories on here are based on very low carb like less than 50g a day. For me, that is just not feasible, it will affect my quality of life. I don’t have a sweet tooth, I can cut out all desert, chocs and sugary drinks. But bread and rice are a staple in my diet, I can’t see a life without it. (I like to be realistic) well my main question here is, is there any chance of me reversing or controlling my disease with these “little” changes I’m making e.g. staying under 100–150g of carbs daily?
Is there anyone that has done it?
 
Before I knew about low carbing tool I reversed my undiagnosed diabetes.
Of course I cannot prove it but not everything in life can be proved. Hence all the research and data collected along the way.
Eating just enough to feed my young healthy body and exercising 10hrs per week was successful but I had more weight loss on 600cal milkshakes in the mid 80s.
 
Thank you so much for reply! Means so much as I thought no one would bother!

Can I ask, would you attribute it to your successful weight loss? how do you get on these days? Is your diabetes still reversed/controlled and what are you doing to maintain in the day to day?
 
HeathKick2017 said:
But bread and rice are a staple in my diet,
Click to expand...
Hi Kick,
As long as your not crazy and having rice sandwiches breakfast lunch and dinner, it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

For some people they are so carb sensitive they have to cut out bread and rice. Check your results with a glucose meter and if t doesn't spike you then you shouldn't have to cut them out of your diet altogether
Just use some common sense and eat them less often.
 
Hello @HeathKick2017,

Some members have also successfully gone through the Newcastle diet, which has helped them to reverse their diabetes. It involves having 800 cals a day for eight weeks. I am tagging @Pipp and @Fleegle, who have some experience with this diet.

I definitely would like to encourage you to become proactive about your diabetes. It is so worth it. You will find that you feel so much better.

Personally, I have adopted the low-carb way of life, which has worked for me. I've been living this way now for 3 years and it took some time to find a replacement for some of the foods, but it can be done and I honestly don't feel deprived. My hubby even calls this a luxury diet.

Have you had a look at the website dietdoctor.com? They have lots of great recipes and you can access them for free without signing up for the website. For example, I make the keto bread from the website to replace bread. Rice can be replaced with cauliflower rice. There also low carb cakes, such as brownies, cheesecake and carrot cake. You might also want to have a look at the "What have you eaten today?" thread in the low-carb forum to get some ideas what types of foods you can eat.
 
I
I had a very bad 'burn out' just after having a bad birth and moving twice quickly after being pregnant and into my second son's labour.
I end up on insulin.
Low carb gave me my sanity back thou. A great tool to compliment my insulin therapy which I'm hoping to reduce after bariatric surgery this year. I've been diabetic since I was 6yrs old (roughly). Symptoms were ignored by my then outdated GP. I wasn't even offered thrush cream. I was tormented and given an antiseptic cream and ushered away dismissively. My mum was told it was hygiene related so my father bought me a bidet to save on hot water bill.
 
I am not sure it is possible for a Type 2 to reverse on up to 150 grams of carbs especially rice. I managed a 41 HbA1c on low GI, which included soda bread, oats and sweet potato. This required a lot of exercise. Switching to LCHF yielded much better results. To loose the 40 kg, optimally you will need to keep blood glucose / insulin low, this will be hard with high carbs coming in, unless you go low calorie, which drops your metabolic rate, which means either need more exercise and reduced food amounts by about 25 %. You could try low carb bread, such as Livlife and there is a Polish low carb bread that has been mentioned recently. Rice I think is around 33% carbs per 100 grams with just 1 gram of fibre and high glucose / insulin response for many - you will have to test. You could try the cooking with coconut oil, cooling, refrigerating, reheating trick, which lowers the impact of the starch in rice.

You might have a chance on a whole food plant based diet as this protocol included rice, but not much is said about this on this forum. I used to feel the same about oats; but better glucose control in my back to back tests mean I have long forgotten about these.
 
Thank you for your reply! Yes... I’ve bought a meter just too scared to poke/see the reading. I know I really should. Will take your advice
 
I had never heard of dietdoctor but thank you! I will check it out today. I will also try to make the Keto bread. Elsewhere on the forum they talk about Lidl protein roll, are these any good, Carb content wise?
 
HeathKick2017 said:
I had never heard of dietdoctor but thank you! I will check it out today. I will also try to make the Keto bread. Elsewhere on the forum they talk about Lidl protein roll, are these any good, Carb content wise?
Click to expand...

Hi @HeathKick2017,

Yes, I had them before -- they are pretty good, a bit seedy. They are about 10g of carb each, so much better than regular bread. When I had them, I had about half a roll at a time and hardly saw my blood sugars move. They are also some other lower-carb breads around, most often labelled high-protein breads. You might want to check those out too -- though I you might want to look at the carb content too.
 
Thank you! That explains why I have such a hard time loosing weight. Perhaps I’ll drop my carbs to 100g a day. And eat rice only on some days of the week as opposed to my previous lifestyle of pretty much twice a day everyday. I really think it was my inactivity that caused the weight gain/diabetes I barely left my house for two years I was a full time couch potato. I’m hoping with upping my physical activity to 3x a week 1hr cardio. 3x a week 45mins resistance training which I’ve been doing I can reduce my insulin resistance. I’ve managed to loose about 3 inches of my waist but then again it’s taken almost 4 months!
Thanks for your suggestion on the rice — I usually cook it in tomato sauce, so I’ll try adding coconut oil!
 
MTS1980 said:
Yes I have but at least 8km walk every day Is a must I use few unconventional things too in my diet it is possible buddy
Click to expand...
Thank you for sharing how you do it! I will up my physical activity. Hopefully that will help my burn the carbs I take in
 
Thanks for all your responses. I also do IF fasting 18hrs a day eating 6hrs and I take some supplements such as chromium and apple cider vinegar. anyone else familiar with these or IF?
 
Hi @HeathKick2017
For me testing was the most important thing and finding what foods my body could cope with and what was better avoided. I didn't go very low carb but probably down to under 100 g of carbs a day. Maybe less at first but I just used my meter. I can now manage more carbs but I am 3 years into this and I still test.
 
I would say

- it depends on the cause of your T2 (there are several different causes)

So if your T2 is the result of your extra weight and visceral fat on the liver and pancreas AND you lose that weight and keep it off, then your T2 may well reverse. So the weight loss is the key factor, and there are many different weight loss diets around, so pick one, do it, lose the weight, and voila! you are likely to get a disappearance of your T2. Unless you put that weight back on. Low carb is of value as a weight loss tool for many, but it isn't the only way. And low carb is helpful to prevent weight regain for people with insulin resistance, but it isn't the only way.

Having said that, if your T2 is caused by other things - and there are many, including medication, age, genetical likelihood, other illness, environmental factors, etc. etc. - then weight reduction may not be enough alone. People in this situation often find that a multi-pronged approach of diet, exercise, lifestyle, medication, and so on,. are necessary, and going low carb is a very powerful tool in the T2 toolbox.

Short answer: Start testing your blood glucose and map out what is happening to your blood glucose when you eat at your current carb level. That is usually a very good indication of whether we will benefit by reducing carbs further.

My personal view: People with T2 are 'carb intolerant'. Why would we choose to keep putting food into our bodies that we are intolerant to? and which we will probably get more intolerant to as we get older? So I think that low carb is a very very good idea in the long term, whether we 'reverse' or not.
 
Each of as is different, specially when it comes to physiology of our bodies, lcd works in most cases, especially in the beginning, when one is overweight/obese. Initially I dramatically reduced all carbs, especially simple sugars. This worked well, very well, until I got my weight to "normal" levels (BMI under 25) and increased my physical activities a lot. Then I noticed that the more carbs I cut, the higher my bg will rise, slow, steady rise until I eat some carbs and then my bg will start falling again. So now I upped my carbs intake, roughly to 100 g a day and voila! My bg started going down again, slowly but the trend is there. I also noticed that my insulin resistance has decreased, I do not spike so much anymore. I do consume more carbs in the mornings (some wholemeal rye bread), and early afternoons (usually some fruit, strawberries etc.), try to avoid carbs for dinner as much as possible. This gives me pretty good results. Last night I ate some potato salad (with decent portion of bbq meat, veggies and green salad) and my 1 hr postprandial reading was 7.3 and 2 hr was 5.2. Which would indicate a pretty good insulin response. This seems to work for me. I am still battling a dawn phenomenon though, my fbg is mostly in 5.5 - 6.0 range. Hopefully this will get better in time too.
 
I didn't go VLC but kept my carbs to between 50 and 80 grams a day but I also cut calories drastically as well.

Though am officially in remission A1c of 35 last few tests I still get odd glitches and rogue readings occasionally. So still have to be careful.
 
I have 80-100g a day and have kept my blood sugars nearly normal for over 6 years.

I have not tried to go back to eating more carbs as my understanding of how my body works is that I am carb intolerant to a certain degree and so taking more carbs makes no sense to me.
 
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