Are you getting the right kind of calories?

kev-w said:

Aye well, weighing in at 79kg BMI 24.5 no fat I'll carry on just doing that I think, it's worked pretty well for the last 34 years all told.

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I weigh 8 1/2 stones, give or take a pound or 2 and have done so for over 4 decades and I will keep trying to stay that way too

db89 said:

The term 'empty calories' confounds me. How can it be empty if it gets converted to energy? Or does this mean I can go and sink a chocolate bar for free?

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Don’t know about the chocolate but I might try that anyway. I won’t really cos my sugar skyrockets.

@kev-w
Simple response to your "funny" face at my "obesity may be a symptom rather than a cause" post .. nothing special really...if you are really interested that is.

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Hi All,

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Robinredbreast said:

I was just about to say the same thing. It's about eating sensibly, knowing you are getting overweight or feeling unfit, clothes won't fit anymore, then trying to cut out the c**p food and try to eat a sensible healthy diet.
People aren't stupid, but they do tend to ignore things and/or bury their heads in the sand, not a good idea, especially when the state of their health and well being is at stake.

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And what if you continue to put on weight after doing all those things? Then you need good dietary advice, and eating carbs with every meal is not good dietary advice for some one who is gaining weight because of metabolic syndrome. I didn't bury my head in the sand once. I went to my doctor for help and she gave me the GI diet...yep 'healthy' carbs. I put on 8 pounds in two weeks.

OK, I don't have hypos. I don't even have to work at it, I just don't get them. It isn't because I am clever or work hard at my health. It just happens. Hypo free zand. Wonderful hey? That's because I do not have T1 or RH.

Some on this thread have said how well they maintain their weight and have indicated that they intend to always do so. They can do this because they do not have IR/T2. It sounds critical of those of us who can't manage that. The reason we can't manage that is because we have IR/metabolic syndrome/ T2. It isn't because we are greedy or stupid or lazy or hide our heads in the sand. It's because we are T2 and our bodies don't use insulin properly and therefore they produce more of the stuff and that makes us fat. I was insulin resistant for many years before being diagnosed as T2, and getting ever fatter every year. I tried to eat healthily but since dietary advice was usually centred around eating 'healthy' carbs I was never going to manage it until I discovered low carbing 7 years ago.

Please don't assume that because someone is fat they eat a worse diet than you. It really isn't that straightforward. I am lucky that I am not T1 and don't get hypos. Others are lucky that they don't have to spend their life waddling around being ridiculed. I don't criticize someone whose silly body has decided to stop producing insulin. I don't see why I should be criticised because my silly body produces too much.

kev-w said:

But the article isn't about T2 diabetes is the gist of it and is correct in what it says, and if obesity is one of the causes of T2 then it is in fact a salient point..

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I agree it is a healthy diet for someone who is not diabetic but do need to loose weight .People can do that even eating a normal amount of carbs it is when they eat to many that the problems start

I rather suspect that needing to lose weight should be a trigger for testing for diabetes.
All the time I was being urged to eat 'healthy' amounts of carbs I felt pretty dismal. That started in the early 1970s.
My weight went up and down but in the other direction to that described as yo-yo dieting.
When eating a low carb diet my body functions far better than when eating low calorie.
When eating all I want on a low carb diet, I lose weight.
At the last interview with a nurse she was congratulating me on managing to lose weight, and was rather baffled when I said that I hadn't been trying. Losing weight by the conventional methods seems to be either impossible or hard work.

Pinkorchid said:

I agree it is a healthy diet for someone who is not diabetic but do need to loose weight .People can do that even eating a normal amount of carbs it is when they eat to many that the problems start

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But people can be insulin resistant for many years before they become T2. They aren't diabetic yet can't handle carbs - but don't know that because no-one tells them.

Resurgam said:

I rather suspect that needing to lose weight should be a trigger for testing for diabetes.
All the time I was being urged to eat 'healthy' amounts of carbs I felt pretty dismal. That started in the early 1970s.
My weight went up and down but in the other direction to that described as yo-yo dieting.
When eating a low carb diet my body functions far better than when eating low calorie.
When eating all I want on a low carb diet, I lose weight.
At the last interview with a nurse she was congratulating me on managing to lose weight, and was rather baffled when I said that I hadn't been trying. Losing weight by the conventional methods seems to be either impossible or hard work.

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Yes needing to lose weight should be a trigger for both insulin and BG tests. Sadly only BG tests are normally done so we don't find out about IR until many years ( and many stones) later.

Pinkorchid said:

I agree it is a healthy diet for someone who is not diabetic but do need to loose weight .People can do that even eating a normal amount of carbs it is when they eat to many that the problems start

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Perhaps you would like to tell us how many carbs is too many?
Because unless you explain that, you are implying that anyone who is fat is eating abnormally large amounts of carb, and of course that isn't true, is it?

zand said:

And what if you continue to put on weight after doing all those things? Then you need good dietary advice, and eating carbs with every meal is not good dietary advice for some one who is gaining weight because of metabolic syndrome. I didn't bury my head in the sand once. I went to my doctor for help and she gave me the GI diet...yep 'healthy' carbs. I put on 8 pounds in two weeks.

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Exactly. I've struggled with weight my entire life. I tried various "healthy diets" including Weight Watchers and low Gi and exercise. I have lost weight but it's been difficult and I have regained. (Eating low carb has been more effective for me than any previous diet I've ever tried. As well, I've have normal hunger for the first time that I can remember. On low fat diets, I was constantly hungry). My sister and father in contrast have always been able to eat everything (my sister ate a lot of junk food until her 50s, ten years ago) and haven't had to worry about any weight gain. My mom (who has also had weight struggles although not as big as mine) has told me that when I was a child when people asked if I ate more than my sister, her answer was no, I usually ate less. My dad told me that at age 90 (he's 92 now) he started to put on a little bit of weight for the first time in his life so he cut back on desserts (he used to eat them 4 times a day). I laughed and told him if weight loss was just eliminating desserts for me, I'd never ever been obese in the first place. In contrast, my father's brother has struggled with weight his entire life.

There are people who have even more difficulty than me losing weight and people who weigh more than I do. I don't judge overweight/obese people, our bodies all work differently.

There is some evidence now that the same factors that lead to T2 diabetes are also responsible for tendency to obesity (ie "thrift gene", "fat sparer gene") I agree that obesity is a symptom of this predisposition.

I always claimed to not eat much and was rarely believed - but when on holiday with a group of friends back in the 1970s they were astonished by the small amounts of food I cooked for them on the first evening, and went off to find a fish and chip shop.

Pinkorchid said:

Agree but we don't know any more than they would who is insulin resistant so no one is going to tell them to give up the carbs and even if they do chances are they would not be interested​

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If someone is overweight then their GP should test their insulin levels. Then they would know and could so something about it. I have never had mine tested but know that I am insulin resistant because I only lose weight when eating a low carb diet.

I think it's so wrong to judge people because they are overweight. Why assume they eat too much? If they are leptin resistant then they will be always hungry. It's natural to eat when you are hungry.

I have an Aunt who is slim and says it is because she has always eaten a healthy diet. 4 years ago I started taking her to do her weekly shop. What an eye opener! Her healthy diet consisted of breakfast cereal with sugar and orange juice, ready meals, biscuits, chocolate, sweets, low cal squash, cakes and low fat spread with wholemeal bread. wow! I don't think I have ever eaten such a bad diet, even as a slim teenager. Yet because she isn't fat she thinks she is eating healthily and judges anyone who is a tad overweight as a junk food eater.

Brunneria said:

Because unless you explain that, you are implying that anyone who is fat is eating abnormal amounts of carbs, and of course that isn't true, is it?

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Perhaps I should have put it better and said for some but not all to many carbs can be the problem for weight gain it is metabolism which is different for different people. When I say a normal amount of carbs I suppose I really go on what I and my family ate which was what I would call moderate amounts of things like bread, potatoes and sweet stuff but not big portions When I bought my family up in the 60/70's there was no fast foods or takeaways..except fish and chips which were an occasional big treat... so no burgers, pizza or pasta which people now love to eat and are very carby. Meals were cooked from scratch and puddings and cake were for Sundays we ate the way most families did then.

And there's always the fly in the ointment.... what about those of us who put on no visible weight? Does this mean we must have been eating ultra healthily or that portion size was miniscule? No it does not, it just means we stored the fats in perhaps unseen and more dangerous places.
As for excercise Oh Puleeze!

Pinkorchid said:

Perhaps I should have put it better and said for some but not all to many carbs can be the problem for weight gain it is metabolism which is different for different people. When I say a normal amount of carbs I suppose I really go on what I and my family ate which was what I would call moderate amounts of things like bread, potatoes and sweet stuff but not big portions When I bought my family up in the 60/70's there was no fast foods or takeaways..except fish and chips which were an occasional big treat... so no burgers, pizza or pasta which people now love to eat and are very carby. Meals were cooked from scratch and puddings and cake were for Sundays we ate the way most families did then.

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Thank you.


That kind of highlights what i was thinking.
Basically, the amount of carbs that you mention in a ‘normal’ 60/70s family is actually significantly more carb than I was brought up with. We had no sugar in the house. No bread (my mother was intolerant of wheat). I only tasted chips once a year on holiday, and battered fish was the same. Jam was offered to guests, not us. And we only had puddings on Sundays (until yogurt arrived. We were given that more often.

So much less carbohydrate than you describe - yet it was still ‘too much’ for me.

Just goes to show that different people have different capacities for carbohydrate, doesn’t it? It would appear that I am more carb intolerant than you, since I became T2 in my 40s even eating less carbohydrate than you throughout my life. Yet we both developed T2 eventually - suggesting that we were both eating more carbs than our bodies could cope with.

zand said:

OK, I don't have hypos. I don't even have to work at it, I just don't get them. It isn't because I am clever or work hard at my health. It just happens. Hypo free zand. Wonderful hey? That's because I do not have T1 or RH.

Some on this thread have said how well they maintain their weight and have indicated that they intend to always do so. They can do this because they do not have IR/T2. It sounds critical of those of us who can't manage that. The reason we can't manage that is because we have IR/metabolic syndrome/ T2. It isn't because we are greedy or stupid or lazy or hide our heads in the sand. It's because we are T2 and our bodies don't use insulin properly and therefore they produce more of the stuff and that makes us fat. I was insulin resistant for many years before being diagnosed as T2, and getting ever fatter every year. I tried to eat healthily but since dietary advice was usually centred around eating 'healthy' carbs I was never going to manage it until I discovered low carbing 7 years ago.

Please don't assume that because someone is fat they eat a worse diet than you. It really isn't that straightforward. I am lucky that I am not T1 and don't get hypos. Others are lucky that they don't have to spend their life waddling around being ridiculed. I don't criticize someone whose silly body has decided to stop producing insulin. I don't see why I should be criticised because my silly body produces too much.

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After my dear dad died this year, I didn't have my hourly walk, there and back to the care home most day's, I was down and out and did , well, not a lot, I put on some weight. Not overweight I know, but aged 60 now, I have to work at a it, even though I wanted to stuff my face at times. Decades of diabetes isn't easy and if I don't keep a check on what I am doing, making sure I keep active and watching what I eat and not letting depression take a firm hold, then weight can go on. We are all, I'm sure, trying to do our best with life and diabetes.