Carb limits, sugar limits brain overload

Give us some facts chris First are you diabetic what is your Hba1cif you have had one if not what is your 2hour after meal figure for BGs
Dont panic there are lots of things you can eat ,people on this forum post some wonderful ideas and recipes This is the place to be have a read around Daisy usually posts some basic information that will give you a start .Hng in there
CAROL

csarge38 said:

As a 'big boned' person surely my calorie intake should be 2000 cals per day.

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Are you hoping to stay Big Boned then Chris ? If you reduce your carb intake then the calories will come down - that's almost inevitable. Those of us who have already hit our ideal weight have the opposite problem - of trying to keep our calories up without carbing. This means I eat a lot of dairy.

If you've weight to lose then I would ignore calories for now, but reduce the carbs and replace with protein and fat so that you don't feel hungry.

I see you are a Type 2 Chris. Why do you need to cut out fats?

I have upped my protein and fats to compensate for the lower carbs.

csarge38 wrote
I totally get the reduced sugar, carbs etc but are everyone's limits different.

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Yes. That's why you'll keep seeing 'eat to your meter' as advice to the newly diagnosed. We have differing levels of pancreatic function, and therefore cope differently with carbs. Some can get away with moderate carbs in their diet, whilst others find it easier to control their blood sugar levels on a low-carb diet. I see that you're possibly still waiting for your meter.
If you're left off medication initially to try diet and medication only, you'll want to keep your meter readings as low as possible to achieve a drop in HbA1c your GP will be happy with, and hopefully keep you off medication.

Quite a few of us here choose to follow a low-carb, high-fat diet. Your GP or other HCP is unlikely to be pleased with that, but we do it because it works, and there's no definitive proof that a high fat diet is bad for you. In fact, there's growing evidence it's actually good for you.

I also agree with what swimmer2 has said.

You've already had Daisy's advice to newbies, so you can build on that. Let us know if you want to low-carb - we'll tell you how we do it !

All the best

Geoff

csarge38 said:

Ok, apologies in advance, maybe it has not been explained properly or maybe I cant quite compute what is being said. I totally get the reduced sugar, carbs etc but are everyone's limits different. I am 6' tall and weigh 15st 12lbs (so a bit tubby then). As a 'big boned' person surely my calorie intake should be 2000 cals per day. How can I get anywhere near that if I cut out carbs, fats, sugars.

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I'm 6ft2 and weigh 17stone. I run 20miles a week. I eat less than 25g of carbs a day, which means that I burn somewhere between 3750 and 4000 kcal a day. At your height and weight you'd use at least 2500kcal a day, even if you sat on your bum all the time.

I get about 80% of my calories from fat, about 17% from protein. I eat lots of meat, eggs, vegetables, salad, berries, cheese and cream.

Because my appetite is not longer fooled by carbohydrate induced sugar rushes, I eat when I'm hungry, and stop when I'm full. I never count calories, and I've lost 70lbs in the past 18 months.
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3763&p=313266#p312898

My HbA1c is now 4.9% and I feel healthier, fitter and happier than any time in my life.

csarge38 said:

The more I read the more I see that this is not, for want of a better phrase' a prison sentence and with a little common sense things do not need to change quite so dramatically as I first though.

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Blurrgghhh. Chin up dude. It's not a prison sentence, you've just got to change your diet a bit and you'll be fine. As a bonus you get to eat all those things that they previously told you were "bad for you", like cream and fried breakfasts. Yum.

csarge38 I have my dona shish Kebab still every Thursday just leave out the pitta bread and get extra salad, I also love my Indian curry's a lot of them are low carb, I have them with cauliflower rice, also when the lads get a take away pizza they hate me because I steal the topping of them :lol: there is loads you can eat, you just have to get away from the normal diet your used to like bread potatoes pasta and the likes I would be stumped with out the old cow though (not the wife) 4 legged variety.

Hi. Don't worry too much about fats; the NHS and dieticians are paranoid on the subject and they (wrongly) ignore the impact of carbs. Who says you need 2000 calories per day? Where is the research that indicates this? Is it another fable like the 5 litres of water per day? Perhaps that's why so many are obese? As others have said, eat to the meter and cut down carbs. If you lose too much weight i.e. below a sensible BMI level then increase fats and proteins together with a little more low-GI carbs.

Who says you need 2000 calories per day? Where is the research that indicates this?

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Are you absolutely sure that you want to have this argument? It's not exactly rocket science since it's fairly easy to measure so it seems a bit unlikely that there's this massive conspiracy. For example, this study found that BMR (basically, calories burnt lying in bed doing nothing) is 1.1k for women and 1.5k for men.

You can, in principle, repeat this for various activities (walking, running, etc). Based on this, you can then derive that the average person needs 2k based on what you know the average person does.

However, we are all individuals.

My daughter is 6' tall, I am 5' 2" tall. Our nutritional and calorie requirements are not the same. Neither is our basic rate of calorie use just to tick over.

Once again, the standard 'One Size Fits All' advice is flawed.

AMBrennan said:

Are you absolutely sure that you want to have this argument?

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You're the only one who said anything about having an argument. The rest of us are just trying to help the OP.
Daibell's advice seems spot on and simple.

Daibell said:

As others have said, eat to the meter and cut down carbs. If you lose too much weight i.e. below a sensible BMI level then increase fats and proteins together with a little more low-GI carbs.

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In other words, Eat to the meter and adjust according to wether you need to lose or gain weight. Calories don't matter then.