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Anonymous Question Getting ill when I try to diet

Anonymous Question

Anonymous Question

Well-Known Member
Messages
290
Type of diabetes
Other
Treatment type
Diet only
Anonymous question submitted:

I have apparently been suffering from pre diabetes for a while now and have now been told I need to meet up with a dietician to review my dietary choices. That's fine. I've no problem with any of that, but I've also been told I need to lose weight and this is my problem. Over the last 2 years I've tried to lose weight on 5 separate occasions. Each time within a couple of weeks I've been struck down with a raging cold or flu and had to abandon the diet to regain good health.

Is it possible this recurrent sickness has been related to my blood sugar problems and will following a medically approved diet enable me to lose the weight this time around without taking sick again?

To submit a question, please go to http://www.diabetes.co.uk/ask-an-anonymous-question.html
 
To address your questions first - I don't know the answers - sorry, so I will tell you my experience instead. .

My experience was similar to yours. I was pre diabetic for many years (possibly as many as 10). My GP and nurse kept telling me to lose weight. I tried various diets. They didn't work. I got ill with recurrent infections, just like you, coughs, colds, chest infections, throat infections, flu...

I didn't need health care professionals to tell me to lose weight, that was what I wanted to do anyway. What I needed was for them to tell me how. All they gave me was the eat well plate, GI diet and GL diet. I put on weight on all of those. They also told me to just cut down portion size, it didn't work, so I cut down more and eventually kept getting ill just like you, probably because I wasn't eating enough of the right foods.

So after having a bad bout of flu where I didn't eat anything for 6 days, and then very little for 5 days, I weighed myself and I had lost just 1/2 pound. Diets weren't ever going to work if I couldn't lose weight when not eating at all.

So I decided to stop worrying about my weight and try to get well instead. I cut out pasta, bread, potatoes, rice, flour products and of course sugar. I gave up diet drinks and had water instead. I didn't lose weight very quickly, but I lost some and more importantly, I stopped being ill. I now know that many others follow the type of diet I did, but wasn't aware of this at the time. Have a look at LCHF (low carb, high fat) on this forum. Don't be put off by the high fat bit, it really means 'full fat' - you eat natural fats like butter, cream, cheese, lard and cut out the man-made low fat products which are usually full of hidden sugars.

Now back to the questions. I am guessing at the answers as I have no medical training at all.

Is it possible that the recurrent sickness is due to blood sugar problems? Yes I would say so, since sugar causes inflammation and inflammation causes illness. Also you may not have been having enough fats to help you metabolise all the nutrients from your food whilst dieting. We can live with very few carbs, but fats are essential.

Will following a medically approved diet help? It depends on the advice you are given, if it's the standard NHS advice, well - it didn't help me. I was just nagged for not losing weight, so therefore it was assumed that I hadn't followed their diets properly. Very frustrating and upsetting when you are doing your best.

For me LCHF was a much better choice than any other diet I have tried. If I were you I would probably go to listen to the dietician to see what they have to say, but bear in mind that the standard 'wholemeal carbs with every meal' advice is not followed by all of us here.

Good luck. :)
 
Hi and welcome. A sensible diet should not cause illness. As diabetics we need to keep the carbs down and it may be that your previous diets didn't do this? A low-carb diet will also help with weight loss. Be aware that many diet sheets from the NHS, dieticians etc are completely wrong for us. You must keep the carbs down and fats are good for us. In summary keep the carbs down and the proteins, fats and veg etc high enough to keep you full. I bet the diet sheet you were given said the opposite? High blood sugar will always increase the risk of infection as bacteria will feed on the excess glucose.
 
zand said:
To address your questions first - I don't know the answers - sorry, so I will tell you my experience instead. .

My experience was similar to yours. I was pre diabetic for many years (possibly as many as 10). My GP and nurse kept telling me to lose weight. I tried various diets. They didn't work. I got ill with recurrent infections, just like you, coughs, colds, chest infections, throat infections, flu...

I didn't need health care professionals to tell me to lose weight, that was what I wanted to do anyway. What I needed was for them to tell me how. All they gave me was the eat well plate, GI diet and GL diet. I put on weight on all of those. They also told me to just cut down portion size, it didn't work, so I cut down more and eventually kept getting ill just like you, probably because I wasn't eating enough of the right foods.

So after having a bad bout of flu where I didn't eat anything for 6 days, and then very little for 5 days, I weighed myself and I had lost just 1/2 pound. Diets weren't ever going to work if I couldn't lose weight when not eating at all.

So I decided to stop worrying about my weight and try to get well instead. I cut out pasta, bread, potatoes, rice, flour products and of course sugar. I gave up diet drinks and had water instead. I didn't lose weight very quickly, but I lost some and more importantly, I stopped being ill. I now know that many others follow the type of diet I did, but wasn't aware of this at the time. Have a look at LCHF (low carb, high fat) on this forum. Don't be put off by the high fat bit, it really means 'full fat' - you eat natural fats like butter, cream, cheese, lard and cut out the man-made low fat products which are usually full of hidden sugars.

Now back to the questions. I am guessing at the answers as I have no medical training at all.

Is it possible that the recurrent sickness is due to blood sugar problems? Yes I would say so, since sugar causes inflammation and inflammation causes illness. Also you may not have been having enough fats to help you metabolise all the nutrients from your food whilst dieting. We can live with very few carbs, but fats are essential.

Will following a medically approved diet help? It depends on the advice you are given, if it's the standard NHS advice, well - it didn't help me. I was just nagged for not losing weight, so therefore it was assumed that I hadn't followed their diets properly. Very frustrating and upsetting when you are doing your best.

For me LCHF was a much better choice than any other diet I have tried. If I were you I would probably go to listen to the dietician to see what they have to say, but bear in mind that the standard 'wholemeal carbs with every meal' advice is not followed by all of us here.

Good luck. :)
Click to expand...

Good post, @zand, you should write a blog about your journey to now!;)
 
Could it be that you are not getting bouts of cold and flu but are just going through the transition from carb to fat burning and each time you stop just when it may start to work? All those that go low carb went through this carb flu I am afraid.
 
I've never had low carb flu, :) the one time I thought I did it turned out to be a real cold. :(
 
There's a school of thought that says when we detox (usually through diet/lifestyle changes), our bodies chuck out a lot of rubbish - which temporarily affects the immune system, as the nasties flush/burn away.

Of course, this depends on a lot of things. Some people poo poo the whole 'detox' concept. Others poo poo the idea of detox diets... and so on.

And then it all depends on what kind of diet you are trying to do.

I am a big supporter of the idea of gentle weight loss. This is because every time I have ever lost weight quickly, I have put it all back on again + some, within a year. Yet when I gently, slowly, ease the weight off, it stays off. (I am currently nearly 5 stone lighter than my heaviest ever weight, but still with a heck of a lot still to go).

So, what diets were you trying?
 
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