unfortunately, your reply is too vague for me to make helpful suggestions. Can you give an idea of what your daily food and drink looks like.
I’m sorry for the lack of clarity. It isn’t that I’m intentionally trying to be vague. It’s just difficult for me to typify what I consume on a given day because it’s so sporadic and I haven’t yet established specific trends or patterns to my eating habits that I am aware of.
I’ll try to provide in-depth info below.
For context: I’m male, aged 37, 5ft 6in tall and I currently weight about 14 stone (90kg). I have a BMI of 33.
According the the NHS, my ideal body weight is between 8st 3lbs and 11st 2lbs, with the latter seeming more appropriate.
In April 2020, my mother passed away at 56 from epilepsy related complications. Sadly, due to her own personal challenges, we had been estranged in the decade leading up to her death. After she passed away, to try to understand her better, I requested access to see her medical records. They made for grim reading. I learned that she had been in very poor health and was extremely overweight.
Ever since she passed away, its really played on my mind and made me think of my own health and mortality. I now, more than ever, recognise the desperate need to change whilst it’s still within my power to do so and before it’s too late. I appreciate I sound very dramatic, but I now have more awareness of the urgency of that and don’t want history repeating itself.
So, as it stands, I’m around 2.5 stone overweight. In all honesty, I hadn’t ever really thought of that as being a huge amount. Nothing that a quick, short diet wouldn’t resolve, I kept telling myself year after year.
But as a small framed guy, it was becoming harder to ignore how my lifestyle was negatively impacting my health. For example, every time I move, even just slowly or leisurely - I sweat profusely. My heart rate goes sky high, my heart smashes through my chest and I feel light headed.
I can only assume these issues are weight related as tests and assessments haven’t been able to establish any other cause and I think my GP is just too polite to tell me!
Regarding my eating habits, I guess it’s important to say before getting to that, that I take a daily 60mg daily dose of Lisdexamfetamine for ADHD, following a year long titration process with a specialist nurse.
Aside from treating ADHD, Lisdexamfetamine is also prescribed to people with binge eating disorders, although that isn’t applicable to me. From the moment of taking it upon waking and until it starts wearing off (around 6/7pm), it totally suppresses my appetite. Because of that, I often go the whole day without anything more than a few cups of coffee. After it’s worn off though, my appetite returns with a vengeance.
Because I only need to take it on days i’m working or studying (I study a masters in Mental Health Science), I sometimes skip taking it. On these days I have a normal appetite. This fluctuation makes
It harder for me to understand my own eating habits and trends.
On the days I make a conscious effort, I might eat a few boiled eggs for breakfast around 8am, followed by canned soup around 12pm. I will then have an evening meal around 6pm which will normally be fish or chicken/turkey breast with vegetables.
On bad days, I skip food entirely until the evening. I might order a takeaway or eat bad or processed food (sausage and chips, chicken Kiev’s etc) and might snack on crisps, chocolate, orange juice and then wine later.
I’d say my three main vices are fizzy drinks/fruit juices, white break and alcohol. Not so much these days but I have been known to drink a full 2 litre of Coke (not diet) or large carton of orange juice. I can also eat half a loaf of white break in a day. This has been much reduced lately in trying to change my eating patterns.
Of course, I’m very aware that all of those things are bad for health. I think I’ve just buried my head in the sand. I don’t think I’ve even been consciously aware of just how much of that bad stuff I must in a day or over a number of days.
Truthfully, I thought that the likely culprit was alcohol. I have been a big drinker from a young age and have drank excessively for the last 25 years (red wine mainly). During lockdown particularly, I was getting to the point of having a bottle every night, sometimes two. This caused liver-related health issues on top of everything else.
I had perhaps naively assumed it any weight gain and high blood sugar was due to the sugar in the wine etc. So, logically, I thought that if I cut out alcohol, any future HbA1c test would improve somewhat.
Today marks 50 days since I decided to take an extended break from drinking alcohol and the first HbA1c result I’ve had following this is the highest I’ve had to date. The good news is though that my liver is back in good shape and within healthy ranges!
So, whilst alcohol does me no favours, my July 2021 HBA1C shows I need to be more conscious and aware of what I’m eating. My health issues can only be because of my weight. This recent score of 76 has really scared, embarrassed and shocked me so I’m going to be making a food diary going forward. That’s the only way I can say for sure what’s going in!
Even writing this post has disgusted me and made me open my eyes!
Since I got diagnosed this time last year, I’ve not once had chance to sit down with my GP (due to Covid) to understand what it all means. She just said to me that I just needed to make some lifestyle changes and could reverse it.
Whilst I know that what I need to do is common sense ie less in more out by cutting the ****, move more, less carbs etc, other than that I feel fairly in the dark. I tried a Libre 2 for a few weeks some some months back and many of the readings were out of recommended range. Yet, just before that, I’d gone from 56 to 47 in my HbA1c so clearly had been doing something right somewhere? I didn’t quite understand (and still don’t) the reading variations, what they should be, what makes it spike (though whenever I had alcohol it rose significantly).
I’m at an “enough is enough” point now. I’ve got to take my head out of my backside and wake up and stop being in denial (not that I’d even realised that I clearly was!)
Last Sunday (25/6/21), I decided to try Huel shakes as meal replacements. Admittedly, when it comes to finding what works for me, I’m like a rabbit in the headlights. I get completely overwhelmed by all the information, especially as much of it is conflicted.
But in regards to Huel, I’d done a fair bit of homework about its purported benefits etc over previous months but I had been out off by the price. Yet, I read lots of different (independent) articles detailing their nutritional value and how they are good for diabetics as they (arguably) help to maintain good blood sugar levels. I thought this would help me as I’d then know specifically everything I was consuming and the nutritional values etc. Aside from one slip up where I had pizza one evening in the week, as of today, I have lost about 6lbs.
This has been such a wake up call to me that even after a week, where my enthusiasm would normally be waning, I feel just as committed to change once and for all.
Going forward, I’ll set myself small goals to work towards so it seems it’s realistic for me to achieve and then repeat it. Hopefully, within a 6 months I can reach my ideal weight and turn around my health for good.
Losing the weight is just half of the challenge though. I still need that good understanding of my blood sugar levels etc to manage it going forward and I’ll be putting as much effort into this as losing the lbs.
I’m really sorry. I completely rambled on this post but wanted to try to be as clear and detailed as I could.
