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Hello and Thank You

Wow well done and thank you for the update it's wonderful to hear when someone does so well and your weight loss too is staggering you really must feel like a different person to a year ago. Excellent and inspirational results.
 
shelley262 said:
Wow well done and thank you for the update it's wonderful to hear when someone does so well and your weight loss too is staggering you really must feel like a different person to a year ago. Excellent and inspirational results.
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I've had a good run of luck, some great support from people in my life and on this forum, put in a lot of effort to change my ways, and as one of my closest friends said of my approach, "finally, being a stubborn ******* is paying off for you!"

I guess I'd sum up what I've learnt and experienced so far as follows:

Managing diabetes - If you want medication as your singular approach to management, the NHS will help and has many options - more of them than you can shake a stick at, in fact. If you don't, the NHS seems entirely at a loss as to what to do with you, at least in my experience. Diabetes professionals are the same as midwives in my opinion - out of touch, recommending out of date "solutions" that are proven to be unsuccessful/dangerous, and rather than being part of the solution they're part of the problem.

Cholesterol - Still don't understand it, probably never will, and I'm seriously skeptical that anyone is anywhere close to understanding it regardless of how many letters they may have after their name.

Weight loss - It can be easier, but it's never easy. Keto, with occasional low carb range days, has reduced my appetite and forced me to face many of my food demons, which has helped immensely. It's the easiest diet I've ever done and definitely the most successful. However, for me it's shifted the problems of a diet from cravings and hunger, to "what the hell am I going to eat while I'm out?" or "how am I going to get time in my schedule to food prep this week?" Admittedly, they're better problems to have and there are always solutions, but it's still a challenge.

People - While I've been fortunate that my close friends and family have been extremely supportive, people more broadly have been a problem at times. Work people, particularly at senior levels, don't want to hear that a "working lunch" with pizza isn't going to motivate me to drive an 8 hour round trip to HQ to sit in a meeting to discuss their latest irrelevant whims. The amount of people (particularly at work) who have said "I don't know why you don't just take medication and eat what you want", as though that's even a thing, is quite staggering. Surrounding yourself with supportive people, who fight for what's best for you and make every effort to help, is vital. It's also why this forum is so amazing, because everyone is supportive and tries to help.
 
Stunning results and very well deserved.

I have enjoyed your contributions and hope, busy as you are, that you will continue to join our discussions when time allows. It's helpful to us old lags as well - especially with the ongoing challenges of managing Other People Who Don't Understand. Sometimes it can feel as if we are the only ones who have to deal with this, so we gain resolve by knowing we aren't alone in this.
 
Fantastic result. Really well done.

The official NHS definition of remission (recently adopted, might last, might not) is two HbA1c results of less than 48 taken 182 days apart with no glucose-lowering medication in the 90 days before these measurements.

https://diabetesjournals.org/care/a...ence-and-Characteristics-of-Remission-of-Type

That isn't what I would accept as "remission" for myself, but you're easily inside it. My practice used a much tougher definition some years back that was HbA1c at normal levels (ie below 42) for a twelve month peiod with no glucose-lowering meds. Even on those criteria you'll be there by November.

Well done again.
 
Remission is one of those emotive things for T2 diabetics I think. The term and how it's discussed a lot of the time leads people to think it's basically a cure. However, it's never been an actual specific goal of mine, mainly because remission is ultimately the product of many goals/targets being achieved. Remission, in and of itself, doesn't change much for me. It's not like I can now change my diet to 100% carbs and be fine because I'm in remission, so I view it as a rubber stamp on the effectiveness of the approach I'm taking and a strong suggestion I shouldn't rock the boat.

All of my specific targets around BG management, weight loss, exercise etc bring immense benefits, all in different ways across a spectrum of health issues I had/have. Achieving these has changed my life for the better - plus they also happen to have resulted in T2 remission as one of those many benefits. That's how I think of it anyway and I'd never have got to this realisation, or taken the approach I have, without the influence and guidance of so many here on this forum.
 
Agree with that. For me, remission implied getting to a point where I didn't have the ******* symptoms anymore. On the current definition, I could meet the criteria to be "in remission" and still be at a BG level where I had all my symptoms. That is patently a nonsense. In other health areas remission is usually taken to mean primarily an absence of symptoms.

It seems to me that the 182 day definition is most useful in enabling a payment to be made - you have a trigger point and "remission" is the sort of thing that sounds good.

It's a bit like getting to double figures when you're batting (apologies for the cricket reference) - it's something you need to do, it's a definite landmark, but once achieved it doesn't mean all that much, and the important thing is you'll be concentrating on keeping going for your fifty or ton.
 
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