Help please, Just diagnosed but do not need to lose weight

[Aylajondy]

Hello, I have just been diagnosed, I am just diabetic with HbA1c value 48. I have read so many people manage to lower their values to healthy ones with a low carb diet. The last 3 months I started doing more exercise, cut down on all cakes, fruit juices and sugars and lately I am trying to move towards a keto diet. My problem is that I was not overweight to start with and these changes caused weight loss that I did not want or need.
Is there anyone in this forum in a similar situation and could you please help me or direct me towards a balanced diet that will not make me lose more weight? I feel a bit desperate, confused and overwhelmed by it all at the moment
Thank you in advance for your help.

 

[Goonergal]

Hi and welcome @Aylajondy

I don’t share your problem - had plenty of weight to lose and find it much easier to gain than lose.

However it’s not impossible to maintain or gain weight eating low carb/ketogenically.

You’re only just in the diabetic range with that HbA1c, so I suspect you don’t need to drop carbs as drastically as some of us, but depending on your personality type, it can often be easier to have an ‘all in’ approach.

I’ll tag @Jim Lahey @Krystyna23040 @ianf0ster as people who may have something more based in experience to say, but in the meantime I’d suggest making sure you get plenty of fat, whether that be attached to meat, cheese etc or added in the form of foods such as nuts and avocado.

I’d also recommend looking up / researching the concepts of ‘TOFI’ (Thin On The Outside, Fat on the Inside’ and also Insulin Resistance. Having that knowledge will help you to adjust what you eat to meet your goals.

 

[TriciaWs]

If you don't need to lose weight then you can eat more unprocessed fats on a low carb diet - add butter to green veg, oily dressings on salads, etc.

 

[ianf0ster]

Hi @Aylajondy I was a slim Type 2 who thought he didn't ned to lose weight. that was the main reason I chose to go Low Carb rather than tone of those 800 calorie diets.
How skinny are you (BMI wise) and how fast is weight dropping with what you are currently eating?

I was BMI 25 at my very maximum and was losing between 1lb and 2lbs per week.
I was low carbing, but eating a lot more protein and traditional fat (fatty fish, bacon, fatty cuts of pork, lamb, eggs every day, 100gms to 200gms of cheese almost every day, unlimited nuts)..
I wasn't specifically counting calories, but I'm pretty sure I was eating quite a lot more calories on Low Carb than I was before diagnosis when I was eating that Low Fat rubbish.

I found cheese (and to a lesser extent fatty nuts like Brazils) were something I found I could eat even when I'd thought I was already 'full'. So they were invaluable for slowing and eventually stabilising my weight while still getting my HBA1C down to 37. My BMI is now 23 - so a long way from either being actually underweight, or from the weight I was in my early twenties!

 

[Aylajondy]

Hi @Aylajondy I was a slim Type 2 who thought he didn't ned to lose weight. that was the main reason I chose to go Low Carb rather than tone of those 800 calorie diets.
How skinny are you (BMI wise) and how fast is weight dropping with what you are currently eating?

I was BMI 25 at my very maximum and was losing between 1lb and 2lbs per week.
I was low carbing, but eating a lot more protein and traditional fat (fatty fish, bacon, fatty cuts of pork, lamb, eggs every day, 100gms to 200gms of cheese almost every day, unlimited nuts)..
I wasn't specifically counting calories, but I'm pretty sure I was eating quite a lot more calories on Low Carb than I was before diagnosis when I was eating that Low Fat rubbish.

I found cheese (and to a lesser extent fatty nuts like Brazils) were something I found I could eat even when I'd thought I was already 'full'. So they were invaluable for slowing and eventually stabilising my weight while still getting my HBA1C down to 37. My BMI is now 23 - so a long way from either being actually underweight, or from the weight I was in my early twenties!

Hi Ian, I can see that your blood sugar levels have come down but your cholesterol is high now. How are you balancing that?

 

[ianf0ster]

Hi Ian, I can see that your blood sugar levels have come down but your cholesterol is high now. How are you balancing that?

Can you tell me why people over 60yrs old with higher LDL cholesterol (on average) live longer than those with low LDL cholesterol if total cholesterol or LDL cholesterol is really implicated in heart disease?
What about Triglycerides? Aren't they a decent proxy for the number of damaged Cholesterol particles - so why ignore that?
If I use one of the more advanced Cholesterol /heart Risk calculators, my risk has gone down since I went low carb because A). Triglycerides are well down (almost ideal) and B). My HDL is so much higher (though I'm no longer so sure that matters).

Higher LDL is sometimes known to happen when slim people do Low Carb or Keto. A study is being done to try to determine (once and for all) if this is at all harmful. If it is, then I will consider trying to do the balance you ask about.
I will try to find the right Statin at the right dose to balance the following while still eating lower carb:
1). Blood Glucose (since many statins are know to raise BG (Pfizer are being sued for that in the USA).
2. LDL (assuming it is found to be harmful in the context of high HDL and Low Triglycerides.
3. Co-enzyme CQ10 (which statins deplete).
4. Take vitamin D supplements to combat statin induced myopathy.
5. Take a water soluble Statin so it won't cross the blood/brain barrier- I don't want 'brain fog', Parkinson's or Alzheimer's.

Until then I remain confident that overall the positive effects of Low Carb outweigh potential negative ones until there is real evidence to the contrary.

 

[Deleted member 543160]

Hello and welcome, @Aylajondy....

I've eaten an LCHF/ketogenic diet (which for me is pretty low carb and normal full fat) since I was diagnosed at the end of 2013. I lost some much needed weight early on, but for most of the time since then my weight's been pretty stable. Basically I eat few enough carbs to keep my glucose levels at low pre-diabetic levels, and sufficient fatty type foods to make up the rest of my energy needs, so that I'm not normally burning off any surplus body fat.

As I understand it, in order of precedence your system will firstly use easy to process carbs for fuel, followed by dietary fat, and as a final resort will turn to hardest to process body fat. So if you're losing weight, try to add some more fats to your diet so that your body can use them for fuel instead of using up what little body fat you may have.

 

[carty]

I am a skinny type 2 and I eat low carb and higher fat ,lots of cheese and full fat yoghurt and double cream ,butter on my vegetables ,avocados ,nuts ,avocado oil as a dressing .I cook with butter when I am frying or making omelettes. After I changed to this way of eating my cholesterol levels came down .

 

[Krystyna23040]

Hi @Aylajondy I agree with @Goonergal that it is definitely not impossible to maintain or gain weight eating low carb/ketogenically. On diagnosis I was a horrendously skinny T2 with an Hba1c of 125.

I keep to a very low carb diet and hba1c is now 36. I have found that I feel so much healthier if I make sure that everything I eat is really nutritious, so my diet includes plenty of animal and vegetable protein, above ground vegetables, Greek yogurt, kefir, cheese, berries, seeds and nuts. I stir fry my vegetables in butter, use olive oil as a salad dressing and have a small amount of cream in my coffee. I avoid anything low fat and especially like the fatty cuts of meat.

If you are looking at avoiding weight loss you can't beat eating nuts. They are really high in calories, low in carbs and very nutritious.

My cholesterol is 4.6. Eating full fat made absolutely no difference to my cholesterol levels - although it is now highly likely that my LDL particles are now the much more healthy 'fluffy ' ones instead of the very small harmful densely concentrated particles which would have occurred as a result of my previous low fat, high carb, high sugar diet.

 

[Aylajondy]

Can you tell me why people over 60yrs old with higher LDL cholesterol (on average) live longer than those with low LDL cholesterol if total cholesterol or LDL cholesterol is really implicated in heart disease?
What about Triglycerides? Aren't they a decent proxy for the number of damaged Cholesterol particles - so why ignore that?
If I use one of the more advanced Cholesterol /heart Risk calculators, my risk has gone down since I went low carb because A). Triglycerides are well down (almost ideal) and B). My HDL is so much higher (though I'm no longer so sure that matters).

Higher LDL is sometimes known to happen when slim people do Low Carb or Keto. A study is being done to try to determine (once and for all) if this is at all harmful. If it is, then I will consider trying to do the balance you ask about.
I will try to find the right Statin at the right dose to balance the following while still eating lower carb:
1). Blood Glucose (since many statins are know to raise BG (Pfizer are being sued for that in the USA).
2. LDL (assuming it is found to be harmful in the context of high HDL and Low Triglycerides.
3. Co-enzyme CQ10 (which statins deplete).
4. Take vitamin D supplements to combat statin induced myopathy.
5. Take a water soluble Statin so it won't cross the blood/brain barrier- I don't want 'brain fog', Parkinson's or Alzheimer's.

Until then I remain confident that overall the positive effects of Low Carb outweigh potential negative ones until there is real evidence to the contrary.

Hi Ian, thank you for your reply. I am finding all of this a mind field. I gather I will learn as I go.

 

[Aylajondy]

Hi @Aylajondy I agree with @Goonergal that it is definitely not impossible to maintain or gain weight eating low carb/ketogenically. On diagnosis I was a horrendously skinny T2 with an Hba1c of 125.

I keep to a very low carb diet and hba1c is now 36. I have found that I feel so much healthier if I make sure that everything I eat is really nutritious, so my diet includes plenty of animal and vegetable protein, above ground vegetables, Greek yogurt, kefir, cheese, berries, seeds and nuts. I stir fry my vegetables in butter, use olive oil as a salad dressing and have a small amount of cream in my coffee. I avoid anything low fat and especially like the fatty cuts of meat.

If you are looking at avoiding weight loss you can't beat eating nuts. They are really high in calories, low in carbs and very nutritious.

My cholesterol is 4.6. Eating full fat made absolutely no difference to my cholesterol levels - although it is now highly likely that my LDL particles are now the much more healthy 'fluffy ' ones instead of the very small harmful densely concentrated particles which would have occurred as a result of my previous low fat, high carb, high sugar diet.

Thank you it is very helpful and reassuring

 

[ianf0ster]

I just saw a video by a US low carb doctor who said that they were living proof it is possible to gain weight even of a keto diet much less merely on Low Carb (in their case without wanting to). They discovered that real mayonnaise is their weakness - they can't limit it to a spoonful or so, but eat at last half a jar at a time.

If you want to gain weight on low carb, eat lots of protein, do weight bearing exercise (to build muscle) and eat more traditional fats than you would normally do, it isn't that hard.

 

[Outlier]

That isn't real mayonnaise! Tell them to make it from scratch, using only the necessary ingredients. Their arms will ache so much they won't make another batch that day.

 

[Deleted member 543160]

My real mayonnaise come in a jar:

Ingredients

• Avocado oil (80%)
• Pasteurised British Free Range Egg Yolk (9%)
• Apple Cider Vinegar
• Pink Himalayan Salt

No need for aching arms here!