High Sugars and over weight

It's very hard for a T1( insulin user) to lose weight.
Reducing your carbs and matching that to lower insulin doses should help as should exercise.
I wouldn't think that something like "Lighter Life" would be very helpful. It's terribly expensive and being based on milk, it's quite high carb.
I would recommend you to read Dr. Bernstein's Diabetes Soloution. Richard Bernstein is a doctor, who is himself a T1 diabetic. My edition of the book gives lots of suggestions for meals, which are very strictly low carb. You might want to be a little less strict yourself. Then the Atkins diet has loads of useful ideas for low carb recipes. the double advantage of reducing your carbs is to help you with weight AND reduce blood glucose at the same time. A win/win situation.
Hana

Hi jaji,

I'm type 1 and lost 4 stones in weight when I cut out the empty carbs and reduced my insulin to match. It's not really that hard!
Your instincts are right - using less insulin is crucial, as is getting blood sugar down to normal levels.
Let's just say you're in the right part of the forum to find out how!

All the best,

fergus

Hi Jaji.

Have you read Fergus's 'Newbie's guide' at the top of the Low-carb forum index? That will help you understand the process better and will help you get started.

I think that the biggest hurdle a lot of people have to overcome is understanding which foods are carbohydrate, which are protein and and which are fat. That may sound like pretty basic stuff, but you would be amazed how many people don't know.

You don't need 'shakes and stuff', Lighter Life or Slim Fast. They may help weight loss, but people who use them rarely keep the weight off because they then go back to eating the way they were before and put it all back on. You just need to eat plenty of really healthy food and leave the 'rubbish' - the processed 'open a packet and stuff it in' stuff well alone. You're not needing to count calories here, because once your body is in fat-burning mode rather than carb-burning you will naturally lose weight despite eating plenty of food. It's not so much about how much you eat but about the type of food you eat.

Can you cook? Make salads? Learning to eat proper foods - real foods, rather than the 'dead' stodge that passes for food these days is what makes the difference. If you radically lower the carbs, you will probably need to up the fats, but fat does not make you fat unless it is eaten with lots of carbs. Fats help you to keep fuller for longer so you don't have such an urge to snack between meals and that will make a difference too.

Most of us in here have started from a similar place to you and many of us have lost weight too - just have a read through the success stories! More importantly, we have been able to get our sugars under control and many have also found that other health problems have also either gone or have considerably improved.

It may be difficult to start with because it means turning over 'deeply entrenched' ideas and beliefs and adopting a whole new concept in eating, but once you become familiar with it it becomes 'second nature'.

You've come to the right place for help and encouragement. I hope you can manage to make it work for you.

Hi there
Do NOT do slimfast, that stuff is sooooooooo full of sugar!
You can lose weight by just reducing your carbs but if you want a more structured approach and have the money to pay for it check out golower.co.uk it's a low carb mail order diet I did it when I first started low carbing and I would recommend it although it's not the cheapest option.

If you want a low carb shake, try unsweetened soya milk with holland and barret soya shake powder (flavoured) about 2g carbs per portion, although I add in frozen berries in the blender to make it tast nicer

AC makes a very good point.
Weight loss relates to a great number of metabolic and hormonal issues which can work either for us or against us. Many weight loss programmes ignore these fundamental truths and instead opt purely for calorie restriction, neatly packaged in branded labels to make it appear tried and tested.
Unfortunately, anyone with a knowledge of the history of diets will tell you that this approach fails for over 95% of people because it doesn't address the fact that excess insulin underpins weight gain.
The website the AC posted appears different, emphasising the importance of proper food and its role in helping the metabolism to work as it should.
If you feel more comfortable 'signing-up' to a nutritional plan because these issues can be quite complex, the 'golower' strategy looks much more likely to succeed.

All the best,

fergus

Another point that is very worth realising is that all these 'cobbled together' mixes, like the LighterLife and Slim Fast shakes although they may contain basic nutrients, many of them are likely to be synthetic, not natural, and they will not contain enzymes and other necessary trace elements and nutrients that are provided in the REAL food.

So whilst they might keep you alive, and help you lose weight, they are unlikely to be adding anything of real benefit to your body.

The more and better selection of real natural nutrients your body gets, the stronger it gets and the more able it, and you are able to stick to low-carbing and get the optimum benefit from that.

Low-carbing really is life-changing stuff.

Hey everyone! I kept the carbs really low yesterday and went to bed with a level of 4.8 last night and woke up the same this morning! Great, eh?

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Stop ingesting:
* Gluten: wheat, barley, rye and oats
* Sugar and anything which tastes sweet

Then do a two week elimination challenge of milk. Respond accordingly.
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Then do a two week elimination challenge of milk. Respond accordingly.

Click to expand...

:? :?

Can you elaborate on this please ? !

Then do a two week elimination challenge of milk. Respond accordingly.

Click to expand...

Can you elaborate on this please ? !

Click to expand...

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease of the pancreas, meaning an antigen attacks the pancreas, and the immune system responds by attacking islet cells. Gluten is the most common t1d antigen, but there are others, probably many others. Milk cassein is probably the second most common t1d antigen.

After eliminating gluten and sugar for a couple weeks try eliminating cow milk products. See what happens to your health and blood sugar levels. After a couple weeks re-challenge your diet with cow milk. See what happens to your health and blood sugar levels.

If milk products are contributing to your symptoms then stop ingesting them.

If the gluten and casein don't do it, test legumes (beans, soy and peanuts). Then test nightshades (tomatoes, potatoes and eggplant). If these aren't the culprits, then look into viruses, especially herpes viruses like varicella zoster.

You'll probably need to monitor your blood sugar closely throughout all of this. If you're taking insulin, and your pancreas increases insulin output, you'll need to cut back on the insulin injections.

Good luck.
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