Husband diagnosed and worried

Please can we not derail this thread with general gym discussions or questions to other members about their regimes. Please use PMs for that or start another thread.

@Arnopanda I second the advice to get a GAD test done. If your husband has Type 1, then he could be fighting a losing battle against his blood sugars, which may upset and discourage him even more.

As for the gym and being big, I know nothing, but once your husband's blood sugars are under control he should find it easier to manage his body/weight. @TorqPenderloin has already been tagged, but I'll tag him again as he's posted photos of himself.

It sound like attitude will be everything with your husband. Could you present any necessary change in his diet as a positive, forward-thinking, goung with new research, being ahead of the game thing? That is, something positive rather than a negative.

SunnyExpat said:

So your gym advises fat for muscle building?
How does that process work?
Do they have competition level members?

Edit, - quick guide here. http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/beginners_shopping_list.htm


As a matter of interest, do you personally bodybuild at all, or do you go more for treadmill endurance stuff?

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Hi. Note the higher fat not high fat. They stress a low-carb diet rather than mentioning high proteins and fats. They are not strongly into body-building but rather general good physique. I do treadmill and resistance stuff to stop myself falling apart at 71!The point in my post is that I don't understand how carbs help body-building but perhaps I'm missing something?

Daibell said:

Hi. Note the higher fat not high fat. They stress a low-carb diet rather than mentioning high proteins and fats. They are not strongly into body-building but rather general good physique. I do treadmill and resistance stuff to stop myself falling apart at 71!The point in my post is that I don't understand how carbs help body-building but perhaps I'm missing something?

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No offence, but serious body building, I would say you are.
It's not an endurance sport, it's a very strenuous, high impact, but very short term activity.

High fat tends to be more endurance, when you need reserves after you hit the wall.

Either way guys.
These "carbs" ingested are not going to do the "job"& only serve to continually raise BS, if the individual in question has insulin resistance or not producing insulin at all..?

I'd say Diabetes managment is paramount..

Jaylee said:

Either way guys.
These "carbs" ingested are not going to do the "job"& only serve to continually raise BS, if the individual in question has insulin resistance or not producing insulin at all..?

I'd say dIabetes managment is paramount..

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The last thing a competing bodybuilder wants to do is lose weight (bulk density) which is what high sugars do.
They use dehydration for better definition of muscle density on the competition day. Which holds a slight problem but if only for a few hours and only once a year might be ok. Afterall we diabetics suffer dehydration as part and parcel of our condition in bad controlled periods.
I guess deliberately causing a risk to our condition is reckless.
Reckless diabetes management is very dangerous! I hope he can see sense once he's in control and with all the facts.
I know one thing if hes fanatical about being the best. He could be the best diabetic bodybuilder.

There are bodybuilder so who use lchf approach. I Think they are called keto gains on Facebook and the website is http://ketogains.com/

Might be worth a look at? They do serious training without the carbs. I (try) and lift heavy on vlchf. The fat is for fuel not for muscle building.
Sounds like you are between a rock and a hard place.

Two things to say about kidneys.

Firstly, there is nothing quite so damaging to the kidneys as out of control blood sugar. Whether eating protein hurts them is beside the point. If your husband's glucose levels stay as high as they are, he will almost certainly develop kidney disease - it's a major cause of debility and mortality in diabetics.

Secondly, the theory about protein and kidneys is that because high protein diets cause the kidneys to increase in size, to cope with the extra breakdown products that come through them, that must mean that they are "stressed" in some way and likely to be damaged. Whilst there's good evidence that they do grow in size, there's basically no evidence that this is harmful in anyway. I see it more as just normal human adaptation, in the same way as a blacksmith's arms get bigger.

The most convincing description I ever read was in relation to kidney donors. You know, the healthy people with two good kidneys who hand one over to a friend or relative to save their life? Obviously their remaining kidney now has to do twice the work. Accordingly, it will grow significantly larger. So if "overworking" your kidney made it "stressed" and caused it damage, you'd expect there to be a higher rate of kidney disease in the cohort of people who've given up one healthy kidney. Is there? Nope. The rate of kidney disease is exactly the same for these people as in the general population.

I'd say ignore the voices that say don't eat protein. For someone looking to put on and maintain muscle mass, and also needing to keep blood sugar under control, bring on the protein.

The bigger issue will be persuading a body-conscious individual to eat more fat. But if you look around the testimonials on this site, you'll see that without exception people (including me) who increased the percentage of their calories that they consumed from fat, saw their levels of body fat fall. It's not as simple as "eat fat, be fat".

I agree with those who say this doesn't really look like a Type 2 case, more like Type 1. The weight loss and the very high blood sugar is the key. Your husband has lost the ability to produce insulin, and so all that carb is just swimming around in his blood stream doing damage. Cutting out the carbs would help anyway, but I'd be quite surprised if he didn't need to go onto insulin. If that's the case, then he will have to get good at balancing diet with insulin and low carb needs to be done carefully. The only Type 1 I know basically eats whatever he wants, but has a permanent insulin pump installed in his abdomen, and just pushes through the right amount of insulin for whatever he's eaten. He's built like a cage fighter and plays rugby every week, so it seems to work OK for him.

A proper diagnosis, as soon as possible, is crucial.

Give it another week and he'll feel too tired to go to the gym.........

His body will start to break down muscle to feed his bodies energy requirements (which I'd assume would be high if he's always working out at the gym - he'll be like a hamster in a wheel going nowhere fast and loosing weight) and his BG levels will continue to rise damaging his organs - no ones mentioned eyes yet, I'm sure he'd like to be able to see his young child grow up.

At diagnosis aged 27 my then doctor was old school useless and put me on metformin (or something) in the space of about 3 weeks I went from 12st to 9st - classic 'undiagnosed' T1D, I felt awful, first shot of insulin was like a magic bullet!

Diabetes management here is key as mentioned above - The simple fact is that If you husband wants to gain weight by eating so many carbs he has to do so while keeping his sugars DOWN. If he us taking in carbs without enough insulin that his levels are going high then his body will not be properly processing these carbs as intended and he will actually loose weight.

This will only be damaging to his body and he will never gain weight. Tell him that and it should get his head on straight lol He needs to first properly manage his sugars and then he can put the mass on.

This goes double for protein intake. If he is eating a bulking diet with high sugars (anything over 8ish) his body wont properly process what he is eating and he will end up just peeing it out. If he continues to bulk with such high protein intake AND high sugars over time it can hurt his kidneys, which will hurt his goals even more.

There is no reason to stop bodybuilding - he just HAS to make sure he is properly managing his blood sugars while he is doing it.

The other thing he will need to keep an eye out for is work out supplements. Its the norm for lifters to take a bunch of pre, post, and intra workout supplements as well as vitamins, creatine, BCAAs and whatever else is trending this year. Again - these should be ok IF his sugars are normal - i should note that I am not a doctor. I was also told to stop all creatine supplements when i was diagnosed as they may strain the kidneys with high sugars as well so you both should be aware that supplements may pose some addition risks.

The point I am trying to make is that he simply cannot ignore his sugars and carry on safely. He will need to first learn about his condition, how things affect him, and how to manage it or it may just cause him to loose weight and muscle FAST.

I dropped 30lbs in 3 months of high sugars before ending up in the hospital and my lifts were all cut in half... high sugars basically undid years of training in a couple months, and that is much worse then eating less carbs lol

Arnopanda said:

Thanks you so much for your reply Daibell. Iv read online (good or bad im not sure!) that too much protein is also bad as it can over work the kidneys? He eats over a day: meal 1 - 250grams porridge with water and 5 egg whites, meal2 - 250g chicken with 250g of jacket potato, same for meal 3 and 4. Meal 5 is 250g beef mince with 250g white basmati rice and meal 6 - 250g turkey mince with 250g white basmati rice. I can't see why the gp today from 111 would accept this is OK? Thanks again for replying- I love him so vary much but I can't talk to him about this. I know he's struggling with the diagnosis and iv only ever known him as a bodybuilder so worried this will ruin him. He's more interested in reading about adapted gym diets and talking to the gym dietician (who is also a competing bodybuilder, gym owner and his trainer!) - I had to force him to read the pack the nurse gave him!

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250g of porridge would send any diabetic sky high,the only way is to lower is carb intake to gain better control especially been diagnosed type2

I haven't been able to get on much lately between enjoying vacation and moving cities.

Nothing wrong with bodybuilding and having diabetes, but you realistically haven't to do things a little differently.

I wasn't able to read the entire thread but your husbands situation sounds nearly identical to mine before I was diagnosed with type 1 last year. I don't have experience with glicazide and other sulfonylureas as I started on insulin the day after my diagnosis. If he does have type 1 (and his situation strongly points to it) it's a matter of time before he needs to begin insulting injections. Honestly, I'm very glad I began insulin immediately and it's nothing to be scared of.

As far as bodybuilding, it's much more difficult and slower trying to gain muscle with a very low carb diet, but it can be done. Ultimately, he will have to resort to "clean" rather than "dirty" bulking, but I'd argue that dirty bulking is bad for anyone.

Happy to answer questions. Sorry if my response is a little off base. Like I said, I've been limited on time lately. Always happy to help when I can though.

-Mark


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