LCHF success stories from type 1's

Fat max said:

Hi , what does the HF stand for, is it High Fat or Fibre and could you advise me how to start? Eg how many carbs per day and who is Dr Bernstein and is there a recommended diet plan I can follow?

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It stands for high fat but that doesn't mean you have to stuff fat in your mouth. It is more to do with the old low fat culture being de-bunked. If you like butter then eat butter but you can't spread it on bread since that is too high in carbs so soak you new potatoes in it (for example).

I don't know who Dr Bernstein is at the moment but I am sure I soon will

Thanks for the thread. I'm on day 3 low carbing and my insulin needs have already plummeted to about 25%! I have medium ketones which I read is a natural state when on low carbs - but I'm keeping an eye on them.

From the first moment I was diagnosed in June and the nurse said "eat weetabix for breakfast" I was thinking really???! Like someone said earlier it seems like they tell you to feed your insulin, I haven't seen any scientific evidence to back up why that is good?!

Insulin is a fat building hormone, so the less u need the better right?

Also - BS soooo much easier to control whilst low-carbing.

Happy days!!!

Squire Fulwood said:

I don't know who Dr Bernstein is at the moment but I am sure I soon will

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"For there came a voice, crying in the wilderness"

Dr Richard K Bernstein is the saviour of diabetics, bless his cotton socks. Or if not the saviour, he is John the Baptist. (He's Jewish so might not enjoy that allusion ;-) )

http://www.diabetes-book.com/

It works a treat for me. Got my HbA1c from mid/high 7s to the low 6s and reduced my hypo frequency.

If you get your dose right, then you shouldn't go high and you shouldn't go low. Smaller doses of insulin mean smaller dosing mistakes. Low carbing makes excellent control easy. I'm going to keep it up until someone gives me a cure or an artificial pancreas.

Squire Fulwood said:

It stands for high fat but that doesn't mean you have to stuff fat in your mouth. It is more to do with the old low fat culture being de-bunked. If you like butter then eat butter but you can't spread it on bread since that is too high in carbs so soak you new potatoes in it (for example).

I don't know who Dr Bernstein is at the moment but I am sure I soon will

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Thank you that makes sense.
Fatmax

I started LCHF when I was diagnosed without realising there was a name for it. It was immediately clear that carb-heavy foods spiked my blood sugars so seemed obvious to me to avoid/reduce them. This meant I could keep my insulin doses low therefore minimising the margin for error.
I didn't need to lose weight but I have lost some and am quite thin however I feel healthy and have plenty of energy to run/swim/cycle etc so don't see it as a problem.
I eat a full fat diet but as a previous poster said I don't stuff my face with blocks of fat/cream as I would probably feel sick.

Hello everyone! Congratulations to u all for sharing ur opinions I began attempting control because of you all Plese forgive me for posting here but can't find a thread for low-carb newcomers... Have just began last week (I live in Bolivia & learned english from a Cambridge college education but the only affordable practice 4 the language is amrican so...) ANYWAY Heard that the change must be gradual since already have frozen shoulder & some retinopathy: 100/200 gr of carbs per day are usual? Could anyone share how it is to begin with this change of diet?

Hi @Jaz253

You are the second person to join this thread looking for advice, so maybe we should have a low carb newcomers thread! And your English is very good by the way.

In answer to your question, 200g of carbs a day is too high to see the "ketosis" effect that is the "secret" of low carb. You need to be below 150g/day, possibly lower.

Emmotha said:

Thanks for the thread. I'm on day 3 low carbing and my insulin needs have already plummeted to about 25%! I have medium ketones which I read is a natural state when on low carbs - but I'm keeping an eye on them.

From the first moment I was diagnosed in June and the nurse said "eat weetabix for breakfast" I was thinking really???! Like someone said earlier it seems like they tell you to feed your insulin, I haven't seen any scientific evidence to back up why that is good?!

Insulin is a fat building hormone, so the less u need the better right?

Also - BS soooo much easier to control whilst low-carbing.

Happy days!!!

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well done, you may find you hit a wall in a couple of days as you use up the store of glucose in your system <50g carb a day and feel crook for a week or two. as you switch over to fat as a fuel, drink plenty of water and take a bit more salt
http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/lowcarb101/a/firstweek.htm

One thing, if you don't want to lose weight, eat more healthy fats/oils, butter, coconut and olive are very good. so that you aren't throwing ketones
http://www.dietdoctor.com/lchf

Squire Fulwood said:

It stands for high fat but that doesn't mean you have to stuff fat in your mouth. It is more to do with the old low fat culture being de-bunked. If you like butter then eat butter but you can't spread it on bread since that is too high in carbs so soak you new potatoes in it (for example).
I don't know who Dr Bernstein is at the moment but I am sure I soon will

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instead of boiled greens and veg, stirfry at moderate heat in butter and olive oil for a treat

After trawling through all this stuff for weeks I have come to some weight loss conclusions that are mainly influenced by these two links.

http://www.diabetes.co.uk/news/2014/sep/diets-regarded-all-the-same-for-weight-loss-95293062.html

http://authoritynutrition.com/23-studies-on-low-carb-and-low-fat-diets/

After 1 year or more of dieting of any kind a look back will reveal any weight loss was only due to calories and exercise .and all roads lead to the same place

So red herrings are running rampant in here.

When I consider carbs and BS I have no reason to disbelieve the advice I pay for (and people around here want to argue with it) but the advice is it is only carbs that send us high. Now I am sure that other things that people quote can send us high but I am also sure the biggest factor by a long way is carbs and the other things are little fishes in big ponds.

So the answer is calories put on take/off weight and carbs have lots of calories but other foods have calories too.

I also read recently a snippet by Dr Karl K http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Kruszelnicki on energy consumed when we do nothing.

You probably do not know of him but he is qualified in just about everything you can think of. An amazing character who has the ability to explain the highest techo stuff in simple terms.

I think it is, from memory, our gut bugs that determine our at rest calorie burning. He has a book out with it in but I only flicked through the book.in a shop and did not buy it. But anyone really interested could follow it up.

I see no reason why carbs can't be balanced for calories hence stable weight and then insulin used for final control of BS. But others think they need to go lower with the carbs and add the necessary calories with fats. and use less insulin.

If you can find something by Dr Karl on the subject you are likely to get the best explanation in simple terms.

How is this for for quals.
Karl Kruszelnicki, AM is a scientist, who is best known as an author and science commentator on Australian radio and television. He is often referred to as Dr Karl.[3][dead link]

He holds degrees in mathematics, biomedical engineering, medicine and surgery. He has also studied astrophysics, computer science, and philosophy. He has worked as a physicist, labourer, roadie for bands, car mechanic, filmmaker, hospital scientific officer, biomedical engineer, TV weatherman, taxi driver, and doctor. Kruszelnicki is the Julius Sumner Miller Fellow in the Science Foundation for Physics at the School of Physics, University of Sydney.[4]

If you want an explanation you can understand see if he has something to say about it.

I think we have the right to question any advise we are given, as I am sure ppl on this low carb chat have fully researched the benefits. Calories are an overall measure of energy, and at a top line you can use them to control / lose weight.

If you drill down further you can research how the body uses the components of calories for fuel: carbs, fat, protein (in that order). If you have less carbs, you burn more fat and have less BS spikes. Simple science really. Calories aren't so relevant to this thread.

We are not trying to argue with anyone, just like minded people who have researched and chosen a different path which works for us

@forge think of cals in - cals out vs LCHF as steam engines vs petrol engines. The physics of both are true. One doesn't disprove the other; they can and do co-exist. Both can get the job done. But one is more flexible and powerful.

Always been a low carber. 51 years. (I know it hasn't been classified as a diet for 51 years). When I actually added more fat in to my diet I lost 10lb that I didn't need to.
I haven't regained it but staying the same with the same amount of fat now.
Bloods pretty much have always run too low if anything over 30 years of my diagnosis. I used to have DP but pump management sorted that brilliantly. Pretty much the only times I go higher than 7.0 now is an occlusion or pump problem. The only exception to that may be when we have a very occasional takeaway that I have to guestimate, but even then pump normally keeps me dn good.

My weight is 60kg.

I think that there are several issues overlooked all too easily with the low fat vs low carb debate. They are worth bearing in mind.

1) One scientific study is not directly comparable to another
We place huge emphasese on scientific studies proving this, that and the other and the problem is different studies are designed differently and so it is difficult to understand their application. For example, what is low carb? In some studies it is <300g/day, in others <150g, and all the way to <~50g. These are all clearly different diets. Then comes the question of proportion of fat and protein. This will dramatically change the result. Then length of study, and many other variables not least your target participant (obese? Healthy?). It can become a mine field. Further, there is the complexity of human variability. This is why Phase I clinical trials can seem the best medicine ever and fail spectacularly in Phase III.

2) The needs of a diabetic or rather, the motivation for going low carb are very different from non-diabetics and are usually not primarily motivated by a desire to lose weight.

3) Adherence is a significant factor in a diet that studies which primarily address weight loss do not fully take into account. Some studies do try and compare this, but it is important to address this where health is a major factor and a lifestyle change can influence that.

4) The way people react to most things will fall under a bell-shaped curve. How steep or flat that curve is will be the variable. Thus some people will respond in 2 very different ways to the same stimulus and while with a large enough number, you will normally see a response that gives the most common observation, how common that is will vary.

All that being said simply means that the best evidence is self-evidence. A particular type of diet may work wonderfully well for you, but it only works ok for another, and not at all for another still. But that is variation for you. But it does not matter what any study says, if something works well for you, that is what matters the most.

Personally, a very low carb diet is best for me and with exercise I can largely eliminate novorapid and rely only on lantus. With carbs my BS is all over the place and I will get hypos from novorapid which results in a yo-yo effect which I'd probably worse for your long term health than running slightly high, but consistent.

It's all kicking off in the other conversation hey?

The most important thing I read that insulin is a fat building hormone so to lose weight u need less insulin. For less insulin you need less carbs. So I tried it, and was very pleased with the extra bonuses of easy BS control and feeling much healthier

What other conversation? I may have dropped out.

What thread?

Yeah it generally does what you want it to do. T1s as a generalisation don't want or need to lose weight on LCHF and as a broad generalisation, T2s often do. No contradiction. And like I say weight *loss* is trivially easy to correct (unlike weight gain which is very hard to correct). It is at best a very minor problem. You seem to have an axe to grind in this @forge ?