Low carb starting to work

...Porridge and weetabix are basically pure sugar, so you might want to rethink that... But then, you don't have to take my word for it, just check your meter. I was told about the complex carbs too, and that I should have plenty of (citrus) fruit. If I'd listened to my dieticians, I'd be on insulin now. Or dead, considering the state my liver was in. Complex carbs don't really matter all that much, as simple or complex, we have to deal with them no matter what. And we can't, not very well anyway. A T1 needs to know what is low GI and what isn't so they can split their insulin dose for instance, but for a non-insulin using T2 it's just a carb is a carb is a carb, really. The cheese is zero carb, so quite safe far as blood sugars go, and they'll keep you feeling full. Eggs, sausages etc sound absolutely perfect.

Really, when you get a lot of contradicting advice, and you don't know who to believe, just trust your meter. Test before a meal and 2 hours after the first bite, (if there's a lot of liquid involved like milk for weetabix or porridge, you might want to check at the 1 hour mark as well, as that gets absorbed quicker so you'll catch the spike), and you're aiming for a rise of no more than 2.0 mmol/l after those 2 hours. If it's higher than that, that meal just wasn't for you, no matter who came up with the idea of having it.

Good luck!
Jo

SOTR said:

I had my checkup yesterday, and have been following a low carb diet for a few months.
My HBA1C has fallen from 80 to 67, so it is working but I have a way to go. I did get a pat on the back.
I was given the advice that I should be eating complex carbs with low GI because I won't have any energy otherwise.
Porridge or weetabix for breakfast etc.
My cholesterol is raised probably because I am eating more cheese, eggs, sausages and chorizo.
I am going to continue with low carb. I guess I should cut the cheese a bit and try more veggies.

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Great on the HbA1c ignore "cholesterol" unless you had a full lipid panel and care to share the breakdown.
Advice on "carbs for energy" is complete dross. As for those breakfast suggestions that's tantamount to malpractice.

You have already proven to yourself that you can have plenty of energy on a low carb diet. It is sad that HCPs keep trotting out the worn -out mantra of carbohydrate as the source of energy in food intake. For many Type 2s a low carb diet works just fine. Also, I find that if I have complex carbohydrate like porridge at breakfast time I set up carbohydrate cravings for the rest of the day.

SOTR said:

I had my checkup yesterday, and have been following a low carb diet for a few months.
My HBA1C has fallen from 80 to 67, so it is working but I have a way to go. I did get a pat on the back.
I was given the advice that I should be eating complex carbs with low GI because I won't have any energy otherwise.
Porridge or weetabix for breakfast etc.
My cholesterol is raised probably because I am eating more cheese, eggs, sausages and chorizo.
I am going to continue with low carb. I guess I should cut the cheese a bit and try more veggies.

Click to expand...

More veges, that might be good - but great wodges of starch from grains?
They are either determined to reduce the surplus population or they don't know what they are supposed to be treating.

The current paradigm is dogmatic and follows a truism that "Science progresses one funeral at a time" - Planck's principle. There is a house of cards which relies on the advice you have been given.

I am in the camp that the best evidence is not an RCT, but what happens actually with the results studied on a continuum. This is illustrated by the below experiences of real people; should they listen to an agnostic device costing around £50 or the results of a respected body and thousands of HCP's, TV adverts and the like:

https://lilynicholsrdn.com/cgm-experiment-non-diabetic-continuous-glucose-monitor/

https://medium.com/lifetizr/what-i-...lucose-monitor-as-a-non-diabetic-bca4c3a9ce28

Hi SOTR sorry I'm a bit late in responding but would like to add my 2p worth.
1. Complex (or brown or wholefood ca) carbs - My BG meter tells me they are the same (roughly) as refined white carbs for me.
So not a good thing particularly as a breakfast. I no longer eat 3 meals per day since 'fat adapted' because I'm no longer hungry in the morning so I extend my overnight fast to 16hrs or even 20hrs on a weekend.
Some Type 1 and Type 2 diabetics did a 'challenge' last year to prove that we don't need carbs for energy - all the glucose we need is easily produced by our liver even if we eat no carbs at all. They ran/walked 100 miles in 5 days fasted i.e. on no calories (not just no carbs), so relying on body fat alone. Testing was done every day to confirm that they were using body fat as fuel rather than leam muscle mass. They weren't all overweight, even very thin people carry several days worth of energy around in their body fat.

This ' was then replicated in South Africa earlier this year.

2. The current thinking on Cholesterol is that the ration between HDL and Triglycerides and between HDL and LDL or total cholesterol matter more than the amount of LDL because they indicate the quality of the LDL. In any case, LDL cholesterol is required for life itself - it is used in the immune system, and to produce hormones etc. The brain itself is mainly cholesterol which may be a reason why some statins (mainly those known to cross the blood/brain barrier) have a side effect of 'brain fog' in the worst cases this can be like feeling you are getting early onset dementia.