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My friend John

Bobby59

Active Member
Messages
33
Location
South Wales
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Tablets (oral)
Dislikes
Cabbage and most veg
Out on a bike ride with a few newly made friends yesterday. One of them John has Type Two Diabetes. John has been on the HFLC diet for two years and he is a bit of a preacher when it comes to HFLC. John takes great pride in showing people his before photo where he is quiet over weight. But I found some thing out yesterday. What I found out disturbed me a great deal. My new cycling buddy John is just 126 pounds (nine stones) in body weight. One of the group told me in confidence that while out cycling with John three days ago they had to cycle into a bit of a light head wind. He went on to say that John struggled badly against the small head wind, to a point where he could no longer continue became utterly exhausted and had to be rescued. Speaking to John a little later I asked him how he was so skinny when he looked ok. John then showed me the many layers of clothing he had on to keep him warm. It was a very mild spring day lots of sun shine and quiet warm. John and I have had many chats about the HFLC diet where John has tried his best to convince me to go on it. While I agree it works in principle it seems to come with a heavy toll and you need a degree in nutrition to pull it off. After speaking to John about his body weight, we both agreed John was over doing the HFLC diet and needed to eat more food. The up shot is that no matter how much John eats with in what is allowed he is struggling to put weight on. After two years John seems to me to be very much Anorexic, he may not realize it and if pressed I am sure he would argue he is not. The side effects of the HFLC diet seem to be if a little of what is good for you is good. lots of what is good for you has to be better. My friend John is in dire trouble and he has no clue, sadly there is no convincing him other wise according to John the HFLC diet is the answer to every thing.
 
How tall is John? And what is his BMI? There are many people with slight stature who would struggle in those circumstances, no matter what their eating plan.

If people eat food regularly, in normal to large portions then they are not anorexic.
If they don't vomit it up after, they are not bulimic either.

You seem to objecting to the way your friend John interprets the LCHF diet, rather than the diet itself.

Sad to say there are many, many people who take perfectly good, nutritious, healthy ways-of-eating and then wreck them with misunderstandings and misapplications and internet/urban myths. That applies to nearly every 'diet' out there.

Perhaps you could recommend your friend does more reading on the subject, or joins this forum.
 
Your friend may have issues with anorexia, but I'm confused as to why that has anything to do with which particular diet he is abusing.

Unless you live with your friend, you have no idea what and how much he is eating each day. You can abuse anything and taking a diet to an extreme is no exception.

If your goal is to share your friend's possible issues with an eating disorder, I'm sorry to hear about it.

If your agenda is to somehow relate this to a low carb diet, then you're sadly misinformed.
 
You can, theoretically, lose too much weight on ANY diet, does this make all diets wrong? or is it perhaps what the dieter does with them? LCHF certainly is not the answer to everything and I have never heard anybody claim that it is, it can however be a very effective tool for both weight loss and bg control, like any diet it is possible to abuse it.
 
Hi @Bobby59 and welcome to the forum.

There are many many members on here who use LCHF diets to control there blood sugars and to lose or maintain there weight. They do not have the problems your friend does so don't make the mistake of it being caused by the diet rather than by your friends decisions on his own weight.

If you have any questions at all don't hesitate to ask them

Cheers
 
The HFLC diet puts the body in a state of starvation. I feel the dangers are fairly obvious if your half way there all ready how little will it take to tip you over the edge.

The photos of Johns before show him being a rather chubby fellow. when he lifted the final layer I was just gob smacked at how thin he was.This is just in a 2 year space.Scary stuff.

Edit John is about 5 foot 9 inches tall.
 
Your friend may well have an eating disorder but it is likely that he would have taken any diet he chose to follow to the extreme and become underweight. There is absolutely no reason to become underweight while following a low carb lifestyle and I think your friend has chosen to become that thin.
 
Yeah. Not sure what the agenda is here, but even if the story is true then the sample size of one makes it irrelevant.

Bobby, there's loads of people on this forum who are following a LCHF diet and few have the problem of being underweight. I'm about 95kg (210 lbs) and have absolutely no problems maintaining that weight on LCHF. That weight's not too bad for my size and build, though I really should lose about another 10 pounds, but believe me it's slow going.

I cycle about 160km per week and still have no trouble maintaining my slightly too heavy weight. At this point I'd say that I've got about as much fear of going dangerously underweight as I have of getting struck by a meteor when I walk outside to check my mailbox later today.
 
Forgot to add. Bobby, is there a chance that your friend John could be a late onset T1 misdiagnosed as T2. This could drive him to overdo the exercise and diet in order to maintain sensible blood glucose levels. A situation like this genuinely could lead to a very motivated person going underweight.
 
I have been doing reasonably strict lchf for ages now and my BMI has been steady at 27 for about a year now so, still overweight but not obese. When you make statements linking lchf and starvation on a lchf forum I can`t be sure if you are being confrontational or are merely uninformed. If it`s the latter I suggest some research might be in order.
 
None of us are experts here and we do the LCHF way of eating that suits each of us personally. Yes your friend may have taken it to the extreme and has become a bit obsessed with loosing weight so it is more likely he is simply not eating enough food and maybe he wants to be as skinny as he is. How much do you actually know about him for instance you say he is T2 are his blood levels good is he otherwise healthy despite being so skinny You can't judge the diet and say it is bad just on how one person is choosing to do it
 
I beg to differ - When I am High Fat I put on weight - not as much as High carb. I have to go LCLF to lose weight which sounds like your friend John. It also makes me cold and have reduced energy levels; again sounds like your friend.

I think you need to do your research fully before spreading your beliefs

BTW I LFHC, HFLC, LFLC and also HFHC at different times so know how I feel at all times and can feel the state my body is in.
 
Hmm. I would suggest that we can't really enter into a discussion on this as we are talking about a third party, have no idea of what his diet actually consists of, and all we have to go on is your many "chats" with your new friend. If you are concerned about his "starvation" diet, seeing as you managed to find this forum, maybe you could point him in the general direction?
I'm sure he would appreciate your concern
 

Bobby - Could you explain to me the basis on which you are classifying your friend as "anorexic". Is it his weight? Is it what you understand to be his diet? Is it that he appears thin and feels the cold? I'm not at all clear on that part.
 
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