My personal hypothesis - T2 - Low insulin Diet

Nourishment on the cheap - whenever I visit a butcher ask for chicken carcasses to make stock
Today's haul cost £2.00. I roast them, keep the chicken fat adding flavour for cooking, strip the meat ( 500grams this time ) and make a pie , boil the bones for a nourishing bone broth . All now staples in my household. - almost food for free. Maybe give it a try next time you are wandering past a butcher - the going rate seems to be £2 per kilo, though often they will just give you what they accumulated that day - like today

keytones before bed 52.2ppm ! glucose 4.5 mmol

This method of eating certainly seems to get one's metabolism in full swing !

chalup said:

I am up 2 pounds today but have been in the small room constantly so suspect water retention. For the first time in like ever I had no liver dump today. I woke up at 4.9 and have now dropped to 4.1 pre meal. I went to bed last night at 4.9. This is where I would love to have a libre to see what actually went on overnight. Hopefully they will be available in Canada soon now that they are approved in the US.

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That's great. I haven't managed to get no liver dump at all yet, though I have had a few days where it was much less discernible.

On the weight front, mine slowed down in the second week and I have had a couple of days when it went up a bit, that's pretty standard for any diet though with changes in water balance. I am definitely still on the way down despite oodles of food. There is a temptation to see if I can increase the rate by reducing the food. I am going to try to stick to around 1300-1500 calories for a few days first though given I've made the " not enough food " mistake so many times before.

I spent a happy hour yesterday going through my belts. I am definitely two to three notches down and some of them are definitely destined for the bin ..... happy days.

Day 13 of the Low Insulin Diet (starting weight 91.6 kg, current 84.6 kg )
Waist size 86.5 cm (starting 94 cm)

So I put on 0.4 kg yesterday . Though that's at least partially my own fault. One of the principles I set myself was - " figure out what you are going to eat first and once its eaten stop." yesterday I forgot !

Yesterday at the same time as 'Id cooked the steak I had also roasted the chicken carcasses , and they were ready at just the same time I was finishing my meal in full blown eating mode. Before I realised it I was happily tucking into the chicken skin as well . So I ate about 1700 calories yesterday - hardly a surprise I'm not actually any smaller today .

Note to self - choose what to eat - stick to it ! do NOT prepare other food during my meal window because that is when my willpower is weakest!

(yesterday's food was scrumptious though 1720 calories 97 protein ( 20 being the chicken) 66% fat, 11% carb om 3 6g, om 6 7.8 g ( 4g of om 6 in the chicken skin lapse - was doing well till then ) - wonder if that has the same effect as the veg om 6? -

I know that grass fed beef om 6 is supposed to be ok - though its entirely wishful thinking that that has any relevance to the quality of a chicken, given that none of them will be raised on grass !

For anyone interested here is an opinion of why grass fed instead of grain fed beef gives better om 6 -( more CLA conjguated linoeic acid) https://chriskresser.com/why-grass-fed-trumps-grain-fed/

Merrylizard1314 said:

Wonderful experiment CherryAA. What I have found, in my own dabbling in dietary manipulations, is that the the fewer carbs one ingests, the lower the triglycerides and that is one thing I take notice of, especially, e.g.,
September blood test after 2weeks holiday with carbophiliacs and many debacles involving fish and chips.
Triglycerides 2.4
FG. ............6.1

October after strict very low carb ( usually under 20g)
Triglycerides 0. 8
FG ........ 4.8

I was diagnosed as prediabetic, although almost certainly T2D according to Kraft and, although being listed on this forum as T2 with insulin, I have used only diet and exercise to control BGLs.

One thing I would like to conquer if at all possible, is hypertension.
A strange thing I have noticed in my own case is that when I have reduced calories (I followed the Newcastle Diet with some success about 2 years ago), it actually worsened the ht. and I had my first episode of atrial fibrillation shortly afterward. It took a while for me to connect not eating enough food, with adverse heart blips.
Your experiment appeals to me as a way to eat lots of food, as well as effectively fasting.

I really enjoy the way you go about your research and the cogent way you explain it to this dunderhead.

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Thanks, " In my opinion" there are two things I am pretty certain of. a) Trigs down come from less carbs b) HDL up comes from more saturated fat (and no doubt exercise-I'm told, though I haven't personally seen that correlation)

Funnily enough - one of the reasons I started this was about hypertension. I know I can control my blood sugars ( at present) through HCLF but so far improving the hypertension has proved a bit elusive - every so often I stop the medication for a few days and the blood pressure starts to rise inexorably ( as does my weight through water retention -I think maybe 2kg of this current loss was that precisely as I was coming off the back of a couple of days of another attempt at that).

Your post has reminded me to check mine! Its currently 116/78 ( last medication 24 hrs ago) its actually been averaging closer to 135/ 84 over the last few months even with medication. I'd forgotten to check this parameter as well...... ( so much to measure LOL)

The other thing I've just realised is that actually I've had zero heart palpitations since I began this. On LCHF alone I was also getting palpitations on quite a few days which were sufficiently worrying to wonder if LCHF could work for me long term.

Thanks for the reminder and great that that seems to be going well too. I am not going to stop the medication unless the numbers really fall a lot from here but I will make a note of that each morning as well.

13 days in and it does not feel at all like a " diet" as such, just a way of life .

tim2000s said:

Hi @CherryAA - I just wanted to throw something else into the mix. Another thing that we have been able to measure in T1s using Artificial Pancreas systems is the change in insulin sensitivity (or effectively IR) that can be seen.

What we've been able to identify is that resistance training using compound movements, such as squatting and deadlifting in a HIIT type configuration causes a noticeable improvement in insulin sensitivity (up to 30% more sensitive) and that this endures for roughly 36 hours post training. You might want to look at whether you can incorporate something like this into your program as it should reduce your insulin requirements further.

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Thanks for reminding me about this and why. When I first posted this theory on my blog, and concluded what the diet should entail it included this comment about exercise

"EXERCISE

Do 2 minutes High Intensity exercise on waking first thing in the morning, and after the meal as that wakes up insulin responses"

In all the melee about thinking about what and when to eat. I'd rather forgotten this piece of the plan. I have posted elsewhere about my attempts to keep up with a personal trainer on the net doing HIT with no props.

I have actually incorporated doing the odd squat into my daily routine , plus the odd session of maximum intensity stationary peddling, but yes I do need to tackle this rather more enthusiastically. Its ridiculous that even though I know it will only take a maximum of a few minutes I still find it hard to do!

I'm gonna try this one today - the " swing through maneouvre at minute 6 usually leaves me in a confused heap on the floor !

Kentoldlady1 said:

That is really interesting. Is there a study for this? Thanks.

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There are tons of studies on this
http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/25/10/1729.short
if you google Insulin resistance and High Intensity training dozens of articles will come up

Dr Michael Moseley did a TV programe on it a few years ago where he achieved remarkable improvements to his blood profile through doing it.

tim2000s said:

Not yet. I started out doing an n=1 experiment, http://www.diabettech.com/openaps/w...autosens-function-within-openaps-an-n1-study/ and we're trying to recruit more people to do this in a structured way, but anecdotal experience so far is favourable.

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@Tim, Maybe there isn't the studies on T1? but there seem to be lots for T2.

I don't have the slightest idea what " openapps" is - is that technology for dealing with T1 diabetes? is it something I can get? Hhappy to give it a go if I can and its relevant to you - though as T2 I suspect not

Your experiment looks really interesting and great results so far. I must admit I think that the future of modern health is going to be defined by people with N=1 theories setting out to achieve something and others deciding to give it a go.
For too long we have had advice from people trained for years in thinking along the same lines they have always thought and it just hasn't worked.

Those very same people have invested their entire lives into thinking they are helping people when they may not be. As such the mind shock of accepting you might have been damaging your patients is simply too high to accept and cognitive dissonance is rampant.

Some of the most interesting advances in understanding recently have been directly coming from people with no special interest in the relevant field, who decide to look further themselves
GaryFettke - an orthopaedic surgeon,
Ivor Cummins - a systems engineer
Dave Feldman - an IT techie
Dr Jason Fung - a kidney specialist

They all come to the same conclusions - the key to good health is not pills and potions it is getting NUTRITION right.
My N=1 is an attempt to think that through using everything those other guys have taught me so far.

https://idmprogram.com/losing-war-obesity-type-2-diabetes-cancer/

This is a fascinating blog from Dr Jason Fung on the subject

http://www.burnfatnotsugar.com/

If you want to check out the role of exercise on insulin resistance - Dr Ted Naimman is your fella . He is a vegetarian turned paleo doctor , with a big twitter following.

Kentoldlady1 said:

Ok. Bit confused on the whole oil thing. I understand that the ratio should be good. So does that mean that all the negative effects of o3 can be overcome just eating more o6? In other words if you have a dreadful diet but take a shed load of o6 supplements all will be good? Seriously dim!

And thanks again cherry. Love all your threads and most especially the way you give links to research. Great job, please dont stop.x

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Hmm clearly not explaining myself well totally back to front !
" In my opinion"
Omega 3 is GOOD _ though no doubt " within reason " like all things as per this article

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/fish-oil-friend-or-foe-201307126467

Omega 6
You need some Omega 6 but not that much - the best type is CLA - which comes, for example from grass fed beef.
You don't need polyunsaturated seed oils that are pro-inflammatory the proportion of which has grown dramatically in recent years - increasingly so with the vilification of saturated fat.

Omega 3 "neutralises" Omega 6 - so you can mitigate the effect of Omega 6 inflammation by increasing Omega 3- hence the availability of Omega 3 fish oil supplements.

Whether in practice Omega 3 supplements work - I seriously question . If in fact all it is is a soluble case that holds real codliver oil so you don't actually have to taste it , then yes should work. But a poor diet will produce a 30;1 ratio of Om 6 to Om 3 and VOLUME is important - as per the research above you want enough Om3 not a shedload of it to offset a shedload of Om 6.

However all too often supplements are touted to resolve particular issues and usually their benefits prove to be nothing or detrimental

In my view , the answer is to eat REAL FOODS that limit Omega 6 , and include more Omega 3 REAL foods as necessary to offset the Omega 6 . hence taking actual cod liver oil, and eating actual cod livers .

"In my opinion " every household provider should have something like cronometer on their PC or phone. Its free, its easy to use and within a few days you can easily understand what level of nutrients your family is getting from the food you are eating and start to make adjustments that will improve the health of your family. Nearly everyone has a set of scales and a thermometer, why not a blood glucose monitor and a nutrient program? We are all computer iterate to an extent today .

No one needs to go to the lengths I am doing, but one hour a week spent thinking about nutrition is probably the greatest gift any parent can give to their family.