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Newcastle diet journey

I use Dietimeal. I get them from a lady called Billy, via ebay. The low carb superstore sells them too. They are far from the cheapest around, but they are very low carb, at around 2.6g per serving (varies slightly with flavour), and are versatile, as you can use them as drinks, or as a mousse type pudding, depending on how you make them up. They also do a hot chocolate drink. These were the cheapest I could get delivered here, and I must be honest I've been very pleased with them, although they are a bit sweet for my taste
 
I have to say that I found the diet easier as time went on. Day three for me was dreadful. I got depressed, and if I was going to give up, it would have been then. I got lots of encouragement from the guys on this forum, and went to the Newcastle Diet web page, and got some recipe advice. If you go through the posts on this thread, Julie54 has posted the link to the site. Worth a visit.
 
Looking at starting the ND tomorrow. Trying to get my head around the drink side of things as the ND says that you aren't allowed dairy. But a lot of people are drinking shakes on it. Does drinking dairy in shakes matter or not ?
 
type2dad said:
Looking at starting the ND tomorrow. Trying to get my head around the drink side of things as the ND says that you aren't allowed dairy. But a lot of people are drinking shakes on it. Does drinking dairy in shakes matter or not ?
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Before you start go to the website. If you read through this thread you will find several links, and Julie54 has posted the answer she recieved from Dr Roy Taylor to a similar question. It's on page 2
 
Now into the second week. Days 3-4 were the worst. Have survived on the shakes. Chocolate, Strawberry, and Banana are the best. Caramel is like gloop. Fav veggie dish is veggie curry - helps keep you regular as well! Make a large batch and freeze it. Have lost just over 3Kg last week.
Still going to the gym 3-4 times a week. Blood glucose has dropped, even the Liver Dump tests when I wake up are now low. e.g. 4.7. Post meal tests are all below 5. Will continue on metformin this week. Next week will reduce to 1 tab per day with evening 'veggie delight'. After that will cut it out all together. Plan on carrying out the 3 day test regime each week to monitor progress. If results continue to show pre-diabetes glucose levels post meals, for about 2 weeks, with no meds, I will come off the diet. What then is the big question.
Does anyone have any ideas about what you do after ND? I don't want to throw away the gains I have made because it has been hard work. I am worried that if I go back to my old ways of drinking, eating, and more drinking this is what will happen. It has taken 50+ years for my body to become diabetic. Does this mean that after the ND I can revert to abusing my body again for another 50 years until the diabetes returns? Are there any maintenance diets that will help you keep the weight, BMI, visceral fats etc low? Please don't say that I am going to be confined to veggie curry, gloop shakes, and NO booze for the rest of my natural.
 
yes thank you,Jim, I was thinking about after the long journey its been, and the thought of slipping back to old ways , its no way for me.
 
Christine i am sure you will be fine, read few of your posts and you sound very dedicated/strong. i think what we must do is to keep away from the processed foods, you know all that stuff we have found so convenient over the years, yet its not always been this way, before these convenient foods man/woman used to eat Live foods, foods that kept our natural enzymes in check, foods that gave us "Life" not foods that gave us an existence and made millions for big food manufacturing plant.
Just because it goes into our bodies and allows us to poodle along day to day, does not mean it is Life.
I am doing this because i want "Life" i want to live again, i don't want to be a zombie anymore, feed the masses sludge and they are easier to control, me well i will control me lol.
You are doing just fine.
I have had two days on the trot now where i have taken my sugar levels before breakfast and they have been 5.3, so pleased.

Jim
 

Hi Pembers,

I'd also like to know the answer to this. Personally, when i'm done i plan to gradually increase the calories gradually up from 800 to around 1200 over another 2 months to hopefully retain the gains. I'm also going to buy a cross-trainer for the living room so I can workout at home. its tough to find time to go to the gym or for a run with an 8 month old son; at least i can watch him as i workout.

I'll keep taking the shakes for breakfast, and soup for lunch, and add chicken to my stir fries and curries, and fish to my steamed veg, and continue to stay away from bread and pasta totally, and rice and potatoes except on rare occasions (Xmas dinner for instance and the occasional sunday roast). Not sure if this is the way to go. The temptation is there at the end of the 8 weeks to have something really bad and see just exactly how my body copes with it, but i'd be gutted to get a 24 reading again after all this effort and the 4.4's i've been getting.

What is the 3 day test regime you mention?

Also, "At bed time they are down to the low 5's, but in morning have risen to high 7's" that is exactly what happened to me at the start and gradually the morning ones became ok too. Did confuse me though. i hadn't eaten anything since the night before and only drank waer so why was it higher. As someone mentioned "Dawn phenomenon" which is something to do with hormones triggering a release of glucose to aid us in getting up. I looked on it as a good measure that things were improving if that particular test was going down, as it was the last to improve.

Cheers, rasping
 
Hi Raspin
The 3 day test is when you monitor your blood glucose when you get, before breakfast, 2 hours after it, the same with lunch and dinner, and before you go to bed. Do this for 3 days at a time each week.
I have been cutting the shakes down to 2 a day and increasing the veggie evening meal. This has meet with mixed success. So going back to 250gms for evening 'meal'. Still keeping the BG down to below 6, sometimes to below 4.4.
Dawn phenomenon is also known as 'Liver Dump'. Mine can be quite high eg. 6, but after getting up, showering etc it goes down. Some mornings it is much lower. Don't know why. Possibly something to do with what I had to eat in evening.
Off to son's 30th birthday in London tomorrow. Will have some shakes with me and plan on having veggie option in pub for dinner. Will be interesting to see how my BG behaves. Wish me luck.
Planning on following similar eating plan after the diet. Normal breakfast (Shredded Wheat, skimmed milk etc), a shake or diet soup for lunch, and healthy dinner (chicken, fish, lean meat) salad etc. The wife wants to follow the 5/2 diet, fasting 2 days a week. Intend to keep her company on it. There must be some room to 'misbehave' and enjoy a nice steak, chips, and a good drink. Just take things sensibly.

Hope everything goes OK. Keep in touch.

Pembers
 
Hi Pembers,

Thanks for the explanation. I hope things went well at the weekend. Social occasions can be taxing, especially if you don't want to break your unbeaten run of not cheating and eating exactly what you have set out in your diet. I've got a wedding to go to in 2 weeks, and relatives down this weekend. I've certainly noticed how closely social events seem to all be tied to eating and its a pain in the wotsit to be frank.

i tried the glucose test this Saturday. I fasted from 10pm the previous evening until 10am on Saturday with only water to drink. I did however notice that just before i started my blood sugar was slightly elevated (its usually 4.4 - 4.6 first thing but it was 4.8). I think this may be down to having had about an hours unspolit sleep due to my 8 month old son currently having a cold and teething so I do wonder how that effected the final results.

Anyway, I'm still diabetic. Roughly, off the top of my head my results were as follows. i tested twice in the same 2 different fingers each time.
10am 4.8 & 4.8 took Glutole
11am 9.0 & 9.2
12am 9.8 & 10.0
1am 9.6 & 9.8
3pm (i tested off the cuff as i wondered if it would ever go down and it was 3.8 - the lowest I have ever seen (weird)

Incidentally, testing on more than one finger certainly starts to make you wonder how hit and miss glucose testing is as it is almost always different between to fingers or sometimes even the same finger. Most the time the deviation seems small but sometimes it as mush as 1.0.

I do draw some comfort from the glucose test. I dropped down from 1000mg of metformin to just a single 500mg a day around 5 days ago and other than the this test i haven't been over 5bs for weeks.

Also, just over a month ago, when I was first diagnosed my fasting result was 18.1, and after a roast dinner the following day (before i' got my results saying i was DB) it was 24.4. For days after that i could not get my BS below 10. Now i am pulling in a 10 after eating a concentrated dose of glucose. I suppose i shouldn't be too downhearted about that as it could definitely have been worse.

3-4 weeks togo on the diet and 2 stone 2Lbs lost so far. I started at 18st 13 & 3/4lbs 3/4 and i'm down to 16st 11 & 1/2lbs. If i can get down to my interim target weight of 16st maybe i'll give it another go then.

If anyone can make any sense of the above I'd appreciate any insight or advice
 
I started the ND last Monday lost 7lbs in five days first time in over 20 years that my dieting Has started with such good weight loss. I'm using the slim fast shakes they do contain more carbs than I would like but BG is improving also. Biggest problem is DP. Have made the pea and watercress soup its not bad and I don't feel hungry. Just a bit bored but will defo persevere.
 

It's a very low calorie diet, not a low carb, so it's normally a high percentage of the intake.
 
douglas99 said:
It's a very low calorie diet, not a low carb, so it's normally a high percentage of the intake.
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Aye, but from my understanding the low carb helps increase the insulin resistance where as losing the weight helps with the production of insulin with the aim being more insulin production which you're generally more sensitive to. I may very well be wrong, and i'm certainly no expert, but don't you need it to be relatively low carb, maybe not excessively low, to aid in achieving any improvement in resistance? I know lower carb is also supposed to make the weight loss side of things more effective as someone posted a quote from the professor saying that if you used shakes with higher carb weight loss would likely be slower so...even though they call it a low cal diet isn't it really also a low carb diet too? Especially when you look at the list of things you should and shouldn't eat when mimicking the study.

Laharvey, if you look at the asda meal replacement shakes they are less carb than the slim fast ones, and only £4 for 12 servings (24/30 approx). however If you make them up with unsweetened almond milk they are only 15g carb a shake and 160 ish calories. They come in strawberry, vanilla and chocolate. I think the chocolate ones, which taste nice anyway, actually taste better with the unsweetened almond milk, its kinda nutty chocolate then. If you get the almond milk, check its unsweetened and should have very little carb, the sweetened stuff is not at all similar. Tesco, asda and morrisons all do it and it was recommended to me on these forums.

I've also tried atkins shakes which you make with water. Again chocolate, they have 2 grams carb total. OMG they taste like S&^&. However, again, if you make them up with almond milk they become around 3g carb and taste much better and less watery.

I lost 2 stone with the asda shakes and almond milk so they are more than sufficient for this diet i feel. I've only started using the atkins ones as i'm only a few weeks from the end so wanted to do a couple of weeks super low carb and its helped me drop another 1/4stone in the last 4 days. When the diet ends ill be back on the asda ones for breakfast cos they are actually pleasant. Also, the atkins ones are not fortified with vitamins and such, unlike the asda ones, so personally i wouldn't be keen on using them for anything but a short burst, and i take a pro-biotic multi-vitamin everyday to try an compensate.

Hope this helps.
 

I think you have to decide what you want to do. Low carb, or Newcastle.
It for a period of weeks, so it's a focussed plan, not a catch all for everything.
If you don't add milk to the shakes, they are low carb because you're missing out the milk, they're also lower calorie for the same reason, if you wants to make the 200 calories, you'd simply add more shake, and up the carbs again that way.

At the other extreme, a completely carb free Newcastle diet would simply be protein and fat, such as 200 calories from a piece of fatty steak, blended.
It wouldn't be the Newcatle diet then though, it would just be an 800 calorie lchf diet.
The Newcastle diet is what it is, if it's changed, it's another diet.

As for the personal choice, I lost 4 stone on a normal, balanced, portion controlled, low calorie diet. My bs in now normal, I still eat carbs that don't spike me, I eat a lot of veg, and "healthy" food, and eat low fat.
All down to what works for you personally.
 
The Optifast shakes used on the original diet were around 20g carbs per serving.

3 shakes and a non starchy veg meal a day- depending on which ones you choose, Total would be no more than 80g of carbs.

So low carbs but not extremely so

I think part of the low carb aspect is to give the pancreas a bit of a break!
 

Yes, about that, but the Newcastle diet was never designed to be anything other than a low calorie diet with optiplan.
It was never designed to affect the pancreas it's low carb as it's only 1/3 of the daily intake of calories. as you say 600 calories is about 75g of carbs, (300) 50 g protein (200) 12 g (100) fats from the make up of optifast, + 200 from veg, (again, still carbs)

So, 25g of cab per shake?
 
I'm on week 6 of the ND and when I've finished I'm going back to absolute normal Friday night to Sunday night and on a modified ND from Monday to Friday - including no booze. I hope that will work. But when I say normal, stuffing yourself is never good.


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