Posting on behalf of hubby

I was the same. In my case it was carb withdrawal. I fell off the wagon, twice I fell face first into a plate of crumpets, another time I gorged on 6 slices of ryvitas.

Taking bloods helped. I saw the rise in numbers. It did take 2 or 3 weeks for the cravings to go, but they did.

Try a glass of water to help with appetite. Sometimes I get peckish but it passes. A 30g portion of nuts can also help.

It isn't easy at the beginning but a higher level of fats in the diet will sate appetite and help to get over carb addiction. Now to the thorny issue of cholesterol, dietary cholesterol accounts for just 15% of total body cholesterol and if you could cut out all cholesterol from your diet the body would make up the shortfall. Cholesterol is made in the liver and is vital for life. When people make big changes in diet or lose weight this can skew lipid levels for a while but this soon reverts to one's individual level and some people see a natural lowering of cholesterol even with a diet high in natural healthy fats. If hubby is still unconvinced then use coconut oil, olive oil and avocado to help satiety.

MarkR 2 said:

Hubby (MarkR) was diagnosed 3 weeks ago, is on Metformin 2 x500mg daily go 3 weeks also low carb diet. Maximum of 40g main meal and 15g snack although is consuming nowhere near that. He has this week been constantly hungry he isn't even getting 2hrs post meal before he's expressing hunger. I'm at a loss as to what to do as I do not want him to get into the habit of grazing on high fat foods because that will inevitably raise cholesterol.

I'm so sorry I feel like I spend had my time asking question on these forums.

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A good bet is to get him to OVEREAT fats for a bit - for example - a big plate of bacon and eggs cooked in butter with buttered mushrooms and tomato, repeat each time he feels hungry, be reassured that high fat does not " raise cholesterol" - carbohydrates raise cholesterol. If he tried that for a few days he should find the gaps between meals get longer and eventually his body will no long crave the sugars. Once that has happened he can then start cutting down on the quantities of fat so that he can start consuming his own fat. These early days are sugar withdrawal symptoms not " real hunger" is awful and unpleasant but he can power through it. ( I did this check out my cholesterol numbers below) I still eat 60% fat a lot of it saturated !

will get used to it in 21 days if the new way of eating is adhered to, if not, definitely within the second 21 day period, meanwhile a very small palmful of yellow roasted chickpeas helps for each craving attack and they are very low in their GI & GL, although they are some carbs.

As said above, it may be carb cravings because of the dramatic reduction in carbs.
Or it may be genuine hunger because he didnkt eat enough fat and protein to last till his next meal.

Both are very easily sorted

If it is carb cravings, then a cup of bovril or coffee, each with a dash of cream will always kill cravings for me.
The trick is simple - fat kills cravings.
And when the cravings disappear after a few days, it is natural to forget to have the extra coffee and bovril.

If it is not eating enough, then bigger portions are an even easier solution.

One thing you said is very telling

MarkR 2 said:

I'm at a loss as to what to do as I do not want him to get into the habit of grazing on high fat foods because that will inevitably raise cholesterol.

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Guzzler has already laid that to rest. It is most definitely NOT inevitable.
My way of eating is very high in saturated fat, red meat, and very low carb, and mt cholesterol is at the national average for total cholesterol and my ratios are optimum (at last test).

In fact, rapid weight loss is one of the main reason for cholesterol to rise when people go LCHF. Yet healthcare professionals always seem to blame the high fat diet for rising cholesterol hdespite it being proven that dietary chol only affects 15% of total chol). When the chol rise is actually from the weight loss that the LCHF diet produces. Ironic, eh?

Incidentally, when chol does rise with rapid weight loss, it drops again once the weight settles.

I know that your role as a loving spouse is to protect your beloved from the horrors and terrors of fat. That role was assigned to us 50+ years ago. It is like gravity. Almost irresistible.
But that was all based on faulty science.
https://idmprogram.com/diet-heart-hypothesis-hormonal-obesity-xxxv/
It isn’t good fats (butter, olive oil, meat fats) that cause the problems. It is the bad fats (processed, trans, polyunsaturated veg oils) PLUS too many carbs.

Edited for typos.

I feel he needs filling up, look up fat head dough. You can make pizza and garlic bread. The quantity makes far too much for the two of us, and it is very filling.

I use lurpack garlic butter to make the garlic bread.

I just put the amount I don't use in a Polly bag and it keeps in the fridge for a few days.

Go lchf. Give him half a bag of pork scratchings. My work colleague is a body builder and put me onto this and it worked for me. Maybe throw in a few Brazil, pecan or macadamia nuts

Hi @MarkR 2 look at @daisy1 post re starting out. It takes a couple of weeks to get sorted but hang in there its well worth the slog. Plenty of help and advice on here to help you through the rough times. LCHF in just short of 3 weeks has reduced my BS from 16.6 down to between 4.5 and 5.5 after 12 hr fast.

Terrytiddy said:

Hi @MarkR 2 look at @daisy1 post re starting out. It takes a couple of weeks to get sorted but hang in there its well worth the slog. Plenty of help and advice on here to help you through the rough times. LCHF in just short of 3 weeks has reduced my BS from 16.6 down to between 4.5 and 5.5 after 12 hr fast.

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Brilliant!

MarkR 2 said:

Hubby (MarkR) was diagnosed 3 weeks ago, is on Metformin 2 x500mg daily go 3 weeks also low carb diet. Maximum of 40g main meal and 15g snack although is consuming nowhere near that. He has this week been constantly hungry he isn't even getting 2hrs post meal before he's expressing hunger. I'm at a loss as to what to do as I do not want him to get into the habit of grazing on high fat foods because that will inevitably raise cholesterol.

I'm so sorry I feel like I spend had my time asking question on these forums.

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I sympathise. My initial diagnosis as being "marginally" diabetic was about 180 months ago, and they just put me on metformin like your lesser half, but regardless of what they actually said what I heard was "eat a healthy diet". So I spend 18 months eating wholemeal bread, rice, veggies and lots of fruit while cutting back on red meat. Then I was tested again about a month ago and discovered to my horror that these were bad choices! So they gave me a testing kit and that was the key - I could now actually SEE the effect of what I was doing. I graphed it (i'm an engineer - we love to turn data into pictures) and you can see the results below:

If you look at the graph you'll see that over 2 weeks I went from wildly swinging levels (up to nearly 25mmol/l, which is a level where you should always have a binbag to hand to collect the various limbs that start dropping off) to a pretty consistent 5-7 mmol/l. I can point to the sections of the curve and see what changes I'd made to cause the reduction in levels AND the greater consistency. Elimination of grapes was one of the bigger ones (my former favourite grazing food), together with discovering that watermelon should be reclassified as a class-A controlled substance which requires a prescription signed by at least two doctors. I also discovered that cashews are not merely posh peanuts - they are different (eat as many peanuts as you like, but avoid cashews).

I've essentially gone zero-carb and zero sugar (as far as I know). I avoid bread, pastry, cake, potatoes, pasta, buscuits etc. I switched from proper brown sugar in my coffee to fructose (fruit sugar), and I eliminated all sweet stuff apart from coke zero. When I need to graze I eat peanuts or cheese. I do drink quite a lot of coke zero (either vanilla or cherry) when I want something sweet, as this has only aspartame to worry about and while there is quite a lot of witchcraft-based scares about aspartame there is as yet no actual evidence to support it.

So FWIW I recommend:
1. Go back to your doctor and demand a blood glucose test thingy and a prescription for at least a month's lancets and test strips. Use this six-eight times a day - on waking up, before each meal, 90 minutes after the first bite of each meal and just before bed (that's six times for me because I don't eat breakfast). Record the results in a spreadsheet (I'll send you mine if you like) because pictures are always better than words. The test takes seconds and is unobtrusive - I even do min post-lunch test while I'm in a meeting if I have to (I claim that it shows I give my blood for the company!). If you're not measuring anything then you have absolutely no idea what is good and/or bad - it's like that bit in Game of Thrones where the blind Arya Stark was trying to fight Waif with a quarterstaff. If the doctor seems reluctant to give you a testing machine try pleading and/or threats of public floggings/assassinations etc (whichever suits your style), or change doctor(!). You can buy these machines (and the test strips) but you shouldn't have to - I didn't. Once you are measuring you can make informed choices. When you first get the tester do more tests - test before and immediately after eating, and then again 90mins later. Look at the variations and try to find the common things which cause peaks and troughs - find the reasons for the shape of the graph. After a few days you can then do the standard 6-8 readings and know what's happening between them.

2. Each person here will give you different versions of what to eat and avoid. This isn't because they are lying, it's simply that everyone is different (I'm not! - Ed) so you need to find what actually works for your lesser half, and to do that you need to be measuring (see (1) above). In my case I completely eliminated sugar and carbs as far as I know - I've started reading the labels on food and learned many fascinating things. I eat a lot of salads, but I can have things like steak caesar salad, or salads with chicken. bacon & egg. Scotch eggs seem to be good "on the go" food. I've also taken to doing mild exercise after lunch and dinner (exercise before eating is wasted effort). Two post-lunch laps around the hangars at a brisk walking pace drops my blood sugar by 25%, and it tends to stay down.

3. Address one problem at a time. The important one for now its to get your blood glucose consistently below (say) 8 mmol/l. Once you're there then (and only then) examine the diet which achieves it and adjust for concerns over nutrition.

4. If your lesser half is the sort of person who can do "moderation" then consider having small rewards or rations of "bad-stuff"[TM] like chocolate or chips. Personally I can't - I'm physically incapable of eating one square from a chocky bar are leaving the rest for another day, so I've had to go completely cold-pheasant and exclude all the bad stuff from the house (my better third literally has a locked cupboard where she keeps her supplies of stuff I mustn't have!

OK, that was a wall of text which Trump would be happy to place along the Mexican border, but I hope some of it helps!

€0.0007 supplied,

PDR

@PDR did you know that you should avoid fructose like the plague?

xfieldok said:

@PDR did you know that you should avoid fructose like the plague?

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Clearly not! A colleague who has been an injecting diabetic for several years told me that it was a diabetic-acceptable alternative to sugar for coffee. Was he wrong? All the research data I've found seems to indicate that fructose doesn't increase blood glucose levels and that earlier concerns that it caused liver/fat issues were either massively overstated (in the context of a half teaspoon in coffee twice a day) or not reproducible in subsequent studies.

PDR

PDR said:

Clearly not! A colleague who has been an injecting diabetic for several years told me that it was a diabetic-acceptable alternative to sugar for coffee. Was he wrong? All the research data I've found seems to indicate that fructose doesn't increase blood glucose levels and that earlier concerns that it caused liver/fat issues were either massively overstated (in the context of a half teaspoon in coffee twice a day) or not reproducible in subsequent studies.

PDR

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I have read so much recently I am not sure where I found it. I will try and find it and report back!

@PDR it is in the Diabetes Code, there are several references to it. I have the kindle version which has a search function. It does mention that fructose may not give much of an insulin response but from memory it is fairly evil stuff.

PDR said:

Clearly not! A colleague who has been an injecting diabetic for several years told me that it was a diabetic-acceptable alternative to sugar for coffee. Was he wrong? All the research data I've found seems to indicate that fructose doesn't increase blood glucose levels and that earlier concerns that it caused liver/fat issues were either massively overstated (in the context of a half teaspoon in coffee twice a day) or not reproducible in subsequent studies.

PDR

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There are many presentations by qualified medics on the effects of fructose on the metabolism. N.B a person who is highly IR and trying to address T2 with diet alone will be quite different from a person who has T1 or is an insulin dependant T2.

PDR said:

Clearly not! A colleague who has been an injecting diabetic for several years told me that it was a diabetic-acceptable alternative to sugar for coffee. Was he wrong? All the research data I've found seems to indicate that fructose doesn't increase blood glucose levels and that earlier concerns that it caused liver/fat issues were either massively overstated (in the context of a half teaspoon in coffee twice a day) or not reproducible in subsequent studies.

PDR

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Here is Jenny Ruhl on fructose:

"Fructose
You may read in books written for diabetics that fructose is preferable to other sugars for people with diabetes because it doesn't raise insulin or blood sugar. Fructose, like glucose, is a form of simple sugar, the one which is found in fruits. For this reason it has been promoted as being "natural" and "healthy." However the fructose you find listed in the ingredient panel of supermarket foods does not come from fruit. It is extracted from corn and it is anything but good for you.

This is because while it is true that fructose may not raise your blood glucose concentration and hence is not detectable by your blood glucose meter, it does raise the levels of fructose and once fructose gets into your bloodstream it makes a beeline for the liver where it is immediately turned into fat. Not only that, but this fructose in your liver also increases insulin resistance and decreases leptin, a hormone that regulates appetite and body fat levels.

The reason that our bodies respond this way to fructose may go back to our evolutionary primate heritage. Fruits are relatively rare in nature and for an animal who is struggling to put on a bit of fat to get through tough times the discovery of a small store of seasonal fruit is a dietary bonanza. So it makes sense to quickly store it as fat for tough times ahead. It is only when our bodies start encountering this "fruit" sugar in large quantities every day--with no famine periods in which to burn it off--that fructose becomes a problem.

The average consumption of fructose by Americans rose from 64 grams per day in 1970 to 81 grams per day in 1997--a rise of 26%--and that's just the average. Anyone who starts their day with glass of orange juice and some high fructose corn syrup sweetened cereal and then has a soda with a lunch and dinner that includes some canned soup or bottled spaghetti sauce, both of which sweetened with surprising amounts of high fructose corn syrup, and polishes off that meal with a scoop of ice cream or a couple cookies sweetened with high fructose corn syrup is taking in a lot more fructose than that 81 gram average.

There is an accumulating body of research which suggests that because of fructose's ability to deregulate appetite and lead to increased fat storage, the huge increase of fructose in the American diet over the past couple decades may be one reason for the increase of obesity within the U.S population.

Fructose, weight gain, and the insulin resistance syndrome.Sharon S. Elliott et al., Am J Clin Nutr, Vol 76 No. 5 911-922, 2002.

If that isn't enough to put you off fructose, consider this: fructose causes far more glycation of proteins than does glucose. Glycation refers to the dangerous bonding of sugar molecules to proteins that clogs up your circulatory system and kidneys.

Experimental studies on the role of fructose in the development of diabetic complications. Sakai M, Oimomi M, Kasuga M. Kobe J Med Sci , Dec 2002, 48(5-6) p125-36

Unfortunately, you aren't going to see any of this discussed in the media any time soon. Food manufacturers love high fructose corn syrup because it is cheaper than other sugars. Since a few large food companies are responsible for buying a large percentage of all media advertising, you won't be hearing much from the media companies they support about this major ingredient in their foods.

In 2008, after information about the bad effects of high fructose corn syrup became known to people in the Web diet and nutrition community, the corn syrup industry spearheaded a campaign complete with viral videos to convince people that high fructose corn syrup was good for them. It isn't."

Wow! Thanks @Alexandra100. @PDR are you going to find another sweetener?