• Guest - w'd love to know what you think about the forum! Take the 2025 Survey »

Prediabetic hb down from 44 to 37!

S

Skinny43

Well-Known Member
Messages
75
Just had the blood result. It’s 37! Been managing through diet only.

Feel pretty chuffed about the result. But weight has gone down too much. Now Bmi is 17.7 ( pre diet it was around 20. Is this a concern? I was hoping to speak to the diabetic nurse about it. When phoned in for result the reception told me there was no need to speak to the DN. not sure who I should talk to regarding to my weight now. Perhaps you wonderful people here can share some experiences? Is my weight now too unhealthy? I feel great though. I’ve always been skinny (so is my dad). Could my genes just be on the skinny side therefore can be underweight but healthy.
Thanks for any replies.
 
It's below "normal" but that in itself might not necessarily be a problem if it's your biological set point. Some say that you should be the build you were in your late teens. I subscribe to this idea myself, as I don't believe that the "middle-aged spread" is a natural phenomenon. If you want to gain weight without impacting glucose you could increase your fat intake and/or work out to increase muscle mass but, generally speaking, if you have a healthy appetite and you're not depriving yourself then it should ensure you remain where your body wants to be.

Good work on HbA1c by the way.
 

Thank you Jim. You are confirming what my instinct says too. Everyone is different. I think I’m just genetically skinny. My dad is definitely underweight using bmi calculation, but he’s the most fit, able and healthy person in their 70’s I’ve seen!

I’m definitely not starving myself. I eat quite a lot of veg, meat and diary. I snack on nuts quite often.
Interesting about the late teen idea. I’m gradually getting close to be more like the weight and build when I was in uni.

I’ve been lazy with exercise though lately. I shall get back to running and core workout.
 
Congratulations on your results!

If your family is skinny as you say, then perhaps that's just the way you are, indeed. Women lose more muscle and bones than men with age, due to hormonal changes (menopause). I make an effort to keep those with exercise. So, if I lose weight, I survey those.

Would you mind sharing what you'd usually eat in a day?
 
My husband's family exists out of rail-thin people. It's just their natural state. So I wouldn't worry overmuch about it, unless there's things like fatigue or similar cropping up. If you're feeling good, then that's excellent. And well done on your HbA1c!
 
Well done on that HbA1c number. I wish I could get that low but I think I too would need a low low BMI to get there (currently 21).
I too have always been skinny, ever since birth, and have struggled to gain weight healthily - I just cant build muscle. I did some research on this and turned up the Barker Hypothesis which correlates low birth weight (LBW) to adult metabolic disease. I don't know if this applies to you but it is worth a read as an explanation for some skinny T2's. The main vector for this relationship seems to be the role of skeletal muscle in glucose uptake. Low muscle mass compromises this and LBW results in lower than optimal adult muscle mass. An individual's 'potential' for building muscle as an adult is set at birth. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4608552/
 

You are so right about women losing muscle and bone masses. I’ll remember to get back on track to my exercises.

Food wise, in a typical day I have:
Breakfast - some (15g?) low sugar cereal with milk, fried egg and a slice of cheese.
Lunch - chicken Cesar salad or whatever salad I can find on the shelve.
Dinner - usually meatballs or fried veg with meat. Occasionally 2 pieces of pizza (thin base ones) for a treat. If the family have rice I’ll have a tiny bit (maybe 30g?). Sometimes pasta with salmon and tomato etc.

I aim to take ~50g of carbohydrates within a day.
I snack on nuts if I feel hungry between meals but recently I’ve not felt very hungry. It’s more like a habit when I do snack .

Any white stuff like white rice or white bread will send my sugar level high. If I keep to brown rice and wholemeal pasta I’m much more tolerant on them.

What I also learnt was the portion is very important. There seems to be a virtual limit that my body can handle. There’ll be a huge jump in BG level if I go over that line. I’m still trying to gauge where that line is.
 

Thank you for reassuring me. My mum and 2 brothers are both overweight. But my dad and I have always struggled to put up weight. How funny we have two extremes in the family!
 

True I have been skinny since birth. I believe I was born quite low weight too.
However I’ve always been sporty and been running a lot generally. It makes my legs quite muscular. I think I have quite a bit of muscle ( mainly on legs). It’s just difficult to build fat especially when I was younger. Over age, I’ve had more fat around my waist and that seemed to be what’s lost most through low carb diet. I think it’s those belly fat that caused my blood sugar problems in the first place.
 

This reflects my own experience. I was LBW and skinny till I discovered alcohol & chips as a student. After a brief unhealthy tubby foray I discovered the bicycle and running and the gym and got seriously fit and lean again. However although I got strong muscles I couldn't bulk up. And I have cycled and run ever since. However my understanding of ageing is that we all lose muscle mass year on year so if one didn't have a lot to start with then this loss hits harder. Consequently, as muscle is so important for processing blood glucose, excess calories more easily gets laid down as visceral fat with all the metabolic problems that result. Hence naturally skinny people can be 'obese' at a lower BMI than the average person.
 

These words all sounds surprisingly familiar and really resonate with my feel. I have been thinking for a long time I can be ‘obese’ with a very low bmi. That all makes sense now. Thank you for explaining it all. I should aim to build more muscle or at least try not lose much more too quickly.
 
You're a bit too skinny, Skinny. It is a constant struggle for me to stay above 18.5 BMI too, so I feel for you. Particularly with nasty bugs going around, is really isn't good for us to have so little weight to lose before we risk bad trouble if we fall really ill. You are clearly doing a great job of managing your carb intake to get your glucose metabolism back on track, and hurrah for that. But it sounds as though you aren't eating enough fat and protein to fuel yourself properly. We are all so indoctrinated with the low fat nonsense and bogus concerns about too much protein that we can forget how careful we must be to keep the engine properly fuelled, once we cut out the carbage. My suggestion would be, up your good fats and your protein and make sure you stay strong and resilient.
 

Thank you so much for your thought and concern. I’ll have a think about ways I can increase my fat intake. I think I eat plenty of protein already from cheese milk and meat. I do also constantly snack on nuts etc. I even eat pork hind as a snack. I sometimes eat greek style yogurt and avocado but not quite often enough and I’ve been forgetting about them. I also have 1 fried egg plus my son’s egg yoke as he hates it. Any other ideas if increasing my fat intake? Should I start fat counting? I’ve been kind of eating to my appetite without restricting myself on fat and protein but haven’t counted calories etc.

Thank you again.
 
that's nice as prediabetes is characterised by the presence of blood glucose levels that are higher than normal but not yet high enough to be classed as diabetes
 
You are welcome, and thank you for your kind words too. I am a fan of eating to appetite too, and that's great if things are going swimmingly, but, if you need a little course correction, I can see the case for counting on fat and protein, at least until things are going in the direction you want. Meat, cheese, eggs and oily fish and Greek-style yogurt are my staples for fat and protein too, and the nice thing is that they are all so good for both. Maybe just upping your quantities a little would help. I don't know about you, but, like many people who are inclined to be skinny, I tend to respond to stress by eating too little rather than too much - the opposite of most folks! If you are wired the same way as me, maybe we both need to take particular care to stay well nourished just now, there being so very many things to stress about.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Menu
Log in
Register
Cookies are required to use this site. You must accept them to continue using the site. Learn More.…