Prof Roy Taylor

[Ruthiecbrown]

Has anyone read his book? I thought it was really interesting but I am curious about his take on low carb. He says it doesn’t matter whether you are low carb or not it just matters that you lose weight. Any opinions?
I must confess I feel my brain is in a pickle. I managed gestational diabetes brilliantly with low carb. Lost the plot when my mum died when my baby 7 weeks old. Since then I have gained two stone. I am not diabetic ( yet) but obviously I am high risk.
I have read and watched so much - Jason Fung Gary Taubes Sarah hallberg diet doctor etc but then I read someone saying it’s just calories and not carbs and I question everything. I have a science background and the science behind low carb makes sense but I still doubt myself so it doesn’t help reading Roy Taylor’s opinion.
I am confused and frankly feel I need someone to slap me around the head with a wet kipper to get some sense into me. Without the motivation of keeping blood sugars in check or a healthy baby I seem to not stick to anything for long enough to help.

 

[bulkbiker]

Wet kipper moment...

I've lost 120 pounds and put T2 into remission with ultra low carb and intermittent fasting.

Taylor has had decent results but Fung and Hallberg I think have had better...
I know where my money would go..

 

[lucylocket61]

I control my blood sugar levels by low carbing. I have lost little weight. The carbs amount is the biggest single factor for control.

Eating once a day, or just in an 8 hour period, instead of grazing, has also helped me.

 

[LittleGreyCat]

Has anyone read his book? I thought it was really interesting but I am curious about his take on low carb. He says it doesn’t matter whether you are low carb or not it just matters that you lose weight. Any opinions?
I must confess I feel my brain is in a pickle. I managed gestational diabetes brilliantly with low carb. Lost the plot when my mum died when my baby 7 weeks old. Since then I have gained two stone. I am not diabetic ( yet) but obviously I am high risk.
I have read and watched so much - Jason Fung Gary Taubes Sarah hallberg diet doctor etc but then I read someone saying it’s just calories and not carbs and I question everything. I have a science background and the science behind low carb makes sense but I still doubt myself so it doesn’t help reading Roy Taylor’s opinion.
I am confused and frankly feel I need someone to slap me around the head with a wet kipper to get some sense into me. Without the motivation of keeping blood sugars in check or a healthy baby I seem to not stick to anything for long enough to help.

I've met the guy, although only briefly.
Very informative, and I think his position is that IF you pancreas is being blocked by fat then it doesn't matter how you loose weight, whatever you do to remove the organ fat is good.

IMHO this is different from long term BG control.
If your problem is IR and a fatty pancreas and liver then losing the fact CAN (not WILL) reverse your diabetes whatever route you take.

If this works then you can probably manage carbohydrates.
If it doesn't then your problem is probably not visceral fat but a worn out pancreas.
Which requires coddling by not stressing it with too many carbohydrates.

So do whatever you can to lose visceral fat and hope this reverses your diabetes.
If this doesn't work, consider low carbohydrate eating because this gives your poor tired pancreas some hope.

A rule of thumb from the Prof was "get your weight and waist measurement back to what it was in your late teens".
However no guarantee that this will work, but it is worth trying anyway.
Didn't work for me.

 

[Honeyend]

I think most of the real life guinea pigs on here, whether they have lost weight or not have seen their BS improve on low carb.
I have lived on 800 calories, when I was about 28, despirately trying to lose weight after a baby, but I think it breeds an unhealthy atttitude to food, you become dependant on not eating, which a lot of us will fail at. If you want a sustainable diet with real food that you can enjoy eating I think low carb is the best choice.
If you lose weight as a side effect, thats a nice bonous, well it is for me, if not you still have lower BS. What is there not to like?

 

[Roggg]

I think all the leaders of what I am calling the new wave in T2 research are all converging on a common understanding of this disease. This includes Taylor, Fung, Phinney, Lustig, Ivor Cummins, Halberg, and others. The things they agree on are IMO more important than how they differ from one another.

I bought Taylors book, but I have only just started to read it. Roy Taylor's research was the first thing I ever read that suggested diabetes could be beaten. My only problem with his protocol is that it's much more difficult than, for example, Fung's method. I tried it 1.5 years ago, and was having good results but simply couldn't stick to the plan.

 

[ianf0ster]

I am confused and frankly feel I need someone to slap me around the head with a wet kipper to get some sense into me. Without the motivation of keeping blood sugars in check or a healthy baby I seem to not stick to anything for long enough to help.

It seems that you already know that Low Carb works. By that I mean a Low Carb Way Of Eating with no conscious calorie restriction - just only eat when actually hungry. It has a better success rate (for T2D remission and BP reduction) than Calorie Restricted Diets and over the longer term is as good as bariatric surgery.
So why are you considering something with both a lower success rate and a huge requirement for masochism i.e. being tired and hungry for weeks on end?

 

[Honeyend]

Listened to Dr Michael Moseley on the local news and I still think that low calorie diets are a Trojan horse.
Non of these doctors want to be hauled over the coals with the GMC, have a long law suit, perhaps be seen as a Andrew Wakefield, so the safe way to go is whatever they say has to be evidence based, in the sense of a clinical trial, and so far as I know there is only one which is based on low calorie. For a clinical trial and nice standardised drink to feed everyone makes it less open to bias.
All I know I was eating low cal and low fat for years, since the 80's as my family has a history of heart disease. I didn't eat meat, so no animal fats. My blood cholesterol was always raised and dispite living on 2000 calories and having an active life style I put on weight, went low carb because I was so angry with the doctors that assumed I was stuffing my face and sat on my bum. Thats the only thing they see.
When I started low carb I wasn't diabetic, I lost weight. I now am type 3c and my numbers are good so I am not on any medication, if I had eaten what had I ate before I would probabely be on insulin and my pancreas truely messed up. On my first CT scan its said it was totally necrotic.
Is this healthy in the long term? To be honest I do not care. All I know is I nearly died, the food that the medical staff , dietician, tried to get me to eat would have raised my BS, I know because they were checking them, and I was sick. I only started getting better when I insisted on coming home, complete with tube feed and insulin, and weaned myself off with low carb food. Basically meat and lots of it. I was someone who could not walk more than 15ft when I got home, I have now just come in after walking 3000 steps mucking out cows. Low carb has given me control and probabely help regain my life, so its a yes from me.

 

[Robbity]

I'm another "swear by low carb eating person", and I managed to control my glucose levels before I lost any weight (20 kilos, but I'm still well overweight and while i don't have such low levels as some, I've kept them down to low pre-diabetic figures for six years without ever counting a single calorie. The only time I ever tried a low calorie diet I was miserable the whole time and while I did lose weight, it went right back on again afterwards - this was well before I was ever considered to be diabetic though.)

Something to consider too: a low calorie diet isn't really sustainable long term , but a low carb one definitely IS. There have been members of the forum who've had success with Prof Taylor's Newcastle diet, but in the end they've needed to make a decision on how to continue with good glucose control long term, which usually turns out to be LCHF anyway...

 

[Member496333]

There's doubtless some merit to the "lose weight above all else" attitude, but my question would be: what's the easiest way of permanently losing weight without unnecessarily slowing down an already broken metabolism? Exactly.

 

[Lucylemonpip]

In my opinion, calorie diets leave you feeling hungry and more likely, therefore, to fail, because you’d probably cheat, because you were so hungry. At least the LCHF diet leaves you satiated; plus, I think we purposely eat more vegetables. I know I do. I eat a whole load of broccoli and kale, which I would never ever have dreamt of doing prior to starting the LCHF diet. I roast them in the oven, with olive oil, a sprinkling of pepper, garlic granules and balsamic vinegar (and lemon juice when cooked) and amazingly, it’s delicious!

On a low calorie diet, you’d still eat vegetables and salads. You’d eat leaner meat and chicken. So even though you’d not eat the chicken skin, that’s neither hear nor there, as I don’t anyway on a LCHF diet. You’d not eat biscuits, cake or sweet puddings etc, which you’d not eat on a LCHF diet either. Nor would you want to really have much rice, pasta or potatoes, but if you did on a low calorie diet, you’d have to still eat them sparingly anyway, so you may as well not have them. Also, you’d cut back on things like bread and breakfast cereals, because they are high in calories and added sugar. You’d also eat more fish, like salmon etc, just as you do on a LCHF diet.

The only real major difference in a LCHF diet, compared to a calorie controlled one, is that you can eat more cheese, eggs, full fat yoghurt, bacon, fattier meats, butter, olive oil, coconut oil etc, and double cream. If you are worried about the cholesterol angle, then cut back a little on the cheese and cream etc. You don’t have to have tonnes of it. Moderate it a bit. Although, there is evidence that LCHF does not mean high cholesterol etc.

The biggest bonuses of a LCHF diet is that you don’t feel hungry AND low carbs equals lower blood sugar. It’s a win, win situation.