Type 2. Improved BG Control but Weight Gain.

Hello Board

Since diagnosis 2 years ago, I've had really bad control of my blood glucose but have recently been referred to my first community diabetic nurse specialist - what a difference she is to GP practice nurses! She put me onto 5ml x twice a day of Byetta (Exentide), referred me to the podiatrist and wrote to my GP about bariatric surgery. My BMI is around 50 (my highest ever). I've got on extremely well with the Byetta and my sugars have overall come down by at least 6-8 mmol/l for each reading. I test on waking, before my lunch, before dinner, two hours after dinner. I also take 2 x 500mg Metformin twice a day and 2 x 80mg Gliclazide twice a day. The Byetta was reducing my appetite and I've taken the opportunity to eat very healthily with smaller portions of low GI food and sticking to about 1400 cals a day. I thought - "YES! I can do it this time, I'm going to have lost weight and help my diabetes further".

Oh dear. Had my 3 week Byetta follow up on Friday and jumped on the DNS's scales and have somehow managed to GAIN 4kg. I burst into tears in front of her, feeling like such an idiot as I'd been so proud with my efforts and she was so chuffed with my BG control and I was ready to have lost 3 or 4kg and got such a shock. She's told me to drop one of the evening meal Gliclazides (she feels they cause weight gain and aims to get me off them totally), is starting me on the 10ml Byetta from today (if the dispensary have it ready) and has told me that it's totally normal to gain weight when BG control is so much better and that the 6-8 mmol/l of sugar I normally have slooshing round my blood stream has to have gone somewhere and has ended up as weight gain. She's really happy as my sugars are better but I'm worrying that I might die of a heart attack or stroke anyway if I can't drop some of this **** weight - like half of it.

In anger and disappointment I made some poor food choices for a few meals (old habits die hard) but have climbed back onto my healthy eating future now and am looking at reducing carbs further to less than 30g in each meal. Will this weight gain continue for as long as I have good BG control or is it just a spike caused by going from readings of 10-18 mmol/l in the evenings down to a new normal of 7-12? I understand that losing weight unexpectedly is a side effect of uncontrolled diabetes so does controlled Type 2 diabetes cause ongoing weight gain?

Has anyone else experienced this or does anyone have any advice?

Gosh I wish the DNS had warned me a bit more about this when I told her I was planning on eating better to control my sugars and lose weight. Such a shock and hard to experience hunger pangs when I don't even enjoy watching the scale measurement reduce.

Thanks in advance.