Givens: 1) Everyone is different, so what works for one might not for another 2) Refined sugar and white flower is bad, fruit juice is basically sugar, etc. I think very few people would dispute that these things need to go. 3) some component of diabetes is genetics and your fate may be your fate
Have you tried intermittent fasting? I do a 18-6 and its been working for me.
In the past I have done that. I tend to eat between 11:45am-7PM now. The last week however, I've switched to 7AM to 4 PM eating window to keep overnight glucose as low as possible. Even with this, my dawn effect is still there, I hit 130 at 6:30 am, ate 2 eggs and grilled tomato around 7:30, spiked to 155 around 9 AM, now back down to 125 and dropping.
However, others here are saying "eat smaller portions", ie big meals are bad. With a 6 hour eating window and 2400 calories to maintain my relatively healthy weight at my activity level, how could you not eat big meals? I see the logic in both approaches...eat less more often, lower spikes. Eat more less often, give your pancreas and liver a break.
"Is all this saturated fat really the culprit behind my type 2... "
No. The fact is that as of now no one really understands how T2 happens, hence no cure. My brother is 2.5 yrs older than me. We grew up eating basically the same food (at home and eating out) and had the same life style because of the small age gap. Yet he became T2 at quite young age.
It certainly seems that we have very little concrete information for such a common disease.
Thing I left out is that I never had high fasting BS until covid, which I had during omicron a few months after my second Pfizer vaccination. Not saying that caused it, but just putting it out there as a factor.
These are my thoughts to all newly diagnosed
Eat smaller portions of what you eat now. Reduce carbs and high glycemic foods.
I say this because diet changes are not permanent. It takes a long time to change diet. Weight loss diets are based on severe calorie restrictions so do not start .
See medical specialists every year
Nutrition and diet are lifelong issues.
Thanks for the response. I've been mostly a 2 meal per day person for many years. Are you suggesting I start eating 3 meals a day instead, the same calories but smaller portions? Again, I don't have much weight to lose. Based on height weight waist and neck measurments, I'm 17% body fat.
This goes against the whole intermittent fasting/short eating window that many propose.
Find out.
Maintain your diet. Monitor sugars. Get a cgm if possible. Do mot worry about weight loss and remission.
BIG THING See Drs for eyes, feet, kidneys, endocrinologist, primary, get a1c test
I am 20 years diabetic. I learn every day
There are no shortcuts
You can certainly try a plant based diet to see if that helps. Some people find it helpful. Others don’t.
Having a cgm fir a few months might be useful in dialing in on you diet and seeing what eating pattern(s) give you higher glucose readings.
Only time will tell if changing things up will be beneficial…and unfortunately, time is also the enemy as humans tend to get even more insulin resistant as we age.
The only thing you can really do is to lean into healthy habits, keep monitoring your glucose levels/a1c, and hope for the best.
I am a fat/unleathy type 2 that is off meds doing this with just diet and exercise. It's entirely possible for some.
I basically listened to my doctor, and got a dietician, whoes word is law for me, and I just, do what she says. I work out daily, usually in three short installments after meals, I get whole grains but not too many, plenty of fiber, protine, etc, a balanced diet, counting my portions for the day. I think most of it is being stubborn with yourself, realizing that candy bar is the same value to you as three or four whole apples, making post-meal workouts so normal that you feel weird about skipping one, and measuring your blood sugar to make sure you know what anything you eat will do to your body.
I can't workout after every meal, although would if I could. Desk job 8 hours a day for at least 4 more years when I can hopefully retire or work part time somewhere on my feet. Cgm in use.
A workout can be 20 squats or 30 calf raises, a 8-10 minute walk, anything really. When I say short I mean short, jog up the stairs and get winded, workouts done. Do the long good ones when you can, if you can't, keegles. Anything that gets your body a few moments of activity, pepper them in, I do leaning push-ups agaisnt my counter while making coffee, just move around when you have an opportunity.
Oh got ya. I walk the stairs after lunch in my building. I don't consider that a workout per se more "activity" but everything helps.
Every little bit helps, if you have the time go down then back up again a second time, may look weird but you'll be healthier for it.
EDIT: forgot to say why you should do this, muscular skeletal exercise helps your body naturally absorb bloodsugar without relying on insuilin, so a tiny workout can be helpful keeping down post meal spikes.
Keto really worked but I was encouraged to move to a Mediterranean diet as most people cannot stick with keto long term.
Mediterranean works for me and I've been sticking with it consistently
You can get good results with a low carb diet in the short term, which is why people swear by keto and carnivore (6mo-2years). But saturated fat does over time directly result in increased insulin resistance. For long term results, the mastering diabetes guys really have everyone else beat. But keep in mind, the guys really don’t expect perfection, they see whole food plant based as the gold standard. They know not everyone will completely give up meat, dairy and eggs. I have patients that eat meat, fish and cheese sparingly, when it makes them happy, and they still get results.
They also don’t give you a free pass on carbs. You are definitely supposed to be limiting flour, other refined gains, juice, sugar. You are to limit refined oils as well. They don’t expect perfection in these asp
thanks for the thoughtful and long reply. Not understanding downvotes.
If anything in terms of the risks of a high fat diet and insulin resistance/diabetes, I'm a case study. However, you also bring up weight loss. By no standard measure that I see would most doctors tell me I need to lose weight at 17% body fat. Getting down to 12% body fat isn't exactly easy to maintain, harder than maintaining a low carb diet, that's for sure.
I don’t mind the downvotes. People can have their diet camps. Evidence suggests the quality of the fat and carbs you put into your body is much more important than cutting out entire macronutrients, though. There have also been a lot of misinformation campaigns about diet. It’s also pretty difficult to disagree with personal results—many different diets will yield results at least for a time.
Treatment is tricky for people who are genetically predisposed to diabetes. There are plenty of people with BMIs below 20 with horrible diabetes. In these cases, it’s not about weight loss per-se, but getting rid of the fat in organ tissue. This is often not actually a noticeable amount of weight.
This care is usually rather individualized. You alluded to difficulty keeping your weight any lower wi
So what's your position on red wine, a glass a day the cons outweigh the pros?
My position is no one ever drinks just one 😂 The polyphenols in red wine can be helpful for your health as long as you don’t drink so much the alcohol outweighs the benefits of the polyphenols. Drinking with meals can decrease the amount of alcohol absorbed, which is good. But do note you can get polyphenols from non-alcoholic sources, such as coffee, tea, 100% cocoa, beans, spices, fruit, etc. I don’t recommend alcohol but if people are going to drink, opting for one glass of red wine, with meals, not close to bed time is a good harm reduction strategy.
The caveat here is that some people shouldn’t drink at all. If you have heart or liver disease alcohol is ill advised. Drinking any amount if you have substance use issues is ill advised. People with an alcohol flushing reaction have more toxins in their bodies for longer after alcohol consumption. The list goes on. It is best to consult with your physician if alcohol is safe for you.
Drinking isn’t necessarily contraindicated in diabetes, but it can make blood sugar control more complicated. Drinking excessively with diabetes can be extremely problematic though, and I would call it ill advised.
Thanks again.
Today my lunch was chipotle bowl. I usually skip the rice, have chicken, black beans, fajita veggies, pico and verde salsa, sour cream, cheese, lettuce, and a ton of green tabasco. I'm too cheap to pay for guac.
Today, had double chicken, brown rice, beans, fajita, 3 salsas, no sour cream, no cheese, ton of green tabasco. glucose did spike to around 155 around 1.5 hours later, but within an hour after that settled down to around 105 and has stayed there since. Considering how high a carb meal that was, that's a good result I think. High Fiber, high protein, lower fat (than I'm used to) meal.
That sounds like progress to me, more whole plants, less saturated fat. Hope my info dumping helped lol
Down votes for what reason?
In general terms, in the beginning anyway, T2 is most likely insulin resistance where you have plenty of insulin but it doesn't work as well due to high glucose levels over time. While you may be thin, you may have internal fat built up, visceral fat, and this seems to be what's reducing your insulin sensitivity
There's a growing number of people putting T2 into remission or at least reducing the required medications significantly by reducing the carbohydrate loading they consume every day. So meats, fish, low carb vegetables like broccoli and peppers would be the major part of their diets and rice, potato, fries and high carb vegetables would be avoided or minimised daily.
After a fairly short period, insulin sensitivity returns to a better degree and can be maintained unless a higher
I absolutely agree you can reduce blood sugar and therefore A1c ..and presumably damage they cause...by cutting carbs drastically. I'd prefer it as I'll take greasy food (after a salad) over salad and lentils or chick peas all day. But in my case...there's that LDL problem that doesn't seem to resolve and that Dr's don't like.
I think it's a question of balancing objectives.
The LDL problem is a long term problem but diabetic complications are probably a shorter term issue?
At 6.5 measured a1c vs 230 cholesterol, the doctor seemed more concerned about the cholesterol and prescribed a statin. I said I'd take it if my cac score indicated an issue. It wasn't perfect ( which is zero), but 4 is considered low risk, so I'm more focused on the diabetes.