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worried_jim Posts: 11,631 Forumite
5 February 2012 at 10:26AM edited 5 February 2012 at 10:34AM in
My name is Jim. I have type 2 Diabetes. I was diagnosed in January 2010, and as you can imagine this was a complete shock to me, even though the Dr’s said that I may have had the disease for ten years with out realising it- I felt fine at the time.
The only reason it was discovered was because friends at work kept telling me to go see a Dr as I had mentioned that all of a sudden I was waking in the night with the most incredible thirst would drink 3-4 pints of water between midnight and 7am- you can imagine what this did to my sleep pattern as I was going from the tap to the toilet constantly.
Here is the crunch- I am big. I never used to be; in fact I was picked on at school, as I was so skinny- I even ran cross-country for English schoolboys as a teenager, I was a racing snake.
As time went on I got fed up of the bullying and stopped sports when I got a car at 17-I no longer need my legs as I had wheels! I started to put weight on about 2000-2001 and soon ballooned. I did successfully lose it all in 2004/5, but over time it has all crept back on.
I have done weight watchers, and it did work at first but I couldn’t go to the meetings- they were just too funny. I would sit there howling with laughter, as these huge bloaters would sit at the back moaning they couldn’t lose weight as they sat there eating crisps-in the meeting! It was just like little Britain’s fat fighters.
I have just spent the last 18 months doing Cambridge and this helped me loose nearly 20lbs- although I would yo-yo. I found this hard as being diabetic I would often need to eat. If you aren’t diabetic I would find it hard to describe the feeling of low blood sugar and the urge you have to eat, if I had no money and I was passing a shop and feeling ill, I wouldn’t hesitate to go in and just eat something right off the shelf.-Fortunately this hasn’t happened.
While surfing this site yesterday I found this thread-
Diabetes prevention diet plan?
and post number 14 suggested I look at an author called Gary Taube http://garytaubes.com/
He has published a book called “Why we get fat”. I read the reviews and purchased a copy.
In post number 9 it was suggested that I look at –
http://blogg.passagen.se/dahlqvistannika/?anchor=my_lowcarb_dietary_programe_in
Which is a recommendation by Dr Annika Dahlqvist,General Practitioner, Njurunda, Sweden for a low carbohydrate diet for those with type 2 diabetes.
Well I have decided that enough is enough and as of now I am going to follow this plan. I am sick of eating crap, even though I know that it is doing me harm- for some reason I can’t stop and there is no one to tell me to stop- just me.
As of this moment I weigh –
95 kg = 209.439 lb
OR 209 lb and 7.02 oz
My Body Mass Index is according to-
http://www.nhs.uk/Tools/Pages/Healthyweightcalculator.aspx
31.85, so I am obese and my weight suggests I have increased the risk of becoming ill with problems such as high blood pressure, heart disease and cancer.
You would think that this alone would be a wake up call.
Apparently there maybe up to 1 million people in the UK who have diabetes with out realising it. Diabetes now accounts for 10% of the NHS budget, which For 2011/12 it is around £106 billion, so diabetes is costing the taxpayers £10.6 billion. Not only am I slowly killing myself I am doing it at the expense of you the taxpayer.
Well I have made my shopping list and I am about to clear out the cupboards and throw away all the food I shouldn’t be eating. I will record honestly my progress here and I hope that “LolitaLove” who originally started the post "Diabetes prevention diet plan?" for her soon to be diabetic relative see’s this thread and maybe tells her relative about it.
GlasweJen Posts: 7,451 Forumite
5 February 2012 at 11:02AM
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Good luck Jim!
daska Posts: 6,212 Forumite
5 February 2012 at 11:06AM
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My mum did Cambridge for years, it's great if you have the will-power but it's soooooo.......... boring! And she didn't have any will-power so she yo-yo'd and never actually lost a huge amount. My dad being vegetarian and her not naturally leaning that way didn't help, he wanted rice or potatoes with every meal and it's cruel to ask someone on Cambridge to cook these and not eat them! In the end we sat her down and said "this is silly, it's costing you a lot of money and it's not working", she argued for a long time that it was but we pointed out that if it were genuinely working then after 10 years she should be skinny LOL. Cambridge DOES work, but you need a will of iron and the cravings for something 'real' to eat are a nightmare.
Good luck with the low-carb. Carry on reading around and be prepared to spend some time working out exactly what works for you. And clearing out the house sounds like a good plan, if it's not there you can't eat it.
p.s. The bit I really miss is the 'crunch'. Macadamia nuts are good for snacking, they're lovely and crunchy but not too high in carbs. Pork scratchings are a good substitute for croutons (shame I don't like them LOL).
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants - Michael Pollan
48 down, 22 to go
Low carb, low oxalate Primal + dairy
From size 24 to 16 and now stuck...margaretclare Posts: 10,789 Forumite
5 February 2012 at 11:19AM
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Hello Jim
The way you write about your early life is exactly as DH describes his. He was a very sporty, active young guy - running, swimming, rowing, cycling, you name it. He describes rowing on the Thames - they put him in bow position because he was so light ('10 1/2 stone in all my kit and wringing wet').
I don't think he has been so much addicted to bad food because it wasn't around when we were growing up, certainly not to the extent that it is now. But in middle life he had jobs which involved a lot of driving, hours spent behind the wheel to get to appointments, eating and drinking at odd times and the wrong things. He developed Type 2 in 1981 and has been insulin-dependent since 1996 - before I knew him. For him, however, it was pretty well foregone, because it's in his genes. It comes down both sides of his family. Even now, his brother and many of his cousins are diabetic.
Recently I decided I did not want to become diabetic. Seeing what he does day in day out, it's almost a full-time job to keep control. Using insulin makes weight loss/weight control harder. However I discovered Dukan back in the summer and have lost a stone. I was warned at a Diabetes Open Day that because of my weight vs height - I'm not very tall - I was at risk of developing this in the next few years. I'm now 2 stone less than I was at the end of 2007 - just seen a pic of me taken then, shocking. DH and I are now low-carbing. He's just got down to 15 1/2 stone.
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Æ[/FONT]r ic wisdom funde, [FONT=Times New Roman, serif]æ[/FONT]r wear[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]ð[/FONT] ic eald.
Before I found wisdom, I became old.worried_jim Posts: 11,631 Forumite
5 February 2012 at 12:27PM
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Thanks for your kind words of support and experiences. Just done the Sunday morning big shop and had scrabbled eggs (organic) for breakfast. I felt great walking around Tescos earlier- like a weight had been lifted off my mind. As I was buying cauliflower I thought to myself "why didn't you do this sooner?".
Having pork and asparagus for dinner today. I have planned all my meals this week so I am in a good place to begin with. The cupboards have been cleared.judoka Posts: 6 Forumite
5 February 2012 at 7:05PM
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Good Luck Jim. will follow your progress, i also need to loose some, just need to get my head in the right place.
worried_jim Posts: 11,631 Forumite
5 February 2012 at 8:11PM
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judoka wrote: »
Good Luck Jim. will follow your progress, i also need to loose some, just need to get my head in the right place.
I've been on the "verge" of doing something since December, it was reading LolitaLove's post yesterday during a quite moment at work and looking at Dr Annika Dahlqvist and Gary Taube's websites that I just thought "right, enough is enough". Feel really good today mentally and physically and am looking for ward to getting to this point next week and looking back and say "that's weeks one done with, now lets get on with week two".
I have just cooked some food up for the weeks breakfast as I am out by 7:30am so I have limited time in the morning and if it is in the fridge ready to go in the microwave that half the battle.
Fortunately I am chained to my desk and even getting time to go to the loo is a challenge and I am so busy in the mornings that they fly by. I have lunch at 1pm which can drag as I have an hour sitting near the vending machines and those cheese and onion Mcoys crisps are so very tempting. I have lunch already prepared for tomorrow- I have an Italian salad with added chicken- yummy.
Back from lunch at 2pm and then it's only 2 hours till home time at 4pm- so it will be easy for me to get through the day with out cheating/temptation. The hard part is being home at 4.20pm and not snacking- this is my downfall time, especially if I am feeling low. I am (or have been) a comfort eater on a scale that I would never admit to another person- truly eating like a pig.If I can just get through this week I will be pleased. I have thought about setting myself some goals and I want to be realistic and have something to work towards, so it's going to be BMI and not been obese any more.
daska Posts: 6,212 Forumite
5 February 2012 at 8:17PM
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OINK! Bet you couldn't pack away more than me when I get going on the crisps, rice pudding and biscuits. I lost a stone over 3 months just by not buying crisps, how scary is that!
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants - Michael Pollan
48 down, 22 to go
Low carb, low oxalate Primal + dairy
From size 24 to 16 and now stuck...sweetilemon Posts: 2,243 Forumite
5 February 2012 at 11:17PM
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Well done Jim you seem to be starting well. There is a lot of support on here to keep motivation! When i come in from work i still snack just on different things. Instead of crisps i have low cal hom*ous and bread sticks or olives or something.
ktb Posts: 487 Forumite
6 February 2012 at 2:53PM edited 6 February 2012 at 3:51PM
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Jim this thread is SUCH an inspiration
I am only 32 and I haven't got any medical conditions, but researching Type II diabetes on behalf of my OH's Dad and high cholesterol for my own Dad, I realised the potential consequences of continuing to eat the typical western diet (eg carbs for breakfast, carbs for lunch, carbs for dinner & carby/sugary snacks as standard).... and if low fat/high carb diets were good for us then then over their heyday of the last 30 years, we would not have seen such MASSIVE increases in obesity, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, strokes etc...
Both my Dad and I have been eating LCHF (low carb/high fat) since November and we feel fab
we have both lost a little bit of weight, in a healthy way too, which is nice. We don't feel deprived, like you do on a standard low fat diet. We regularly eat out in restaurants as there is ALWAYS something yummy on the menu that you can eat. Ultimately though, I know that I am eating in a way that really supports the digestive and metabolic system and the more medical literature I read on the subject the more I know we are doing the right thing. We 100% must have fat in our diets in order to survive yet we could live (& thrive) without any carbs indefinitely. That says it all to me.Good luck on your journey - I honestly think you will see amazing results from the lifestyle changes you are making. I hope that your post can triggers lightbulb moments for others, in the same way that LolitaLove's thread did for you!
I also just wanted to add to other people reading this, that you really don't have to have gotten as far as illness to benefit from this way of eating. It can very much be preventative! As I posted on the other thread, this site has been really useful for me http://www.dietdoctor.com/lchf
fiesta04 Posts: 516 Forumite
6 February 2012 at 4:12PM
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Jim, hurry up home and give us all an update.
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