One more pound lost

[Lottadata]

I have been eating 2 very low carb meals a day and one meal with more carbs and no more than 3 units of insulin for the past two weeks and I am delighted to report I have lost another pound.

The insulin stopped the hunger which I experienced on a pure Bernstein very low carb diet with no insulin. No hunger, no snacking. I've been really busy with my book project (busy=utterly obsessed) so I haven't been eating much at all.

Three more pounds and I'll be done, but that will probably take another two months. The Universe really wants us little old ladies to get bigger. :lol:

[Nancy LC]

Congrats! Yeah, I know what you mean about the universal plan for older women.

[RobLL]

good going, and am really looking forward to that book

[eddiemcm]

Very interesting about insulin supressing hunger.
I thought it was supposed to work the other
way.If it works for you ...
Cheers
Eddie

[Korban]

Congratulations!!!

[Rose1942]

Congrats! I would say you have pretty much reached your goal, ballpark-wise. Well done!

[Lottadata]

Rose,

I reached my weight goal back in 2003 and stayed there until last year when I stopped metformin because it wasn't doing anything for my blood sugar. Sure enough, as soon as I stopped it, I started to gain weight eating the same diet I'd always eaten. I gained 10 lbs in one year! So now I'm happy to be on the way back down, but I have to keep taking the Met, even though it is really tough on my stomach.

I really wonder what Met is doing. Nothing I've read about it explains it's ability to prevent weight loss. The one thing I have noticed is that when I am taking metformin I don't drop water when I go beneath the ketogenic boundary, and I don't gain it back when I go over it. Without Metformin, I will go up and down 3 lbs any time I go over around 75 grams.

That suggests to me that it is paralyzing my liver in some way. I also note my triglycerides are much lower on metformin even if I am not eating low carb than they are when I eat very stringent low carb without metformin.

So that might help too. Maybe the liver isn't able to turn carb into fat when I'm taking metformin.

The effect on bgs is so minor, it's ridiculous. I was actually getting the best bgs I'd ever seen the last couple months off metformin and feeling wonderful. But the wieght was packing on.

And it is ridiculous how little food I have to eat to lose weight. All the metabolic calculators tell me that at my height, weight, and age, I will maintain on 1650 calories, and that is the ugly truth. So I have to drop down well under that level to lose, but not too low, or I slow my metabolism. 2 lbs a month is the max I can lose, and it is an effort.

The really good news, though, is that I didn't diet during February and maintained the weight loss from the previous month.
=====
Re insulin and hunger: If you are insulin resistant but still producing a lot of insulin, the less insulin you produce, the better off you will be as far as hunger goes.

But I'm insulin sensitive and insulin deficient, so if I don't inject, my blood sugars go up and down after I eat and that makes me hungry. Moving blood sugars seem to be the hunger producer rather than actual insulin level.

====

RobL,

Thanks for the kind words about the book. I'm hoping it will be available by April.

And checking out your sig, what an incredible body fat percentage improvement!

[Rose1942]

Boy, you are between a rock and a hard place, aren't ya..... I feel for you! It must be really frustrating to have to deal with fine tuning such a regimen.

I haven't been doing this for long (well, who knows how long I was diabetic before I found out) and so far I am convinced that I have to low carb it pretty strictly or #1 my BG will go up and #2 I will either stall or gain. If I am careful, I can maintain a good BG and I am gradually losing weight now. Was losing it fast the first month but it has dropped to about 1/2 pound a week now. That's ok, I am fine with that.

So what you are saying is that if I have insulin resistance, but am still producing a lot of insulin (which I think I am) - I should keep up with the low carb to prevent making more than I should - thus hunger will not raise it's evil head? That does seem to be what is happening. I am not usually hungry between meals. And I notice that I want smaller portions now, and they satisfy me. If I keep it this way I don't see many big spikes.

However, if I should be BAD and either eat a little extra carb, or if I should overeat even a little bit, I see spikes and I get hungry sooner. Maybe I am just lucky that this is the way it is working out for me - I'm not changing anything!

By the way, I am not sure The Universe wants us little old ladies to get bigger, but I do think that Mother Nature does want us to have a little extra protection for our bones. Not to the extent of being really overweight, but not too thin either - as we age we are less apt to fracture stuff if we fall, if we have some 'cushioning' (tried to put that delicately) ;)

[Korban]

We have the so called "thrifty genes". We should rock in the next global famine.

/smile

[Rose1942]

The problem with my personal cushioning is that I will have to fall directly on my belly to prevent broken bones, and I just noticed I don't have very many bones there.................. what is Mother Nature thinking anyway, is she daft?

[Lottadata]

However, if I should be BAD and either eat a little extra carb, or if I should overeat even a little bit, I see spikes and I get hungry sooner. Maybe I am just lucky that this is the way it is working out for me - I'm not changing anything!


Rose,

You aren't "bad" when you eat carbs nor are you "good" when you don't. These are words with moral connotations and food choices aren't about morality. As I see it, you're good when you help out another person. You're bad when you do something that hurts them.

What I've learned over the years is that our physiology changes and the diet works well at one point may need to be tweaked at another. So it isn't about good or bad, but about "works" or "doesn't work." Continually observing the effect of what you eat on your body and altering what doesn't work will keep you in good shape. At some point, changing what you eat might not be enough to do the job and you may need to try various meds.

But the whole thing works a lot better if you stay out of power struggles with yourself which is likely to happen in you invest any food with a negative charge. The minute you make eating carbs something you aren't allowed to do, trust me, you've birthed a power struggle. It may take years to blow up to where it derails you, but it will. I learned that the very hard way!

For now what you are doing sounds like it is working extremely well, so go with it! If it stops working, then you can investigate changes.

From your stats you don't weigh all that much, and my sense is that people who are not obese usually have some insulin deficiency going on. How much insulin resistance is involved is extremely hard to know. Doctors assume all Type 2s are insulin resistant because that has been what they were taught. I know small Type 2s who are very insulin resistant--as judged from insulin doses--and small "Type 2s" who are not insulin resistant at all. You won't know yourself until you inject a few units of insulin and see what it does.

Measuring fasting insulin or C-peptide levels doesn't necessarily answer the question either, thought my doctors thought it did.

[RobLL]

And akin to the good/bad comments, I don't like the term cheat or cheat meals. It is appropriate in every field of engineering to know what the tolerances are. Another work for tolerances is slack. I build a certain amount of slack into my diet. If my BGs are going well greater slack. Not so well, less slack. There is no point in making your diet stricter than what it takes to get your BGs where you want them.

[Rose1942]

Lotta and Rob - very well put, both of you, about the 'good and bad' thing. Actually I set those standards for myself, no one is telling me what to do, least of all my current doctor, who is clueless about low carbing in my opinion. I know in my heart of hearts when I am eating something that is probably not right for me, but I do it rarely so I have no real guilt. I understand that this is going to be a lifetime diet choice and that if I don't stick to it pretty strictly, I will only be hurting myself. But if I don't allow myself a small treat once in awhile, it will be a long hard road! Tonight I was slicing a wedge of frozen banana cream pie for my husband, and (unfortunately, accidently on purpose) I managed to botch it and a little sliver fell off................. hmmmmm! Like that!

I also realize that if at some point in time I do not reach a truly normal BG that stabalizes, I will have to consider other options. I will then see an endo, one that I am sure is up to date and on the same page as the doctors we visit online here (Bernstein, Eades and others).

[Lottadata]

Rose,

Your chances of finding a doctor who is on the same page as Bernstein or the Eades is very, very low.

Fortunately, you don't need to find one. Bernstein's book lays out the principles you need to follow, and if you subscribe to Diabetes in Control and scan it every week, you'll have a pretty good idea what new drugs might have come along since Bernstein wrote.

Once you know what the choices are, all you need is a doctor who is willing to listen to you, and prescribe drugs that sound like they might be appropriate or else explain to you why such a drug would not be a good choice for you.

The biggest problem you will run into following a Bernstein type plan is doctors who take one look at your A1c and either a) say you don't have diabetes or b) say you don't need any meds because your A1c is far under 7%.

I've run into both. The guy who was supposed to be the best endo in my area took one look at my A1c and said, "Come back when it's over 8%." I could not get it across to him that my "great" numbers were great only because I was eating almost no carbs.

But most doctors are overwhelmed with people with diabetes with A1c of 10% and higher, and it's hard to get them excited about turning what they call "good" control (which is those mediocre 7% a1cs) into normal blood sugars.