So, my diabetic-in-denial husband says he is ready to start trying to change his diet since his toes are tingling. He takes Metformin and Losartan. He weathered a bout of Pancreatitis in the spring of '13. It resulted in him losing his gall bladder because it was a stone that caused the problem. Even so, I can't tell that he has any trouble processing fats.

He finally let me test his bg tonight and it was scary-high. He tested at 350 and as far as I know, he hasn't eaten anything since about 7:30 or 8:00 this evening and it is now close to midnight. I asked him if he had anything since he got home from his mom's, where we had dinner (I stayed to help our daughter with getting settled after moving back from college. She lives w/her grandmother) and he said he couldn't remember. Pissed me off but if I get testy with him, he might not continue to cooperate. His dinner was roast beef with carrots, potatoes and one slice of bread with butter. I don't think he put anything else on it. I knew it would be high, due to the starches at dinner but I didn't expect it to be that high. He said he messed up yesterday and drank a soda. He doesn't do sf. I told him I didn't think that would affect his meter this far afterward. I don't know what he had for lunch. I had mexican food and cratered, having between five and ten chips with small amounts of salsa and a few bites of rice. The main part was shrimp fajitas. I had no starch at all with supper, sticking only to the roast beef. I did, however, have too many cashews, before and after. My number, a little before midnight, was 114. That was higher than I expected. I don't know if I'm diabetic or not.

I don't think he will go lc all at once. His idea of following the diet is to stop with the sugary junk food/drinks, and eat very little bread. If he orders a sandwich, he will remove the top bun and eat about half the lower one. He doesn't order much rice but if he picks a meal that has a starchy side, he'll eat about half of it. He doesn't concern himself about fats one way or the other. I hope I can get him to move to lower and lower carbs, but he insists on beans because of the fiber and because he considers them to be nutritious. He doesn't find meals with no starch at all to be filling. He snacks on nuts during the work day.

Those days are usually from about 9:00 am to roughly 9:30 at night, often 10:00. He gets to go in late every so often and comes home earlier if the work load or customer traffic warrants it, but it's not a dependable thing. This is a six day work week, btw. You can see he eats very few meals at home. He can bring lunch but he needs to get away for his sanity. Whenever he wanted to get away for a bit but still eat a lunch from home, at his last store, he would take his food to a nearby park. He can't do that at this job because there are none nearby.

It's also almost impossible for me to check his post-prandial number as you can see from this schedule and there's absolutely no way he'll do it himself. I guess I could check it on Sunday, and compare week to week. I really need to make this burst of willingness to pay off. I had assumed he wasn't really going for weight loss but he corrected me when I said something about that the other day. He doesn't have much to lose, though.

I am completely open to suggestions. I'll watch Dr. B's and Dr. Fung's videos and likely read Dr. B's book but I have to make hay on this sooner rather than later.

To continue with the "hay" metaphor, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink". There were many comments in your narrative about all the things "he won't do". Maybe as the neuropathy worsens he might have some "lightening bolt" that convinces him to change, but until then...

I would also suggest again the two Dr. Hallberg videos, Reverse Diabetes and start LCHF. Both short, simple rules. He has to watch them too, not just you.
http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=468458

Have you made any of the non-grain bread substitutes for him? Wheat Belly cookbooks have some good ones. How about adding a flax MIM to his lunches? They are filling!
Slowly reduce the amount of beans in dishes? Would he snack on pork rinds or vegetables/dips instead of nuts? Nuts aren't bad carb wise, but they can be overeaten and pile up. Remove all sugared drinks so he doesn't "mess up"..replace with flavored essence waters. Maybe try other sweeteners..if he doesn't like Splenda taste, try Zevia soda? Many alternatives to diet soda now, there are drops like Mio but made with stevia, Stur.

Sorry that you are having another challenge with his health. Will add if think of anything else.

Well, it is really tough to see a loved one fail to tackle a health challenge they could control, if they wanted. I don't know that there's a whole lot you can do except keep the food LC at home. Can he take food to work rather than eating out?

What's tough is to get them to realize that halfway measures aren't going to really change anything. If he had cancer would he take a half dose of chemo?

Beans aren't great, but they're not horrible either. You might look into Dal and black soy beans. Also lupine beans. The Italians eat them. They're super low carb. I make stuff from flour of the lupine bean. You do have to presoak them.

What does he mean when he says he's ready to start changing his diet? does he know it will mean changing his routines, not just what he eats but when?

Honestly I would tell him if he wants to change the way he eats, to get the benefits - the absolutely easiest way is to eat to his meter and to learn from that what keeps his BS low.
If he won't change that, perhaps he is not ready to make changes that make a difference.

which means to find a way that he can stand, to check his meter. Would a change of meter help him?

The first chapter of Bernstein is pretty motivating.

Anne, To me it doesn't sound like your husband is in denial, more like he's coming to the realization that he's in trouble and is learning how to deal with it. But there's too much to learn in one sitting so what he needs is encouragement to keep doing the things he's doing. Right or wrong he's trying and that's the biggest milestone. For the near term, getting his FBG would probably work since his PP isn't gonna happen.

With Dr. Fung, I started with his earliest post in August 2013: How Do We Gain Weight - Calories Pt 1 and kept reading for a couple of days until I'd completed all of different topics. It was really an eye opener.

I tried the fasting and that made a big difference in a short time and it was something I could do on the weekends.

Good Luck.

I have gotten my DH's BS under control for the most part now.
The first thing I would suggest is to fill up your DH with a totally low-carb breakfast. 3 eggs and 3-4 bacon or 100% meat 0g carb sausage like Chappell Hill or Burton sold at HEB which has the cheapest prices.
If you cook it he will eat it and go from there....
He will be less likely to want to binge (as much)out of hunger for lunch.
My DH goes out for lunch every day because yes it's a break from a high stress job and sometimes it's late 2:00 so he's learned to eat before he leaves home to sustain him for the next 6 hours until he can have lunch. Then he is able to make good low-carb choices because he isn't famished and their isn't the need for anything until lunch.

ps just add one more thing about my DH, in the emergency room when he first found out that his BS was high he was 325 with no meds and the doctor's eyes were popping out of his head trying to make my DH realize how high that was. DH was in denial, thought it must be a mistake.
Now one year later, he runs about 130 with Metformin sporadically taken.

I would be really afraid of my DH having a stroke with BS so high.

I think I could get him to watch. He loves YouTube. It's his go-to for how-to. haha

I forgot to mention he did like the MIM when I spread it out on a plate and make it a bun type of thing for sandwiches. I even put turmeric in it and he was fine with it. I have never liked it as a vehicle for chocolate or sweet flavors but it is a great success around here in the savory department. My mom gets two or three a week as part of her Alzheimer's diet but her taste buds are so far gone, she has no preferences.

The pork rinds are a good idea, possibly. I did him a great dinner the first night with a pork roast but then I found out that ever since his surgery, pork is too rich for his taste. It doesn't give him gastric trouble, it just grosses him out. I'll find out if the rinds are the same way. He still likes bacon so that might be okay. The nuts he has on hand are cashews. I will tell him how they affected my bg last night and he might switch off to almonds or pecans. They are no more expensive than cashews, for sure.

When he brought home his grocery haul the other night, there were several cans of beans and before I complained, I checked out the label. It turns out that if he will keep his portions low enough, they won't be too bad. I believe in picking my battles and was glad I waited until I looked. If I make a show of meeting him halfway, I will be way more successful with him.

He also brought home some of that refrigerator case pasta that is so yummy. This is spinach pasta stuffed with cheese and asparagus so to him it looked healthy. I will quietly return it and if he complains, I have the numbers on my side. 42 g./serving and the serving was a reasonable size, so no compromise by reducing the portion.

He does drink water, so that's an easy switch. The soda avoidance is his idea and he fully understands how bad it is. He totally gets how bad bread is too. He just has to go a long time between meals so he wants 'filler' I think a fourth of a bun is a big improvement for a beginner. He had a fair amount of muscle mass and loves to lift weights. He may be able to tolerate more grams of carbs once he gets back into his weights. We had a ton of stuff from my dad's apartment in our garage since he passed away last month and we are just now clearing it all out so he can get to his weights. Before that, he was so fatigued from all those hours I described, he just hasn't had the stamina. He is wanting to get back out there and that will help a lot. I'm sure I'll join him for the benefit it will impart to my own plan, too. He considers it quality time for us.

The biggest challenge is his hours. If I could get access to his fingers, I could demonstrate to him how it affects his sugar. I need to read Dr. B's whole book, in addition to the videos. I need to understand better how one meal affects the next several readings.

Thanks. I'll look into them.

He does the work of three guys and really does have a hard time stopping to do anything for himself. He probably puts off his bladder for an hour.

As for being ready to change, in his mind, he meant no more sweets. Soda isn't really even his biggest challenge. We are sweet tooth family. There's almost nothing too sweet for us. The cookies he bought are about 7 g./each but his challenge is not to have two of them. I was just thinking, I think I'm going to hide them and dole them out to him.

I also think I'm going to make a list of starchy items and tell him he needs to limit his purchase to ONE item on the list - but NO PASTA.

again, need that like button.

I completely agree. The denial part referred to all the sweets he was eating up until that night. He really has reduced that intake. He blamed all his health issues on stress. I tried to tell him that if he would get his sugar under control, he could handle the stress better. That went right past him with no acknowledgement.

I'll be checking out Dr. Fung's videos soon. I'm working through Bernstein's posts at the moment. If he could build up to the fasting I think it would help him and would fit in so well with his schedule. Breakfast at home and then a supper that he could bring with him at about 7:00. That's what he sometimes does now but it hurts him. I have never seen his sugars below 150 so it's hard to imagine that he gets lows but he does get the symptoms.

I'll check out that link. Thanks.

Yeah, except for the pancreatitis, he has been largely bulletproof. When he went to his eye doctor, he had no damage at all. His blood pressure is nothing to worry about and I don't sweat his cholesterol so that's not scary to him. The doc prescribes statins and we just don't fill them. His heart is super strong.

Honestly I don't know much about diabetes because no one in my family had it.
Growing up, My mother was low carb and checked her BS in her 50s++, she didn't bake so dad didn't eat a lot of sugar or sweets. neither had bs problems.

Now on my husband's side, My DH saw his mother in later years with high BS and later and we later found out that she had only one kidney left because the other had died at some point.

He knows that's where he is headed unless he changes things and he has changed, but only because he has followed what I eat, plus I have done all of the cooking and he ate what was there, cooked when he got home.

So for years he ate no breakfast, high carb lunch and my low carb dinners but was addicted to buying Hershey bars and leaving them front and center in the fridge. First I band them and told him to take them with him.
So then he had no partner in crime...lol

Next was the emergency room trip with the BS wake up call and that's when he began listening and eating a nice low-carb breakfast.

I would also help him pack several sandwich bags with snacks for the day....
an example: 1 bag with sliced corned beef, bag of string cheese, bag of pork rinds, hard boiled egg he loved, etc...
~so he began like that and learned to go eat lunch with meat as the center of the meal and a veggie or a salad. Lunch takes practice but when he is full of a good breakfast and lots of low carb foods in the goody bags, he is a a lot more well armed to deal with it.

I think fasting might be a good option at some point but he really has to learn how eat to live, especially with a very stressful job as mine does too.
Does the work of three people really rings a bell with my DH too!!

Hi CallmeAnn. I'm T2 diabetic for 20+ years. I want to address you, first. If I ate only meat for dinner, with cashews before and after, I would have blood sugar lower than the 114-range, 2 hours after, without meds. I recommend you ask for a fasting and A1c for yourself. If you eat low carb and only do fasting it will not reveal diabetes, even if you have it.

You are going to have to chip away at your husband's eating. He is doing damage to his kidneys with readings like his; there is NO TREATMENT for that, only dialysis. Kidney damage means kidney cells are being killed, and they do not regenerate. A diabetic family member also had good eyes for most of her life - until they started bleeding at the retina. Doctor said diabetic damage, years in the making. The damage is slow and by the time they can see it, it's bad. She had to have monthly shots in her eyes for years. Expensive.

If you are up to it, pack his next day's lunch when you are serving up dinner. Your plate, his plate, his lunch container. Give him a few of snacks in baggies every day to take to work. You probably know the drill: cheese (try a different kind every day) olives, beef jerky, eggs (devil some), an above-ground veggie, with a dip. Make extra dinner so he has a big lunch and is full at dinner. When you cut out rice, pasta, etc, you have to increase low carb foods.

Dive into new recipes - keep him enjoying this WOE. Pinterest is awash in them plus of course we have our recipe section, here, too. Genaw.com is good, too.

He HAS to check his blood sugar more often. Once a week tells nothing, as it reacts every single time you eat. I tested 5-6 times a day in the beginning. The more he tests (before he eats, and 2 hours after), the more he will know what foods, and how much, make his sugar rise. Make sure he pokes the side of his finger, not the pad. The side, by the nail, has the fewest nerves so it hurts less.

I wish you lots of luck with him, and stamina for all the food prep you will have to do. I remember how making lunches for my hungry young adult sons was a workout! haha.