Hi everyone,

Well, I guess I should start off by saying that I'm not trying to lose weight, but rather attempting to gain lean body weight while improving blood glucose control.

I'm a 60 year old, thin type II diabetic recovering from colon cancer. I'm 6'0" tall and last year my weight dropped down to 144 pounds during treatment. During recovery I had no trouble regaining body weight, but unfortunately I found I had lost a lot of muscle weight and replaced it with fat. So at 157 pounds I was out of shape, skinny and flabby.

So I joined a gym run by a local hospital and starting researching bodybuilding, nutrition and exercise. For 5 months I've been weight training, I've tripled my caloric intake and recently I started a low carb diet. I haven't had much success in increasing my total body weight, only a two pound increase, but my Body Fat % has decreased from 17.2% to 12.3%, and my abdominals are just beginning to show.

Recently I've started to more carefully monitor my blood glucose levels and I find 1) while my blood glucose isn't terrible, my control isn't all that great either, and 2) despite the strenuous exercise, it's an up hill battle to maintain glucose control while I'm taking in 2,700 calories daily.

Originally my goal was to increase my total body weight to 170 pounds while decreasing my Body Fat percentage. However, I find that to do that would probably require eating more that 3,000 calories per day and that would definately hurt my primary goal of improving my blood glucose control. So I've settled for a body weight goal of 165 pounds and a Hemoglobin A1c reading of 5.0%, my last reading was 5.7%.

One other measure of progress is my waist to hip ratio. I've read that for men a ratio of 1.0 and greater indicates a serious risk of heart disease, and it shoud be between .90 and .95. Currently my waist and hips are both 34 inches. I'm pretty sure that getting my waistline down to 30.6 inches is impossible , but maybe with a lot of effort I could get down to 32 inches. That would undoubtedly require single digit Body Fat percentages to achieve.

Thanks. Be healthy!

Larry

I wish you a lot of luck repairing your body. My husband is in a similar position (not diabetic though but a severe sugar reaction) and he has had great success on Atkins.

Good Luck!

Janine

Wishing you all the best. Welcome aboard.

Welcome, Larry! Nice to have you with us!

Hi folks,

Thanks very much for the warm welcome.

Larry

Larry..

Wishing you the best... Keep up the great work.

T-man

Hi,

Thanks.

Larry