Sounds like a good doc - she's a keeper!

Edit: And, of course, awesome job on bringing those glucose readings down!!

For a little while a decade ago there were "carb-wise" options all over the place. This was during the peak of LC and Atkins as fads. I put "carb-wise" in quotes because some of the options resorted to trickery to get the numbers down, reporting net carbs instead of true total carb breakdowns and sneaking in pseudo-fiber, resistant starch, sugar alcohols, what have you.

Most places kept offering or returned to offering low-calorie "light" menus after the LC craze faded. The majority of diabetics are still counseled to stick to lower-calorie, lower-fat diets and cover their carb intake with insulin. Until mainstream clinical practice catches up with the science, most type 2 diabetics will continue to believe that a Skinny Cow ice cream sandwich is a healthier dessert than a dish of raspberries and cream.

I don't think there's much of a capitalist conspiracy behind it coming from the doctors, nurses, and dietitians on the front lines. It's just that most of them don't keep up with changing science, and it's really damn hard to reject the dogma absorbed from teachers and broader society. In every field, conventional wisdom doesn't age and die until its practitioners do.

Haven't read the whole thread yet, but back in '04 when I was losing my 60 lbs, Pizzeria Uno, Mimi's, and Outback Steakhouse had menu items marked "Low Carb" - not any more.

No restaurants mark items as diabetic-friendly because the &%$# medical community insists we eat carbs, and take medicine. I prefer eating low carb, and taking no meds myself.

Probably because they would then have to declare the amount of sugar solution they inject into their meats.
I have read that Applebees' steaks are injected with this to keep them moist and tasty.

I'm sure that in the past, change kept pace with people's lifespans.

We now have a truly dizzying pace of change, and people living quite a long time. Then worlds collide.

I agree that you can find this at almost any restaurant. But lately I'm finding it much harder to eat out. I'm finding I really need to keep my protein low to keep blood sugar under control. If I eat restaurant-sized steak I get a huge glucose spike. What works best for me is a tiny serving of meat, maybe some small carb serving, and a lot of fat - which I usually get in the form of butter, coconut oil or HWC.

I mean an example of a meal I had the day was:
- 2 oz. canned tuna mixed with chopped celery and homemade mayo (made with a blend of coconut oil and macadamia nut oil) served on a bed of lettuce.
- homemade "jello" made by dissolving some unsweetened gelatin powder and mixing with DaVinci SF Raspberry syrup and I largish fresh strawbery, chopped up. Served with a generous dollop of freshly whipped cream.

Anyway, it *is* hard to eat like that in a restaurant. They always serve far too much protein for me, and I just eat a small amount of the protein and take the rest home with me there is never enough good fat to satiate me, and I end up leaving the restaurant ravenous.

But I *do* agree that my way of eating is far from mainstream, so I would hardly expect any restaurant to try to cater for me. The market would be pretty small.

I take weekly art lessons on Wednesday nights from 6-9 PM. We always take a break about halfway through for tea and snack (usually stuff I can't eat, but that's fine with me) and we sit around and chat for about 15-20 minutes. Oddly enough the subject of diabetes came up and it turned out that *half* the women at the table (one of them a doctor) are type 2 diabetics! So then the subject turned to diet, and the diabetic doctor began saying that she had never known much about diabetes until she was diagnosed herself, and how much more she had learned since then as she began to study it, and she learned that she needed to keep her carbs low.

And I thought to myself "AHA!" until she went on to say, "You, you really need to limit youself to about 45-60g of carbs ***per meal***" Per meal? Eeek? One of the other women agreed and said her diabetes educator had told her to eat 45g of carbs per meal, and she assumed she was given the low end of the range because she is a small woman. A third woman said she had never been given any dietary advice at all! She went on to say that she only knew she had to eat every few hours to keep from feeling lightheaded, so she always carried lots of fruit around with her, and that since she had been out and about that day she had taken an orange and two bananas with her and that was what she ate during the day!

The diabetic MD did actually roll her eyes and say that bananas were really way too high in carbs and shouldn't be eaten, and she did love bananas herself and used to eat 1-2 every day, and her husband still did! But now when he ate his large morning banana she cut off a little2-inch chunk of it for herself. But the banana-eating woman said "well bananas always make me feel good and have lots of potassium". She went on to document her daily breakfast - oatmeal with cinnamon and a sliced banana on top with skim milk, and the others all congratulated her on her how wonderfully healthy her breakfast was! One of the other women said that she had oatmeal and skimmed milk for breakfast every day too - but confessed a bit sheepishly that she loved to add some walnuts to hers - but was quick to say she knew nuts had far too much fat to really eat them - but she only used a tiny bit! They were all firmly in the 0-fat, low-fat mindset, and were making suggestion about where you could find 0-fat vogurt, 0-fat cheese, etc.

So feeling a bit sick of that whole mindset I just said, "Well frankly I make it a point to never eat anything labeled low fat or no fat". As expected they looked at my like a mutant with two heads, and one did ask how I could say such a thing. I just said, "Because I don't think the fats I eat are bad for you, and I think when products have their natural fats removed they get lots of unnatural and bad stuff added to them to make up for it."

So what do you EAT?, they asked me. And I said right out that I ate full-fat versions of everything, that I kept my carbs very low - and also added that I had lost 110 pounds eating full-fat everything, which seemed a kicker as all of them wanted to lose weight to one degree or another.

"That sounds like the Atkins diet" one of them said. "Well, yes," I agreed. "I don't precisely follow the Atkins diet, but yes it's very similar and quite compatible with it."

One of them said, "Well it did work well for you. I mean I *know* you've lost weight and you look much better, but I had no idea it was as much as 110 pounds. But maybe that's why it worked for you. But I only want to lose 15-20 so don't think Atkins would work for me. I really have to stay low-fat. " And the other women agreed with her.

So that's a report from the trenches about diabetes education, diabetes diet, from three women who are all bright and intelligent - one of them a doctor- and who are passionately devoted to managing their disease.

amazing Debbie. That's exactly what I face. Can't eat in restaurants and surrounded by people who believe as your classmates do.

I went to iHop with my 2 dds who are 20 somethings, a friend, 2 SOs of the girls, and grandson. I figured I could get eggs and bacon. It was amazingly hard. All the menu choices were gigantic with loads of carbs. I finally ordered, as side dishes, 2 eggs scrambled, with no pancake batter please, and what I got was not 2 eggs I'm pretty sure. And 3 pieces of bacon. I just did not want to discuss ordering extra fatty sausages with that crowd. I would have starved had I not eaten earlier.

I feel like the ugly duckling in environments like that. Here is my swan pond though.

I've found that of all place, breakfast places are the most UNaccomodating in menu options. Eggs and cheese and breakfast meats are fine, but it seems EVERY meal comes with toast or English muffin, hash browns, and/or pancakes. When I ask if I can subsitute and extra meat instead of any of these, the answer has always been no - other options for substitutions only include things like oatmeal, muffins, etc. So at those places, I always feel like I'm getting more financially ripped than other places (ordering just sides to make up a meal is usually more expensive than ordering a meal, so I end up paying for the whole meals and not eating anything in place of the carby sides).

The exception to this is Denny's where you can create your own "slam" (I think that's what they call it), so I make mine of just eggs and meats.

Yes, that's exactly the reaction I get when "what I eat" comes up. And it's terrible, absolutely criminal, what passes for diabetic counseling in the US. And, I understand, elsewhere.

One thing I've done to help enlightenment along is to explain I eat the way I do to avoid diabetes. This often gets the conversation going because they have never heard of such a thing.

Then too, I run into the roadblock of The New Common Wisdom, which is that "it's genetic and there's nothing you can do, I know a lot of slim people who have it and they eat normally."

And we all know what eating normally is...

Ha! I love it! I had a conversation yesterday with a co-worker who is also a T2 and we were discussing the new USDA "My Plate" change and he was going on about how great he thought it was and at one point he said "I especially like the part where they tell you to switch to low-fat or non-fat milk because people still don't understand how bad all that fat in whole milk is for them".

I couldn't resist....I replied with "Well from all my research, it's not the fat in whole milk that is bad for us, it's all the sugar, especially for us being diabetics. And funny thing about eating fat...I've been eating butter, coconut oil, bacon, avocados, nuts, whipping cream, red meats, etc. since January and I've managed to lose 18 lbs and my HDL has gone up and my triglycerides have dropped 100 points AND I've been able to cut back my diabetes medication in half so I think I'm going to continue eating and enjoying the fat in my diet."

He didn't know what to say to that so he just changed the subject. I don't actually like throwing my personal facts in someone's face to make my point but I've watched this co-worker go from taking only Metformin to now on an insulin pump and watched him continue to pack on the pounds and all the while he has remained staunchly devoted to his doctor's advice of "eat your healthy carbs and eliminate fat from your diet".

It sounds horrible to say but it feels like watching someone slowly killing them self because I've literally watched the downward spiral of his health over the last 9+ years and we talk about our experiences with our diabetes but he is just not open to making any changes....not even trying something different for a "trial period" because he so believes in what his doctor tells him.

I think it's just another example of how much influence "experts" and/or "professionals" can really have over someone.

My sister and I chat about this issue. My mother, T2, never questioned her doctors on anything. If a person with perceived authority/education (especially in medicine) told her to stand on her head to cure something, she would have done it without question. Most generations were taught that attorneys/doctors/police/military/etc were not to be questioned. These were known 'experts' of our society.

Whereas I question everyone. I research on my own, and ask a lot of questions. If something doesn't make sense to me, I ask a different 'expert'. And I never trust a policeman either. I take responsibility for my health, while my mother turned her health over to anyone willing to relieve her of the responsibility for it.

Now, if you don't stand up for yourself and nail down the dizzying array of health professionals, it can roll right over the top of you.

They are trying:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/artic.../BA7O1J74O5.DTL

Now, in Oakland's defense, she wasnt just sharing extra produce with the neighbors, she was raising bunnies and making pies out of them, selling them for a "donation". And in my mind, thats where the health department is supposed to step in. theres a reason food production is regulated, to protect the public. Im all down with her entrepreneurship and moxie, hell, she squatted on that plot in a REALLY rough part of oakland (I used to live around the block-eww) and eventually the owner sold the land to her cheap. I love what she has built. The city was really putting the screws to her. BUT, because of this situation, the city is revamping their ideas of what should be allowed in an urban neighborhood and what isnt. Loads of people keep chickens, bees, goats. its too much for me... but I understand.

I would give anything to start a low carb pizza joint. Im sure it would bomb, pizza is a treat, and people dont want to have to work or equate "healthy" with a treat. Thats prob why LC options on any menu will never happen. Low fat yes, because sugar is still pleasurable. and as we all know, fats are BBBAAAADDDDDD... well, they are a different kind of pleasure. It takes a more refined palate to appreciate fat.

And hey did anyone note that bit where they were making fun of donald trump for eating pizza with a fork? (I thought big deal, I used to do that to practice the "fork in the left hand" technique) but his reply was hey, I dont like to eat the crust. I thought AHA! Hes a low carber! If not explicitly... but he goes out of his way to eat the good stuff and ditch the crust.

When I explain how I eat, I keep it short and simple. "its all about keeping insulin levels low." Thanks to Mr Taubes, this is something people are hearing now, and I see them make the connection. "When that happens, your body switches from burning sugar to burning fat"

A very obese freind recently facebooked about her revolutionary approach to actually changing her diet. Even tho she went with WW, I say go girl! Its a start. She was agonizing about her sugar cravings, and half a dozen of us said "go low carb" even going to far as to explain how it works and their amazing success. Yesterday she posted a recipe from "hungry girl", a weight watcher-freindly cupcake recipe. *sigh*. I cant help but think, hey hungry girl, if you ate healthy, you wouldnt be so hungry.

Just had to share-like the problems we all face when trying to find convenience foods "eating out", especially around office areas, its all "little entree loads of rice" kinds of places. The only respite I have immediately around here is a BBW place, they will give you a brisket or chicken sandwich without sauce or bread (meaning, a styrofoam container filled with tasty meat) or Mediterranean skewer place. Those are good shots.

I have a place not far from here (tho driving distance) I will hit for lunch occasionally if I dont have one packed. its called the piedmont grocery, and they have a steam table with LOADS of LCfreindly food. it lacks the convenience of a sit down place, (tho they hav e a couple of small tables outside) but you can get all the good stuff you want and not waste the stuff they insist on putting on your plate-like potatoes.

Today I had:

Salmon in cream sauce, BBQ brisket with minimal sauce, green beans almandine, bacon, marinated tofu, grilled chicken and great slabs of GOOD parmesan off the salad bar... And it was about $8, sold by weight. Piedmont grocery, you saved this low carber girl's lunch.