Requesting BASIC diet/weightloss advice and support

kteague wrote:...pistachios...

When I want to indulge in foods I prefer not to eat, I get about a cup or so of UNshelled pistachios. The effort of getting 'em outta the shell slows down how many I can scarf down . By the time I finish 'em, whatever I was craving is a just a pale memory. I tried just drinking a glass of water and that didn't do it for me.

DreamStalker wrote: The reason gastric bypass reduces glucose is because it does indeed have less time in digestive track to convert carbs to glucose. But if someone has gastric bypass, they really don't need to cut carbs because the bypass is doing it for them. Why not make your own bypass by eliminating the carbs in the first place?

Hello all,

I've been off the forum for several months since I was too busy taking care of myself after gastric bypass. I realize this is certainly not a solution for everyone and it takes a willingness to commit to a continual care in eating; for me it is working very well. From what I've read and heard, the bypass works in two ways: 1) restriction, due to the dramatic decrease in stomach size to hold about 2 tablespoons of food and 2) malabsorption, because of bypassing 3-5 feet of small intestine & the duodenum. That area of the small intestine is where glucose is absorbed, as well as some stuff we can't do without like vitamin b12, calcium, iron, etc. I was on the low end of the range allowed for gastric bypass but decided to go that route due to multiple health issues. My diabetes was gone by the time I left the hospital 2 days after surgery, and apparently this happens in about 85% of people with Type 2 diabetes who have gastric bypass. In slightly under 3 months I've lost almost half of my excess weight (that's at the high end of the typical range). I will always have to limit my intake to 1100-1200 calories per day if I want to keep the weight off. I had previously tried a number of diets and programs and had no lasting success. I kept trying all the way up until surgery but did not succeed. My CPAP pressure need has finally dropped a little but I've been told that I may always need CPAP because of a small neck.

Kira, I also have UC and found that for me, fiber helped! I suspect that there may be sub-types of some of these diseases so everyone doesn't react the same way to different things.

Mindy (not logged on because I haven't been able to!)

ok heres my deal. Last August, I was admitted to the hospital respiatory distress etc.. they tested my glucose and guess what..it was 320. Being diagnosed diabetic I was told to count carbs. I was now taking 4 insulin shots a day when first diagnosed. Since I was told to count carbs no more than 60 carbs per meal that automatically put me on the low carb diet. I eat less than 60 carbs a day. Ride the exercise bike every day 1 hr to 1.5 hrs everyday now( I started at 15 minutes). Since August, last time I was weighed at my primary in December I had lost 83 lbs. Im down to taking 1 24 hr insulin injection a day and almost off the oxygen, only need it when exercising and Im sure its helped my sleep apnea. Lot of my motivation I have to admit is 4 shots of insulin in the gut is just no fun at all. So its doable for sure!

grady61 wrote:...

Wow, that's quite a story, quite an accomplishment! Congrats on your amazing success so far!!!

I've lost about 57#s and had to reduce my pressure; if you're not using an APAP, you might check with your sleep doc and see if your pressure might need to be reviewed...mine wanted to do another sleep study but I couldn't afford the co-pay, so he loaned me an APAP and recording oximeter over a holiday to collect 5 nights of data.

JohnBFisher wrote:

DreamStalker wrote:... I would urge you once again to get a copy of "Dr. Berstein's Diabetes Solution" as he provides a great easy to understand discussion on this subject as well as others important to diabetics. ...

While I may purchase the book, I tend to be very cautious with any book that offers a "solution" (cure) for a chronic condition such as diabetes. You need to understand that I have read a lot on this subject. I tried to learn as much as possible. While I agree that blood sugar control is very important, the very tight control proposed in his book has been shown to cause problems. But then I try to do a better job than many diabetics I know.

That's not to say I don't have a long way to go. With better sleep I am doing better than I have in months. It's a shame it took me several years to get a machine that actually helps.

John, here is a recent post that you may find interesting and you don't have to buy anything.

THE EARTH IS FLAT AND DIABETES TYPE 2 BE CAN'T BE CURED.

Today I spent some time visiting with a doctor who used to be my my traditional medicine primary doctor. After exchanging all the pleasantries, he asked how my diabetes type 2 was doing? I told him I don't have it any more. He quickly asked, did I mean that I have it under control? Just as quickly I answered , no, it's cured. He objected to this answer saying diabetes type 2 can not be cured , only controlled. His reasoning was that if I go back to eating the standard American diet my diabetes type 2 would return. I tried to explain that I am passionately convinced that eating as our ancient evolutionary ancestors did would prevent this from occurring. He still insisted that I was wrong. So, I tried another tack. I asked him to reverse places with me.

The following is the scenario I presented. He is the patient suffering from arsenic poisoning, because of his ingesting small amounts of arsenic on a daily basis. Naturally he became very ill and came to see me his doctor. He told me what he was doing and I advised him to stop eating poison. He did, and his symptoms vanished. He then asked me if he was now curred, using the logic of my use to be doctor, I answered no, because, if he started to eat poison again he would become sick. As ridiculous as this example is, this is how a traditional medical doctor reasons. Its as foolish as the widely held belief from just before Columbus's time, Every one believed that the earth was flat, and that if you sailed to the end of the earth you would fall off. Traditional medical cares belief that eating a low fat and a high carbohydrate food program promotes good health and allows you to lose weight is as foolish as the belief that the world is flat. Instead it promotes obesity, and diseases of the metabolic syndrome. To prove the point, this is the progression I went through on a low fat and high carbohydrate lifestyle recommended by my doctors. First I became obese, then insulin resistant, followed closely by glucose intolerance which brought on hypertension and diabetes type 2, which brought on chronic kidney disease. As I write there is no known cure for kidney disease. In effect, I poisoned my self. When I stopped poisoning my self, I started to reverse many of my metabolic syndrome disease. After fourteen months and hemoglobin A1c readings of 4.6, 4.7, 4.9, and 5.6 I know that I am cured of type 2 diabetes. Could I get it again? of course, just let me go back to the recommended diet of low fat and high carbohydrate that my flat earth doctors recommend. Medical care as we know it today must change. We all must eat as the lifestyle that our 2.5 million year old genes dictate. Tigers are tigers, lions are lions, cattle are cattle, and humans are humans, and none of the before mentioned animals have changed much along with nature in the last 2.5 million years. We all must eat as our genes dictate, including cattle. We must stop grain feeding cattle and injecting them with (BGH) bovine growth hormone, because we are eating poison. Much more about this subject in my next post. stay tuned.

Billy E

http://nephropal.blogspot.com/2010/01/e ... -flat.html

And for everyone else, here is another new post out today about why and how we get fat. Since it has a graph in it, I won't quote here.
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2 ... ms-of.html

And here you can get a detailed summary of Good Calories Bad Calories ... sort of like cliff notes for the book.
http://higher-thought.net/wp-content/up ... lories.pdf

Mindy2 wrote:

DreamStalker wrote: The reason gastric bypass reduces glucose is because it does indeed have less time in digestive track to convert carbs to glucose. But if someone has gastric bypass, they really don't need to cut carbs because the bypass is doing it for them. Why not make your own bypass by eliminating the carbs in the first place?

Hello all,

I've been off the forum for several months since I was too busy taking care of myself after gastric bypass. I realize this is certainly not a solution for everyone and it takes a willingness to commit to a continual care in eating; for me it is working very well. From what I've read and heard, the bypass works in two ways: 1) restriction, due to the dramatic decrease in stomach size to hold about 2 tablespoons of food and 2) malabsorption, because of bypassing 3-5 feet of small intestine & the duodenum. That area of the small intestine is where glucose is absorbed, as well as some stuff we can't do without like vitamin b12, calcium, iron, etc. I was on the low end of the range allowed for gastric bypass but decided to go that route due to multiple health issues. My diabetes was gone by the time I left the hospital 2 days after surgery, and apparently this happens in about 85% of people with Type 2 diabetes who have gastric bypass. In slightly under 3 months I've lost almost half of my excess weight (that's at the high end of the typical range). I will always have to limit my intake to 1100-1200 calories per day if I want to keep the weight off. I had previously tried a number of diets and programs and had no lasting success. I kept trying all the way up until surgery but did not succeed. My CPAP pressure need has finally dropped a little but I've been told that I may always need CPAP because of a small neck.

Kira, I also have UC and found that for me, fiber helped! I suspect that there may be sub-types of some of these diseases so everyone doesn't react the same way to different things.

Mindy (not logged on because I haven't been able to!)

Congrats on the significant weight loss. If I were you I would still continue to get your A1c test for another year or two and not just take your sergeon's word for it (I suppose you are already doing that).

Check out this blog that may be of interest to you. It has an entry about weight loss surgery and diabetes.

Diabetes Update

I continue to be so grateful for all the input on this thread. I just sat and read (on the exercise bike! for my knee) most of the 30-page summary of Good Calories, Bad Calories. I also skimmed many of the Whole Health Source blog entries.

OK. If I wanted to try a low-carbohydrate diet, where would I start? I'm still confused about what a "carb" is. Do I just avoid/eliminate white flour, white sugar, potatoes? or are fruit out also? Does this somehow imply that whole wheat flour and brown sugar are OK? (Surely this can't be right.) And fruit - I eat a lot of fruit. Are there ones to avoid?

(I know a lot of this information is already here, somewhere. I am really struggling with feeling overwhelmed. I hope I can keep asking basic questions like this.)

I'm going to go and make some Moroccan spicy lentils for my weekday lunches, and a big batch of Bengali tiny fried eggplants in yogourt for today's lunch...

[quote="DreamStalker"]
Congrats on the significant weight loss. If I were you I would still continue to get your A1c test for another year or two and not just take your sergeon's word for it (I suppose you are already doing that).

Check out this blog that may be of interest to you. It has an entry about weight loss surgery and diabetes.
[quote]

Hi there, DreamStalker!

Yes, I do still check glucose with finger stick every week and plan to continue haveing A1c checked every year (I'm cautious!)
Thanks for the link - very interesting. I have long been on a low carb diet and although it kept me from regaining, I was only able to lose about 5-10 lbs per year. Since I have a medical problem that was expected to result in end-stage disease within 5 years, I took the calculated risk of surgery. By NIH standards, I don't know of any doctors who would perform gastric bypass on someone with a BMI under 35 (and insurance wouldn't pay for it). In fact they won't do it for a BMI under 40 unless the person has one or more of a specific set of comorbidities that are serious.

Now about that link: it makes some valid points but there are also a number of half-truths and inaccuracies. For one, the author mixes info about traditional Roux-en-Y gastric bypass and the gastric band. I had the former and there are far fewer follow-on surgeries with this surgery than with gastric banding. This surgery has been around for a number of years and has a pretty good history. If one doesn't regain the weight (and yes, it can happen), then the type 2 diabetes is not known to come back. With gastric banding, type 2 diabetes reduction is more likely due to the weight loss resulting from the surgery. With Roux-en-Y, it's the duodenum/length of small intestine that results in a very rapid change. There are long-term registries and most if not all bariatric surgery practices insist that their patients return very year for a checkup. Also, since I work on cost-effectiveness analyses, I can say for sure that the info on pay-back is seriously flawed! Cost-effectiveness is commonly computed as cost of treatment divided by additional years of life adjusted for quality of life.

On another subject, MoneyGal -- carbs are sometimes referred to as "refined" (eg white flour) or "unrefined" (eg whole wheat flour) and are further defined as “good carbs” and “bad carbs”. We all need carbs as fuel – you’d get very tired without carbs. However, “bad carbs” will promote weight gain and poor health. “Bad carbs” included refined flour, all sodas, etc. Especially bad are things like high-fructose corn syrup. A small amount of regular sugar is usually not considered bad. All foods are made up of fat, protein and carbs. Fresh fruit has no fat and no protein and is made up of “good” carbs. Vegetables are generally in the same category but this does not include legumes (beans, lentils, split peas). Legumes have protein and carbs. Meat and eggs contain protein and fat.
On my 1200 calorie per day eating plan, I’m supposed to eat 60-80 grams of protein, 100-120 grams of “good” carbs and the rest fat.
Hope that helps a little.

Mindy2 (who is really Mindy)

MoneyGal wrote:OK. If I wanted to try a low-carbohydrate diet, where would I start? I'm still confused about what a "carb" is. Do I just avoid/eliminate white flour, white sugar, potatoes? or are fruit out also? Does this somehow imply that whole wheat flour and brown sugar are OK? (Surely this can't be right.) And fruit - I eat a lot of fruit. Are there ones to avoid?

(I know a lot of this information is already here, somewhere. I am really struggling with feeling overwhelmed. I hope I can keep asking basic questions like this.)

I'm going to go and make some Moroccan spicy lentils for my weekday lunches, and a big batch of Bengali tiny fried eggplants in yogourt for today's lunch...

MoneyGal,

I think you would be well-served by talking to a good nutritionist/dietician. Fruits and vegetables are usually all carbs. The sugar in fruit is not as bad as what you can find in many prepared foods but you should generally eat more servings of vegetables than fruits.

The lentils you mention have both protein and healthy carbs (and fiber) and that's a very good food. As for the Bengali tiny fried eggplants in yogurt: I don't know the details of all that's in that dish and especially how it's fried. You might have just a little or could have a lot of saturated fat. Also, if using olive oil for frying, be sure to use it below the "smoke point" (where you can see the smoke coming from the oil).

Mindy2

The dish just has eggplants, which I'm going to fry in coconut oil, plus full-fat yogourt and spices (turmeric, garlic, onion, "panch poori" -- Bengali five-spice, salt, pepper, maybe a chili pepper). I'm not Bengali or anything resembling Bengali, I just like to cook.

MoneyGal wrote:
OK. If I wanted to try a low-carbohydrate diet, where would I start? I'm still confused about what a "carb" is. Do I just avoid/eliminate white flour, white sugar, potatoes? or are fruit out also? Does this somehow imply that whole wheat flour and brown sugar are OK? (Surely this can't be right.) And fruit - I eat a lot of fruit. Are there ones to avoid?

I'm going to go and make some Moroccan spicy lentils for my weekday lunches, and a big batch of Bengali tiny fried eggplants in yogourt for today's lunch...

Iam still in the same boat trying to adjust. I keep tripping too.

Brown sugar is basically white sugar that hasn't been refined as much OR white sugar that has had some molasses added back in so it is basically a NONO.

Personally I am starting by attempting to eliminate all wheat and corn products and most sugars.

Except for my coffee I don't use sugar that much but breads..... There are 3 artisanat bakeries in my neighbourhood that specialize in flaky croissants, baguettes, bagels, handmade organic multi grain breads and much more. They throw out nets of scent to trap people. Corn is easy since I don't like it anyway but the hidden corn is harder.

I am going to hunt for coconut oil today to replace my olive oil for cooking.

Right now my lunch consists of brie and Swedish rye crackers. Yesterday I made an italian white bean soup with chicken - that will be dinner for the next few days.

Lunches I eat at work usually consist of salad and a hard boiled egg. About the only thing I consider edible most days at the cafeteria.

Hey Mindy, great to see you again. I'm glad your healing from the surgery is going well - good luck with the other problems.

MonyeGal --
A useful list of what is and what is not a carb containing food can be found here:

http://blogg.passagen.se/dahlqvistannik ... d_manifest

I read Good Calories Bad Calories in March or April of 2009 and was convinced:
Eliminated all sugar from tea and coffee (if you're a person who takes lot of sugar in those drinks, you can try to reduce the amount gradually -and then the move from 1/2 a teaspoon to non is not that dramatic).

Stopped eating:

• Potatoes
  Rice
  Pasta
  Cakes and cookies
  Fruit Juices

Reduced bread to something like 2 or 4 slices on some weeks, at most. Full grain.

Started eating far more:

• Eggs
  Mayonnaise
  Butter
  Cheeses
  Olive Oil
  Nuts and almonds

Some more: fish, (and canned tuna) and poultry.

I'm not diabetic nor pre-diabetic. I still start each day with a banana, and probably eat 1 or 2 other friuts too. (an apple with cheese and nuts is a real treat for me). I did not eat grapes in the summer.

I don't make a religion of it. I made myself a promise years ago that I will never deny myself any food if I want it, and I don't. (I recommend "When women stop hating their bodies" by Jane R. Hirschmann and Carol H. Munter and Susie Orbach On Eating). Binges result from the cravings caused by carbs, but also from a feeling of "its now or never". Setting up a trusting relationship with yourself / your body is crucial.

Dropping the carbs was not difficult for me -- perhaps because I've never been a carb addict. My cold drink of choice has been water for many years.

My sense of hunger between meals changed dramatically.

And, as a real side effect, I lost weight - I did not change my eating in order to loose weight -- but I did.

O.

Mindy2 wrote:

DreamStalker wrote: Congrats on the significant weight loss. If I were you I would still continue to get your A1c test for another year or two and not just take your sergeon's word for it (I suppose you are already doing that).

Check out this blog that may be of interest to you. It has an entry about weight loss surgery and diabetes.

Hi there, DreamStalker!

Yes, I do still check glucose with finger stick every week and plan to continue haveing A1c checked every year (I'm cautious!)
Thanks for the link - very interesting. I have long been on a low carb diet and although it kept me from regaining, I was only able to lose about 5-10 lbs per year. Since I have a medical problem that was expected to result in end-stage disease within 5 years, I took the calculated risk of surgery. By NIH standards, I don't know of any doctors who would perform gastric bypass on someone with a BMI under 35 (and insurance wouldn't pay for it). In fact they won't do it for a BMI under 40 unless the person has one or more of a specific set of comorbidities that are serious.

Now about that link: it makes some valid points but there are also a number of half-truths and inaccuracies. For one, the author mixes info about traditional Roux-en-Y gastric bypass and the gastric band. I had the former and there are far fewer follow-on surgeries with this surgery than with gastric banding. This surgery has been around for a number of years and has a pretty good history. If one doesn't regain the weight (and yes, it can happen), then the type 2 diabetes is not known to come back. With gastric banding, type 2 diabetes reduction is more likely due to the weight loss resulting from the surgery. With Roux-en-Y, it's the duodenum/length of small intestine that results in a very rapid change. There are long-term registries and most if not all bariatric surgery practices insist that their patients return very year for a checkup. Also, since I work on cost-effectiveness analyses, I can say for sure that the info on pay-back is seriously flawed! Cost-effectiveness is commonly computed as cost of treatment divided by additional years of life adjusted for quality of life.

On another subject, MoneyGal -- carbs are sometimes referred to as "refined" (eg white flour) or "unrefined" (eg whole wheat flour) and are further defined as “good carbs” and “bad carbs”. We all need carbs as fuel – you’d get very tired without carbs. However, “bad carbs” will promote weight gain and poor health. “Bad carbs” included refined flour, all sodas, etc. Especially bad are things like high-fructose corn syrup. A small amount of regular sugar is usually not considered bad. All foods are made up of fat, protein and carbs. Fresh fruit has no fat and no protein and is made up of “good” carbs. Vegetables are generally in the same category but this does not include legumes (beans, lentils, split peas). Legumes have protein and carbs. Meat and eggs contain protein and fat.
On my 1200 calorie per day eating plan, I’m supposed to eat 60-80 grams of protein, 100-120 grams of “good” carbs and the rest fat.
Hope that helps a little.

Mindy2 (who is really Mindy)

Good that you are staying monitored. I also hope you posted your comments about half-truths on that bolg site so that others reading it are made aware.

I have to disagree with you on the good carbs bad carbs comments. If you read previous posts in this thread, I attempted to explain that all carbs become glucose once in the blood system and consequently are treated the same by the body regardless of whether they are refined or whole ("bad" or "good") ... at least as far as weight loss is concerned. For diabetics, refined vs. whole does make a difference but they too are better off eliminating them altogether. Basically the unrefined (whole) carbs enter the blood stream slower but nevertheless, the same amount of insulin is required to regulate the resulting blood sugar from an unrefined as a refined ... just the duration or time it take to regulate it is different. To burn fat out of storage, one has to keep total insulin "amount" down ... whether it occurs slowly or fast makes no difference ... it is the total amount that matters for fat loss. Therefore, for fat loss, ALL carbs are bad.

If however, you are not fat or have no desire to lose fat, then have your carbs and eat'em too.

Secondly, we do not need carbs. Our bodies are designed to make all necessary carb byproducts (like glucose and glycogen) from dietary protein. The only cells in the body that need blood sugar glucose are red blood cells ... all other cells of the body can burn ketones made from fats. Furthermore, most vegetables have small amounts of carbs that the body can use. So our bodies metabolize proteins into any extra needed sugar for our red blood cells and into any extra glycogen needs to replenish glycogen stores that is not provided from vegetables. In fact the body could survive on just meat and fat alone if it had to ... although it is not recommended since vegetables provide lots of other micro-nutrients essential for good health. In other words, carbs are not an essential nutrient as many have been led to believe by dietitians and nutritionists. Our bodies are designed to run on fat as a fuel source.

The reason some get a feeling of fatigue, headaches, and other bad symptoms when removing carbs from their diet is because they are experiencing withdrawal from the carb addiction. It only lasts a few days to a couple of weeks after first eliminating carbs from the diet ... until the body is able to adapt to burning fat again just like it is supposed to. Once the body has adapted to fat for energy, fatigue and bad symptoms go away ... at least until you reintroduce carbs and then you have to go back through the withdrawal period again if you want to get off carbs again.

@ MoneyGal ... what ozij says ... except stop bread too.

ozij wrote: <snip> ...

I don't make a religion of it.

...<snip>
O.

For some, a religion is their way of life ... for others, a way of life is their religion.

MoneyGal wrote:The dish just has eggplants, which I'm going to fry in coconut oil, plus full-fat yogourt and spices (turmeric, garlic, onion, "panch poori" -- Bengali five-spice, salt, pepper, maybe a chili pepper). I'm not Bengali or anything resembling Bengali, I just like to cook.

Now you got it! Sounds tasty and healthy too. Can I come over and have some too?