It's So Noisy at the Fair: The Diabetic Thread

Thanks, Trayce. The fat/no fat yogurt thing is a conundrum, and in general. Some fat is okay theoretically because of the way it interacts with carbs, but then there are Chet Atkins diet types who just load up on it. Something I just read says no more than 20% of your calories should come from unsaturated fat, but I dunno still seems kind of high.

Sorry, saturated fat.

i try to walk somewhere down the middle btw non fat tastelessness vs keto full fat craziness

and try to favor fats like avocado, peanut butter etc

but i’m not putting butter in my coffee or making cakes out of cream cheese lol

In general I wouldnt say an old school Atkins diet is good for diabetics, because as you say they go a bit ham on the fats and Type 2 is all about trying to lose weight and even out the insulin resistance.

Keto diets seem a bit better. I'm not following any "diet", I just cut out the things they said were bad immediately (white bread, any white rice aside from basmati, sugar, fried potato) and reduced my portion sizes strictly (easier now on the meds due to aforementioned appetite loss). I think portion size control is a major one for me anyway. I've lost 10kg since I first started getting ill just before being diagosed. And that was in June, so thats not too bad.

xpost yes, I am still eating a lot of dairy fo the protein! Lo fat cheese mostly, plus some yog and eggs. And yeah going for olive oil esp when I mightve used butter before (except like, on a sandwhich lol I'm not gonna spread oil on my sammich).

But yeah no one can sit here and tell me 4 bacon rashers layered with cheese on a grill is a good thing to eat.

yeah overall balance & reduced portion sizes has worked p well for me

Thirded

Type 2 is all about trying to lose weight and even out the insulin resistance

Not for everyone, mind you. I'm 6'2" and weigh ~165. I'm trying to up my protein intake but also balance out my carbs just enough so that I don't get the shakes between meals. As it is, I often wake up literally weak with hunger in the morning; going 12-13 hours without food (dinner at 6 PM, breakfast at 7 AM) is a real fucking problem. Back in NJ there were a few times before I left that I'd wake up at 3 or 4 in the morning, eat a cup of peanuts and raisins, and go back to sleep for another 3 hours.

I've started exercising lately, using a resistance band and small weights (10 pound hand weights, 15 pound kettlebell) and doing standing pushups off the wall, squats, stuff like that. I'm not trying to get big, obviously, just tightening my muscles up a bit. The hardest part so far is getting to the point where it's habitual, or even where it's something I want to do rather than something I have to remind myself to do every day.

Struggling a bit lately. Increased Ozempic dose has completely destroyed my appetite/ability to want food. Like, so completely, I have to *force* myself to eat anything. As a result I am headachy and tired all the time (well, I assume thats why). And the clinic/hospital team want me to go up to the full dose!? Farrrk no. My sugars are sitting around 6, so I dont see the need. But I hope this settles, or I get to go back off this shit at some point because this really sucks.

Day to day, the diabetes doesn't affect my life much, except in what I eat. So mostly I just post blood-prick numbers here. After two bumps in a row back to the mid-sixes, I was definitely nervous doing a test tonight (first one in 19 days--kept putting it off). Back down to 5.8, so that was a relief. I'm due for a three-month in the next week or two, so we'll see where that's at.

Isnt mid sixes still ok? I'm around there and I'm happy with that!

I think it's fine, it's just that I had gotten things as low as 4.9, and spent months in the 5.0s, so back into the sixes was a step back and in the wrong direction if that continued. But that's just relative to me; I think mid-sixes is a perfectly good place to be.

Also: I over-worry everything.

Oh for a value of trending upward, yeah that makes sense.

Latest HbA1c - 5.3 awww yis.

But unfortunately, Im continuing to have other baffling increases in my liver enzymes despite having cut right back on alcohol (to once a week, tho admittedly on that once a week I still have a few more than I should) and cutting my paracetamol consumption down. The doc really doesnt know why. Could be the ozempic, or the statins, or gall bladder issues or fuck only knows. I'm so tired of all the blood tests and ultrasounds. Can I just be less broken pls.

<3 hang in there. congrats on the 5.3 tho, that’s great news

That's really low--good job.

Had a stupid workplace thing a couple days ago where I was putting away hollow blocks in a kindergarten class and let one drop on my thumb. A little pain, very discolored at the base of the nail. Because of the diabetes, I decided during the night that for sure this meant amputation (I wouldn't even look at it till the next morning), but the doctor I saw the next day said I'll lose the nail, it'll come back, and that'll be it. No pain at all now, but still discolored four days later.

I'm never sure if I should continue to extra-worry these things because of the diabetes.

6.0 last night. I'd been holding off because I've had this sinus thing, and I figured any kind of sickness might affect a reading. As always, I'm just blindly guessing.

Spoke to my endocrinologist last week who agreed with my GP that the Statins were prob the cause of the weird liver enzymes so told me to stop taking them - my cholestorol is ridiculously normal again now anyway and was not that high to begin with.

Placebo or not I cant say but I am feeling better, all the nagging joint aches I'd been having have gone, so maybe statins were messing me up?

Something I was thinking about yesterday. My three-month reading was 5.8; it was 5.7 in July, 5.7 in March. So my home tests bounce around a bit, but the three-months have levelled off there for half-a-year.

I was 10.1 last November. I'm starting to wonder if I was somewhere between 6-10 for the three-four-five years before being diagnosed. I didn't go to 10.1 all of a sudden--that must have taken time. Just not sure how much time. If I'm right, that's calming in a way. Life was normal before the diagnosis, reinforcing the idea that it's just a number. Keep it under control, but 6-7-8, it's all the same.

I had my 3 month checkup a couple days ago and was surprised I was at 6, thought it’d be much higher.

Thats awesome J! Well done! x

I've hit a plateau where weight isnt dropping much, sugars are good but not quite low enough. I cant eat less, I'm already only doing 2k calories a day, but the diabetes nurse today suggested meal replacement shakes like wtf no. Theyre full of artificial sweetners and weird crap.

I know booze is the last sticking point, and its not one that'll disappear. so I dunno.

It’s good but not through much effort on my part. I’ve been eating like shit - too high a deficit and way too much sugar when I do bother to eat. But I got a full blood panel done because I don’t feel anything different than before all this, and almost everything is great. For someone who eats as badly as I do, and never sees the sun, my vit d and b are great, calcium is great, iron is great, etc etc. But I feel like shit. I’m pretty bummed, since I thought the diabetes diagnosis was gonna be a turning point.

Trayce, that sounds so sketchy - a diabetes specialist shouldn’t be recommending meal replacement shakes if you’re eating at a normal level. I could understand it if you were underweight and needed to add the shakes to your existing diet, or at a weight that was so high it was negatively affecting your health directly, but otherwise that is the kind of nutrition advice that triggers disordered eating.

yeah agreed

I'm not eating terribly well tbrh. Some days I'm lucky if I manage one proper meal. I just never get hungry.

Something I was thinking about yesterday. My three-month reading was 5.8; it was 5.7 in July, 5.7 in March. So my home tests bounce around a bit, but the three-months have levelled off there for half-a-year.

can I ask you: the “three month” reading you’re referring to must be the hemoglobin A1c? the daily readings I assume are glucose readings in mmol/L? if so these are two completely separate units

You can also do a GMI which is an instantaneous measure similar to A1c.

huh…I work exclusively in the hospital these days so obviously I’m out of step with these sorts of things… I just looked that up and had honestly never heard of that! the usefulness of a daily A1c surrogate seems a bit dubious to me, gonna read some more about that

Kevin: I don't know...I thought my three-month averages were literally that, an average of all those home tests I do every couple of weeks. Maybe they are completely different.

i dont know the science

over time it has seemed to me that they are def 2 different things

home glucose testing is (to me) just so that you learn how lows & highs feel physiologically to keep you mindful of it, i really do think doctors recommend it pedagogically as sort of busywork so that ppl don’t ignore their symptoms

but it isn’t as good of a long term indicator bc it is incredibly variable

and then the a1c hemoglobin is the longterm indicator, measuring something different over a longer time period
basically the practical uh truth of what is actually going on, is the medication /diet/ etc ~working~

lol the other day I was just taking the piss, I ate a bowl of pasta and then a small bowl of reggular-sugar icecream (made from coconut whats worse) and boy did my levels shoot up. HIghest theve been since before I was treating this haha but they went back down overnight. I really need to stop being cavalier, but this weird sugar craving I never ever used to have, is creeping up. Prob from me cutting back on booze I reckon.

i find that sugar-free/zero sugar stuff that still tastes sweet makes me crave sugar more

Had this tonight:

https://i.postimg.cc/HxZ3DM0x/pasta.jpg

Maybe not the real thing, but was just fine. Here's the nutrition label:

https://www.gtanutrition.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/NuPasta-Angel-Hair-210g-nutrition-facts.jpg

Compared to standard pasta, that's pretty great. Went online to order some and (odd) everything was out of stock. They're located in Markham, just outside Toronto, so I'm going to phone and see about picking up an order in person over the holidays. A little pricey a package at a time.

i didn’t love the texture myself but yeah they are quite popular!
( i am a bit of a “texture queen” tho lol and am easily turned off)

Yeah the Vetta pasta I mentioned upthread Ive really gone off. They no longer sell it in spaghetti only in spirals and penne and you have to cook the everloving shit out of it and it tastes like wet cardboard. Blech. And honestly the amount of protein is negligible for the purpose so I'm not sure theres much point. I'm just gonna stick to occasional-treat small serves of normal pasta offset with a good protein like fish.

By the time I added sauce, vegetables, and fish, I didn't mind it at all. It's a trade-off, I know. But I was looking at the regular pasta, and it literally had 10x the carbohydrates. My fondness for pasta is no doubt a big part of what got me into this mess in the first place.

yeah same

meanwhile i’m finally warming up to homemade cauliflower rice and cauliflower mash

Pasta and rice are go tos for me because theyre easy tbrh. Sigh. I need to get back on that horse and cook up some lentils and chickpeas and make some salads.

3 monthly Hb1AC test today: 4.8 mufukkas! Aw yis!
Im actually suprised given the festive season's rather lax crappy eating and booze!

Wow, that's great--I've never had a 3-month lower than 5.7. My last two at home have been 5.0 and 5.3.

great job trayce, that’s fantastic

I have to admit, I've been eating very little, so I dont know if that added to things? But yeah, endo says I could probably go off some or all of the meds in 12 months if I stay this way.

bravo girly!

Got a CGM attached to my arm for 2 weeks kindly donated by my endo team at the hospital, so I can live-monitor my levels for 2 weeks to see how my diet/exercise combo is going. I feel like a Borg now, with this bluetooth blot stuck to my arm!

I've been meaning to post here -- last week I had my lowest A1C result in the 10(?) years since I was diagnosed with the Type2 -- 6.1. I didn't make any special effort -- just lucky afaict. I guess I just ate a little more healthily after the holidays.

Way to go. My weight has been creeping back up--from a low of 143 back up to 153-155 most mornings--so I was worried when I did my first home-test in three weeks. Still 6.0; I've been 5.0-6.0 for a year-plus now. I want to move both in the other direction, obviously, but not really at the cost of panic-monitoring everything like I did the first few months after diagnosis.