I saw my GP today and he told me my HbA1C is the same as his and my blood glucose level is normal!
Finally!!!
However, I’ve only lost 2 kilos in the past year and particularly on 800 calories I don’t seem able to lose weight…but I have normalized my blood glucose. I am happy with that but do really want to lose the weight (BMI 34).

I am thinking of trying food replacement approach for 60 days but am a bit intimidated and not sure if it will work…am worried about slowing my metabolism and aggravating my type 2 diabetes…any info on this, for people who have a very hard time losing weight?

I am ecstatic to have got normal blood sugar levels now, so my efforts with 800 calories haven’t been a “failure”….just am not getting any lighter quickly enough…way slower than everyone I’ve read about here. I have really bad insulin resistance and I am completely diet controlled with my diabetes now…no meds. Blood pressure perfect. GP can’t really believe that for an overweight person I am as healthy as I am. I see the shock in his eyes when he looks at my numbers. Fortunately, he believes what I tell him about what I eat and is encouraging. In the past, I have experienced disbelief from medicos who really do think its down to claories. With me, seems it really isn’t!!

Open to suggestion. Intended fasting (bone broth) but haven’t been able to get going with it, hence idea of trying the meal replacements. A bit confused currently

Hi
you mention calories a lot but not carbohydrates. Are you monitoring them and your fat intake? Are you drinking 2 to 3 litres of water per day? Have you read the book ?
To stay on 800 calories for a year and lose only 2 kilos seems a bit strange

Reason I mention calories is this is a calorie focussed diet site we are on, 800 cals a day as far as I know.
I started 5:2 quite a while ago, then moved onto bone broth since 5:2 didn’t help me lose weight.
I don’t eat any simple carbs nor do I drink alcohol at all, just protein, fat and salad type veggies.
Perhaps my 2 kilos loss sounds “unusual” to you…I don’t know if you are type 2 diabetic nor how many long term type 2 severely insulin resistant diabetics NOT on medication you have been around and whose numbers you have looked at. I didn’t have to give up alcohol and most of the other carbs people write about getting rid of here, I haven’t eaten that way for years nor do I drink.

What actually IS unusual, is that my blood sugar is now perfect and I am taking NO medications (and I have massive insulin resistance and have had for many years, prior ev en to the diabetes diagnosis). I am not sure how many type 2 diabetics will be able to say that.

I was diagnosed some years ago with type 2 diabetes but with perfectly normal blood sugar now and a perfect BP…I am not worried by my health profile, I just would like to lose weight so I don’t need to exercise this vigorous control that I currently have to in order to control my insulin without medications…and want to know if anyone knows would I do better with the meal replacements than I am currently doing controlling my food intake so very rigorously.

I started this blood sugar diet some months ago but it actually entails me eating more than I was when I broke it down and looked at the claories of my previous diet… I have controlled my blood sugar by not eating at all when my BGL is high…so most days eat once with a lot of broth fasting days where I eat no other food. It is certainly working to reverse my diabetes BUT…my intended query was about the meal replacement approach… if anyone knows about it in comparison with fasting and other VLCD such as the blood sugar diet.

Does it do better in comparison studies, does anyone know?

Yes, I’ve read the book and have posted here previously.

Have I offended you in some way ?
You asked a question, I tried to help
For your information I am type 2 long standing and I am off meds now thanks to this diet.
The reason I used the word unusual was, as you know yourself, 800 calories is an extremely low figure for someone to lose only a small amount of weight over such a long period of time
Good luck to you.

Not offended.

I want to try to find out about meal replacement as compared to Low Calorie diet or low carb diet. I recall the original research that this diet is based on was done on meal replacements if I am not mistaken. so, I wanted to access that info if it is available.

I joined this forum in March and was previously (for a few years) on the fast diet forum.

Ok I’m glad we are pals 🙂
The original research carried out by Prof Taylor at Newcastle university (just along the road from me as it happens) Used meal replacement shakes, I think they were the Optifast brand and the participants had great success, all reversed the diabetes and lost lots of weight
Whatever replacement you decide to go with, check the labels as others have found that some of them have hidden sugars and carbs as ingredients.
Hope that helps

I followed the Newcastle protocol but used Tesco’s Ultraslim in place of Optifast. They are sachets that you make up with skimmed milk (Optifast is made up with water as it has dried milk in it already). Quite palatable I found, and a range of flavours. Do drink lots of water, black tea or black coffee and lots of veg that grow above ground, i.e not roots like potato or parsnips. In the eight weeks I lost a shade under 15kg, i.e 98kg down to 83kg.

Thanks Bill. 🙂

Guthlac thank you for that information and fantastically well done on that incredible weight loss. i will go search for the Newcastle protocol.

???Are you finding it okay as you came off the meal replacements? I am frankly terrified of getting a slowed metabolism while on the shakes and then having a rebound weight gain as I start to eat again. I know that with full broth fasting the metabolism ramps up rather than down, that’s why I have been using it as my control.

I am in Australia and there is a local replacement here that includes Omega 3s, reportedly better than the Optifast, a lot less sugar…it is covered by private health insurance companies for 20 weeks to treat diabetes, osteoarthritis and weight problems.

I recently joined a research study (for knee oseoarthritis) and got randomized into the diet and exercise group…”the diet” is meal replacements… hence my present acute and sudden interest. I got a box delivered today and I am sitting looking at a range of different flavoured soups and drinks. It looks pretty good to me but I’m still worried about the coming off back to food part of the process.

I’ll try to find the Newcastle study info.

Thanks again for the repsonses!

So sorry about all my typos.
The soups I’m eating are really tasty…way better than I expected. They have the skim milk built in but they contain Maltodextrin and glucose syrup solids, and sucrose too (presumably for flavour), which I find bizarre and a bit alarming.

Anyways I am following the Newcastle diet as researched by Prof Taylor. Will try for a week and see how I go.

I have the same problem. I have not found the answer though. I am fasting, eating LCHF, Go my Blood sugar’s down, eliminated Dawn Phenomenon and weight just hangs on.

thewolf5 Sorry to hear that for you but glad for me I am not the only one in this boat!
I tried LCHF too but simply couldn’t lose weight on it. Nor did 800 cals a day seem to have any effect for me. I’ve not counted calories before so wasn’t aware how many I was eating, but it wasn’t a lot.
Most of my friends find my diet the healthiest they have encountered so there isn’t much in the way of food to remove…hence my next step being the meal replacements. I do think probably the healthiest way for me to go is the full broth fasting and one meal every two days…but it is a bit hard so am hoping this meal replacement thing will do it and then I can kick startt my metabolism with the broth fasting if it slows.
Still have dawn higher BGL til about 2 pm but HbA1c is normal and has been for awhile…and so is fasting BGL…as long as it’s not in the morning!
I’m keeping on with the 600 (or so) a day for a week and will let you know how it goes. I’m having 3 meal replacement sachets a day and one salad with green veggies like kale and grated carrot.

I’m hoping guthlac wwill come back and tell us how he’s getting on post replacements…:)

I really wish I had medical advice about how to proceed but quite honestly I can’t find anyone who knows much about diet at all…they all advise me to eat bread and fruit at which stage i switch off cause I know they are clueless when it comes to what will in reality work or not for me.

Can I suggest that you could use an app – such as MyFitnessPal, there are other alternatives – to log in your calories and see what the balance of (good) carbs, fat and protein is?

You could also use http://keto-calculator.ankerl.com to review how many carbs you want within your 800 BSD calorie allowance.
There are also things called Ketostix, which are readily available online, which you use to test your urine (very simple and quick to do) to see if you are in ketosis, and burning fat.

I started the BSD not because I had a really great amount of weight to lose, but because I wanted more control, to lose c 20lbs (ideal weight 9 stone), and to stop what looked to me like a bit of carbohydrate addiction.

After a week or so, I followed up (on advice from this forum) this balance of calories stuff, and have found that choosing a target grams of carbs per day (some people here work on 50gms per day, I am targeting myself slightly lower) to suit yourself will kick-start more weight loss. Although fat does seem to hang on desperately by its fingernails, doesn’t it.

Since then, I can see I am in ketosis from the Ketostix and am therefore definitely burning fat from somewhere. It didn’t show on the scales, no big losses, but I can tell from my body shape it is going. I also know that if I am burning fat then I am probably doing it from around my liver and pancreas, which is GREAT NEWS!.

I have also been told that, when burning fat, it is this visceral fat which goes first, and only then the subcutaneous fat (the stuff you can see). This makes sense when you don’t see a loss on scales, but are fat burning, and your waist size goes down. That’s the visceral fat starting to go. Only at the very end is the subcutaneous fat being lost from the most persistent spot – under the navel (the ‘belly wedge’ as it’s been called here.

So my advice is to do a bit more research on the constituents of your calories, and see whether in tweaking these a bit to up the fat and protein, and restrict the carbs a bit, that you can see more weight loss. But if you are feeling good, seeing changes in body shape, then not to attach too much value to weight itself – if your clothes are looser, you are definitely losing (and winning!).

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the suggestions and advice Igorasusual. It is quite true that if you are burning fat it is probably from the areas around your middle and organs first…my problem is specifically…it is very difficult to burn fat for me and I have been tracking with ketostix for awhile now.

I have been using a phone app (from samsung) also for awhile now after it was recommended to me by a kind lady on this forum, so I do have a good handle on how much carb etc I was eating in my 600 cals to a very precise degree.

600 calories a day doesn’t get me personally into fat burning and I am extremely envious of those it works for.

I have really very severe insulin resistance obviously.

It seems I need to actually water fast on alternate days and that is now working for me. I am drinking coffee a lot! The good thing is the ketostix indicate the fat burning has really ramped up fast so my poor body haveing finally got the insulin down a notch is responding like anything. I am now almost back to the weight I was at a year ago. 🙂 I anticipate no further issues.

I got the book The Obesity Code and finally got to the guidelines at the end…and am now following Jason Fung’s rather easy and clear fasting protocol to the letter…along with the FODMAP diet and Paleo guidelines!!!

It is a lot easier than it may sound.

This week I finally lost a smidge more than 2 kilos so am now FINALLY onto what will work for me which it appears is a little more exacting than the general but that’s okay…I really am willing to do whatever works.

It is very counterintuitive but it seems that a small low carb meal of protein and veggies every second day (water the rest of the time) is what it takes for my body to let go of the insulin levels and hence the fat starts burning.

My blood sugar levels are continuing to improve way beyond my expectations now, I am well into the “normal” range all the time except morning for a short few hours…so I am going to keep on with this and see if I can get to a healthy weight this way.

I have actually been controlling my diabetes with low carb for quite a while…but my weight has continued to be a problem. I clearly would have survived great famines in the middle ages!!!

I am certainly not metabolically “normal”…the problem with my insulin levels is well known to me and I have been keeping track of it now for 20 years, way before I was diabetic I was severely hypoglycaemic back in the early 90s…it has just taken years to get to the right protocol and information to change it, with a great deal of medical misinformation and misadventure along the way and diabetes 2 as a consequence. Better late than never and I am fortunate I haven’t lost my feet or had a heart attack in the meantime as so many diabetic mellitis people have.

It works better for me to fast alternate days than to do longer water/broth fasting too…no idea why! I am unable to find a doctor here to support me in this, however, I am doing pretty well on my own nowthat I am armed with the right information.

The meal replacements I tried and was very optimistic about due to the Newcastle study. They weren’t possible for me to continue with because I reacted quite badly to the lactose and wheat and possibly soy flour they contained ’cause I have IBS.

It’s unfortunate because they were supplied for an osteoarthritis study I joined (I got caught up in an armed robbery at my local post office 18 years ago which left me with buggered arthritic knees). That means I cannot any longer do much aerobic exercise but I am ramping up my step count daily.

It seems to me I am now on track. It’s way easier than I would have expected now I am here and am glad I am finally on the right side of the darn scales. I tell you, I was just about ready to bin them!

Hi Matrika

Well you have done a great deal of research, and have lots of experience on what does and doesn’t work for you, most evidently. Fantastic to hear that you have finally established a regime which seems to be what your body responds best to – and now you are fat burning, which is what we all aspire to.

I very much admire your persistence, and willingness to do whatever it takes, to get things underway – it’s posts like yours which inspire people to keep on with the BSD (or their version of it), and make this such a good forum.

Thank you for your time in telling us what’s going on with you, and every best wish for your onward journey!