I am just over half way through the fast 800. So many people are saying how wonderful they feel and how they want to continue on. I do feel ok and I’m loving the weight loss
But
I miss carbs. I miss potatoes, fresh bread, the ease of sandwiches and rice. Will I ever be able to add them back into my diet or has diabetes killed my ability to process these for ever?
I’d love to hear more about how others have coped with the transition.
Thanks
Not sure – I’m focusing on this phase for now.
I did start looking at low carb bread in a supermarket, but didn’t buy it because I really want to use this phase of BSD to get to my goals (40-50kg in all, so I’m assuming BSD for longer than 8 weeks) to get used to eating without automatically adding carbs to each meal – for the same reasons, I use stevia to sweeten things occasionally, but only maybe two or three times a week, and tiny amounts.
I haven’t read the follow up stages of 5:2/Mediterranean diet etc, but I imagine the answer is yes, but in huge moderation.
If your diabetes is reversed and your blood sugars are back in normal range, you should be able to have them occasionally, but if you revert to having them with the same frequency/quantities that you did before, I guess there’s a danger that the blood sugars start rising again.
I think the trouble with refined carbs (as opposed to the low GL carbs we’re recommended on the BSD) is that they can be addictive, and so when you eat them, the body craves more, and you can be sucked back in.
MM in the book speaks about his yearning for toast, which he tries to keep under control as an occasional treat, not a regular option. My family has been discussing the ‘roast potato conundrum’ especially at Christmas, when I try to cook ‘too many roast potatoes’ for the family, as they are so lovely to eat. I won’t be changing this target this Christmas, so I will be really interested in how I feel about it by then.
I suppose it’s being aware of the likely consequences of eating refined carbs, and guarding against them being first of all a treat, then a regular treat and then no treat at all but just what you customarily eat – which got us all into this in the first place.
And I should perhaps have added that some people have reported eating refined carbs after a period of avoiding them, and finding there were after effects which, on consideration, they felt weren’t worth it – for example, sleepiness after eating a sandwich etc.
I’ve given up sugar (all those wasted calories!!!) and haven’t used sweeteners as they can have an equivalent effect, and I can’t see myself ever going back to that.
It all depends on whether you think of this as a ‘diet’ or as a ‘healthy way of life’. Syb, its not just that your diabetes means you can’t process carbs; diabetes is caused by refined carbs, so you really don’t want to reintroduce them. We have all seen everyone around us lose weight and then put it back on again because they went back to their old habits. What makes you think this programme would be any different? You are losing weight because you are not eating that stuff so if you want to keep it off, the change has to be for life. That’s not to say that one sandwich or one plate of pasta will destroy everything, it won’t, but they really do have to be few and far between, exceptions to your new rules.
Hello the newly released healthy eating guide that supports our way but takes it a bit further can be found here;
Read report as a PDF document or downloaded and/or print it. it is a riveting read and trashes the NHS guidance that we have been complaining about. It suggests that carbs may be reintroduced if low GI and low therefore low starch in some measure even up to 130 gm/day! but only once we have had our daily fats and proteins that stop us feeling hungry. For me it is a next steps document and makes sense more than the previous guide that I have commented on before.
The National Obesity Forum page re the report that caused the furore is here; http://www.nationalobesityforum.org.uk
Thank you all for your input. Janet, I think of it as both I guess. 800 calories a day and no bread, pasta or rice is not I feel sustainable. With diabetes I had already cut out most potatoes, eating low gi ones and I had mostly cut out white bread, replacing it with multigrain or other low gi versions. I am still finding it very hard, particularly at lunch when I have spent most of my life, 40+ years! having sandwiches.
I believed a large part of the fast 800 was to clear the fat out of our internal organs, particularly the pancreas?
I am curious about how full on carbs will affect us and whether despite being back at normal blood sugars they will still create a diabetic spike?
Thank you for the link Skywalker. I found it very encouraging that healthcare practitioners will be better informed. An elderly parent has just developed Type 2 and the advice she was given hasn’t been anywhere near MM’s book guidelines. If she’d been given the advice in this leaflet I would have been happy.
Has anyone read about ‘Banting’ or Real Meal revolution? I listened to a really interesting lecture by Prof Tim Noakes on how industry engineered the low fat, high carb diet messgae in the 60s/70s. I can’t link it here are it was in a subscription based site. Google videos by prof Tim Noakes.
https://vimeo.com/136374130
He had to face a hearing in South Africa for his advice. Big companies (Pharma & food) really don’t like to have contradictory ideas voiced.
Thing is, if you go back to eating how you were before, your weight and any health issues will go back to how they were before.
(You won’t need to stick to 800 calories long term though. That’s just to lose the weight. Once you have, you’ll need to consume at least double that to maintain a healthy weight)
I don’t want to go completely back but I would like to find out if others have readded some of the ‘bad’ carbs
Hi Syb,
This is one of those things that we each have to make our own decision about. Obviously, having lost weight & feeling so much better as a result of this diet, none of us want to ruin all the work and pile the pounds back on. Like you, I like a nice sandwich (Tesco’s remaindered counter is one of my favourite haunts! Sad!!) – but rather than being my “what shall I stuff myself with tonight” option, it really is just an occasional treat. While I was only ever just an occasional potato/rice/pasta eater, I am not going to deny myself the occasional risotto (with proper rice), or roast potatoes (if I’m eating out), even a decent loaf of bread. Darn it, I still like highly processed sausages – Quorn ones are OK but they just don’t set my taste buds alight!
I’m not diabetic so I guess my health issues are slightly different to yours. I have recently tried reintroducing a few things I’ve cut out. I also was a bit lax about late night eating. And I didn’t do quite as much exercise. Guess, what: my weight loss stalled, even went up slightly. So very quickly I restricted things again and have now got rid of the excess. If I want to reach my target then I can’t relax things too much. So the moral of this tale is keep an eye on the scales, snugness of clothes, any medical readings you might be taking (but no need to get obsessive about it) and if you find you are gaining weight again you know exactly what you need to do to nip things in the bud.
Everything in moderation. A little restriction to keep things in check is much better than having to start from scratch again.
I guess it’s moderation and control. 5 weeks in and I can quite happily ignore the cakes and chocolate that I used to consume daily but I DO miss fresh bread and rice. I’m more in RozyDozy’s camp where I am not diabetic so the carb avoidance is not so critical however I don’t want to go back to feeling sluggish (or the next size trousers!) so longterm moderation will be the key..(oh and I had a couple of roasties with my lunch the other week..it’s not the end of the world!)
I am a bit disappointed in that the diet controls my BG, but isn’t a diabetes cure for me. Perhaps I expected too much. My Dad and Granddad were both stick thin and diabetic.
My morning/fasting BGs are now not diabetic levels, and if I stick to no-carb, or (for me) safe carbs, everything is OK, but one, occasional test, toasted teacake, with a coffee, sends my BG high still. I am down to 9 1/2 stone (63 male 5′ 8″) and dropping off the end of clothing sizes, but still firmly diabetic. My HbA1c would be OK, but a glucose test would still fail me, I’m sure.
As I said, a bit disappointed as it seems to have proved my diabetic nurse right..
Steve and Ei
I don’t think your diabetic nurse has quite won the argument just yet. How long have you been type 2? I ask as we know that long term t2 can take longer to respond or not respond as well as newly diagnosed sufferers. Also, you don’t say if you are medication or just food-controlled. If you are only food-controlled, then you have won, because you have proved that you can control your bs by sticking to low carb – as you say, your safe carb limit. I don’t know if you are already reading around other websites but I would point you in the direction of Jason Fung who has a good website and wrote an excellent book called ‘the obesity code’ , he is a kidney specialist and treats t2d, and also the dietdoctor.com website. Both these sources offer more insights into reversing t2d.
I was labelled T2 diabetic about 4 years ago, after a year of “pre-diabetic”. I was never particularly overweight. I was advised, from the start, to stick to the “healthy” low fat, high fibre diet, and so progressed from pre-diabetic to diabetic, and the final straw, was “you need tablets”. That’s when I decided something different was needed, and ended up buying the “8 Week…” book.
I suppose what I’m saying is that when I was told, on the Diabetic Education course, that it was incurable, in my case certainly, it seems, she was right. But when she said you can only get worse, take tablets, more tablets, then insulin, she was wrong, thankfully. I’m better, in the sense that my BG is under control, but the underlying condition is still there. The occasional carb, or wine, slip up proves it. So nothing is actually “reversed”.
I am fairly happy sticking to a low carb diet, and can’t imagine giving up and taking tablets instead, which several T2 diabetics have suggested to me is a preferable way to go.
Don’t let me put anyone off – control, even if that’s all it is, is good!
Steve and Ei
I can’t help but see the irony in your story. Of course your nurse was right as you had been prescribed the exact diet that we now know causes t2d! Its the equivalent of telling someone the way to heal a broken leg is to walk on it! Low fat almost inevitably leads to high carb so its no wonder t2d is seen as a progressive illness. We do as the doctors say and go lower and lower fat, higher and higher carb and the results are catastrophic. But the answer really is to switch this all around – go high fat in every way possible and low carb in every way possible.
There is plenty of medical opinion out there now which suggests people have different tolerances to carbs and I personally think, although I haven’t been pre-diabetic, I have a very low tolerance to carbs so they make me gain weight very quickly. I wonder too, that after prolonged abstinence from carbs, I may be even more sensitive to them and my body simply doesn’t know what to do with them. So yes, I agree that its better to stay away from them.
I find myself coming back to my point at the start of this thread that no, we can’t go back to carbs but we were never intended to, humans were never designed to et them in the first place.
The way I see it (from my personal circumstances anyway), I’ve cut out all refined carbs completely (apart from the odd , ahem, beer or wine). I can’t even be bothered to make quinoa/bulgar wheat, etc even though I bought loads of it thinking I’d miss rice. But do you know what, I don’t!
I’m not counting calories (not diabetic or prediabetic, was just 2-3 stone over weight) and apart from strictly not eating refined carbs I’m not even trying to eat less, and the weight keeps on coming off. I’m going to get to a point soonish where I am lean and really shouldn’t lose any more weight, and I think at that point I’m going to have to reintroduce things like brown rice, brown pasta and maybe some cornflour tortilla wraps, otherwise I’ll just keep on losing weight!
I don’t think I’ll ever go back to pasta and chilli tomato sauce most evening like I used to. It’s all about moderation. I’ll definitely be having the occasional pizza/burger, but they will be reserved for when I go out with family/special occasions which to be honest, are quite a rarity.
Hi,
I’m similar to Timmy (“I’m not counting calories (not diabetic or prediabetic, was just 2-3 stone over weight)”) – and I feel just like Timmy regarding having things in moderation. I’ve relaxed things in recent weeks and I’ve noticed if I do have things that are higher carb my weight loss stalls/rises slightly so I just go back to the BSD way of eating. We each have to experiment but keeping a watchful eye on things is the way to maintain all the good work we’ve achieved.