For my 59th birthday, I was diagnosed with diabetes (from my mother), Hashimoto’s (from my father), and vitamin D deficiency. I am determined to follow a different course than prior generations, as the first one in my generation to manifest the family disease (everyone older than I am who is a descendant of my maternal grandfather has diabetes).

By 2 hours after diagnosis, I had settled on (and started) a diet far lower in carbohydrates than the standard medical recommendation – with the goal of keeping my blood sugar within normal range by dietary management. I also used the diagnosis as motivation to lose weight, even though the family version of this beast does not seem to be weight/lifestyle-related (I inherited it from an active string bean). It can’t hurt – and I’d been looking for motivation to lose weight. I’m down 49 lbs (24% of my starting weight) but have no greater tolerance for carbs than the day I was diagnosed.

But my A1c is 5.7% (down from 7.2% at diagnosis). Management by carb control works for me. I can still probably count on 2 hands the number of times my BG has been above 7.8 since 3 days post-diagnosis, when I finally got brave enough to test it. But I’m not looking forward to adding as many fat calories as I would need to add once I hit my maintenance weight, in order to avoid overdosing on carbs or proteins. So – hope springs eternal! The most recent Newcastle Diet study intrigues me – and has me hoping for remission, rather than management.

After as much research as my time permits me, it appears to me that what triggers remission is fasting or a near equivalent. So I’m going to try a bit of both – the BSD combined (most days) with an 8 hour eating window. (The minimum effective fasting period seems to be 16-18 hours – so just barely long enough to add a little bump perhaps.)

Since I’m already on a 1200 calorie (or less) diet – and have been for nearly 6 months – dropping another 400 calories is not as significant as it is for most people. I’m curious to see whether either my particular flavor of diabetes (apparently unrelated to weight, based on family history) or the fact that I have already been eating so close to 800 calories will have an impact on the outcome.

So, until I hit my goal weight – 19 lbs away – I’ll be eating BSD and 16:8 IF most days. I’m guessing that will take 4-6 weeks. At that point I’ll re-evaluate whether to drop below my goal weight – or shift to maintenance (possibly including 36:12 IF) for a while.

Days 1 & 2 have been uneventful. There have been quite a few days in the past 6 months I’ve come home with 300 calories left, out of the 1200, and have eaten something just to use up the calories. For the next part of my journey, that will no longer be a worry!

Hi neohdiver
stop worrying about adding fat to your diet. It is one of the essential ingredients for success as it will keep you feeling fuller and force your body into fat burning mode thus losing weight.
You will also discover the other benefits such as bettter sleep and a feeling of wellness.
That 19 pounds shouldn’t take too long to shift, looking forward to hearing ypur progress.

Hi neohdiver, welcome to the forums. I was very interested in your post. I too have hashimotos and in the three months before I found this diet I was steadily, and scarily, gaining weight despite never eating more than 500 to 1300 calories.
After 8 /9 weeks of this diet I began increasing my calories to 900 – 1200 calories a day and find I am still fat burning (I use ketostix to check) and slowly losing the last of the belly fat. This happens if you start eating FAT! I know, it is counterintuitive but NECCESSARY!

If you are thin you could well be a TOFI – thin outside fat inside – Michael Mosley was.
I would get all your tests redone now and again in 4 weeks. I know the fat is scary, it took me 2 weeks to dare to eat it, and so far I have lost 2 stones 8lbs and have a BMI of 21.7. Like I said, the ketostix still show I am fat burning. If you look at Bill1954’s posts – he’s the person we all look up to – you will see his cholesterol rates dropped after 4 weeks into this diet. As for his other results….well check them out!!

Diabetes and hypothyroidism are closely connected – they are both metabolic problems so you were unfortunate to inherit from both sides of your family. You aren’t the only person who has decided to do 16:8 at the same time as fast 800. It makes complete sense!

Please keep posting about your progress as we all love to hear about people’s successes. If you have any queries there is always someone on the forums ready to help.

Good luck on your journey – not that you need luck on this diet – stick with it and see those numbers change!

🙂

Looks like we began our replies at the same time Bill! Just took me a long time to type! 🙂

Of course it did, you’re a woman, you have a lot to say 😀

Well, I can see by your responses that abbreviating the details, so my initial post would not be 10 miles long, backfired – since you both seem to think I’m afraid of fat. So here’s more of the story.

My body can only tolerate 20 grams of carbohydrates and stay within non-diabetic BG ranges (my primary goal). Because diabetes carries with it a risk of kidney damage – and a fairly high proportion of people with even pre-diabetic BG levels have kidney disease – I choose to be safe rather than sorry, and treat my kidneys as if they are damaged and limit my protein to moderate levels (about 60 grams a day). I also treat that as a target rather than a cap since protein is essential to maintain muscle.

That means that at 1200 calories a day, even if I eat the maximum carbohydrates my body will tolerate (around 60 grams) and cap the protein at 60 grams, I have 720 calories left that can only come from fat. I’ve actually been eating between 60 and 80 grams of fat every day for nearly 6 months (since the day I was diagnosed). As a side note, I’ve already had follow-up bloodwork – the A1c and the lipid panel are all normal.

Ironically, eating the BSD will mean lowering the fat content in my diet by about 50% I still want to maximize the carbs I eat in order to take advantage of the micronutrients they contain, and the protein is a target (based on my lean muscle mass). That means the 400 calories I am cutting out will come primarily from fats.

It is the same reality that is driving my concerns about moving to maintenance at perhaps 1500 calories. Unless my carb tolerance changes, the carbs and protein are relatively fixed (assuming I want to maximize my carbs and maintain normal blood glucose. The additional 300 calories have to come from fat. (Added to the 60 – 80 grams I am already currently eating.)

There is a difference between including fat in reasonable quantities as part a balanced diet, and having 70% (or more) of my calories come from fat. If I cannot put diabetes into remission – or at least increase my carbohydrate tolerance – it may be necessary. But it will be the lesser of two poor choices (elevated blood glucose v. a very fat-heavy diet).

I”m not skinny – my weight goal still puts me in the top half of the normal BMI range. (But my body shape is between hourglass and pear, so I have never carried my weight as belly fat – aside from relatively evenly adding fat all over when I gain weight.) The person from whom I inherited my diabetes (my maternal grandfather) was an active string bean. 100% of his descendants my age or older have been diagnosed with diabetes- and based on their weight/activity levels/impact of losing weight after diagnosis – the particular family strain seems not to be linked to weight.

Dr. Taylor suggests that losing a substantial amount of weight, alone, should be sufficient – especially for someone who does so within 4 years of diagnosis. He defined substantial as 15% of your body weight (or a quantity that I can’t track down right now – but it is less than I have already lost). His time frame for the change in metabolism for recently diagnosed individuals is somewhat short of 8 weeks, based on the duration of the diet.

I was diagnosed not quite 6 months ago (and my doctor has been testing every year, so I have been diabetic at most 18 months). I have already dropped 49 pounds – 24% of my body weight since diagnosis. According to Dr. Taylor’s criteria I should already be in remission. My A1c is normal. But it is normal not because my BG metabolism has changed – but because of intensive dietary management. My morning glucose regularly rises to 6.9 by late morning, before eating anything), and if I eat more than 20 grams of carbs (or the wrong 20 grams of carbs), my BG has the same response it did the day I was diagnosed. In other words, so far this is acting as I expected my family strain to act – as if weight is irrelevant.

The fact that it continues to seem weight-independent was one of the primary motivators to try either IF or the 800 calorie diet. Both of those (like LC-moderate protein) seem to work for weight-independent reasons. Unlike LC-moderate protein, BSD and IF seem to trigger remission rather than disease management)

Well Bill, I’m a bit disappointed! I’ve been waiting for Judith to bite back but she obviously hasn’t read it yet. Thought that would be good for a laugh or two. Think you were hoping the same too 😉
Hi neohdiver, your story is very similar to my family history. You might find, as I have, that your personal fat threshold is very low. I have to stay at the lowest end of my healthy weight range. Then I can have around 50g carbs a day, occasionally pushing it out to 60g but I haven’t experimented with anything higher than that.
Your normal HbA1c and high fasting readings suggest to me that although your low carbs control your blood sugar really well overall, your liver must still be getting rid of it’s stored sugar. Have you had any indications of a very fatty liver from tests?
Once you get down to your personal fat threshold you should be able to increase your carbs and maintain your blood sugar in the non diabetic range.

Cherrianne – no suggestion of fatty liver from tests. 3-5 years ago, my liver enzymes were elevated at my annual physical. That happened to have been fewer than 24 hours after my birthday meal – at which I’d had 1-2 margaritas. Follow-up tests – and every annual test since then – were absolutely normal. I just appear to be abnormally sensitive to alcohol.

If I have to get to the bottom of my BMI normal range people will freak out. I’m not in the normal range yet, and at least one person has already expressed concern about my weight being borderline too low. Because of my build, people routinely put my weight at 20-30 lbs lower than it is.

My carb limit is 20 net in a 3 hour period, so I can already have 60 net/day – as long as I space them out well.

My liver is definitely is still doing the glycogen to glucose conversion to wake me up in the morning (and until it recognizes I’ve broken my overnight fast). As I understand it, that’s part of the purpose of a fasting period – the glycogen stores run out after 16-18 hours, so a fast at least that long depletes them. But there’s some signaling mechanism (beyond the first phase response telling it that food is on the way) that has to be malfunctioning since it just keeps dumping long after it gave me the energy I needed to get out of bed. But that’s beyond where I was able to get in terms of understanding, given my currently limited time for research.

I just noticed I posted this in the welcome section, rather than where I intended to post it (the 800 calorie section). Guess I’ll post a new one (as a progress thread) in the right place at the end of my first week.

Hi neohdiver,
That’s good news about your liver. I must have misunderstood your earlier post because I thought you were only able to eat 20g carb per day, not per meal. Oops! 🙂
60g per day seems reasonable to me, we are not going to be able to eat a high carb diet or we will end up back where we started.
You are right about the signalling mechanism. There is a specific hormone lacking that signals the liver to stop releasing glycogen after that very early am rush. Can’t recall the name of it right now but it is explained in references to the dawn phenomenon.

Cherrianne –

I’m greedy. I would like to be able to eat normal servings of beans – nearly always more than 20 in a serving, and an occasional piece of whole grain bread, occasionally rice, and occasionally some root veggies (carrots and sweet potatoes come to mind), and I would like a better macro balance – not a high carb diet, but a reasonable balance..

As a generality, the Mediterranean style diet isn’t about eating more than 1000 calories of fat a day – it is about eating reasonable quantities of healthy fats (one guideline says 30-40%). If I don’t improve my glucose tolerance, I’ll be stuck living on 1000 calories of fat a day (roughly 67% – if I maximize carbs and protein daily). I don’t think that is optimal – and it is not something I enjoy. (It also requires a mindfulness to the micronutrient content of the carbohydrates I do eat that I know myself well enough to know that I can’t sustain beyond about 3 years.)

I may not get there – but my goal is to flip whatever switch needs to be flipped to put this beast in remission.