Hi there everyone. Hello to regulars on our monthly thread but don’t forget we are here to welcome newbies and lurkers. If you want a caring and non-judgemental group of people to help you on your weight loss or health journey, you have come to the right place.

Please feel free to join us and let June be the month when you really make a difference to your half year resolutions. Whatever that might be. Besides the dieting information there are several diabetics on the thread who are happy to share the knowledge they have gained with both controlling, resolving or living with diabetes along with their weight loss.

Come and join us or just say hello.

See you all on Sunday 1st June.

Thank you s-g. Lovely bright and breezy name for this thread. I look forward to contributing.

Will see you all here tomorrow (Sunday 1st June). Have a great evening.

Hi to you all and here’s to a motivated and successful June.

My results for May are 1kg which was my goal but still feels a little low and could do better if I could get my head and body back into dieting mode. Good news is the pool is getting warmer and I hope to be swimming in the next few days. Then maybe I will lose some weight.

As it goes, we have a night out on Monday but after that nothing for another month. So hoping to be back on track.

Let us know how you are all getting on and what your aims and goals are whether they are diet related or something else.

Well done s-g.

My ‘Marvellous May’ result was anything but ‘marvellous’!

Anyway we are now in ‘Joyful June’.

Hopefully ‘The Joys of June’ will be reflected at the end of the month!

Enjoy June everyone!

Joyous June is showing great promise.
The sun is shining and the recent rain has helped the vegetable seedlings to put on a spurt of growth. Luckily I haven’t followed that trend.
11 months on from discovering this diet I have had some ups and downs.. Now, at 10st 1lb, I am the lightest I have been for 40 years!!!! BMI 24 and tests showing a steady 5mmol/L. Waist one inch off half my height!! All thanks to the Michael Mosely BSD.

Well done Pootle, I remember when you first started, seems an age away.

I think the mistake I am making right now is we are trying to clear the freezer and to be honest most of the stuff that has been there for yonks are rubbish, which is probably why we haven’t eaten it before. Saturday we had spare ribs which are high in calories but thought a salad would counter that. It is not because the house is for sale (or will be when we sign the mandate) it is just that we keep buying the same things and I wanted to be clear what we have and start using it all. For example, I have 3 bags of frozen peas. So basically I am not really following any sort of diet plan. I will get back on it tomorrow after our night out and still aiming for another kilo for June.

Keep on keeping on…

Great news Pootle! Especially good to hear your bloods are steady too. It would have been so easy for you to give up when you had that one disappointing test. Just shows that nothing in life goes in a straight line and we just have to draw a line through the fluctuating graph to get the ‘real’ trend.

S-g you know I think we are just ‘stale’! It’s so hard to ‘keep on keeping on ….’ for as long as we have! Can’t believe we are coming up to our 9th birthday! I guess for me my ‘reason’ for staying low carb is to keep my bloods ‘normal’ and keeping my T2 in remission. We can’t know how many people actually use this WOL to successfully keep their T2 in remission but for me now it’s over 8 years. I’m just happy to be drug free and anything else is a bonus!

Freezers …. oh dear! I must admit I don’t have a great amount of stuff we don’t eat I just have too much of it! Then I forget to plan ahead and so I forget to take some chicken or something out and have to buy more, because I’ve not left enough time for it to defrost! Maybe I should just get a bit more organised!

Enjoy your night out s-g.

Not looking forward to weighing tomorrow but I will and then my ‘June’ will begin and hopefully June will really be full of ‘joys’.

After night out at the quiz, we came 2nd to last…… I actually lost a smidge of weight. Feeling better today and had a well planned menu of boiled eggs then a grilled halloumi and bacon salad for lunch. Dinner is being made by hubby so I just have to put up with it but its not too bad – meatballs in a tomato, pepper and onion sauce. No white carbs.

Getting bloods done on Thursday and that will be a shock as I weigh 2 kilos more and my results might not be so good. Seeing doctor next week but not my usual Dr gorgeous – so I cant really go into all the things I want to say – like why do you give me a drug that makes me fat then tut tut when you weigh me.

House went on the market today – a couple of photos are a bit rubbish but I have asked her to come and re-take them as they are from when we had it up for sale 4 years ago and things have changed – like the bathroom.

Have a good rest of week.

Hello – I’m back again. Time to lose it and really hopefully for it to stay off this time. 72 inches tall so my stomach should be 36 and instead it’s 42.

I’ve just completed day 2 and found it fine so far, as I usually do. I’m eating two meals a Day, one at 1pm and one at 6. Yesterday it was a protein shake and at 6pm, chicken breast, cottage cheese and salad, today two boiled eggs and at 6pm trout, prawns, cottage cheese and salad.

I’m 52 and cannot keep putting the weight back on – it’s solely down to drinking wine and eating cheese in the week, which I really want to restrict to weekends once I’ve got my weight down. Wish me luck!

Welcome back Simon. Glad you have decided to join us. I cant do 2 meals a day as the hunger seems to catch up with me, plus I am diabetic and have to keep my BG steady. Hopefully you have no such problems.

Nothing to report, weight the same. New gardener came and did a sh-t job and doubled the price he quoted. It wasn’t a written quote so dont think we have any come back. Will go back to my usual guy who does the job in one day whereas this guy kept coming and going and it took him 4 days (not full days). I have told the person who recommended him and she is going to have words, but I won’t be recommending him or employing him again. He will learn that you can’t come over the France, set yourself up and then not play by the rules. We have a joke here that Brits come over on the ferry and gain a certificate in building/carpentary/plumbing or whatever on the trip over and set themselves up in business – they don’t last long.

Raining today so not doing much. Nurse coming in the morning so I will be fasting from 8pm although cholesterol is not on my prescription but creatinine instead as well as HbA1c. Hey ho, will see what the doctor says next week.

Today is the one year anniversary of the death of our beloved Michael Mosley. Sending all our best wishes to his wife and family. Without him many of us would not still be here or would be in a much worse state of health. He was our hero and always will be.

Just received my BG results and they are the worst I have ever seen for many years. 7.2 – which of course is the remnants of my 3 week holiday and not managing to get things back on track. Just shows how important it is to watch the carbs. On a cruise how can you resist the beautiful food even though I do try to miss out on the cakes, desserts etc. I think I had a total of 3 cocktails so the main thing would be eating the beautiful soda bread my daughter makes, having the occasions carby meal when there are no choices available and, of course, the wine.

Seeing the doctor on Wednesday and I can already hear her tutting but at least I am not seeing my regular doctor who would probably give me a bollo–ing.

Hey ho, BG is going down each morning from 120’s to the 70’s I the transition has started.

Welcome back Simon!

S-g sorry to hear your latest results. The good thing is you know ‘why’ and you ‘how’ to rectify the problem. Had your blood sugar gone up for no obvious reason then there might be an issue. I know it’s not easy to get back on track but at least you now have the impetus to push forward. Your next results will be better.

Nothing much to report here. Just finding it a little bit difficult to settle back into a good routine. I have no idea why but it is what it is! Anyway, onwards we go ……

Thank you Verano for the welcome back – although the post about blood sugars etc wasn’t me, it was Sunshine Girl.
I did four days of fasting with 18:6 but slipped last night after a long day when I couldnt get home in time to eat within my window and ended up taking a night off. What a fail after less than a week. I will continue though because having tried just fasting in the week before I’ve found it’s fine once the weight has come off but too slow and indisciplined when you need that kickstart.

Anyone else had successful experience of doing 2:5 etc?

Hi all, Simon dont worry, Verano was referring to me on the BG subject.

What normally happens is I have tests mid December, then my next lot at mid March so I have managed to get over Christmas and get both my weight and number down. This time we are only 3 weeks back and I still have a lot of work to do.

On that subject I wanted to have a word with Pootle about her confusion as to why her monitor was showing a lot lower than her HbA1c. It is not something I thought about and was reading something the other day that I should be aware of. Your HbA1c is the average of your BG over 3 months, but it is also the average over every day. If you measure before breakfast and you are on 6.5 you then think your HbA1c would reflect that – but no – now eat a lunch of reasonably good food but measure immediately and your reading is say 9.7. It will go down again as the day goes on but after a larger dinner your next reading is 11.9. Now lets tot them up and you will find a reading averaging 9.3 – that is what your HbA1c would have calculated – all the ups and downs of the day. Annoying isn’t it – and I am not going to test before and after every meal – once a day is good enough for me.

In my case I am testing at around 5.2 but a fortnight ago it was 6.8 and actually on the cruise I had one morning at 14.6. Hence, my HbA1c is averaging way higher than the 5.2 of this morning and is completely out of whack. I will explain to my docor that I am just back from a cruise and she will factor that into how many tut tuts I get 🙂

Hopefully, I can get my weight down a bit between now and Wednesday – I was 71kgs on my last visit and today I am 73.5kgs. Not quite lost the holiday weight but going in the right direction and should be under 73 by next week.

Enjoy your weekend everyone.

Thanks S-G.

For 6 months I thought eating a 25g portion of porridge for breakfast was doing no harm. The ‘reader’ that I had bought off the internet was misleading me! I think it was faulty as well as the instructions stating that 6 was a normal reading for a healthy person!
I had a chat with a friend who is type 1, (incidentally she had always been told that vegetables are ‘free’ from carbs! So learning that I am relying on veg for all the carbs I am eating was a shock for her. She looked them up in her book and said she now understands why she sometimes has an unexpected high reading.) She passed on to me a tester that has been superseded. I ordered the strips from Amazon and have been having steady readings. I did one last night which was still 5.3 mmol/L. This morning (fasting) was 4.3, so I am hoping that, if I continue as I am, my next HbA1c will be non diabetic!

Sorry to hear of your struggles, wishing you all the best for the move.

S-g that’s really interesting but I have to admit I find it very difficult to understand how an HbA1c can measure ‘daily average’ blood sugar as well. I don’t think we should get too hung up on ‘ numbers’. Obviously your 14.6 was a bit concerning but that was a ‘blip’ rather an upward trend.

Pootle I think we have all been on a ‘learning curve’ with this way of eating. I think we just have to accept that we are individuals and some foods raise some peoples BS but not others. I think we each have to work out what works for our individual body. I had a bagel this morning, a rare treat, and a few hours later my BS was 5.2! Sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason to how we react.

Anyway, I have given myself ‘a good talking too’ and have decided as long as my BS remains stable then all is fine. Weight is something else and as long as it doesn’t increase then it will be what it will be. I need to relax and not waste energy fretting over it. So let’s see how long this lasts ……..

Hi all

Verano, I don’t know where the 14.6 came from, it was probably from the night I had a slice of hubbys birthday cake and a couple of cocktails. To demonstrate how HbA1c works I was giving averages before (low reading) and immediately after (high reading) food. If you measure 6.5 in the morning you cannot count that as what your HbA1c would be as you will have higher readings during the day after food. 3 months is the amount of time it takes for your blood to replace itself, therefore giving a new set of figures.

I like that your BG was 5.2 a few hours after a bagel – I think that shows you are no longer diabetic and your body is regulating the normal way. Mine would be around 10 immediately after and still around 8.9 four hours later and probably 6.8 to 7.0 the next day with it taking a couple of days of higher insulin to get it down. Shows I am still diabetic as my body cannot regulate itself.

This morning weight is still the same so I am still just one kilo down. BG was 5.2 but I am on 24 units of insulin (12 units pre-cruise). I will get it back down but it takes a couple of months. For some reason taking longer as I have found it difficult to get back on track although I am getting there. Still hoping to be under 73 kgs by Wednesday.

Just want to say I will be going back to ‘square one’ on Monday, using the original BSD book and the recipes and meal plans. Hopefully, I will see an improvement all round.

Right now I have a lot of stress with house going up for sale, although in France it can take up to 2 years so I have to learn to sit back and relax instead of jumping up and cleaning every little spill or out of order items. Relax………

👍👍🎉🪅🎊🎉Sunshine-girl … thank you, thank you, thank you.
It never actually occurred to me that I am having a ‘normal’ reaction to bread!
After 8 years of normal HbA1c results it’s only this year that I’ve finally been registered as in ‘remission’. So, I still think of myself as still beingT2.
Maybe I actually no longer have T2. Who knows but I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. In saying that I will always remain low carb. Apart from anything else my taste buds have changed and I really can’t eat sweet food.
S-g I wish you were my doctor!

Verano, I will send you my bill later 🙂 You have to pay for going private. I wish someone like Ben Bikman or Jason Fung were my doctor.

Yes me too!!
As soon as the bill comes I’ll send the remuneration in the post!!!
Thank you once again!

Hi all,

Just back from the doctors who was not my doctor. He said the results (7.3) were not good so I had all my explanations ready, just been on a cruise etc and blood tests very soon after before I could get the numbers back down and showed him my latest readings which are now good. We went back and forth on too much insulin, too much food, then showed this morning 56 (3.1) and he said not enough food, should eat before bed. Went through all the rubbish my other doctor used to say before he realised I was getting good results on the BSD. Anyway, as the lad didn’t speak any English he went to get my real doctor who said 7.3 is not bad but it is not ideal. He was understanding and told me to do what I always do and reduce insulin slowly, slowly.

Anyway, back to young doctor. I told him insulin was a fat storer and only moved the sugar into the organs and fat cells, he didn’t agree. We got to a point when he finally suggested semi-glutide on my next visit. Hurry, just what I wanted. Hopefully I will see my real doctor next time or ask for an appt when he is there so I can at least speak some English /Franglaise.

Found it all very stressful and was in for 40 mins try to explain in French. Driving home (hubby driving) I had a phone call which said vous etre Madame I…, D….. I said oui and they called me a c–t and put the phone down. I am very stressed out but sure I dont know anyone French who would say that to me (or English for that matter) so it must have been a prankster. I tried ringing back but it was a blocked number so hubby tried ringing in case it was just me they blocked and he was blocked also. Probably just some idiot having a laugh but I am not doubly stressed out.

Sorry for the rant but quite a day really.

Hi s-g, rant away. What a horrid morning. And having an unpleasant idiot on the phone afterwards is the pits. It is very dispiriting to hear that there are younger doctors who still don’t get it. How on earth can he dispute the role of insulin in the body?

Anyway I hope you can shake it all off and have a lovely sunny afternoon in the garden!

I think your rant is well justified S-G!
How frustrating with the doctor, then to have such an unpleasant phone call!

Hope you get your Dr Gorgeous next time!

Oh dear! Sounds like you’re going back ‘years’ s-g. Hopefully by now you have put the ‘nonsense’ behind you. You know best how to handle your T2. Don’t let a young ‘whippersnapper’ derail you.
Best of luck with your decreasing insulin. You know what works best for you…..keep on keeping on ……

Hi all, yes I am over my bad morning. The doctor couldn’t understand why I said I ate more than normal on holiday. When you are stuck on a ship you cannot pop out for a salad and if all that is available is say meat and 2 veg, one of which is carbs and you dont eat it I know I will be ill during the night with a hypo so you load up. Especially if you get off the ship in a foreign country and can only find pizza or tapas (for example) and you know you have 6 hours before dinner. Yes there is always food available but between 3 and 5 it is all cakes and sandwiches. Not a salad in sight. Late at night if I am needing food the only place open is the burger and pizza bar so you make sure you have had enough at dinner. Any idiot knows you over indulge on holiday anyway no matter how hard you try. Can I also say he didn’t speak a word of English and I was exhausted after 40 mins of arguing in French.

Yes his knowledge and attitude were a set back but if I can get the doctor to put me on Semaglutide I might not have to struggle with my weight so much. Although for diabetics it is not the magic weight loss drug, it just helps controlling insulin and glucose exchange without the negative effects of injecting insulin.

Reduced insulin to 22 units and BG was 3.85. Will stick at 22 for a few more nights.

Had my first swim of the season yesterday and it was lovely. Hoping to be back in when it cools down a bit later today.

S-g glad you’re feeling calmer now. It’s bad enough that medics don’t always appreciate the relationship between carbs and T2 but to have to get your point across in your second language just makes it that much more difficult. Hopefully they will agree to you coming off insulin. When is your next appointment?

Not much happening here. Weather was lovely yesterday hence a bbq but today is cloudy with rain on the horizon! Im feeling almost as gloomy as the weather is looking. No particular reason it just is what it is.

Hope everyone else is feeling ‘bright eyed and bushy tailed’. Have a good week.

Hi Verano, I will see the doctor in 3 months. It reminded me of the doctors in the UK. He took my BP and I asked what it was (as I had been quite upset and stressed) and he said, dont worry it is good. I had to insist he wrote it down in the end as he wasnt going to tell me. It was 130/80 which isnt good for me, if he’s looked at my previous readings which are around 110/70. I will actually ask to see my own doctor next time. This guy was an intern i.e. learning.

Going for a swim – will bring down BP BG and stress levels 🙂

S-g I’d be over the moon if my BP was 130/80 when I’m stressed. That sounds more like my normal reading these days. OK so just three months and then hopefully you will be on a new track.

Hi all, Verano, we know our own bodies and I know my numbers. My BP normally runs at 110/65, HbA1c 5.8 to 6.2, cholesterol 2.1 etc etc. Don’t forget I am on a whole load of meds for all of those things so they should be low.

I am struggling with the diet. Think I am doing okay and sticking between 800 and 900 cals daily, then I get really hungry in the evening and have a snack. Admittedly it is usually a slice of chicken or ham, or a Ryvita with mashed egg. I just seem to be hungry all the time. Given that I have had 3 swims in 3 days each around 350 cals, that might well be a reason but that doesn’t account for before I was swimming. I have lost just 1kg in about 7 weeks and even then I go up and down around having lost 1 or just half. Somehow my body is not behaving – or is it my brain. Any suggestion would be helpful. Hubby says I dont eat enough. I think I might have a fear in my head of having a hypo as they have been happening too often so I am panic eating at night. I am slowly reducing my insulin and now on 20 units (down from 24).

Today I have had 2 boiled eggs, canned French onion soup (90 calories) with 1 Ryvita with butter and tonight I am having grilled steak with sauteed mixed red and yellow peppers, onions and cream cheese.

Hope everyone else is doing well.

Just done a calorie check and today my total will be 756 including a square of chocolate. Maybe I am not eating enough at meals making me really hungry in the evening. If that was all I was eating I would be losing so my added snacks must be adding a lot more.

Hi s-g. Do you think you are eating enough protein? The foods you list for today give around 70 g (13+13 eggs, 38g for a 150g steak, and something for the cream cheese). There seems to be a growing consensus that insufficient protein will make you hungry, and may encourage the body to hold onto its stores just in case. I think you are more the expert, but it may be worth looking at.

Happy Sunday everyone, Hi Heidi, thank you for your input. You might be partly right but I think the menu for yesterday was a little unusual as I normally have a meat or tuna salad for lunch or a carb free Ploughmans with ham and cheese. Also, my snacks are always protein based like chicken or ham. The onion soup was as tin of Baxters I brought back from the UK and I only buy around 4 which have to last me 4 or 5 months – so not any every day/week or even month thing. I know I generally don’t eat enough but I am trying hard to stick to 800 cals. After such a long holiday my body and brain are rebelling. Thank you and I will eat more protein, think when I have something like onion soup I will add some cheese or nuts for my afternoon snack.

But talking about my weight, low and behold, I have lost half a kilo this morning. My thought is that I have been having too many late night snacks rather than TRE for 14 or 16 hours. I was just afraid of having night-time hypos. Bodies are funny things.

No swimming for a few days as we have had rain and storms and the temperature has dropped in the pool as well as outside air. Due for some more hot weather by Tuesday so here’s hoping.

Heres to a new week everyone. Seems like my little moan did me some good. Made be get my head straight and look at my diet, also with the help of Heidi, making better choices. I haven’t lost any more but I also haven’t bombed out as I usually do at the weekends when I think I deserve a treat. My treat to myself was to be sure not to sabotage the diet.

I am half way to my goal of 1kg a month but might have to increase that as it was based on us going nowhere and not having any visitors. Now family are coming out next month and we will be taking them out and about there is bound to be some meals out or snacking in places with rubbish choices (i.e. a park we are going to which only has a burger bar). Then we have decided to go back to the UK for a week in September, just to break up the gap between May and Christmas – so again, there will be food. Maybe I will try to lose 1.5kgs for June and see how that goes 2 full weeks to go.

Hope you are all doing well and, if you are in the UK, enjoying the lovely weather we are sending to you. I am sure the UK is going to get hotter and hotter every year – just like France has lately.

Great ‘treat’ s-g!

I too have decided ‘it’s Monday’ so time to get back to the good things in my life. So this morning I used my meditation app which I’ve not really used much for the last few weeks. I didn’t use it all while we were away and although I did try on one or two occasions over the last few weeks I’ve just not got back into the ‘groove’. So today is the first day of my new course and tomorrow will be day 2 ……..

I also had breakfast this morning. Well ‘brunch’ really and I know that eating earlier in the day works for me. Sometimes I forget and then eat around 12 and then I seem ravenous all afternoon. Note to self: don’t ignore your body’s signals!

Yes we have lovely weather at the moment so hopefully we’ll have another bbq tomorrow evening. I’m not a great lover of salad unless we’re eating al fresco so, long may the sunny days last!

Have a good week and let’s make it ‘count’ as a step towards better health!