Just wondering if this eating plan can help in reducing blood glucose levels when the cause may be due to cortisol / stress. I am at the prediabetic end of normal for a fasting glucose. I don’t need to lose weight and my bmi is 20., I am 5 foot 6 and weigh 124 pounds.
I don’t like most carbs, eat relatively healthy , but my stress levels are very high, and can’t see a way to reduce them.
I recently saw a hospital dr ( for something else)and he asked me if I was diabetic as my blood sugar level ( not fasting) had been 7.8 So what can I do to reduce my levels?

Hi Hatecakes – right off, let me say I not a medical expert and so am speaking purely from a layperson’s view point. Working on the basis that not all calories are equal, I would say that I would think it possible to use the BSD to adjust blood sugar levels, without losing weight. So, if you were to cut bad carbs – grains, potatoes, sugars, rice, pasta, bread, etc. – and don’t cut the calories, you should find it possible to have some impact on the blood sugar levels.

Try to pull your daily carb intake to 50g if you can, but keep your calories up by making sure you include plenty of full fat and protein in your diet. This would mean plenty of veggies (especially green and leafy veg), a decent portion of protein each day and including good fats of olive oil, nut oils, full fat natural yogurt, some nuts and seeds, avocado, butter and cheese are permitted too – so you see, it’s possible to keep the calories up but the carbs down. I don’t want to call it a Mediterranean diet, as these usually include plenty of bread and even pasta, rice or potatoes and all of these need to be avoided.

Final advice though, would be to try address your stress levels, even if you can only manage a few minutes of meditation a day, it should help. If you read the BSD book, you will note that mindfulness is part of this way of eating, so if you can take time out to focus and quiet your mind in some way, even for a short period, it would be helpful. Exercise can be part of this, as spending some time exercising not only benefits on a physical level, but on a mental level too. Have a think about how you can include a little mindfulness in your day – could even be listening to, or reading something inspirational on a commute.

Hope some of this is of some use. As I said, I’m no expert, but working on the basis that reducing carbs impacts on blood sugar levels, it should be possible to adjust the BSD way of eating to work for you – it’s like you’ll be going into maintenance right from the start.

Sunny B
Thank you for this. I will start on it today, at least there are some changes I can still make, doesn’t feel quite so hopeless!
And yes I do need to look at how I relate to the stress, I can’t change the cause but at least maybe how I deal with it. I used to do a little yoga ( not sure why it’s lapsed!,) and it definitely put me in a better mind space if you like.
Thanks again
H

Hi hatecake, I know a lot of people think of mindfulness as mumbo jumbo but I have just finished a course with FutureLearn online on Mindfulness and it is a lot more about being organised and not try to take on too much. The meditation is just a part of it and can take as little as 5 minutes each morning (or whenever). There is a new course starting today which you could possibly look at called Maintaining a Mindful Life. To meditate just sit comfortably, close your eyes and concentrate on your breathing trying to keep other thoughts from interrupting – to do this I just use the word ‘breathe’ in my mind as a kind of chant. It really can relax you even for just a short time and will reduce the cortisol levels. It also works on a part of the brain which pumps out adrenalin which can have a longer term effect on stress levels.

Try it and see.

Hi H – Glad you are feeling more positive about tackling how you deal with the stress factors in your life. As yoga was helpful before, why not look at starting it again? Even if your time is tight, I’m sure by making a couple of small changes, you should be able to reduce the impact of stress and improve your wellbeing.

Keep us posted …

Hello There,
I have just discovered this Forum. I was astounded to have an HbA1c level of 42mmol/mol (prediabetes) in February. Also I had a BMI of 19. Trying to find info on ‘thin diabetics’ had been difficult. I have been able to reduce my HBA1c but at the cost of more weight loss. Not a good situation as I have osteoporosis (no treatment) I have been told that no action will be taken as to what type of diabetes I am likely to have until I get a diagnosis of diabetes. ?? LADA. I have decided to take some advice outside the NHS…..so watch this space.
PS I am a retired Practice Nurse, and was beginning to suspect that the prescribed dietary advice was not keeping up with changes in thinking when I finished four years ago.

Hi Handstands and welcome to the Forum.

I’m not a TOFI (Thin Outside, Fat Inside) but wondered if you’d read the 8 Week Blood Sugar Diet book itself. I know Michael Mosley described himself as a TOFI. I don’t remember there being much about it in the book itself other than what you probably already know, but he does refer to a number of different research studies and wondered if any of those may lead to more info for you.

Hopefully, there may be other people on here who are also TOFI’s who may be able to share their experiences with you. Also, have you tried the Diabetes websites – I visit the Diabetes.co.uk website (the red one) quite often and have learnt a lot from there about Diabetes generally – again particularly through the Forum.

Will be interested to hear what you discover.

Regards
Marie x