Hi Sanshu
I am a fairly recent convert too. Got my formal diagnosis of T2 on 17 January, with a fasting blood glucose of 12.1. To say I was upset and freaked out is putting it mildly! I’ve been following the plan and walking after my evening meal and have lost 9lbs and already my number is down to 9.3. I’m drinking about 2.5 litres of water a day.
Good luck to you! We can do this, because this time we are not “on a diet” for aesthetic reasons – this time it is for the sake of our health. I’m rather attached to my feet (excuse the pun) and would quite like to keep them! 🙂

Sunshine girl
I feel I am not qualified to have an opinion on the low blood sugar levels as I am not diabetic myself, but for what it’s worth I was heavily involved in nursing my type 2 diabetic dad during his final few years (not overweight due to low carb management – my mum had long ago worked out the NHS advice only pushed his readings up!). He was on glicazide, metformin and insulin (long acting one injection each night). The first thing to go was the glicazide when he started eating much less during his final illness and readings were getting too low. As soon as the glicazide was stopped he stopped going so low, with reduction of insulin to match reduced intake of food. Cannot of course make any recommendations as that would be foolish, this is just our family experience.

Hi Sanshu, welcome to the family, everyone here is here to help you on this plan. The first thing you will find, if you are blood testing, is that your BG will go down fairly quickly, this is normal, this plan works. Good luck.

I have just finished a course on Diabetes the Epidemic and there was a mention of honey being the only true vegetable glucose molecular food as it is processed from the bees collecting pollen from plants and has no process involved. It is pure, but like all sweet things, needs to be used in moderation. I thought all sugars were pure from plants i.e. cane and beet, but when you learn about the processes they go through, they are not pure or natural.

Hi – I start tomorrow for the first time after a recent diabetes diagnosis. I have been prepping for the last two weeks but am still a bit overwhelmed by it all.

I made my own meal plan because I needed something a little less complicated and cheap especially as most of my meals are for one. Hopefully I’ve calculated it well but will be using MyFitnessPal to track calories.

Anyway am definitely looking for support and friendship throughout this and happy to give others the same.

Good luck everyone xx

Please can someone tell me what the bought low sugar drinks are that is mentioned in the book!
Trying to support my husband and think these may help when he’s at work .

I find a hot bath warms me down to my bones! Showers just don’t have the same effect.

I’m about to get strict again with BSD, in my previous round in winter I felt the cold a lot too, but this time it’s heatwave summer in Australia (38 today) so I’m not worried! Maybe these peri-menopausal night sweats will finally stop.

Hi Cazza633, i make sure to only take raw unheated, unpasteurized and unprocessed honey, l only take one table spoon each morning with my ACV. Only taking it for the health benefits, hasn’t seem to affect my weight loss journey to date. Must say makes the ACV little more appealing, comparing the mixure l take before dinner without the honey. cheers

Also starting today so happy to join you. I am T2 diabetic and I need to lose about 8 kg

Hi, I’ve found this site tonight, ordered the book and I plan to start tomorrow. I log my food, exercise and weight on FatSecret. I have 5 stones to lose, so it’ll be more than 8 weeks for me! Good luck, I hope we can all stay strong with each other’s encouragement.

Hi Gillykins and all, hope ok if I join you too. I am planning to start tomorrow and determined to keep on track for full 8weeks. But know I would definitely benefit from some support to stick with it. I have got about 70lb to lose, so need to achieve healthy eating approach for longer term.

I started today, any support would be gratefully received. I have tried various weight loss programs before but always fail long term. I feel totally inspired by the science behind this one – it all seems to make total sense! Good luck everyone else who is starting over the next couple of days.

Hi everyone, yes I’m starting tomorrow!!!
I have had success with this before but didn’t stick to it!!
Anyway determined to do it this time 😎😎😎

Seconding Krysia’s observation, I have also gone from really feeling the cold in the early stages when losing lots of weight, to a metabolism that keeps me generally warm all the time again, which was my previous pre-diet norm. The one exception are my hands which still get really cold. I think the building of lots of muscle has helped with this, along with the adaptation to efficient fat burning. Of course like Krysia I am now on more calories so this may not be directly relevant.

2-3 litres of water is fine, that is the figure recommended in the book, some additional uncounted water may also be present in your food of course. It is important to hydrate properly to get the weight loss happening and minimise water retention.

I stopped taking metformin 500mg 3x daily in October when I started the diet. My hba1c came down from 57 in September to 39 in December. I didn’t bother telling the GP I had come off it. The patient information leaflet tells you not to take it if having less than 1000 calories per day.

I am hoping it will be ok to join you tomorrow would it be possible ? Could do with the support as over 50lbs to lose and a bit of a sugar fiend!

Well done everyone! Some really positive results here and excellent tips. Thanks SunnyB for the “mini goal suggestion” – will definitely take that on board. Am aiming for 11 stone by Valentine’s Day – and somehow another pound has come off today despite my little lapses this weekend 🙂 So only five more to go to reach that mini goal.

LindaA that article on salt was really helpful and a real eye-opener. On my second full week on the diet I had bad headaches and also a kind of tingling in the head, combined with a general feeling of weakness. I also had a bad cold at the time so not really sure what was what, but I do think I was suffering from lack of salt. I now add a bit of salt to any food I cook from scratch – totally against everything I have been told over the last few years but I do feel much better,

Here’s wishing everyone a brilliant week!

MK the only problem is the doctor might say it is the fault of the diet. See my post just above yours. I have been have very low readings, in fact I keep getting warning messages from my machine. 3.1, 3.6 and so on….. Yesterday I reduced my insulin by one unit and my glicazide by half a tablet, 15mg and I am around 3.9 today, still very low but funny thing is I dont feel like I am going low, not dizzy or numb lips or blurred vision, nothing, just noticed when I did my test. I too have been having snacks in the afternoon, usually nuts or cold chicken or both but I am still running low at 7pm just before dinner. Maybe the diet is working, isn’t this what we are aiming for but keeping ourselves save at the same time. I will keep a careful check on my BG and if I feel necessary will reduce either insulin or glicazide. I spoke to my doctor about this and he told me to try to get rid of the insulin if possible but I am sure it is the glicazide that causes the afternoon/evening lows.

Congrats toby101, great all around loss.

Keep it up for the remaining few weeks and you’ll sit in a tidy result.

Sounds like we were similar starting sizes. After 8 weeks, I upper my calories to 1000-1200 for 7/8 weeks to see what effect it had.

Congrats on the mini-goal and getting below upper end of BMI range RozyDozy.

I’m optimistic about my weekly weigh in tomorrow, today I weighed in less than my pre-Christmas low and have controlled well today. I had a 3lb whoosh overnight!

Strange how you can spend months within a tight 2lb or 3lb range and then bam! Overnight change. It goes to show how we must persist through those tough times.

Fingers crossed I didn’t experience a scale blip! 😳

Thank you for the idea, I think we’ll give that a try. And I’ll have a look at the posts by sunshine-girl. 👍

Ohhh well then, no wonder! With such a small amount of weight to lose, it seems to me like you could easily up your calorie intake to 1000 a day. Just keep the carbs as low as they are now. A 25% calorie bump might go a long way for you.

Try not to fret about your lack of movement on the scale this week. I didn’t start weighing myself until week 4, and that just so happened to be a plateau week, up and down with the same pound or three for 8 days. It was troubling, to say the least, but now I know it’s just the way our bodies are. They like to regroup when confronted with a new reality. As of this morning, I’ve lost 71 pounds since I first stepped on the scale on August 25th.

It must be challenging to know what to do when the numbers are all over the map. I wonder if you could do a little experiment with the peanut butter. Maybe eat a teaspoon, wait a bit then test. Then the next day two teaspoons, etc. If it’s a serving size issue, it should be repeatable.

I’m afraid I’m not personally knowledgeable on the subject of blood sugar management diet vs. medications, but sunshine-girl has posted often about her own attempts to negotiate BG stability by decreasing meds as she goes along. Even though you’re still in the early stages of the diet, you should keep an eye out for her posts on the subject.

Oh, thank you Bissell, that is far more reassuring – hopefully this phase will pass soon then, and I can start enjoying life again.

Esnecca – I am soooo cold, that I’m not actually sure I would. I’m not THAT fat (BMI only 27) – I want to lose circa 18lbs and I have no health problems, and so I may be able to cope with it for a few weeks until I can up my calorie intake on maintenance, but longer than that? I just don’t know…..

Certainly couldn’t live the rest of my life like it.

This may sound perverse, but the cold reminds me that my body is changing.

I too have always been the hot one. It’s horrible being so cold all the time. But it’s my body adjusting. I’m sure once I’m fitter and more toned my metabolism will sort itself out. Plus, I won’t be on 800 calories forever 🙂 once I’m maintaining I will be eating more and warmer.

I’m still cold, Theodora, but as in Bissell and KrysiaD’s experience, that can change at any time. I’m assuming I’ll warm back up once I’m on maintenance and not restricting my caloric intake, but that’s a long ways away for me. Soldier on! Think of it this way, if a magic genie gave you the chance to lose all the weight you’ve ever dreamed of losing, but the cost was a few months of cold, wouldn’t you take it?

Gliclozide will do that MK. I remember my Mum having had D and V and still taking the Gliclazide. She had a mega hypo, needed a 999 call out and flirted outrageously with the ambulance man until the glucose he gave her kicked in. She was in her 90’s. I still feel the shame ☺️

I had this to start with, Theodora and I am normally a hot person. The sort that old ladies spot in the street and say ‘ooh, aren’t you cold, dressed like that’s?’. But for the first three weeks I was on perma frost mode. But then it got better and now I’m back to normal. I live in the only non central heated house in the world ( according to my daughter) and even I feel the cold first thing. So I do 5 mins of exercises and that’s enough to warm me up for the day.
Nil desperandum. It will pass.

I spent my first week looking at my meals and going that will never fill me up – week 3 and I find 800 easy to stick to and am often full.

In my experience variety really helps – good luck.

Errr, thanks for the encouragement, I think, Esnecca – but are you telling me that this is not going to get any better?

I was assuming it was just a temporary phase of the BSD800, while my body got used to it, and it would go away after a while!! I’m not sure I can live with being this cold forever – I have no health problems, so am dieting purely to lose weight, but can’t see much point in fitting into lovely clothes, if I then have to cover them up with layer upon layer of fleeces 🙁

And long hot summers? What exactly are they?

Sorry to sound so negative, but haven’t lost any weight at all in the past week, nor inches, and being freezing cold all the time (and I mean freezing) is just making me miserable.:-(

Hi Esnecca, and thanks for your comments. We have Sunpat Peanut Butter, no sugar added, we already had the other before realising it had sugar in it. We’re only 1 week in to the diet, so no doubt that we are going to make mistakes, but we’re trying. My husband is T2D and on Metformin, Insulin, Glimepiride and other meds for Hypertension. His bloods seem to be all over the place atm!

I’ve always been naturally warm person. Even when I was slim in my youth any activity or a minute in the sun was enough to make the back of my neck sweat. I started the BSD in the sweltering heat of August and by the beginning of the third week, I was regularly shivering cold. The only time I wasn’t cold was during and immediately after exercise.

I can identify with how traumatic the shock of cold is when you’ve never experienced that sensation short of being outdoors in actual freezing weather. I get my inner heat from my father, while my mother is always cold. I called her and apologized for all those years of thinking she was crazy for wearing sweaters all the time while my dad and I were in tank tops.

In the beginning I quite liked the cold. It was a very hot summer and I loved the novelty of being cool after a lifetime of being the perpetually hot one. That allowed me to get used to the new normal before the frost descended and the deep cold became torture. I’m afraid that ship has sailed for you, but on the up side, this is the worst it’s going to be. Once the warm weather starts, you might enjoy the cool like I did in the beginning.

My methods of coping include the crazy bag lady layers you’re familiar with, regular long soaks in a hot bath (at least once a day when I feel the coldest), coercing the cats into sitting on my feet and coercing my bf into rubbing his freakishly hot hands against my frozen hands and feet. Definitely get a hot water bottle. They still beat the electric blanket by a mile, imo, because the sloshing, burbling water is soothing in ways beyond just the warmth it generates. Also, fleecy gloves, even fingerless ones, help.

I know it can feel surprisingly debilitating to be constantly struggling with the cold, needing layer upon layer to make it remotely bearable. I can tell you, however, that you will get used to it, maybe even grow to appreciate it in certain contexts. Don’t let this break your resolve, Theodora.

Another blinking hypo today. Felt a bit faint and fell over this PM, tested and down to 3.2 – again, no rhyme or reason other than my one glicozide tablet a day – GP says I must take it before lunch. FBS was 5.6, did my brisk walk and took one Metformin, had ham and grilled tomato breakfast, veg soup lunch, 6 almonds and a small chunk of feta, with 1l of water. . 3.2 – where did that come from? Will phone GP triage service tomorrow but in meantime am staying off the glicozide,. Will have identical food let’s see what my post lunch BG is tomorrow. Puzzled. MK x

Theodora
You won’t believe how much you will enjoy being size 10 again. I absolutely love putting on my size 10s. I even have size 9 troggins which fit like a dream.

HaHa, Krysia – what a shock for them all!

My heated car seat has become my best friend too – never ever even turned it on before starting BSD 2 weeks ago! In fact, until the last 2 weeks, didn’t even use the heating in the car, as I always got too hot. Used to have never ending battles with o/h if he was in the car, as he wanted it on and I wanted it off. These days, it’s the other way around!

And oh to be a size 10 again – if I can get through this cold phase, I’ll get there though 🙂

Sunshine-girl, I really don’t think it is just because the weather has been so cold. I took my granddaughters to Lapland for a week before Christmas and the temp varied between minus 24 and minus 30 !!!!! Didn’t feel cold once though, in fact we had an amazing time.

The highlights of my days atm is having a scalding hot 20 min shower just to warm up 🙂

Great, looks like we’ve got 4 or 5 of us starting tomorrow, with another two on Wednesday.

Somebody suggested “Fat Secret” to log weight and food intake, so I’ll be doing that.

What is the recommended water intake? I was going to aim for 2-3litres. How does that sound? Any other tips??

Initially it can be difficult but once the body has adapted correctly you may notice two things. Hunger is almost a thing of the past, and even when you fast a considerable length of time is infinitely bearable since you have an alternative source of plentiful fuel, for example your body fat. It almost catches you by surprise when your tummy rumbles loudly. The second thing is you begin to tell the difference between hunger and cravings, and once your carbs are low enough cravings subside to the extent that they are (if you are careful) easier to spot as the interlopers they are and they can be eased by diet friendly alternatives. Peanut butter, a little bit on a teaspoon is a good one to get rid of biscuit cravings, and cheese, a small piece, is always good at making the cravings go away. Thirst is also commonly mistaken as hunger, but if you are drinking the recommended 2-3 litres should rarely be a problem.

cheeky so and so.

Theodora, lots of people on this site have diabetes, me included, and we suffer from bad peripheral blood circulation. In other words limited blood flow to fingers and toes, so I am used to being cold all the time. This should not be your problem but losing body fat could cause it, as you say you have only lost 8lbs it seems unlikely to be the cause. It has been extremely cold just lately so it could just be that you are not used to such cold weather.

Theodora – I survived with lots of layers and my heated seat and steering wheel in my car. It wasn’t pleasant though.

When I threw off all the layers (I was still wearing a lot of my bigger clothes with thermals under them) and put on my size 10 tops and trousers after Christmas a lot of friends and clients were visibly shocked by my weight loss which they thought had happened over Christmas. It did cause quite a stir.

Thank you for reporting the post Sunshine-girl.

WillianAnderson, I have reported your post to admin as you are advertising and promoting a commercial product. See rules on posting.

Thanks for your replies.

Denis, do you know, I don’t even possess a hot water bottle, because I am normally a really warm person. I don’t know how much it will help though, because hugging a radiator doesn’t seem to – all it does is warm the bit of me in contact with it. This cold seems to emanate from the inside – O/H assures me that I am not cold to the touch – but I feel cold right down to my core. But anything is worth trying, so thanks for the suggestion – it will go onto this week’s shopping list.

Krysia, thanks for your words or encouragement – but how on EARTH did you survive from May to December if you felt this cold???? OK, I guess the weather wasn’t as cold then as it is now, and I did start BSD in pretty much the coldest period of the winter – today is the first day it has risen above freezing point here for the past 2 weeks – but I cannot even imagine coping with being this cold for months on end!! I cannot believe that it is losing my insulating layer of blubber that is causing it, because I have only lost 8lbs so far. I am usually SUCH a winter person, much prefer it to the summer, just love frost and snow and windy walks, but now I am thinking “roll on summer”.

It looks as though I may have to carry on looking and feeling like an old bag lady for the foreseeable future (and will look even fatter with hot water bottles tucked up my jumpers and down my knickers 😉 ) if I want to lose the excess weight. Unless anyone else has any miraculous suggestions, no matter how daft?

Reading your profile you don’t have diabetes (yet, and I only say that because of family history) so this is a weight loss plan for you. The theory behind the 800 calories is that it shocks the body into losing visceral fat (internal fat around the organs), particularly around the pancreas and liver. This is important to diabetics as it helps the healing process and improves blood glucose with a view to reduce or reverse diabetes. In your case such a harsh diet is not necessary and you could lose weight on more calories, say 1000 although I would say one of the things that makes this diet work is the elimination of starchy carbs like bread, rice, potatoes, pasta and cereal and of course, sugar. Try it and see and if you find the calories difficult to maintain add in some good calories as snacks like cold meat, tuna, cheese, a boiled egg. Something that will give you a boost without spoiling the plan.

Good luck

Hi Gillykins, I’m starting on 30th Jan too and happy to buddy up with you and anyone else!
Alexandra

I’m starting the diet tomorrow (30th Jan) and wondered if sticking to 800c is very difficult or does the diet curb hunger? I have 2 children, busy life and feel tired a lot of the time so wondering if a modified version better? Maybe I’ll start with 800c and see how it goes but don’t want to crash into a basket of bread…

so good to hear from you Verano, take it easy and be good to yourself.

Hot water bottles stuffed down your jumper. ? Really helps I found.

Theodora
Exactly the same thing happened to me. I have always been a very very cold person. Even in the summer I wore a l lightweight fleece over my top while I was working because I was so so cold. Husband used to say ‘how can anyone be so cold and still be alive’.

I started the BSD in May and as the weight dropped off I just got colder and colder because I was losing the layers of fat. I lost nearly 3 stone and got to my target weight on 10th December. I had been increasing my steps since June when I got a fitbit and over the Christmas vacation I decided I must increase my walking speed and do more of my steps at a faster speed.

Over the Christmas vacation I really found that I was beginning to put more muscle on. I could feel muscles getting stronger. Then I began to feel warmer. Started back teaching classes in January and was so warm I had to throw off the fleeces. The halls I teach in felt too warm. People who had been coming to my classes for 16 years were in shock because they had never seen me without a fleece on.

I am not only not wearing a fleece – the tops I am wearing are really lightweight tops you would wear in the summer.

So why did my metabolism change. Was it because of the BSD and everything is working better now. Was it the BSD combined with the extra exercise. I really don’t know. I have no fat to keep me warm now (my BMI is 21) but I seem to be generating heat from somewhere. My carbs are low like yours. I haven’t had a bad carb or sugar since May – so perhaps my body really likes burning fat as fuel and it just took a long time to make the changes. Or perhaps my circulation had been so damaged by all the sugary starchy carbs and it has taken several months for my circulation to become normal again. It is a real puzzle but I have been a cold person since my early 20s and I am 68 now, so it is really a major, but lovely, change for me.

So there is hope that the same thing will happen to you. Believe me I do sympathise because it is horrible.