I think it’s the idea that eating less refined sugar will make you feel ill that is so ludicrous. Since when did lack of sugar make you dizzy? I have always loathed Anne Wiiddicombe and as for Gemma! It is a bit concerning, I think, that people might believe that consuming less sugar will make them weak and ill!

Sorry Jenni

The diabetes reversal is the theory that is currently under review. Whilst positive results have been noted from a number of small studies (Johns Hopkins, Germany etc.), the current Newcastle study is the first full-scale, for all intents and purposes, “clinical trial” of the approach. There are also, I understand, plans for a further study to assess the long term effects of BSD.

Hope this helps.

Great for those who are active, I hoped to be. I have been suffering from a cold (and it is only a cold) for about a week. Today I am feeling considerably better but not ready to get my aerobics gear out. I don’t work so have been allowing myself to wallow, blanket round me, telly on, snuggling with my favourite cat. Real life will kick in next week when I start exercising and also need to clean the house. I have been nice being able to allow myself to be ill and not feel guilty.

I have still lost 4lbs from last week but no movement in the last 3 days, too much slobbing about. My BG is steady around 5.0 to 5.5 on a reduced insulin amount so just keeping things stable.

I have been keeping my brain active and just finished week one of The Science of Nutrition with FutureLearn, which is very dry but with a few interesting snippets. For example, I was told I would gain weight when I went on insulin and oh boy did I ever, 15kg in 6 months and still carrying about 10kg of that now. No one said why except I heard it called the fat magnet. Scientific explanation. The purpose of insulin is to stimulate the fat cells take up fat for storage, sounds like a bad thing but was for the purpose of maintaining a supply for times of famine and also clear the blood of excess, there are other purposes to do with sugar too. I am also still doing French and Spanish daily, about half an hour on each and next week I will be back to my French class at college which I missed this week.

Have a good day everyone.

JulesMaigret.

I do so agree that the final decision rests with us as individuals, and I too am a direct and assertive individual. I agree with challenging our thinking, so that we can make those final decisions!

Thanks for your help!

Toby 101, the BSD is primarily designed to reverse T2 diabetes or at least reduce BGLs. 800 calories is key to that. It results in reducing fat in and around liver and pancreas and allows them to in effect reset. Contrary to other listings this has been determined by research greater than one 11 person study at Uni Newcastle (source Michael Moseley in his Australian presentation which was replayed today in ABC radio in Melbourne).

yes iwanttobeslim, I watched it on record last night. I am so glad they are pointing out the sugars in simple carbs like bread and rice etc. The green gloop is a bit much, I often have spinach and celery with green tea or almond milk but my nutribullet (other makes available) makes mine into a lovely smooth drink. The thing that really annoys me are the second rate celebrities trying to revive their careers or earn a big wad from the programme and then not committing, I laughed at Peter going to hospital because on day 2 he felt a bit dizzy, then Jemma spent the rest of the day saying she felt weak and dizzy (remember she only lasted 2 days in the Jungle) and the woman I want to kill right now is Ann Widdicombe. She has become a professional reality TV contestant who then goes and refuses to do anything she is asked. Maybe I should admire her determination but please get her off our screens.

We have to remember this is meant to be car crash TV where we can laugh at these idiots but as far as the diet goes, it is a serious concern to society and should be presented in a better light.

Absolutely, the guidelines are slow to change and I agree that that is a serious issue, but my main concern is that we cannot generalise and blame the nurses. My GP manages to be pompous and a**e-covering at the same time, whereas my nurse is sceptical about BSD, as she has never had a patient try it, but generally supportive. In all fairness, she was concerned that 800 calories wouldn’t give the balance of vitamins minerals and amino acids to stay healthy, which is a fair shout, I think.

I am by nature quite a forceful individual and I will discuss and dispute with medical professionals, because I want them to challenge my thinking. I am not that arrogant that I believe I know best. But equally the final decision on treatment is mine. I believe that on-going dialogue with your GP/nurse is crucial as we all progress through this relatively new approach. Blanket condemnation that nurses are “not overly qualified” and therefore their opinions should be simply dismissed is I believe unhelpful to other patients and potentially dangerous.

I have no idea what low carb chocolate is but there is nothing wrong with eating chocolate on this plan as long as it is over 70% and you count the calories. I do know about diabetic style foods, i.e. chocolate, jam etc. and the general view is they are just money makers taking advantage of the fears of the uninformed (not because we are stupid but we are told rubbish by experts). As for something like jam either don’t eat it or have a little but not often.

I just carried on. I have had a few “off the wagon” days, but even then generally kept to the low-carb side of the diet, at the expense of the overall calories. As a bit of a data monkey I measure what I eat and my weight every day, and as long as the 7 day average is under 50g of carb and 1000 cals per day I’m happy.

I’ve never been on a diet (hence starting at 329lbs) so I started with understnading the principles and getting on with it. I sort of accepted that I would need to change the way I eat until I reached my initial goal weight – still got 28lb to go – and more importantly, get my blood sugar and BP sorted. I gave myself the goal of achieving these and dropping the 100lb by my birthday in June, so it’s a matter of head down, stick to the regime, drink the water and up the exercise a bit.

I’m waiting the results from the HBA1C I had yesterday, together with a cholesterol test I asked for as I have a slight, and admittedly probably ill-founded, concern that eating all this full-fat will put my cholesterol up. Yes, I know…….

Hi

I have every respect for a nurses’ qualifications and experience, and realise they have to follow the guidelines. My issue is that the guidelines are slow to respond to reasearch developments and after all they are guidelines,not hard and fast rules.

I saw a dietician before going low-carb. She agreed that there was some evidence of this approach working. After all, pre-mid 80’s, diabetics were advised to count carbs!

Thanks for that. Really helpful. I’ll see how I get on.

JulesMaigret, that’s impressive AND inspirational!
Sleeping is still waiting to settle down – two hourly stints is not that restful but will get there.
So have you effectively just kept going or have you switched between the 8wk BSD/Med eating/8wk BSD etc?

JulesMaigret and Chrysalis, the cat’s going to be fine – she’s too pretty and gentle and funnily enough does love wafer thin chicken lol.

We tried the 5:2 last two years and we got so far and then both just stopped losing. Oddly am finding this easier in a lot of ways and guess we’re also not lured by naughty nibbles and alcohol!

Bit of a sweeping generalisation there.

Firstly, it is not individual nurse’s job to set NHS policy on treatment. If they changed their approach when every new bit of research came out it would be chaos and potentially highly dangerous. We have a process in the UK, OK it may be slow, but it is evidence-based,, hence the current studies in Newcastle. The original research had, I believe, 11 patients. Drawing a significant conclusion from the results of such a small sample is not credible.

As for nurses not being “over-qualified”, should I conclude that you believe that they are therefore appropriately qualified, or is it just a baseless insult and slur, unless you can tell me the level of qualification you would find acceptable. Your experience is not good but the over-simplification and generalisation is not justified and potentially discourages people from trying to have or persisting with a sensible discussion with their nurses.

If you are not going to take their advice then fine, but castigating them for disagreeing with you just makes you sound boorish.

I am slightly confused why so many people are bothering to weigh out every bit of food stuff and calculate to the calories. Surely 800 calories must be arbitrary? Apart from anything else it cannot be right that eating 800 calories has the same impact on a 20 stone man as 12 stone woman for example. What I take from this is that you should be looking to restrict your calorie intake to around 30-40% or your weight maintenance level and avoid sugar and the bread/potatoes/pasta/rice heavy carb stuff

I have glicazide prescribed too. Just recently I have eaten my 800 almost entirely without starchy carbs, even healthy ones, and to my delight my blood sugar has remained under 7, using only metformin. The scary rises in bs which seemed to occur when I had eaten nothing to cause them have stopped too.

We renewed our security certificate last night but it was incorrectly applied, so you’re getting a “Not secure” warning. I’m sorry about that! It will be fixed in an hour or two and the site is, in fact, still secure, just not showing it.

Thanks for understanding.

Hi Lezhas. One thing you could try is deliberately acquiring the taste for unsweetened tea and coffee. It’s not that difficult and I managed to do it years ago when I gave up sugar in my tea and coffee decades ago. Nowadays I don’t have any sugar in my cupboards. The other thing I gave up is instant coffee. Now I use small cafetières and find them almost as fuss free as instant. Leaf tea is great too, although there are some good tea bags around. I do find I need milk in my tea though, and for that I have about a quarter of a tsp of skimmed milk powder. The reasons for this are a) I live alone and could never use the wet milk before it went off, b) I don’t like the taste of full fat milk in tea, and c) the carb and calorie count of a tiny amount of skimmed milk powder seems negligible.

Hi Anniflower
Sunshinegirl (who is on basal insulin and other meds) posted an excellent reply to a similar question recently and I am sure she won’t mind me copying and posting her reply – which is as follows:

hi julygirl, most of us have altered our meds, reduced them or just got rid of them totally. This diet works quite quickly as you have seen but when it comes to your meds, take it slowly. If you continue to see such good results you might want to reduce little by little. If you have a sympathetic diabetic nurse or doctor that you can get to talk to, that is the best thing to do. It is early days so keep testing (you obviously do).

My story is I want from 10.2 to around 6.0 in a few days (around 10) and started to reduce my insulin a couple of unit at a time say every week. I had some really low readings and reduced my Glicizide as that can cause big drops in BG, I never took Metformin as it gave me the sh—s, which is why I ended up on insulin. Over 6 months I have gone from 38 units of insulin to 22, so it has been a slow process. Also, allow yourself some leeway, you never know when temptation is coming, like birthdays, Christmas.

Hi

Thanks for that. I know the NHS mantra, and feel as you do! Trouble is the insulin… I need advice about possible cutting back on insulin and/or other medications so the BS does not go too low.

I think I’ll give it a go and ‘eat to the meter’

I find low carb chocolate bars and konjac noodles sometimes help, but I certainly feel your pain where bread is concerned!

Has anyone watched Sugar Free Farm? I found the immediate reactions to lack of sugar quite unbelievable. They even carted one of them off to hospital. The only thing there I would find difficult is no tea or coffee, the rest of the food looked wonderful. Oh, and that dreadful looking green goop of course!

PS. She also told me, when I broached the subject of low carb eating, that I was wrong and too ignorant to be capable of forming an opinion because I lacked her knowledge. In effect, be quiet and do as I say. Consequently my opinion of people like this is not high

Hi Anniflower. When I saw an NHS diabetic nurse, her advice was to eat loads of carbs. She said they were necessary fo energy, and if my blood sugar rose I should increase my insulin. This is the party line in the NHS and is toed grimly by GP surgery nurses who cannot be accused of keeping up with the latest research. So you should be very wary of advice they offer. Don’t forget that there is a reason GPs refer their patients to specialists/experts and your average local surgery nurse is not exactly overqualified.

Unfortunately effective treatment of this disease is still a matter for debate but one thing is for sure – the more carbs you eat, the more insulin you will need and the more insulin you take, the fatter you get.

However, your nurse might be the exception who proves the rule, so good luck

Hi shopgirl0423

Just wanted to say well done with your first weigh in. I too have just completed mine and lost 6.6lbs in my first week. Which really does feel great. I need to lose a similar amount of weight to you so wanted to wish you well. I have never been part of one of these forum approaches but reading similar stories and peoples ideas is really motivational and I am sure willhelp spur me on to stay with it and finally get to where I want to be. I have never done the BSD before but it really suits me so far, with the exception of I am not sleeping well.

Is there anyone out there that can suggest a herbal type of remedy that would help sleep?

That is an excellent result Captainlynne! Hopefully you won’t have to deal with that nurse again for a while, and the rest of the bad week is also behind you.

Lynne
what a wonderful Hb1ac. It is truly normal – but probably lower than the majority of ‘normal’ people who don’t have diabetes if they ever were tested.

It is rather sad that the doctors and nurses in your surgery are not beating a path to your door to find out exactly how you have done this.

I am doing the same on maintenance – eating more nuts and dairy and am hoping for the same impressive results.

Topcac – wow, you have been active this morning. I usually go for an after breakfast walk in the morning but have postponed it because it was treacherous underfoot with all the ice and now we have a snowstorm. So am catching up with the admin this morning and will do all my exercise this afternoon once the snow clears.

Daisiesmum
How wonderful you are so close to your goal. It is great that you are working out your maintenance programme. I used to have 2 modes that I operated in. Either dieting or normal eating. Obviously my normal eating wasn’t by any means normal eating – it was in fact overeating,. I have been on maintenance for a month and have still lost a pound. I don’t mind that because it has given me some wriggle room. I would be happy to drop another pound but don’t want to go any lower.

You can really go off people eh Natalie?

Well done to those getting active this morning! I am home with my little one doing some work whilst she entertains herself with her collection of toys. Not inspired to step outside, I am not a snow fan at all! and being relatively high up, every time there is snow forecast we get dumped on.
I am stuck at 9st 12 3/4 I am going to call it my Harry Potter weight! I only have myself to blame. Am going to aim for a longer fast today with perhaps an early light dinner. Plenty of fruit tea to keep me warm. Hoping it will help me get serious and kick start this last 1/2 stone.

Have a good day everyone and keep warm, to those enjoying UK wintry weather.
Hazel

Morning all – well had another go at rowing this morning – only 7 minutes this time, teamed with a 20 minute run and 15 minute swim. Shoulders are a bit sore but I’m hoping that the 10 mins in the sauna helped! I do like rowing SunnyB and apparently it’s fantastically good for you so keep up the good work 🙂

Haven’t weighed in since Monday (TOTM) and I usually would on a Thursday but I am out tomorrow night so I have to weigh in tomorrow morning to keep me on the straight and narrow. It’ll be the longest I’ve gone without weighing on this plan – scary!!

Have a good day – and stay safe and warm in the weather (Northern Hemisphere only I suspect) 🙂

Morning all – just got to work after the gym – check me out (and thank goodness for flexitime)!

It just so happens that the glass door in the sauna (well it would be rude not to) means you can actually look outside through the main window (only one way I hasten to add!) so I was sitting in the sauna watching the snow – I felt quite Swedish….

Run, row and swim this morning before work – just off to shine my halo…..I have my positive pants on today – hope you all do too!! Have a good one and stay safe xxx

Lovely to hear from you Miss Ziggy & well done with continuing well. I was also wondering where everyone was!
I seem to be stuck at the same weight despite eating carefully & wonder if I am under estimating what I am eating. We had the first snow last night here in Sussex & I am supposed to be going by bus to my history class but feeling rather dubious seeing the ice about walking on the pavement in my village to get to the bus stop. I know it’s exercise & that’s what I normally do enjoying the walk from the bus station in town that takes ten to fifteen minutes but neither do I fancy falling over! Oh well grocery shopping after history with my son & granddaughter coming on Sunday. We are enjoying Thai style food at the moment so it will be fish curry with courgetti for me & egg noodles for them & chicken satay to start with a pud of fresh fruit.
My weigh in is on Sunday morning & I am not hopeful of having lost any weight despite trying to 😿
Margaret xx

I had a cup of tea with the mother of one of my daughter’s friends today. She had two sugars in her tea, confessed to a sweet tooth and love of desserts, and her husband works for coca-cola. Yet she is very slim! She complained of not exercising enough since Christmas as she patted her tiny flat stomach. Maybe she was packing on the milligrams.

Hi

Good to hear of successes here; hoping I’ll be one soon!

I am T 2 on basal insulin, and already eat low-ish carb (but Christmas was a bit of a blip!) I have an appt with the diabetic nurse to discuss the diet next Thursday, but I’d love to start this weekend. (Shopping list in preparation!)

Advice please. Start now or wait until nurse’s advice? Don’t want to risk a hypo

Greetings all!

Have just received the book – plan to read it this weekend – & joined the forum but I’ve got 1 question that I’d appreciate some guidance on.

Is the forum solely for those who want to control their blood sugar AND lose weight or are there any here, like me, who want to control their blood sugar but maintain their weight? (I’m tall, slim, very fit but rather surprised – shocked – to be told I have T2 diabetes)

Thanks, in advance, for any words of wisdom

David

I started on Monday 9th and have come to the conclusion that I really don’t like fish!

Anyhoo …. weighed myself this morning and after 4 days I have a weight loss of 4lb … in 4 days! Isn’t it wonderful to get up every morning and look forward to getting on the scales! I know that they say not to weigh yourself every day but I’m finding it so motivational – together with reading all of your posts.

Off to get the tape measure out ……

I hope you all have a wonderful and nutrient filled day!

http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Goodfood/Pages/starchy-foods.aspx

The world has not moved on….This is on the NHS healthy living webpage and a direct link from their weight loss pages (which tell you to increase your starchy food intake to lose weight) – astonishing really.

No wonder people are messed up with so much directly contradictory advice floating around…

Hi everyone🙂For some reason I am not getting notifications of these post via email at the moment even though I am subscribed to them. I thought you had all gone into hibernation!!😮Anyway it’s nice to catch up with you all and your progress. I am still doing okay and by my clothes I am doing good. I can still pull my old jeans off without undoing the zip and button. 👍🏻👍🏻 Yesterday I went met a friend for lunch and we went to GBK. I chose the “go naked” burger which arrives without a bun but with a side salad and coleslaw. Washed down with a glass of wine. I really enjoyed it. Last night we ate oven baked salmon with a salad. I found a recipe online for sweet pepper quiche which is basically quiche egg mixture poured into half peppers and baked. I will we doing bacon cheese and onion mix in mine for lunch. A few weeks ago I bought size ten jeans and was so happy to be able to do them up and can still do them up. Last week I sent off for tankini two piece swimsuit size 12 and it’s way too tight😭Oredered another and it’s too tight. I was so dissapointed then my friend pointed out that i ordered them on Amazon and that were posted from China and in her experience clothing coming from china is always tiny! That cheered me up a bit.👍🏻
Hope you are all doing well….
MIss ZIggy

Granny happy to report another loss of 1kg, that makes a total of 3.5 since 2 Jan, VERY happy with that!! Another 10 or 11 to go but know i will do it this time😀, great support and motivation on this forum! Not happy about cals/carbs being wrong in the BSD book but learnt my lesson and will check and log as you suggest China2013. Great start Cher and welcome Britt and your mum, good luck on your journeys. Good choices today everyone👏.

Ha ha! I spoke too soon about the snow!

Well done Daisiesmum that’s so exciting! You should be very proud of yourself. Especially since you seem to have changed the way you think about food and the triggers for eating the wrong stuff. Enjoy the maintenance phase!
Frog, I was down at my daughter’s in Cardiff when the Tom Kettridge book arrived yesterday so we flicked through it over lunch. I must say it does have quite a few recipes that we will have a try of and has the carbs worked out for each. It makes a nice change to see a recipe book and think ‘I can cook most of the meals in here’ rather than have to avoid 90% like most books. I think she got it on Amazon for £12.50 (ish).
We have approximately 0.25cm snow. Obviously I would take to my bed, but I have 1 tonne of logs arriving at 09:00 that require shifting and stacking. Extra cheese for my lunch, I feel!
Enjoy the day, fellow BSD’ers.

Greetings to everyone. Like FROG I hope you aren’t suffering consequences of wild weather! Where I live seems to be the only part of the UK not to be expecting snow 🙁 .

I am inching ever closer to my ultimate goal – ONLY .8lb to go!!! Only 4 days to my target date!!! I’m working out my maintenance program carefully because I’m so NOT hungry on averaging 800cals that I need to make sure I eat enough.

Tea tasting sounds nice FROG. I have gone off the taste of milk in my drinks since BSD. I used to go through 3-4pts in a week, now I buy in 1pt and it sits there going off! I use fruit teas to flavour my 2-3lts water (just put teabag in the jug of cold water for half an hour or so). I might try some more delicate blends that don’t require milk as my taste buds have changed so much.

Happy BSD Friday everyone, stay safe. Keep warm or cool, depending on which weather phenomenon you are facing in your neck of the woods.

hi Everyone
Newbie here started No Sugar diet on Monday feel fantastic, no sore feet from insulin, no moodiness, no sadness, can actually see the light through the tunnel. I hadnt realised how sugar is so addictive and challenging to humankind. I am loving feeling like my self again however with Energy, Motivation, Determination to kick sugar forever. Thank you for the Blood Sugar Diet read the book and brought another and I have reduced my blood sugar levels from 15+mmols to 8mmols just in five days and lost 1.1kg ooh happy days………………..

Hi Jacks, I use Easy Diet Diary and find it quite intuitive although it is an Australian app so may not be as useful for everyone. I have also found quite a big discrepancy in the calories so I have entered them in my EDD recipe section so I don’t have to re-enter every ingredient every time I use that recipe. I’m sure MFP would do the same. It still takes time to plan meals, write up a shopping list and log everything but for now I need it as I’ve only just finished week 1.
So one week down, 5.9kg (13lb) lost, although when I measured my waist, it was 2cm bigger 😩 I must have made a mistake when I measured my waist last week because that can’t be right! Had another migraine today, that’s 3 this week which is really draining along with headaches every day although they have subsided in intensity substantially over the week. I am hoping the migraines and headaches will be gone for good in week 2.
Britt71638816, welcome and good luck to you and your mum. I don’t have diabetes but was heading in that direction so either way, the program is worth it to at least keep blood sugars under control and lose all that dangerous visceral fat.
Week 2 starts today and its time for a chicken salad for lunch, yum.

Beatthebelly
I think most people lose around 10% in the first 8 weeks. I lost a bit more, but I was pretty hard line and didn’t cheat, walked everyday, drank heaps of water and got as much sleep as I could.
Depending on how much you have to lose will also impact on how fast you lose it.
Good luck
Linda

Lynne, as a vicarious user of the forums for some time, I just wanted to tell you what a huge inspiration you have been to me. Not sure if horrid nurse is a bad nurse or just not a very nice person in general and sadly there are people like this in every profession. Take heart, you have been such a positive influence to so many of us and I am ready and willing to join the team to virtually harangue the nasty peep who upset you!

Keep us posted Bambalone!! 😀

Hi,
I thought I’d share the results of my first week on the diet. Down 3.4 kilos or 7.5 pounds in 6 days. Feeling pretty chuffed that it is working so well. Got another 13 kilos to go and feeling strangely confident. 😊
Have a great day everyone!

Ps — move husband to BSD — much better for his health and brAin and you can cook just one meal!

Do not move off the 800 DaiseyMay!! It is going to get easier and easier as you move forward. It’s like learning a new language — you mispronounce words and use the wrong tense, then suddenly your brain “gets it” and it’s all much easier. You don’t have to be exactly 800 every day — I think most days I messed up and ate closer to 950 but it totally worked. So you don’t have to be perfect to do it right! Aim for 800 but be glad you are anywhere in general vicinity on those bad days! It’s a goal, not a grade!!