[tdstiayw]

Hello. I'm new to the site.

My doctor said that I am borderline Type 2. He gave a simple diet to follow: no bread, no fruits, lots of veg, and lean meats and fish. Dairy is also OK.

He also sent me to a dietitian. She put me on a diet w/ quite a few carbs and fruits. I'm confused. With the doc's diet I lost weigh immediately. With her's I began gaining weight.

What do I do?

[jenb]

Sounds like the dietician subscribes to the American Diabetes Association dietary guidelines and your doctor does not.

If you read the posts here you'll find that (generally) this group agrees with your doc. Cut out the starchy, bready carbs like rice, potatoes, corn, most grains etc.and load up on yummy low carb veggies. Dairy products are good, but watch for carbs in low fat versions. As for fruit, I think most people will agree that it's great in limited quantities, especially berries. You can test to see which fruits and in what quantity have the least impact on your blood sugar by eating some and testing you BG an hour later. If your glucose level rises excessivily, either reduce the quantity or eliminate that particular fruit from your diet.

In my opinion, if you think you've been advised to include too many carbs in your diet, follow your gut instinct and cut back. With diabetes you'll find you feel better if you take the reigns, learn all you can about how various foods affect you, and make the adjustments that make sense to you . Never forget that you're in charge!

Jen

[tdstiayw]

Originally Posted by jenb

Sounds like the dietician subscribes to the American Diabetes Association dietary guidelines and your doctor does not.

If you read the posts here you'll find that (generally) this group agrees with your doc. Cut out the starchy, bready carbs like rice, potatoes, corn, most grains etc.and load up on yummy low carb veggies. Dairy products are good, but watch for carbs in low fat versions. As for fruit, I think most people will agree that it's great in limited quantities, especially berries. You can test to see which fruits and in what quantity have the least impact on your blood sugar by eating some and testing you BG an hour later. If your glucose level rises excessivily, either reduce the quantity or eliminate that particular fruit from your diet.

In my opinion, if you think you've been advised to include too many carbs in your diet, follow your gut instinct and cut back. With diabetes you'll find you feel better if you take the reigns, learn all you can about how various foods affect you, and make the adjustments that make sense to you . Never forget that you're in charge!

Jen

Thanks for the great advice. It's very encouraging to have a forum like this one.

[mazea]

Nutritionists often recommend carbohydrate low fat diets which make it impossible to lose weight/gain weight. I've heard a few stories like yours. My nutritionist gave me the opposite problem- I couldn't stop losing weight because I was eating 165g carbs a day and eating low fat foods(under 15g). 3 months later after this diet, I had lost 3 kg and was underweight so I decided to ignore much of the advice.

It's not the type of carbs you eat so much as the amount of carbs (carbs especially in my opninion) and fat you eat that put on weight.

High GI foods like sugar put put your blood sugar up the same amount as low GI foods like milk, but hi GI foods put your blood sugar up faster. It is better for diabetics to put blood sugar up slower. Banannas are very low GI and great for diabetics to eat.

I cheat . I can have sugar without a spike if I have 15g fat with it because fat makes the carbs absorb slower. I can have bread as long as I have a slice of 5g fat cheese with it.

Apart from recommending a second opinion from a nutritionist and informing them that you are having problems with weight, have you tried carb counting?

[tdstiayw]

Originally Posted by mazea

Nutritionists often recommend carbohydrate low fat diets which make it impossible to lose weight/gain weight. I've heard a few stories like yours. My nutritionist gave me the opposite problem- I couldn't stop losing weight because I was eating 165g carbs a day and eating low fat foods(under 15g). 3 months later after this diet, I had lost 3 kg and was underweight so I decided to ignore much of the advice.

It's not the type of carbs you eat so much as the amount of carbs (carbs especially in my opninion) and fat you eat that put on weight.

High GI foods like sugar put put your blood sugar up the same amount as low GI foods like milk, but hi GI foods put your blood sugar up faster. It is better for diabetics to put blood sugar up slower. Banannas are very low GI and great for diabetics to eat.

I cheat . I can have sugar without a spike if I have 15g fat with it because fat makes the carbs absorb slower. I can have bread as long as I have a slice of 5g fat cheese with it.

Apart from recommending a second opinion from a nutritionist and informing them that you are having problems with weight, have you tried carb counting?

The dietitian has me on 105 grams of carbs a day, plus 2 fruits of my choice. Add to that unlimited vegetables.

Haven't figured out how many calories that is total. I'm supposed to be on 1800 cals a day.

In any case, I find it a harder diet to follow than my doctor's advice.

The doc said that sugar from carbs is my problem. If I can limit those, then my blood sugar re-enters the normal range.

I'm going to go see the doc and see what he thinks. He was adamant about cutting out bread, starch, etc. Truncal obesity is a problem also. Thankfully everything else about my health is A1.

(I'm a male in my mid thirties and overweight with a desk job. I do manage around 7000 steps a day and walk 30-45 mins a day as well.)

[sumi]

Hi td, welcome
As you can see already, diabetes is very individual. Some people eat more carbs, some less. If what your doctor suggests feels right for you, you are losing weight and your bgs are improving, it sounds like you have it made!

[mazea]

Some vegetables have carbs in them. Potatoes has 15g carbs per 70g potato. Corn has carbs too. A piece of fruit roughly 15g carbs per orange or apple or small bannana. So your 'other' carbs could add up to 60g a day very quickly.

[jps]

In talking with a few dietitians in my line of work, they all seem to subscribe to the ADA guidelines for diabetics. My PERSONAL OPINION is that it is waaaaaay too carb heavy. In fact, with my first counseling with one, she was impressed with how quickly I normalized my sugars. She saw the log and saw that the overwhelming majority of the diet was fats and proteins. And of the 60g of carbs I did allow daily, they were of the low GI variety carbs. That meant no bread, no pasta, no peas, no corn, no potatoes, no rice. Then she chimes in that I need to add alot more grain and potato to my diet.

That's when we got into an argument about what I was going to eat. I simply would not follow her plan at all, I figured my own was working for me, that her thinking was ADA based and "outdated".

I think it's more of a matter of what works for you individually. I decided to go somewhat extreme at first (lower than 60g carb per day) and figured I could modify it after a few months if it was too forgiving or not forgiving enough. Turns out it was just right and I've since been able to increase the carbs a bit after a lot of weight loss via the low carb route.

[Ronin]

Tdstiayw, et al.,

Dietary advice is all over the place, and they have differnt goals. Clearly your MD wants you to reduce your carb intake, the dietician wants you to eat a "healthy" diet. The proper diet for you will be somewhere in-between the two.

What I've learned is that the timing and placement of carbs, as well as the type of carbs makes a juge difference. Keep in mind that I'm one of the Pre-D's so my pancreas does work (albeit at the low end of the normal scale) and I exercise a lot so I do burn carbs efficiently.

I have studied and determined the windows where I can eat moderate GI carbs without causing dramatic spikes in BG levels. For me that is within and hour before or after a bicycle/tandem ride. (Note the "or" -- that is an or, not "and") Sometimes if I know I'll be doing a very long ride, I'll carb-up prior to the ride but I usually go for the post ride carb boost.

The key to this is testing yourself often with a log that will (eventually) show you the coorelation between what you eat and do and your BG levels.

Finally, diet alone isn't going to help. You must, and I mean must, get active as in "exercise" -- doing some physical activityt that you like daily if possible that gets you breathing harder than normal, makes you sweat a bit, and builds muscle tissue. This also drives weight loss and strangely enough, allows you to consume more carbs.

[jenb]

Originally Posted by mazea

Some vegetables have carbs in them. Potatoes has 15g carbs per 70g potato. Corn has carbs too. A piece of fruit roughly 15g carbs per orange or apple or small bannana. So your 'other' carbs could add up to 60g a day very quickly.

Just to clarify....all vegetables, fruits, grains and some dairy products contain carbohydrate. For diabetics, the challenge is to find the carb sources that cause the minimal need for insulin. Generally that means reducing your intake of sources of starchy and/or sugary carbs and concentrating on the higher fiber, lower glycemic index cohort.

Jen

[foxl]

Well it is an oversimplifaction, and some times you should eat even the higher-carb things -- like bananas, in smalle portions.

But for the most part, I kind of do follow that rule.

[sanflan]

Bread is especially hard for me, it sends my blood sugar way up. I have better luck eating apples.... that is just me. You can test and see how you respond. I have adopted the philosophy that if God made it you can eat it, but if man made it beware.

My son, who is type 1, said he never met a dietician who was thin. This might be an exageration, but I have never met a dietician who didn't believe in low fat, high carb. I would follow my doctors advice if I were you, he knows how hard it is to control this disease.

[xMenace]

There's many more plusses to your doctor's plan than your dietician's. In my opinion reducing or eliminating grains is a must. I feel fruit has too many benefits to eliminate completely. You can find more sugar friendly fruits like berries and apples (YMMV). (?) are assertions I can't find absolute proof for [to my satisfaction].

Doc
- lose weight
- lower triglycerides
- lower VLDLs
- lower CHD risk (?)
- lower BP
- lower BG
- lower overall cancer risk(?)
- lower risk of complications(?)

Dietician
- more energy (?)
- better mental performance (?)
- lower bowel cancer (?)

[jenb]

Originally Posted by foxl

Well it is an oversimplifaction, and some times you should eat even the higher-carb things -- like bananas, in smalle portions.

Ha, no kidding! There is so much to talk about on this topic that we could write volumes on it, no? Hopefully I covered eating things like bananas (and bread too) by saying that we need to minimize the amount in our diets, not eliminate these foods. I love a good starchy carb as much as the next guy (or gal).

Jen

[tdstiayw]

Thank you all, once again, for the great advice.

My doc is getting back to me in a day or two with his thoughts on the dietitian's diet plan. Until then, I am splitting the difference between the two diets and watching what I eat.

Any thoughts on multivitamins or on PGX?
Polyglycoplex - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I take a multivitamin everyday but no other supplements. I also drink whey protein isolate once or twice a day.

Any experience with high quality whey?