Diet and Health FAQ

Tagged As: weight loss diet tip

Question:
I've been Type 1 for about 15 years. Anyone got any good tips on weight loss diet? I can decrease my insulin and eat less, I suppose, but are when I exercise I sometimes go hypo and need to eat lots to make up for it. The never ending story, as it were. Just thought I'd ask around for some of your tips and tricks

Answer:
Having been type 1 for 49 1/2 years, and struggeling with my weight for the past 20, and having tried nearly every form of diet/exercise combination discussed in this ng for the past 3 years, I can offer the only thing that has ever worked for me, the NO CARBOHYDRATE DIET. This was recommended to me by my doctor back in 1977. His rationale was that diabetes is a disease of carbohydrate metabolism. Carbs from all the so called healthy-foods like pasta, breads, cereals, etc. breakdown into glucose. Glucose, as the body's chief energy source, passes into the bloodstream from the digestive track. High glucose causes the body to use whatever insulin is available to convert any excess into fat. Thus, by eliminating carbs, the body would produce no fat and would burn the body's own fat to sustain itself. I think this was written about later by one of the doctor/authors like Atkins or the like. In the interveening years, I have experimented with several other diets with the yo-yo effect, so I keep coming back to the no carbs diet for weight recuction and control. It's really quite simple; you can eat all the meat, fish, poultry, eggs and cottage cheese you want, but NOTHING else. After 3-5 days, you will force your body into ketosis which indicates you have succeeded in starting the process of burning your own fat. At this point, you can add cellery, lettuce or other low carb. veggies. Keep on this routine until reaching the desired weight. Of course keeping the weight off then is the problem, but with careful re-introduction of limited carbs from fruits and veggies, along with appropriate exercise, you should be OK. When on this diet, I eat along the following lines: Breakfast: 2 eggs, ham or sausage and cottage cheese lunch: hamburger patty or slice of meat loaf and cottage cheese dinner: same as lunch with variation in the types of meat. snacks: deviled eggs, slim-jims, jerkey, etc. After reaching ketosis, I mix non-fat cottage cheese with low-fat cottage cheese with pineapple which improves the taste. I also use salt and pepper on cottage cheese to improve its taste. I found a quote by Dr. Bob Arnot in his pamphlet, Fat-Burning Breakthroughs that seems to apply to the problem we diabetics have: Excess insulin is probably the main cause of obesity and may be killing you. How does this hormone cause obesity? Simple. Too much insulin packs the fat cells with fat, slams the door, and throws away the key. This pamphlet has much that I think would be of interest to readers of this ng. I will contact Dr. Bob and see if I can get permission to post it here. Admittedly, the no carb diet sounds boring and will cost a bit more than a regular balanced diet, but comparred to commercial weight loss programs, it's much cheaper.