That makes more sense. The word I missed was “simple”. I hated not eating fruit while on keto, but I’ve reintroduced it and can still keep my net carbs well below 100g a day.
Alcohol and sugar aren’t good for anyone, and I’ve learned it’s easier to abstain completely that drink in moderation.
I’m 100% with you on that. It was just a suggestion.
Interesting. I find it easy to stick to an alcohol limit, but when it comes to junk food, I’m finding the “just say no and don’t think about it” approach is much better for me than trying to allow myself a rationed amount.
Anyway, to the OP, I admire your self-discipline. It’s maybe a little obsessive, but extending your healthy lifespan seems like a worthy thing to obsess over.
I’ve currently got my weight trending down…very, very slowly, but I’m OK with that. Probably giving up restaurant food would make a significant difference, but I love it so.
What if those things aren’t white?
Chickpea pasta?
Brown rice?
Whole grain bread?
Just curious.
Or chocolate chip cookies a nice light brown. 
I did this level of tracking for years at a time. Mostly it showed that no matter what I did, my body quickly adjusted and I lost no weight. The only thing that has made a difference is Mounjaro.
I worked with a young guy who was even more anal than the OP. He was very, very fit and used to agonize over his body fat percentage. He had a regime of cardiovascular exercise and gym sessions. During the work week he would do weight sessions in the middle of the day. This required him to consume portions of precisely, measured fluids and meals/snacks on an exacting schedule according to when he would be exercising. On occasion he would excuse himself in the middle of a conversation to eat or leave for the gym.
I’m anal about my diet for obvious reasons. I like to live. (T1 diabetic)
I have wished, hoped, begged for reprieve. I actually dream about eating(and now for water, always slightly dehydrated) any thing I want and how much I want. And, the most perfect thing would be if I could just eat when ever(time of day) I wanted.
Alas, never to happen.
Weightloss and dieting is the most confounded thing we are dealing with in the 21st century for health.
I think there are very healthy persons who are large. As long as they are not sedentary and move a normal amount. Seems like to me these folks could just increase activity.
It’s not always possible. I know.
The GLP-1 meds are going to really come down in price, I hear rumblings about it. The folks at my dialysis clinic who are T2 diabetics are often very large. They are excited the price is going down. I hate to say it, they never last very long, when they get where they need dialysis. I was looking at some the other day chatting about the drug and thinking, well, most of you won’t live long enough
T2 is a lifestyle disease. I do not want anyone to go thru what has to happen to you to have to require dialysis.
If you can prevent it and it takes you being anal to do it, I approve.
Just don’t get militant about it. I’m militant about drinking soda pop. No one even hears me fuss about it. No one cares for your opinion on what they consume.
Yes. For yourself @dolphinboy you do you. (I mean that in a good way).
I have to spend what little willpower I have on other more pressing issues, unfortunately. I went for a while having to plan things a lot, out of necessity because I couldn’t eat a whole lot, and had to maximize my nutrition in fewer calories, while avoiding foods that triggered me to feel overly full and in pain.
If you have the mental health and willpower to do it, then I’m genuinely happy for you. I may even be a bit envious.
From a glycemic / diabetic POV they’re all bad. Just less bad than the purely white version.
Most commercial “whole wheat” bread has a sizeable amount of white flour in it. Like a majority. And sugar to mask the taste of whole wheat that most consumers don’t like.
Brown rice is definitely glycemically better that plain white rice, or worse yet sticky starchy white rice. But that means you can safely eat 1 fork of white or 3 forks of brown in an otherwise simple carb-free meal. Why bother eating any when the safe dose is still far to small to make it a normal component of your meal?
When gluten free became a fad I had high hopes that many gluten free substitutes would be glycemically better. In a word, nope. Some are marginally better than the standard product. But like the white/brown rice issue, the difference isn’t enough to let you eat the gluten-free variant in anything approaching a normal meal-sized portion.
Cute. Gee I wish.
The only good news, as @dolphinboy said a few posts ago, is that if you have eaten absolutely nothing sweet for about 6-12 months, anything with US-conventional doses of sweetness just tastes nasty. It’s as offputting as chugging a glass of molasses. The key is to eat zero; that’ll trigger not liking or wanting sweet. Conversely, eating your max safe dose or using artificial sweeteners won’t do that. And so will leave you craving that wonderful sweet flavor you’re depriving yourself of. That way lies failure.
IME IMO YMMV. And good luck to us all on our journey.
As @susan said, some of us have bodies that respond to diligent efforts to steer them, and others have bodies that are very resistant. Kinda the difference between riding a horse or a buffalo. Buffalo don’t care what you want, not even a little bit. Horses are (much?) more tractable.
I am one of those Lucky-Bastrds™, who never gain weight …
I’m in my mid 50ies now, and I still use the same size Levi’s jeans I used age 17 (30w32 fwiw) … and I could eat what I wanted as much as I wanted and whenever I wanted…
UNTIL my mid/late 40ies … then presbycia (spe?) set in - and I noticed the “liquid-paper-problem”:
Since then I do have to “somewhat” monitor my intake (quality and quantity) … and for ME, Interm. Fasting worked like a charm. I stop eating roughly at 8pm, eventually make it into bed, get up next morning and have fastened for 12 hours already … the next intake is around noon (normally 2pm) … so that makes for roughly 18 hours of non eating and 6 hours of eatery … I do not even get hungry a.m. anymore.
I eat too much bread (sandwiches, but not fast-food) … but I don’t slap myself stupid over this … this year I bought a (quite expensive for me) concept2 rowing machine, as my physical activity level really dropped off in covid and never really came up to former levels … So I work out quite leasurly 2-3 times a week for about 45ish min. and thus increased/improved my fittness and also add to the cal-out column. The good thing about the rower is: its low impact on articulations, but hard on your muscles (what you want!) … and that workout impacts 84% of all muscle groups, so it is very complete … 45mins translate to about 400-500 cal depening on how much gusto I put into it.
works good for me, I hover around my equilibrium, noticed that I replaced (smallish) love-handles with (also smallish ) muscles, maintaining roughly the same weight (70kg/183cm - 150lb/6”ish). If anything, given my age, I really noticed changes in fitness took a long time (3-4 months before I saw muscle-changes and faster-times on the machine)…
So my lifestyle change is rowing on my tarrace to balance out any calories imbalances for the rest of my life.
Uh huh.
Good on ya for figuring out early what changes were needed. I had to ignore the changes until I got fat enough to give myself diabetes. Then I got religion. Far smarter to play it as you are.
Thanks for the replies. It sounds like many of us are trying to manage our weight as best we can, given our own circumstances. Everyone is different, and no single program works for everyone. The trick is to figure out what will work for you long-term and try to stick to it as best you can, for as long as you can. One thing we can all do is be more active. Sitting watching TV or reading for hours isn’t very healthy, so go outside and do something to get your heart rate up. You don’t have to train for a marathon. Just a brisk walk, especially after a meal, helps.
As anal as I am about eating, I do allow myself to go out and enjoy a restaurant meal as a reward. There are, however, lines I will not cross, such as eating fast food, sugary treats, or drinking soda, since it’s very easy to slip back into old bad habits that I’ve worked hard to break. People tell me that I must have tremendous willpower. I don’t think I have exceptional willpower; I try to always make the wise choice based on the research I’ve done.
Will I keep this up for the rest of my life? Who knows. I’m 71 now, and my doctors are happy with what I’m doing and have no suggestions for me. When they finally put me in the home, I won’t be preparing my own food, but until then, I’m trying to eat as healthily as I can and maintain a healthy weight to increase my longevity and health span. I could die tomorrow from a heart attack, but my goal is to reach 90, which only 20% of American males ever do.
stupid Q (we are fighting ignorance after all)
when high body fat can give/trigger (pre) diabetis, does getting your weight in check “undo” the diabetis (always / sometimes / never) ??? I always wondered …
IOW: can you “spring back” ? … w or w/out those GSM-1 (?) jabs?
From what I understand, diabetes is the only chronic disease you can reverse by changing your diet and losing weight. It’s not a guarantee, but most people who make these changes drastically reduce their A1C, and many can get off their diabetes meds. YMMV.
I do. I don’t do crazy or extreme or fad diets. I just track calories. I can eat/drink anything I want, it’s just portion control. I lost about 30 pounds about a year and a half ago doing this and kept it off. My target weight is 165.
1700 calories per day is my maintenance level. Eat less than that, I lose weight. Eat more, I gain. Practically speaking, If I don’t drink alcohol I’ll lose weight.
I weight myself every day and if I go over 165 for more than a couple days I cut back.
I started weight training at the gym 8 months ago. I likely will raise my target weight to 175 over the coming year to account for the muscle.
Sometimes. Not for everyone. Please re-read what I wrote.
Sorta true. Simplifying a bunch
Type 2 diabetes is a process where first your body becomes less efficient at using its insulin effectively (“insulin resistance”), then your pancreas begins slowly dying from overwork trying to make up for that difference by needing to create lots more insulin all day every day than it was designed for. Your pancreas was designed for a marathon and your resistance is demanding it sprint 24/7/365. Of course the more of the pancreas that dies off, the harder the surviving part is asked to work. That’s an exponential failure process. One it gets going, uncontrolled insulin resistance can kill a pancreas in not too many years. Then you either shoot insulin multiple times a day or die. There is no third way.
Nothing will grow back a dead pancreas cell. Nothing. OTOH, a lot of insulin resistance is tied to body fat percentage. Dropping the fat means the insulin you still create with your semi-damaged pancreas is enough to keep your blood sugar in the normal-ish range without pancreatic overwork.
The earlier you notice and reverse insulin resistance, the less permanent irreversible damage your pancreas has suffered. That’s the “sorta”. One aspect is reversible, another is not.
The value of a very low carb low glycemic diet for a diabetic is in minimizing the amount of insulin needed, thereby minimizing the daily workload of your pancreas. If you have enough pancreas left when you get the situation under control this will be long term stable. That’s me, or at least was when I was first diagnosed and turned to living and eating hard core. My blood numbers went from frank diabetes to not even pre-diabetic. But the destruction of some fraction of my pancreas had already happened and I’m stuck with that for life.
Now, a decade-plus later it’s obvious my pancreas has been slowly losing capacity despite my efforts. Such that adopting a classic American high carb diet now would kill it dead in probably a matter of a year or two-ish. When I go full hard core as an experiment for a couple months, the blood results are better, but not nearly as good as back when this adventure started.
So I’m sort of plotting a middle course between a pleasant enough lifestyle and preserving pancreas longevity that I now know won’t last me into old age no matter what I do.
You didn’t ask about meds, but …
Very roughly speaking, all the various diabetic meds fall into three categories:
- Stimulate the pancreas to make more insulin.
- Stimulate the rest of the body to make less blood sugar and/or be less resistant.
- Trigger weight loss which has the effect of improving resistance.
But body fat reduction to a low percentage coupled with a low glycemic (= low to nil simple carb) diet are far more powerful than the drugs. If you can dump all the weight and not eat (much simple) carbs for the rest of your life. Given that that is an impossible ask for most of humanity, drugs are the only remaining option.
Again all of the above is a huge simplification. Any medic will find plenty to disagree with. But that cartoon wireframe has guided my behavior for nearly 15 years to pretty darn good effect. Shame I hadn’t learned about my resistance 5 years sooner and done something decisive then.