Protein and Fat and Type II Diabetes

In My Humble Opinion
1

I think I have already told you all, I have Type 2 Diabetes.

Anyway I am not planning on making any radical changes in my diet or anything, certainly not without consulting my doctor. But I was just wondering.

What effect does protein and fat have on Diabetes? I know before they found a way to get insulin from animal sources, they would put people on the ketogenic diet. I don’t think it worked. But they must’ve known what they were doing.

They say sugar is a bad choice when you have Type 2 Diabetes. But what about fat and protein?

:slight_smile:

2

IMO / IME …

Folks w T2 diabetes do very well on a diet low in simple carbs. That’s a far cry from a ketogenic diet.

If you’re new to the game you’d do well to read all you can; there’s plenty of decent advice from legit sources. And plenty of cranks pushing BS too. And of course pass any radical plans by your doc first. As I did.

For my first couple of years I ate zero refined/added sugar, zero potatoes, zero rice, and zero flour. Every meal had some carbs in the form of veg and/or the less-sweet types of fruit. Any excess weight I had melted off and my blood sugar dropped hugely. As a result very little medication was needed to maintain me at completely normal A1C & FBG.

Now, with 8 years experience under my belt, I’ve softened my dietary stance a little. I now eat some, but very little, of that white stuff, still take very little meds, am lean, and maintain an A1C in the low 5s. IOW high normal = not quite pre-diabetic. Despite a known 7/8ths dead pancreas.

At first glance it appears that of necessity a diet low in carbs is high(er) in protein and fat since those are the only 3 choices on offer. That’s less true than it appears.

A better way to describe a diet is that it consists of 5 food types, not just 3: protein, saturated fat, unsaturated fat, complex carbs, and simple carbs,

A diet with nil simple carbs and low saturated fat can be well-balanced in the remaining 3: proteins, unsaturated fats, and complex carbs. Being well-balanced in those things seems to work just fine for general health AND works just fine for maintaining a low A1C & FBG as well.


THE most influential technology for managing diabetes is a fork. Use it wisely or pay the price.
3

Agreed about diet being one of the absolute major components of control that can be ‘self administered’ - there have been tons of studies done, and many of them can be found online but the upshot is like @LSLGuy said read all you can.

I can remember reading about one of the longest surviving diabetics, she was a child in the 30s and did the pretty much carnivore only diet with restricted calories [so she didn’t just eat all the bacon/whatever meat she wanted, they also restricted her to something like 1000 calories a day or something like that.] She survived into the 90s that I know about [the article was somewhere in the mid 90s as I recall] and she said she was relieved when they came out with insulin as she was finally able to eat like a normal person [can you imagine, growing up never having tasted birthday cake!!!] but most people still ended up dead even on the old restricted diet and exercise thing.

Don’t forget exercise as an additional aid in controlling your BG levels - I have a friend that instead of spiking insulin will first try running on his treadmill to see if he can burn off a little glucose. I wouldn’t recommend trying that without your doc’s awareness, but once you have been diabetic for a while you learn your body and how it reacts to food, drugs, exercise and lifestyle in general [I know how to tweak insulin from long experience using lantus, a long acting insulin. A single unit can work for certain amounts of excess glucose because i know how my system works on the glargine. Fast acting has an entirely different effect in my system. I prefer to just watch my diet and do my normal meds.]

Also - if you are in a job environment where they do the birthday cake for a person, once you are stabilized, have a discussion with them and explain thoroughly that you can adjust your diet for the day if you know there will be cake so you canh indulge in a piece … my workplace desperately wanted to make me feel valued s the cake lady made one with chocolate ganache frosting made from diabetic chocolate candy, so everybody had the shits from the alcohol sugars substituted for real sugar. Oops =)

4

Yes to the latter. Speaking back to the OP:

IMO/IME best to simply eat less of normal food than to try to make up for acute carb intolerance (as I call diabetes) with fakery like artificially sweetened stuff. And for darn sure don’t expect or ask others to alter their cooking for you. They’ll make a hash of it, the other guests will be disappointed (or worse ;)) and your innards will still be ill-treated.

IOW, it’s easier to forego cake than it is to make or find fake-sugared cake. Ditto bread, pasta, etc. Cold turkey is easy and affords the opportunity to update your everyday “normal” diet to something chosen by adult you, not child / adolescent you. Playing at keeping the same old sugar- & carb- heavy tastes that gave you DM while using weird science to fool your guts is not the way to beat this bastard for the long term. Feed your body what it does well on.

Also aruvqan makes an excellent point about exercise. I’m miles away from being insulin dependent, but I can spike to 200+ if I gorge on a second helping of rice at the Indian restaurant then play couch potato all evening. Or I can gorge exactly the same, immediately take a 1-2 mile leisurely walk, and my BG tops out at 130.

Until one gets bad enough to truly need insulin, your fork and your sneakers can take you most of the way back to normalcy. At least as to BG, A1C, etc. Which in turn drive most (not all) of DM’s myriad and nasty co-morbidities like blindness, amputation, neuropathy, etc.

Every day I don’t eat crap is another 3 days I won’t be blind later. It’s an easy mantra to remember. And at least for me, motivation aplenty.