SUCCESS STORY BY BLANCA ROBLES-LEANOS

Another success story!!**
On 12/4/15, I was diagnosed with T2D. My A1C that day was 11.9. The world came crumbling down on me. I lived in a complete blackout for weeks. I never felt so depressed in my life. I had frequent panic attacks and felt like my spirit had left my body already. I felt I was walking around in my shell. During that time, concluded that I could either fight this or let it knock me out cold. Having two small boys, the latter wasn't even an option.... I geared up and decided to fight! Having that intention, I searched for a support group that could give me some hope. I searched on FB and this group was the first to come up and I immediately joined. I was encouraged to do LCHF. Honestly, I never heard of this woe before. I did my research and was convinced this would be my ammunition against diabetes. I immediately started LCHF woe and never, ever cheated. Not even once! I ate with my meter all day long. Testing myself 4-6 times per day.

Fast forward, three months later. Today I received my new A1C report from the bloodwork done on 3/7/16. My result is 5.0!!!!! WHAT!!!!!????!!!!! I immediately started crying. I can't believe it! I asked them to double check and make sure they are looking at MY results! They chuckled and said "they are YOUR results!". I made it to the 5% club everyone!!! I feel like I'm being born again!
I feel extremely blessed to have found this group and all the admins who have time and time again repeated themselves on LCHF. THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH! Thank you for sharing your wisdom! It goes a long way for some of us who listen and apply to the advice given! THANK YOU!!!
LCHF is without a doubt the way to go!

from type 2 diabetes support group global network

POST REGARDING FATS BY RHONDA L.

 There are fats in meats, nuts, eggs, avocados. You can use things like cheese, cream cheese, heavy whipping cream, coconut oils, butter etc. Natural fats in anything. Fat will keep you full and take away all your cravings for carbohydrates. Out of the 3 nutrients, (Fats, carbs and proteins) only fats and proteins are essential for the body. Carbohydrates are not needed for fuel as your body can use fats for fuel and will, if you keep your Carb levels low enough. Many of us stay at 20 or below in Net carbs to keep our bodies in a fat burning state. The carbs you do consume should come from non- starchy vegetables that contain lots of fiber to help you with bathroom task. Eat leafy green veggies daily.

NANCY K

This is a great post written by Nancy Kasperek, Type 2 Diabetes Weight loss Support Group
For those here trying to lose weight, and who isn't? If your dietician or doctor recommended 30-45 grams of carbohydrates per meal and 10-20 grams for 1-2 snacks daily you will never lose weight. Those recommendations come from the ADA, who has no desire for you to have steady bs in a normal range of 70-99. Why? Because their primary sources of funding come from big pharmaceutical companies. So why bite the hand that feeds you? Companies such as General Mills, Post, etc. do nothing as well. They have influenced every sector of the government, and those bodies which determine the food pyramid and what food types should have the greatest emphasis based on research that THEY have paid for. Your doctors get no education in nutrition during their training. PA's, nurses, and dieticians get education based upon the ADA recommendations period. But as a T2D you have insulin resistance. How you acquired insulin resistance is of no matter, it's the fact that you have insulin resistance. Exposing your body to too may carbohydrates will gradually increase your insulin resistance, prohibit you from losing weight, and increase the likelihood that your medication doses will have to be increased over time, and add additional medications to try and control your bs levels. Those many carbohydrates are stressing your pancreas as well, and eventually with a lot of stress it will begin to fail. Complex carbohydrates, such as grains and cereals, can cause your bs spike to be prolonged as much as 6 hours. So if you claim that they don't spike you, do you test every hour past the 2 hour mark to ensure that? So what is a T2D to do? Smile when you get counseling that says to have that many carbohydrates daily and significantly lower your carbohydrate intake to much less than 50 grams total per day, and even lower if you possibly can. But to lose weight you must also add another component that many of us don't want to hear, or talk about-exercise. Exercise is important for many reasons. 1. It will temporarily lower your insulin resistance and make your circulating bs more available for the muscles to use, until those stores in the liver are depleted. At that point if you have increased your good fat consumption your body will begin to utilize those for energy. 2. It increases your heart rate, which helps with your overall cardiovascular health. 3. It will help you build muscle and burn some of your extra fat. 4. First you will notice a body shape change, and a change in your measurements long BEFORE you will see a change in your weight. But exercise and lowering your carbohydrate intake will not be enough if you allow spikes above 140, or 20 points higher than your premeal levels at 2 hours. So essentially you have two choices: follow the ADA woe because you choose to consume the carbohydrates that insulin resistance will make you crave. Thus increasing the likelihood of more meds, and all the complications of diabetes. 2. Choose a much lower carbohydrate way of life. thus stabilizing and normalizing your bs, slowing the rate of any complications to a snail's pace. Having a healthier body, plenty of energy, losing weight, and normalizing your lab results. It's your personal choice. But honestly, I for one, choose number 2 for the entire family and myself. I am losing weight, I have plenty of very wonderful tasting foods to choose from. I have expanded the palate of the entire family into new foods that they woud have never tried before this. We are making better choices in foods, as well as exercising together, which for me increases family bonding and quality time together.

POST FROM NANCY K.

, diabetes can not be cured and it will not just go away with medication. To control diabetes so that you can come off meds (as long as you continue this way of life is honestly your only option. No diet is going to cure it, only control it. You have several options-some of which are not going to be healthy for you in the long term. 1. Follow the ADA nutritional ideas with too many carbs per meal, take your meds, get your med doses increased, add more meds to your day, experience many complications from diabetes. 2. Follow a much lower carb intake daily, watch your bs carefully to keep them in the 100-70 range, watch your bs fall to normal range, watch your doctor reduce your med doses or stop them, slow the potential of complications to a snails pace and live a much less complicated life.

GEO ZAUN'S STORY

This coming may will be my 12th year as a diagnosed diabetic and I diagnosed myself, I don't think my doc would have caught it if I had not asked for the tests to be run as I was always very healthy. So at my diagnosis my HBA1C was around 13 don't rightly remember. I was send home knowing I would try to bring it down according to the dietitians advice. Well I was able for 5 more year to keep it the HBA1C right around 6.0 and was then placed on metformin becazuse my HBA1C had risen above 6.3. So now I was on metformin 500mg a day, and over the next 3 years that rose to 2000mg metformin and then onto Lantus (insulin) because my HBA1C was rising above 7.2. Initially it was 5 units a day, however it didn't take but 2 years to be at 40 units a day. (This was as late as 21 months ago). Now in May 2 years ago we went to Germany, knowing that we were going to walk a ton every day. There were days when I walked at least 11 miles a day, and probably no day where I walked less tha 7 miles a day....Now this was on a continual basis for 6 weeks. During that time period, not changing eating habits I was only able to decrease my Insulin injections from 40 units a day to 20 units a day....this decrease happened within the 1st 14 days, and then leveld off. This taught me 2 things. A.....that my dietician was full of proverbial crap and B.......exercise alone had only a minimal impact on my blood sugars. Then in August of 2014 I dicovered this group and with the help of a lot of people here and LCHF I was off of all meds by Nov. 25th of 2014. Now keep in mind, I was exercising like a energy bunny, 3-4 hours every day. I was determined to get off of the meds. My doc allowed me to gradually remove the meds as my daily numbers fell. Insulin reductions happened almost weekly by 5 units, and metformin was withdrawn in 250mg lots. Well now that brings us to Nov 25th of 2014. Fast forward to February 2015. By this time I had no more residual metformin in my system, my HBA1C remained at 6.1 and I changed my exercise routine to 1 hour a day. At this point my daytime numbers were always in very good range as were my nightite numbers however my morning numbers after I got up left a lot to be desired. I'd get up checked my sugars which ran anywhere from 65 to 90 which is excellent. Now 15 minutes after I got before breakfast I would get readings of 160-170-180, that's double of my waking numbers. At this point I experimented but nothing I would do would work. Lets say the phrase I'll use for this is called Delayed Dawn Phenom, as my liver did it's dumping not before I got up but afterwards. Now by Nov. 2015 my HBA1C was on the rise again to 6.3 and I was ready to ask my doc to put me back on Metformin. Knowing that I was gonna have my HBA1C checked again for a specialist in 2 month time, we delayed the metformin restart. During this time period with the help of Pat and Martin we tried different things, which in the end did put me on the right track. On February 12th of this year my HBA1C was back down to 5.8 and falling. Since the 12th my morning numbers have stayed in range and today they have not risen above 90 since waking. Slowly but surely I've been able to work on resistance at the same time that I've been able to reset the timing of my liver. The conundrum that threw me off of the rails in the first place is the fact that I was during this time period always ketogenic according to my blood keto count. Looking back on that, I have to thank my daily exercises. I posted this to let you all know that for me to work out all of the kinks of my particular diabetes took almost 2 years and has not been an easy task. I encourage all of you with doubts to stick with LCHF My blood panels other than my HBA1C roller coasting have been perfect since Nov.2014.

CLARIFYING THE PURPOSE OF THE GROUP. N Kasparek

Personally I think for the most part people are supportive. But occasionally people are going to misread a question or comment. It's difficult when it's only a written word. Honestly there is going to be a strong reaction which is negative when people post that they ate foods which should be avoided by a diabetic and state "I ate X and it didn't affect my bs". This is not helping those who are new and struggling with the diagnosis and finding their way through the information that is available. This group is supportive, but we don't enable poor choices or bad information being posted on this group. I, for one, was encouraged to research my disease, my meds, nutrition, exercise. I was given the tools too start my journey, to become well informed, and make my own decisions based upon good scientific evidence. While anecdotal information may provide some temporary help to some, it's not based upon fact, which is what we need. So when people say my bs is 400 and I age a whole pizza and someone says drink pickle juice it's not going to help in the long run, they need information how to change their thoughts about food and how to go about a life change.

Geo Zaun...good info for newbies

Ok folks, here is a question that is asked every day.....I eat this many carbs every day, is that to many carbs. The answer to that is simple, if your meter tells you that that is to much then that's to much. This is a low carb group, that means less than 100grams of carbs a day. Some of us can manage with that, but others can't. I can only manage around 20grams of total carbs a day. This figure depends on the individual and how far along their resistance is. This is somethin...g each and every individual has to figure out themself. You dare not forget that if you cut the carbs from your diet, you need to increase your fats. For every 2 grams of carbs you cut you need to increase your fats by 1 gram or a bit more because 1 gram of carbs=4 calories and 1 gram of fat=9 calories. You can not increase your proteins because if you do that, then your body will just convert the proteins to carbs and then your sugars will go up even though you cut your carbs. So understanding this you now know where LCHF comes from. Always always eat to your meter, your meter is your guide if your numbers don't come down then you need to cut more carbs and eat more fats. The amount of total energy you need to eat is determined by how many calories your body needs to function properly. My body needs around 2400 calories, so I eat about 100grams of proteins which=400 calories and 20 grams of carbs which is 80 calories. That is a total of 480 calories and my body needs 2400.......Well that means if fats are 9 calories per gram then I eat at least 200 grams of fats a day. This is what my meter tells me, this is what I must do in order to keep my numbers within the normal ranges and stay off of the meds