Dangerous when bored. On the shakes diet

Just dragging this from the depths as I have only to wait until Tuesday to see if the 3 month experiment has had any benefit.
I am still fasting all day and sometimes missing having a shake - so just one small meal. If the results are good I might go on until Christmas or even into next year. If not - I don't really know what to try next. I suppose I could learn to swim.
 
Good luck with your results @Drummer
 
Drummer said:
I have only to wait until Tuesday to see if the 3 month experiment has had any benefit.
Click to expand...
Just like an election candidate, and with no exit polls to go on! I'd take heart from Professor Taylor's work. Even 'non-responders' were much healthier for losing weight according to their other markers.
Good luck.
 
The nurse taking the blood sample remarked that I ought to be losing loads of weight - and I sighed. I really do lose weight very slowly - it is in my notes from the last 50 some years.
My waist is smaller, I can bend down more easily and my strength has improved. I can get up stairs faster. Having intensified my keeping the blood flowing to my feet regime my feet seem smaller and the area of dark skin on one shin is smaller and lighter in colour. My abdomen is more flexible - I can approximate dancing and yoga exercises I last did properly decades ago.
Even if I don't see much improvement on my diabetes numbers, I intend to get some sort of bar or handholds and try to improve my leg strength doing squats.
Apparently my ability to do the modified press ups I can still manage is unusual in a woman over 70. I used to be able to brachiate - I think that is the term - swing by my arms. I used to do that on lighting rigs and gave people fits of hysterics.
 
So I couldn't wait - I contacted the surgery and found that my HbA1c has gone up to 48.

Also - despite taking less Thyroxine, my levels are quite high.

Now I have a phone appointment with a GP next week, but I might get some test strips and start to check on what levels I am getting.
It is puzzling but I wonder if the carbs in the shakes are too readily available.
I eat a lot of my carbs as raw foods, salads and suchlike, and I did find that my blood glucose levels went on rising in the mornings until I had a small amount of carbs - usually as a tomato or some salad and coleslaw.
Maybe I should try eating in the mornings and fasting after that.

I have definitely lost subcutaneous fat, as my skin is looser, waist smaller, so it has made some differences, just not those expected.
Oh well - back to steak and mushrooms for breakfast - the things we do for science eh.
 
JITR said:
That could well be the explanation.

Early TRE to the rescue?

Early Time-Restricted Feeding Improves 24-Hour Glucose Levels and Affects Markers of the Circadian Clock, Aging, and Autophagy in Humans
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6627766/
Click to expand...
I used to eat at around 12 hourly intervals, and was fairly stable on what I was eating then - but I really did think that the calorie restriction of the last few months would be helpful.
Yes, I have shrunk a little, so I need new clothes, and I don't feel bad at all - but an increased HbAic on this regime goes against all my expectations.
 
Drummer said:
I used to eat at around 12 hourly intervals, and was fairly stable on what I was eating then - but I really did think that the calorie restriction of the last few months would be helpful.
Yes, I have shrunk a little, so I need new clothes, and I don't feel bad at all - but an increased HbAic on this regime goes against all my expectations.
Click to expand...
You may well have had more carbs in the shakes than you would have been having with your normal regime and as the test is biased towards the last weeks when that was happening. What a bummer to put yourself through that for less than nothing.
 
Drummer said:
So I couldn't wait - I contacted the surgery and found that my HbA1c has gone up to 48.

Also - despite taking less Thyroxine, my levels are quite high.

Now I have a phone appointment with a GP next week, but I might get some test strips and start to check on what levels I am getting.
It is puzzling but I wonder if the carbs in the shakes are too readily available.
I eat a lot of my carbs as raw foods, salads and suchlike, and I did find that my blood glucose levels went on rising in the mornings until I had a small amount of carbs - usually as a tomato or some salad and coleslaw.
Maybe I should try eating in the mornings and fasting after that.

I have definitely lost subcutaneous fat, as my skin is looser, waist smaller, so it has made some differences, just not those expected.
Oh well - back to steak and mushrooms for breakfast - the things we do for science eh.
Click to expand...
Drummer, what is higher despite less thyroxine? I'm a bit confused by that.
 
Drummer said:
So I couldn't wait - I contacted the surgery and found that my HbA1c has gone up to 48.

Also - despite taking less Thyroxine, my levels are quite high.

Now I have a phone appointment with a GP next week, but I might get some test strips and start to check on what levels I am getting.
It is puzzling but I wonder if the carbs in the shakes are too readily available.
Click to expand...

Ack! How are you feeling having had the results after your experiment?

Hope you weren’t too disappointed. I got the feeling you were hoping to move your results past where they’ve been happily sitting for a few years.

Interesting that you’ve noted some shape changes. Were you tracking weight change?

What will you take from your experiment?
 
AndBreathe said:
Drummer, what is higher despite less thyroxine? I'm a bit confused by that.
Click to expand...
My levels of thyroid hormones are high - my thyroid has started working again, back from the dead, apparently.
I need to take less Thyroxine.
 
everydayupsanddowns said:
Ack! How are you feeling having had the results after your experiment?

Hope you weren’t too disappointed. I got the feeling you were hoping to move your results past where they’ve been happily sitting for a few years.

Interesting that you’ve noted some shape changes. Were you tracking weight change?

What will you take from your experiment?
Click to expand...
I think I have PTSD from years of being insulted when the diets I followed didn't work so I could not actually bring myself to weigh and track changes.
Having definitely been low calorie during my experiment, resulting in having no trousers that fit (today I went out and had to unlock the door as I had trapped the trailing edge of one trouser leg between door and threshold) all I can think of is going right back to William Banting's letter on corpulence, and considering that it is the quality of the foods I have been consuming which is at fault.
Formerly most of my carbs were coming from fresh and frozen vegetables, the fresh ones eaten raw. From time to time I added frozen berries, half a dozen times a month.
The 20 gm of carbs from the shakes became the most significant source of carbs, with perhaps 10 gm of carbs from cooked vegetables as part of the meal.
I was having a shake at 5pm and a meal soon after - perhaps that too is wrong for me, but having the shake earlier in the day made me hungry.
My first thought though, is thank goodness I did not try this earlier, as it is supposed to be so effective and for me it was not.
I will request a follow-up test if the GP will allow it, as I think it would be best to go back to the regime I was following which gave me almost normal numbers.
 
Drummer said:
I will request a follow-up test if the GP will allow it, as I think it would be best to go back to the regime I was following which gave me almost normal numbers
Click to expand...

Yes your previous system does seem to be so well suited to you.

“If it ain’t broke” and all that.

Good to have tried it I guess. I tried an insulin pump with the same mindset - something that seemed to work well for everyone, but that I didn’t expect all that much for me. In the end an insulin pump far exceeded my expectations.

So sometimes these experiments do work out.

Sorry it didn’t for you in this case, aside from the weight you seem to have lost,
 
Drummer said:
I used to eat at around 12 hourly intervals, and was fairly stable on what I was eating then - but I really did think that the calorie restriction of the last few months would be helpful.
Yes, I have shrunk a little, so I need new clothes, and I don't feel bad at all - but an increased HbAic on this regime goes against all my expectations.
Click to expand...

I am still smarting from my HbA1c going up to 39 in three months after being at 32 for a year, against all my expectations! That's why I am thinking about eTRE, my eating window in the morning. Problem is we enjoy having supper together.

Anyway, @Drummer, eTRE has this graph. To my mind it indicates you may have been much better off had you consumed your meals in the morning than the evening. Imagine shifting the timescale from 8:00 to 18:00, and adjusting for your high morning glucose and effects of thyroxine.

1731411788199.png

Summary:
Collectively, our data suggest that eTRF improves several facets of health through both circadian- and fasting-related mechanisms. eTRF improves glycemic control by lowering 24-hour glucose levels, reducing glycemic excursions, and potentially by improving insulin signaling. Importantly, some of these improvements in glycemic excursions may be driven not only by eating earlier in the day but also by having a short inter-meal interval, suggesting that TRF interventions with longer inter-meal intervals may be less effective at improving glucose levels.
 
Drummer said:
My levels of thyroid hormones are high - my thyroid has started working again, back from the dead, apparently.
I need to take less Thyroxine.
Click to expand...
Thanks for clarifying. Do you have Hashimoto’s disease?

Whatever you do, make sure your levels are checked after 6-8 weeks after your dose reduction.
 
AndBreathe said:
Thanks for clarifying. Do you have Hashimoto’s disease?

Whatever you do, make sure your levels are checked after 6-8 weeks after your dose reduction.
Click to expand...
I was diagnosed just with thyroid failure, a long time ago now.

Since I have been keeping my blood glucose levels down my need for Thyroxine has more than halved. The prescription at the moment is too high - but thyroids are not supposed to start working again so there has been some resistance to anything more than an annual check and reduction. I lowered the dose myself as I was having atrial fibrillation. I learned to check my pulse rate so as to detect what was going on, but last year my usually metronomically regular pulse started to skip beats. On the lower dose it is not back to perfectly regular.
 
Drummer said:
I was diagnosed just with thyroid failure, a long time ago now.

Since I have been keeping my blood glucose levels down my need for Thyroxine has more than halved. The prescription at the moment is too high - but thyroids are not supposed to start working again so there has been some resistance to anything more than an annual check and reduction. I lowered the dose myself as I was having atrial fibrillation. I learned to check my pulse rate so as to detect what was going on, but last year my usually metronomically regular pulse started to skip beats. On the lower dose it is not back to perfectly regular.
Click to expand...
With Hashimoto's, being auto-immune, levels of antibodies ebb and flow meaning a similar thing in terms of thyroid performance. Hashi's can sometimes be very difficult to manage, when in it's active phases.

Honestly, whilst an annual check is just about fine with a stable thyroid and stable medication with changes to medication, or symptoms, best practise is considered to be testing circa 3 monthly until there are 2 similar measurements. within the reference ranges, then testing intervals can be lengthened.

Unfortunately, the clear understanding of thyroid disease in primary care make diabetes look great.

Edited to add; if you are experiencing A-fib, you really should be having an ECG to check things out. Becuase I tale T3, my Endo has me scheduled for regular ECGs. They take about 5 minutes to do, so a very limited burden on resources.
 
I'm quite shocked that you've been messing about! That's the kind of thing that I do. I thought you were doing fabulous on low carb two meals a day? That's what I'm trying to do. I'll get there yet or maybe not. 🙂 10 and 4 and fast through the night is the plan if I could only follow it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top