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Experimenting with That Paleo (Caveman) Diet ? with Diabetes

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I'm on what could be considered a variant of it, but to me it's just 'what I eat'.

I make a very conscious effort to avoid bread, pasta, wheat, potatoes etc. and 90% of the time I eat a lot of quality meat (ie. mostly 'whole' meat that I season and properly cook myself) plus quite a bit of salad, broccolli, cauliflower. Plus eggs. Where I fall down is I also eat a lot of processed meats such as salamis and chorizo.

When I combine this with exercise, I find I lose weight and tighten up my body VERY quickly - a particular trick of mine is to exercise around 6pm when my basal is running out and I haven't eaten any carbs all day. My BG pretty much remains static after the workout (even if I haven't eaten since 1pm) so I know I must be metabolising fat.

MY ketone levels are also always really steady - they're always in the 0.15-0.4 mmol/l range so I know I'm in ketosis BUT I've enough basal insulin to avoid DKA.

Where I differ most from all these Paleo diets etc. is I'm not obsessed with it. There are plenty of days where I can't be bothered to start worrying about carbs and sometimes there are social events where it's pointless to start being difficult, I just try to make the smartest choice. Case in point - yesterday we had a works lunch at an Italian place, so I have chicken wrapped in Parma ham with mozzarella with a side salad. Easy. Today, I've got family coming and for the sake of convenience we're eating lasagne. So I'll be eating that tonight, although when serving up I'll probably do it so someone gets the bulk of the pasta sheets other than me. And on Tuesday it was a tough day at work so I polished off a stuffed crust pizza. In other words, yeah, I try to make so-called paleo choices but my diet fits round my lifestyle rather than vice versa. But doing this is actually a lot easier than it sounds because I'm a very savoury person anyway. I genuinely just prefer eating meat and veg than bread and spuds anyway and for the things I really can't do without (noodles and tortillas), there are some really good alternatives out there that make it a lot easier.

So what effect is this having on my health overall? I had some bloods done before Christmas when I was sorta keeping to this diet but had also spent two weeks in Thailand living off beer and rice. My A1c was 7.1%, my total cholesterol was 5.1 mmol/l with a 2.5 split. So I was, in other words, ok-ish. I'm going to be interested to compare these results with what I'll get in six months time as I've now properly got in the habit of doing this sort of thing at least 5 days a week. Interestingly, my body weight has stayed the same but I am visibly thinner - either I'm putting on muscle mass or more fat around my organs. Not sure which, yet.
 
Sounds like you've made some good adaptations to better suit your tastes and lifestyle Deus, which is how it should be with these things I think - hope you are rewarded with good numbers when you next have a review 🙂
 
Me too - I'm sorta gambling that this does pay off because the theoretical science behind the numbers stands up, but most people aren't buying it yet (ie. everyone thinks fat causes high cholesterol, whereas theory says it's spikes in blood sugar and excess insulin). One unpleasant side effect of this which hasn't been replicated in the link you posted is that my carb ratios are now completely screwed - if I eat carbs, I need a LOT more insulin than I used to, which I am finding a bit disturbing and can't explain just yet. However, I find that exercising does help reset this so I'm looking at this as a holistic lifestyle - I'm changing my diet but I believe I cannot get the results I want by just changing what I put in my mouth.

One thing I am promising myself though is not to get militant about it - there is a definite school of thought among a large proportion of low-carbers that can be extremely obnoxious. There are certainly people out there who see themselves as some sort of movement that's 'sticking it to the man' who refuse to believe that any way other than their's is terrible and bad. There's also some out there that have quite negative views about the effects of exercise which suggests to me they're using the diet simply as a way to legitimise eating bad food - there are certainly some low-carbers out there who seem to think the diet involves swapping a burger and fries for two burgers and then leaving out the bun. I don't think that's a good strategy.

My plan is based on one provable truth - you don't actually need dietary carbs to survive if you are managing your diabetes correctly, so it's entirely up to the individual to decide how many they want to eat. Simply put, you can cut out carbs if you want, but it's not essential. For me, it's easier.
 
hi Alan and thanks for this. Very interesting. I'm currently on Slimming World's 'original' plan which is reduced carbs so similar to the theory of this diet (ie empasis on meat and fruit/veg and carbs are limited (some, like pasta and rice, are out completely ).

Because of this, I'm really interested in the point made in the article below:

4. If you eat low-carb, you have to bolus for protein. This was the biggest shock for me. After querying my friends, I discovered that bolusing for approximately half the protein is what I need to do to prevent a post-meal spike. Gary Scheiner, author and CDE at Integrated Diabetes Services, explained, ?Since your Central Nervous System needs glucose to function, if your diet is lacking in carbs, the liver will convert some dietary protein into glucose. So it is usually necessary to bolus for some of your protein whenever you have a meal that is very low in carbs.? For me, a low-carb meal is anything under 30 grams of carbs.

Often, my meals are either no carbs or very low carbs (sometimes below 10g and that is on veg 'sides' like beans, carrots, brocolli, butternut squash, swede etc). Since EDUAD showed me that graph on DSF showing that some protein does get converted to glucuse, I've thought that I need to bolus for some of the protein I eat. My question that I have (and cannot seem to find an answer to) is: how much bolus do I need? The lady above says she boluses for about half the grams of protein she eats, but on what ratio?

Does anyone have any suggestions?
 
My approach is to do correction doses - I usually do a pre-meal reading, a 2 hour PP one and then bolus according to how it looks. It's not an exact science.
 
thanks Deus - good idea. 🙂
 
Generally I would prefer avoid need for correction doses but I suppose any rise from protein is going to be slight anyhow- so what level would you correct at- above 5 or 6? ( I imagine if eating only protein or fat there would still be digestion going on and a potential rise in glucose so you could safely correct at this level without hypoing
 
actually, one thought I've just had with using a CF is that (as we've recently estalbished in another thread) the Roche Accuchek meters recognise CF doses as 'active insulin'. so if you were to 'correct' when eating protein, then check your reading later whilst the 'active insulin (ie the bolus for the protein) was still in your system, then it would give you a lower dose for the correction of your high bG than you would need.

I'd probably just enter a manual food bolus dose, that way it wouldn't muck around with your CF doses.
 
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