Is the NHS 'soup and shake' type 2 diabetes diet really the solution we've been waiting for?

Status
Not open for further replies.
I really like the idea of a liquid diet. No thinking, no messing, no washing up, just glug and get thin and healthy. It doesn't work though. I tried Slender back in the day and in recent decades I tried SlimFast. I was ravenous. I also wonder if that's what started off my liver trouble, I have my suspicions as I was on SlimFast I'm sure when I first started up with that ages ago. I now think liquid diets are daft and just not normal. Low carb eating twice a day is the way to go, if it's good enough for Buddha it's good enough for me. If I can only just get my head around my weird food thinking. It's a shame for that poor lady.
 
childofthesea43 said:
Indeed, at 48kg there can be nothing left to lose fat-wise. What was the figure X on diagnosis? If X>48 how long did it take to reduce to 48? If there was such a reduction how soon was it initiated after diagnosis?
Click to expand...

I have no idea what I weighed at diagnosis, nobody weighed me and nor did I (for many reasons). I didn't carry a lot of weight, but did have love handles. They disappeared in short order on a low carb diet and sailing daily.

I started reducing carbs within a week. I started finger prick testing within 48 hours of diagnosis (my father had been a steroid induced diabetic, so I got the value), against the specific instructions of my practise nurse, who gave me a diet sheet mirroring my way of eating, so that was never going to work.
 
Ditto said:
I really like the idea of a liquid diet. No thinking, no messing, no washing up, just glug and get thin and healthy. It doesn't work though. I tried Slender back in the day and in recent decades I tried SlimFast. I was ravenous. I also wonder if that's what started off my liver trouble, I have my suspicions as I was on SlimFast I'm sure when I first started up with that ages ago. I now think liquid diets are daft and just not normal. Low carb eating twice a day is the way to go, if it's good enough for Buddha it's good enough for me. If I can only just get my head around my weird food thinking. It's a shame for that poor lady.
Click to expand...
I remember trying the Cambridge Diet as someone I knew had lost 5 stone, shakes which I didn't like as they just tasted sweet and chemically, soups which were OK and bars which again were sweet but not bad and the odd stick of celery.
Very boring and bland, I found my mouth got very sore and it hurt to chew.
I didn't last for long on that. Seeing the chap who had lost the weight some years later he had put it all back on and passed away not long after.
Real food is my choice.
 
AndBreathe said:
I have no idea what I weighed at diagnosis, nobody weighed me and nor did I (for many reasons). I didn't carry a lot of weight, but did have love handles. They disappeared in short order on a low carb diet and sailing daily.

I started reducing carbs within a week. I started finger prick testing within 48 hours of diagnosis (my father had been a steroid induced diabetic, so I got the value), against the specific instructions of my practise nurse, who gave me a diet sheet mirroring my way of eating, so that was never going to work.
Click to expand...
So it is not known whether you lost a lot of weight (say 10kg) or just a little (say 2kg), nor whether it was lost in a short time (say 3 months) or a longer time (say 12 months). Given those gaps in the data it is not possible to see where the story fits into the Taylor perspective on these things.
 
childofthesea43 said:
So it is not known whether you lost a lot of weight (say 10kg) or just a little (say 2kg), nor whether it was lost in a short time (say 3 months) or a longer time (say 12 months). Given those gaps in the data it is not possible to see where the story fits into the Taylor perspective on these things.
Click to expand...

The weight I lost was within 3 months. I knew I had lost weight because by clothes were loose (but not falling down). I eventually stepped on a pair of scales in a hardware store in Basterre (the Guadeloupe one, not St Kitts).

The scales read about 52kg if I recall. The last couple of kilos was very slow as I tried to stop losing.

My A1c went from 73 to 37 in 4 months, when I broke my trip to come back to the UK for a couple of weeks.
 
Last edited:
A superb A1c reduction anyway.
 
Apparently there will only be 10000 places at a cost of £20 million according to nhs England. 4.3 million diabetics 90% type 2. Those places won’t go far.
 

Attachments

  • 2FE5C20D-378A-472F-A5B1-CE69C53743AE.jpeg
    2FE5C20D-378A-472F-A5B1-CE69C53743AE.jpeg
    101.9 KB · Views: 3
I have done a VLCD a few times over the years, (Lipotrim, cambridge diet, slim and save etc) and they all did help me lose weight (I wasnt diabetic at the time), I would go on them for 3 months, get down to a normal size and then slowly revert to my normal unhealthy eating patterns and regain the weight. I was a typical yo yo dieter, and would often diet for an occassion, normally an all inclusive holiday and as you have paid for it, all inclusive normally means quite a few cocktails and several plates of food! I think the difference with following it for health reasons rather than to fit in a bikini is that maintenance after the shake diet has been finished would be followed correctly as the motivation is to learn how to eat for optimum health and not vanity. I found after the first 7 days I would get into ketosis and not think about eating, it was almost addictive and as someone with an eating disorder I decided this route wasnt for me this time and instead just followed a low carb eating plan. It can work well, but whether is works long term I dont know, it wouldnt for me though.
 
There seems to be very little discussion here about exercise as an aid to weight loss. I don't know if I am unusual in that I find exercise really effective when it comes to losing weight. Maybe it is down to the fact that endurance sports are my thing so I tend to exercise for fairly long periods of time, I don't know. Whenever I embark on another epic act of masochism, the training tends to give me a ravenous appetite but I tend to be able to eat as much as I like and burn it all off. Is there any one else at all out there that has this experience or is it just me?
 
Chris Hobson said:
There seems to be very little discussion here about exercise as an aid to weight loss. I don't know if I am unusual in that I find exercise really effective when it comes to losing weight. Maybe it is down to the fact that endurance sports are my thing so I tend to exercise for fairly long periods of time, I don't know. Whenever I embark on another epic act of masochism, the training tends to give me a ravenous appetite but I tend to be able to eat as much as I like and burn it all off. Is there any one else at all out there that has this experience or is it just me?
Click to expand...
I don't think exercise makes you lose weight, but I think it tones you up. Twice I got to 15stones, the first time by walking up to 2 or 3 miles daily and I looked good imho, a suit I'd saved fit lovely. The second time I got to 15stones without exercise and I looked like a bag of spuds. I managed to get into the suit but I was a lump, yet the same weight both times. Really interesting I thought. 🙂 Both times I piled it all back on. 🙄
 
"I don't think exercise makes you lose weight, but I think it tones you up."

It presumably doesn't work for everybody but it certainly works for me. After the lockdown I had gone from 75 kilos to around 83. I did a lot of swimming and my weight dropped to 70 kilos. It had to be the exercise as I was actually eating more food not less. As a young adult I weighed 75 kilos, my weight was stable until my late forties when I started to get a bit heavier. It was my drop to 70 kilos and the resultant drop in blood glucose levels that brought me to this thread.
 
Chris Hobson said:
It had to be the exercise as I was actually eating more food not less.
Click to expand...
Depends on the food you were eating though.. the simplistic "eat less, move more" mantra really doesn't work when used in the human body. There are foods that help you store body fat and foods that help you burn body fat. Cut out the former and eat the latter and you should be fine.
 
Pizza, I ate a lot of pizza. After swimming 4k it was what I craved the most.

Oh yes and it certainly toned me up.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top