T2DiabtesandMe.Com - advice on food seems terrible

[belfastbiker]

Watching the T2DiabtesandMe.Com video here, and the dietician/nutritionist/whatever is talking of avoiding fats and thus avoiding butter and eating processed c**p margarine. WTHell? I'm on the diabetes.co.uk forum and all the guys having the most success are all lower carb, higher fat ways of eating.

If I avoid fat, imma replace it with carbs mostly, surely?

Oh, hai!

 

[rebrascora]

Personally I don't hold with the idea of saturated fats being bad either. I think it is all part of the same outdated information/research on fat. I may live to regret it but at the moment, I am eating more fats, including a lot of saturated fats than I have the whole of my life, and I feel fitter and healthier than I have in 20, maybe even 30 years.
I get stressed about enough stuff but eating too much saturated fat is not something I am going to add to the list.
I know there is talk of rape seed oil being "bad" but not many people seem too concerned about that.
It is the same with eggs. they are good for you, or bad, good or bad, depending upon which decade we are in and the latest research. I feel better physically and mentally when I eat eggs. That is good enough for me and my BG meter tells me that all these things help to stabilise my BG and improve my diabetes management.

 

[Drummer]

Low fat was never researched, as far as I can find out. It was one persons opinion which was repeated and repeated and repeated again until it just had to be taken seriously.
I eat the fat which comes with the meat, or the oil which is in the fish, plus a very small amount of butter and olive oil - I often find that the butter has gone rancid before it is used - I ought to put it in a bowl of water, but I forget.

 

[rebrascora]

@Drummer There was definitely research done but the data collected was to do with mortality rates and there were very few post mortems conducted in those days so quite a few deaths were written off as heart attacks without any clear evidence or when other ailments were a factor. The dietary fat aspect was a general assumption based on the population of a county as a whole rather than the specific individuals, as far as I recall. The data was also cherry picked from a handful of countries where the information supported the high fat diet correlated to high incidence of fatal heart disease and the data from other countries which didn't support the theory were ignored. I forget the name of the scientist but he was well renowned.

 

[Drummer]

I suspect that I have a higher threshold for the definition of research than many - I have a scientific background right from school to retirement, and Ancel Keys might have meant well, but somewhere between the raw data and the advice something went awry. The seven countries data conformed to the desired evidence, so the rest of the world was ignored, even though it was surely equally worthy of study?

 

[trophywench]

I don't actually believe that physically slathering fat over everything you eat and drink is what I'm ever going to advise anyone to do. I think LCHF is a complete misnomer. It should be lowER carb (Whatever level of carb you happen to eat, gradually reduce it) and normal fat. So things like full fat milk (blue top) but not Channel Island milk (gold top) and butter are OK where you'd normally use either milk or butter/non dairy spread anyway - but only in the normal amounts - not half an inch thick on a crispbread or toast or a quarter of a block of it in your mash or your peas or your cabbage. A knob of butter (ie a flat teaspoonful) on your veg, yes.

It's counter intuitive trying to get into T2 remission pdq, because it's actually dangerous to your overall wellbeing to reduce BG too much too soon. (Risks are at least retinopathy and neuropathy)

Don't even think remission will always happen either. Some people can and some people can't - because every single person's body is different so we're all stuck with that until they replace us all with clones - by which time thankfully I'll already have been dead quite a while!

 

[trophywench]

Didn't Mr Keys only publish the research at the request of the Grain Board of America? And was it not many more than 7 nations which he covered in the first place?

 

[Ljc]

I am with Jenny here.

No way could I go as LC as many do on here as for HF no to that too, I have never believed all fats to be bad, I just have normal fats, like I used to have when growing up in the early 1950s.

Fortunately this forum advocates a different dietary regime to the main site and seen many a newbie come here terrified , who in a few months show great improvements in their Hb1ac results with some going into remission.

 

[belfastbiker]

It's counter intuitive trying to get into T2 remission pdq, because it's actually dangerous to your overall wellbeing to reduce BG too much too soon. (Risks are at least retinopathy and neuropathy)

Wait, this is first time I'm seeing anything like this, I need to know more - I've been pulling out all the stops in terms of diet change (intermittent fasting & low carb, a lot less processed food), medication, supplements (e.g. Berberine), exercise etc.... and whereas a random BG reading was showing me 20 mmol/L on about 12th Sept (I was then diagnosed T2 on 17th Sept), my fasting BG is now 5.3, and 2hr post prandial is 7.2 with low carb and 8.6 with higher carb. My eyesight *was* getting much worse, but in the last few weeks had markedly improved, and retinopathy test on 22nd October showed no issues, so along with controlled weight loss and better cholesterol results, everything seems to be going right direction, and now I'm concerned about moving too fast.

 

[rebrascora]

It is known that dropping your levels too quickly can cause damage to the fine capillary blood vessels in the eyes and extremities and so lead to possible retinopathy and/or neuropathy. It is usually when you are coming down from very high numbers like 100+ but can happen lower down the scale. Just because it increases the risk doesn't mean to say you will have these problems and some can be transient in nature if you do get them. If you have dropped your levels and eye screening is showing no damage then you are likely fine and I wouldn't worry about it now, but it does get mentioned quite frequently on the forum here.
By the way, many congratulations on your progress. Looks like you are doing a great job with managing all your levels... BG, weight and Cholesterol. Well done! Hope you also feel better for it in yourself.

 

[trophywench]

Yeah - it's the pdq that's counter intuitive, not the trying to achieve remission.