FickleHearts Congratulations on the new low.

Fickle, you are doing so very well.
Trish, you have left ww behind and trying something new, and its not working as well. I know its tempting to feel free to eat different things and not have to count them, but ww was really working for you. You don't have to pay to play, you know the points values of most of your regular foods now, you can track on paper, or create something on line, or use a calorie counting system thats a bit different. I was worried about those fried shrimp, somehow we forget the coating is not low carb!
I have been peaking down to 177 last 2 days, but I think my hungry may come back too. As the pain gets better and I take less pain medication, I expect the appetite to return. Also with the warm weather, we are getting outside more. Exercise always makes me hungry. In the past, I have used the exercise as an excuse to eat whatever I wanted, but have been doing well this time. Usually have an apple or something "free" on points if possible.
FBS was 5.3 today (96)
One thing thats NOT happening so well, is that the sugar cravings are still quite strong. I haven't been having desserts generally, (last time was at the Mandarin buffet 2 weeks ago) but the cravings are still there. Doing groceries yesterday, just passing the Vachon cakes (different cakes, but like little derbies) was hard. SO glad DH was with me, that helps curb me, and I didn't cave, but really, when oh when will I not feel so deprived when I don't buy and eat crap?
I am thinking of making a sugar-free cheesecake for dessert tonight, to lift the deprivation. If I bake little ones in cupcake papers, and freeze most of them so I don't sit and eat an entire cheesecake in one sitting, maybe I can have a bit of dessert without throwing myself completely off.
Have a good Sunday friends

Morning everyone
We are getting some movement on the scale again this month...yeah for us!
Since we were talking about dawn phenomenon last week I've been reading Jason Fung's blog on it..he explains it in simple terms. I've also downloaded Dr Berenstein's book the diet solution. I knowwwww another book lol. He's been living with diabetes all his life and thru testing and experimenting he's been able to learn a lot about it. He also eats LCHF . Just more info for me to gather on this journey.

Fickle, I do believe you have won the bet! Yay! If I were you, I would continue on the way you've been until the 21. If it looks as if you're going to be below 198 for weigh in, just drink a lot of water and do your weigh in later in the day. That will usually add a lb or two.

Mad, I'm going to ask again if you remember the name of the shingles/poppers. p.a. isn't sure if what she's thinking of is the same ting you were speaking of.

Trish, I went into my online trackers and recorded goals for my macros like you do on MFP. I don't know if I'm allowed to say the name of my tracker on this forum. I never knew my tracker had that, and I've been using it for around 20 years. LOL I never even paid attention to what all it has other than recording food, weight, and diary entries. I wish I could be more diligent with my tracking as I think it would help me. I did it faithfully for about 6 months, but then when I had my bowel surgery I got away from it and never went back.

Fatmad Thanks for your thoughts. I think it goes along with my thinking and decision today.

This morning I was thinking about food pyramids and that the Dr. Hyman's pyramid has non-starchy vegetables as the foundation, then protein and fat. He has fruits and starchy veggies together on the third row up, then grains, and beans, then spices and herbs and recreational treats at the top. I realized that it isn't really isn't that much different that what WW would pretty much be except that they would include fruit with the non-starchy veggies. Long story short I've decided to continue with the WW plan and do track it on paper on y own. I feel your little pep/advice talk is my confirmation that is the right decision for me. The only thing I am going to do is work at doing this combined with kind of an Intuitive/IF way of eating.

As for exercise, I'm not going to do that excessively either although I will keep it up because of the benefits and how good it makes me feel after most of the time. I have that it really doesn't help us lose weight so that takes away the thought that exercising means I can eat more. I never used my exercise points so I could eat more any way. I always try to save my extra weekly pts for what Dr. Hyman calls recreational treats which I call "when we go out to eat". However, I'm learning from my calorie counting that if I plan right even foods eating out can often fit nicely into my regular weekly pts without using the extra ones. It is all a matter of right choices. LOL I'm keeping my calories between 1200 to 1500 calories lately.

I also like being able to use the free foods when I feel hungry.

Carol Sue You can PM me the info you found on the tracker if you like. Since you found Dr. Fung's article about how the liver affects the FBG, I am taking the Metformin with my big meal like my doctor told me to do originally and not stressing about my FBS reading. I believe if I stick with this eating plan and allow my liver to dump the access like the article seems to imply then eventually the weight and the FBS will come down and stay down. Right now I'm focusing on making new healthy eating habits.

p.a. I have that book. I never wanted to go LCHF, but maybe I should read it again or at least the highlights. He is T1 and it really impressed me how much he has learned to keep it in control. I've had cousins who went blind and died because they never even tried to control their T1. I consider myself blessed to be T2 as it really should be easier to control. It just takes determination because I think we get by with a few things they can't for a while. However, we don't really get by with what we think we do as I have a T2 cousin who really works to control it now (using ADA plan) and has had a kidney transplant and is blind. I think we definitely need to stay on top of things and control it.

In fact, I was thinking about when all this weight started coming back on me years ago. DH BIL from 1st marriage was diagnosed a diabetic. I was following WW Flex/Core combo back then and doing very well. He kept saying I was diabetic and I kept telling him no I wasn't. I knew I was following WW very well. We would go out to eat and I would laugh because he know the calories in what we ate and I knew he pts by heart and I laughed and said "You see food as calories and I look at it and I see pts." Any way one day we all had gone to Out back to eat and we left and went by their apartment and he insisted on checking my bs. We had just finished our meal which DH and I had shared. My bs (less than an hour after meal) was 145 and he said "See I told you that you are diabetic".

I got off my WW plan and started following the diabetic diet and guess what when by the time I got Medicare and could go to the doctor, I was diabetic. I suddenly remembered this incident the other day and realized that I wasn't diabetic that day. The then diabetic diet made me diabetic. I was losing weight before I got on that diet. So now all I have to do is go back to eating the way I ate before I did the diabetic diet. Back then I ate lots of veggies, used EVOO in my cooking and I was healthy.

I am sharing that because I realize that I already know how to eat healthy because I've done it before. I honestly believe WW SP is the way I ate back then and I will continue eating that way.

Sorry this is so long. A lot of it is thinking out loud, but maybe it will help someone who is reading it. Once you know what works for you, please don't let any one convince you to do anything else.

Have a Super Sunday.

Interesting article about when it's the best time to drink our coffee for better health.

http://news.yahoo.com/best-time-day-...144953184.html


Here is an interesting article about exercising from MFP. Evidently when I make myself exercise when I feel exhausted already could be doing me more harm than good. Never thought I could be hurting my immune system. You might find this one interesting too.

http://blog.myfitnesspal.com/4-fitne...DBLM153N8QXRTg

Trish, I have always understood that Type 1 is an autoammune disease, for which we have no control, and type 2 is caused by lifestyle and is preventable. When type2s have to use insulin, it is usually because they are not able to control their BG otherwise. I'm not saying I know this as fact, but just that I've heard that. I'm not sure if a type 2 is considered a type 1 after they start injecting insulin. I know that type 2 is referred to NIDDM, which is non insulin dependent diabetes, so if you go by that, anyone who injects insulin is type 1. I have heard some say they are considered type 1.5 and I have no idea what that means.

Also, as far as your BIL telling you you were diabetic, why did he say that? What led him to believe that, even before he checked your pp blood sugar? As I understand it, a non diabetic can get a higher blood sugar after a meal, but it returns to normal very quickly. You may have been prediabetic at that time or approaching it. They say most are diabetic for a while before they are diagnosed. I know I was, and I know I caused it by the lifestyle changes after I married DH. He was not a healthy choice for me. LOL He should have come with a warning label.

I agree that you seem to do much better with WW than you ever did with any other plan, but I kept my mouth shut. I haven't shown a loss for several years so I feel I have no room to criticize someone else's choices.

I don't think I'm going to stop having my morning coffee. I don't usually drink any coffee after 10AM. It no longer appeals to me. I stopped using my SF Non Dairy Creamer about a month ago and I don't notice that it has made any different, so I might go back to it. I seem to drink more coffee when I use the creamer.

I wanted to mention another thing. I don't usually eat bacon, but I've been buying it lately after reading so much about adding fat to my diet. I don't think I will buy it any more because I think it is causing me bowel problems. Like you, my body does not handle extra fat very well. I should just stick to what I know works for me.

Trish when you said you think eating the 'diabetic way' made you diabetic....that's what Dr Jason Fung's says as well. He says in his videos that when we eat carbs our bg goes up,,,,then our Drs give us meds to control this. The Drs are treating the symptoms of high bg....they aren't treating the actual desease.
He calls the meds we take 'dracebos' , a placebo for the dr to give us,,,so when our diabetes gets worse as we grow older and bad things start to happen, then the dr can say, 'well I did what I could'.
The example he gave really made sense. If we get a sick and have a fever,,,,the Drs may give us Tylenol to keep the fever down but that's not what's causing the fever. You need to treat the actual illness.
Re-watching the videos today and they started making more sense to me.,

folks, the poppers are made in the store usually. at Sobey's, FOodland, or IGA. They have 20 calories and 4.5 g carbs, each. not salty, I couldn't eat them without something on. They make a shingle to hold good stuff, like cheese to melt, tuna salad, etc. They are pretty tasteless and its like styrofoam, kinda like a rice cake, but lower carb and no fat. It takes me 2-3 weeks to go through a package, as I prefer to eat real food, and just use them from time to time.
Have managed the weekend without going over daily points allowance. Didn't dip into flex points. Very odd. Ate higher fat than I have been, and lower carb, has helped curb the hungries I guess. But still craving the sweet, so made my mini cheesecakes today. Ate a couple.
Trish, I think that sounds like a good plan for you. The points system just guides us to portion our food, and encourages the non-starchy veggies, we can eat low carb just fine, just have to take care of portions.
Hope Monday is good to us all.

Last night at bedtime my bs was 124, better than usual. I had a low carb dinner. I woke up at 4 AM and decided to test, just to see. 114. But this morning when I finally got up at 8:30 it was 136. I think this is because I go to bed very early, around 9:30-10 but don't go to sleep right away, and that's why I sleep so late in the morning. By that time my Metformin and bedtime snack have worn off. I think this is why my DR goes according to my A1c instead of fasting bs. I doubt if I will ever find the key to getting good fasting bs in the AM.

Ok, well Mad, I guess I can stop looking for the poppers here in the States. Are they sold in the bakery dept? And is that the purpose for which they are made, the way you're using them? There is probably something in our stores that could be used in a similar way.

It's a good thing you never took up smoking. When you try to quit you get so many cravings for a cigarette for such a long time and you just have to fight it in order to quit. I was able to quit smoking cold turkey and that was 23 years ago. But I can't quit my food addiction. Probably because I can't quit food cold turkey. In fact, I love cold turkey! LOL

p.a. I think high carb eating has to be combined with obesity and sedentary lifestyle for type 2 to occur. DH has eaten high carb for 73 years and never became diabetic. For whatever reason he never had a weight problem, and always worked at a very physical job. Even in retirement, he can't sit and watch TV for longer than 30 min without getting antsy, and has to get up and do something. I can sit forever!!

Morning everyone
Yes Carol, there are always the lucky ones like your dh.... :)
Mad I haven't seen those poppers, I'll have to check Sobeys.
Yesterday I made homemade Easter eggs,,,a long time tradition in my family. Think butter, condensed milk, icing sugar then all dipped into chocolate. I'm not normally a chocolate person but when it comes to these eggs I have a hard time resisting. I made half a batch only. ( makes 14 large eggs). I did very well making them but right before bed I started slivering one. I slivered it to death lol..... I think it's because it brings back memories of my childhood,, my mom made them for our church. Recipe has been going on for almost 50 years...crazy.
Back on track,,,I ate so well yesterday there was no damage on the scale. Today will be a low calorie day for sure.

p.a. I would be able to resist those eggs unless they were coconut cream. LOL

Those eggs sound delicious p.a.

I made this sugar free peanut butter fluff stuff on Friday, used a Ghiradelli dark chocolate square to dip in it..... YUM! Calories were a bit high, but I haven't had a good treat in a long time. It was worth it.

My mother doesn't eat low carb. She just figures up the carbs in her meal and adjusts her insulin intake for it. She tries not to overdo starchy veggies and really doesn't eat a lot of sweets, but I do wish she'd eat better than she does.

I'm beginning to think type 2 can't wholly be attributed to bad eating habits and lifestyle. I think there is a heavy genetic component to it too. I know lots of people that ate/eat way way worse than I ever did, and do not have any insulin or sugar issues. My husband is one. That being said, I didn't do myself any favors eating the way I did and never exercising. In the back of my mind, I always knew the consequences, but happily and foolishly ignored them.

I think you should do whatever diet you can stick too long term / for life. WW's is a good program. MFP is free and easy. For me, LCHF makes me feel better most days (I'm not forgetting my breakdown over pancakes LOL). If it's not something you can lose on and stick with, then it's just going to make you miserable. Losing weight is hard (for me anyhow), but it shouldn't be miserable. I'm having to learn that. An occasional slip isn't going to end everything.

I plan on incorporating carbs back into my life when I get closer to goal, but never like I ate them before. An occasional day eating burgers and fries, a sweet treat on a special occasion....... Maybe a once a week eat what I want day. For the most part though, I will forever be a meat and veggie side girl from here on out that at least gets in a 30 min walk every day. I'm coming to terms with that.

And fried shrimp...... Gulf Coast girl here and shrimp is my favorite food (have family that does it for a living).

To quote Bubba -
"You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it. Dey's uh, shrimp-kabobs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo. Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. There's pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich."

But fried is and always will be my favorite way to consume them. I'll take those carbs happily LOL!

I got up and got my book etc and got ready to count pts and decided this is crazy. MFP already has the calories for these foods and makes it so much easier for me to do this. So I decided to continue to follow the WW using MFP to count the calories and let MFP count everything for me. So much easier to plan my meals for the day, print it and move on. I just upped the carb percentage to cover more veggies and the fruit I want to eat and stay within the 1200 to 1600 calories each day. The WW products that I use have the calories on them so I don't have to worry about which pts system I am eating. Takes away the stress of dieting.

I've got my plan for today and will only have 1317 calories. I love how I can keep up with the exercise that I do which encourages me to do it. According to MFP, I should be able to get down below 220s in about 5 weeks. Not sure that will happen, but at least the weight should start coming off and I know I'll be healthier without a lot of stress to do it. Another thing is that I can keep up with the sodium intake too. I would like to stop using any kind of diuretics.

One of the great things that is happening with this way of eating is that when I sleep, I sleep really good and don't wake up as often as I used to.

Carol Sue I'm not giving up my coffee either since I only drink 2-3 cups every morning. However, I am giving up the afternoon cup. I'll just drink more coffee. I don't know why the BIL thought checking my BS within 20 minutes after we ate a steak and veggies meant I was diabetic. We left and it was never checked 2 or 3 hrs after eating. So there really was no reason except I think maybe he wanted a partner in fighting it. LOL Since I ate pretty much like Dr. Hyman recommends now, plus I was consistent with exercise and I was so strict with the way I ate that I refused to eat anything that was off my plan. I didn't count calories, carbs or anything. Although I saw food with the thought of WW pts count, I ate more Intuitively. If I was hungry I ate, but if I never ate just to be eating. So there was no way that my diabetes was out of whack back then. I weighed much less than 200 lbs.

I'm going to do the same thing again only this time I will think calories count rather than pts. I did it before so I believe I can do it again. The difference is that I won't allow myself or anyone else to talk me out of it this time. :)

Have a great day.

Trish, I just don't understand what made him think you were diabetic in the first place, than led him to want to check your BS.

I was wondering about when you ate the guacamole burger without the bun and with a side salad and came up with 245 calories. On their website it says the burger with the bun is 700 calories. Surely the bun isn't that big to be 500 calories. I did a search on MFP and found a few different entries and they had various calorie counts, with no rhyme or reason for the differences. Even though, I think eating a burger without a bun is a very good choice, and the guacomole is good fat, so it was all good. Just sayin. If I recall, their burger patties are pretty thin so they would not have as many calories as a normal thick burger pattie.

I can't drink coffee after 10AM. It just doesn't appeal to me after the first couple cups when I get up. I prefer a cold drink after that. DH drinks it all day, and sometimes he gets up in the middle of the night and has a cup. When he smoked, he got up in the middle of the night for coffee and a cigarette than went back to bed. And he wonders why he doesn't sleep well. LOL

You are so regimented that you plan your diet in advance. I can't do that, but probably could if I was by myself. It seems that your DH is pretty willing to eat according to your plan, where mine is not. I am the one who has to adjust to his plan.

Fickle, Is your mother type 1 or 2? I just wondered because of the insulin. I know some type 2s are on insulin. I I am trying to do this with as little meds as possible because most or some of the meds cause weight gain. I feel that would be fighting a losing battle. You would never improve because your weight would never go down. This is why so many say that it's a progressive disease, but I don't think it has to be. When I was in the hospital they were injecting insulin before every meal, but I was purposely selecting low carb foods from the menu so by the time I went home I was down to getting 1 unit of insulin before each meal. At that point they decided I only needed pills. I never asked what my A1c was when they first checked it and don't know how to find out now, but I would have liked to know.