I'm new to this and looking for help and support. I have been a Type 2 Diabetic for past 11 years. I've come off all my Diabetic meds for 8 weeks now feels so liberating and back in control of my health ...and have been following a LCHF vegetarian diet without fish but do eat eggs ( getting a little bored with same same veggie choices used to love eggs now a little fed up ...need to look at more recipes to keep me on track) ... have lost 5kgs and 3.5 inches around my waist. Is there anyone else out there done or doing this and managed to see any change in their HbAc1?? getting a little fed up thinking constantly about what to cook and eat and don't want to go back to my old ways... I can't wait to see what my HbAc1 levels read in 4 weeks time !!!! Last HbAc1 in July 2017 was 50.
Type 2 Diabetic following a LCHF diet... - Low-Carb High-Fat...
Type 2 Diabetic following a LCHF diet without any Meds
I do not have type 2, but I just finished Dr Jason Fung's book "The Diabetes Code". He recommends a diet to reverse Type 2 and to eradicate it from future generations.
Review his YouTube videos and see if you are interested in his book. I read it for my mom and my son who is currently on a path towards type 2.
Congrats on comming off your meds. That is quite an accomplishment.
Seems Good
I was only diagnosed in May, but went straight onto the lowcarbprogram (Diabetes UK) instead of meds. I have a meter and my blood sugar readings have all been in normal range since just after that.
Sometimes I feel I just want to break out - my sweet tooth is still hanging on - but so far so good. And although I don't manage to do much cooking (I have other health issues and get very tired), I have a few favourites such as coconut flour pancakes and 90 second bread. I also buy in ready prepared veg, especially onions, and salads to reduce the cooking load.
If you can afford the signup fee, or can get it prescribed by your doctor in England, they have meal plans for vegetarians. Plus a food diary, and online support from their staff and the community.
I started with a target of under 100g of carbs a day, then 90g, now 85g. BS today 5.5.
Sounds encouraging ...well done!!! Hang in there. I feel so much better for being on a LCHF diet just need to look at different recipes.
I still have urges for sweet things .... I've stripped the house with all temptations needed to go cold turkey. It's been hard. Eating out with friends has been the hardest feel he focus just comes back to me not been able to have much. Haven't heard of 90 second bread or coconut flour pancakes Thank you for sharing.
Congratulations on such a great result! I love the fact that the LCHF message is finally getting out there to Type 2 diabetics that (in the vast majority of cases) they don't need drugs ... thanks to private organisations like diabetes.co.uk and pchuk, who are up against the bovine might of the NHS telling people to take their pills and eat their carbs.
Vegetarian LCHF is really hard, and frankly your best bet is to broaden your repertoire. What's your motivation for being vegetarian? If it's animal welfare, there are plenty of people doing cruelty-free dairy (you seem to be OK for eggs). You need to be eating a lot of fat, and in your case that basically means butter and cheese. Also ... get a big jar of Virgin Coconut Oil and use it liberally.
Thank you for your thoughts. Yes I was thinkiing the same so good to hear there are so many of us that want to reclaim back our lives in my experience there just wasn't enough out there to encourage people to give LCHF a try and not to surrender to pill popping sooner !!!!
I'm a vegetarian as I don't like the idea of any animal being killed for my benefit and the fact I don't feel so great when I do eat makes it's easier to be a vegetarian. Thanks for the headsup on Fats didn't quiet realise i can be that liberal on the intake of Fats!!!
Feels strange being so free with my fat intake as for years we've always been told how fat in any capacity is the enemy and now i can eat it in bundance.
The problem with the official advice is that it's sort-of true. If someone is eating a diet that's overloaded with carbs, reducing your fat and salt intake does actually make sense. However it's like putting a band-aid on a compound fracture: it's slightly better than doing nothing, but only very slightly. Reduce the carbs to a level that one's body can deal with and the problem with fats ceases to become a problem; they'll be burned for energy as nature intended.
In the case of diabetics, you just have to take that to the logical extreme: reduce your carbs to close-to-zero (because your body is basically unable to use them), and consume the majority of your energy as fat. It annoys me no end that the sole rationale for advising diabetics to eat carbs instead of fat is that "fat causes heart disease". Even if that were true (it isn't), the carb+drugs regime results in far more unpleasant complications ... including, uh, heart disease.
The reason could be that there are no long-term outcomes of Keto diet so for legal reasons, they may have been advised not to go down that road. Let's say, someone died due to the advice is given, they can be liable. Hard to prove, but they may want to avoid that situation altogether. I do eat Carbs more lately as many of us tend to go back once we have gone past certain stages. I have seen a recent article that keto won't help you lose weight much. A couple of key people commented this before.
Ahh yes it's something I was thinking too how long can a LCHF diet actually be sustained for long term I'm looking at a lifestyle change to help me come off my diabetic med permanently. Thank you for your thoughts .
This is an odd one, because the issue is balance of harms, not harm vs. no-harm. Those who argue that keto 'might be harmful' for diabetics completely ignore the fact that the standard advice is not free of inherent harms: in fact it's guaranteed to result in a shortened life and the complications related to inaccurate blood-sugar control, via well-understood mechanisms. And yet nobody has ever been sued over that. So on one side we've got some well-documented, concrete harms caused by the established therapy, and on the other we've got some vague handwaving about fat, with a conspicuous absence of LCHF adherents keeling over with heart attacks. Hmm.
It's much the same story with weight loss. Does a standard low-calorie low-fat diet help you lose weight? In the vast majority of cases, no. Dieter forums are awash with despairing souls who are "doing everything right" and are still fat. Or fatter than ever. Set against that are LCHF-based weight loss diets which work so well (for most people) that some people end up getting completely fanatical about them 
Keto, was the first-line treatment for diabetics well into the 20th century - people literally spent a lifetime eating VLCHF. There are, I am sure, dusty old journals lurking around in university libraries documenting exactly how that panned out. It's not as if this is something new and radical: the information is out there somewhere.
Incidentally ... I mentioned elsewhere that a family member has just been diagnosed with diabetes type 2. She went to the doctor a few days ago. I was gratified to hear he's put her onto a standard VLCHF diet. This is not the UK, by the way.
Sometimes, it's a case of lost in translation. You do not recommend pure keto. You suggest adding a few Carbs after a while, like beans, whatever you suggested on other threads (that makes sense). I would say, a balanced diet does make sense to me in a long run as you seem to suggest (beyond keto). But if someone is quite obese, the situation is probably entirely different. Sorry, what does "V" stands for as in VLCHF?
NHS is a strange class of healthcare. Money is not filtered down where patients actually are, as my previous Dr commented. He was an avid NHS supporter but not sure after his NHS department was closed down.
I commented before that if I did not have any access to private healthcare, I could well have been blinded and died as well. NHS never enjoy "innovation" in treating patients who have chronic illnesses (obesity is one). NHS is more protective of their own doctors as far as I am aware. Do they truly care about the welfare of their own patients? So far, I cannot say it does as money isn't there. The UK is a developed country but uniquely, on the healthcare league table, it's quite well far down on the list.
Certainly, I have seen doctors abroad and their "attitude" is quite starkly different. Their equipment is spanking new and high tech, not one of those vintage MRIs in one of the "leading UK hospitals" where you are more likely to depend on the healthcare for the rest of your life. Helping their patients is not their mission. If it was, money would have been there. On NHS, if you have non-life threatening chronic conditions, you are left with medications unless you end up getting a complication(s) and they will try to save your life at that point. But do you have a quality of life left? I doubt that very much. You have to make your own decisions as to how to help yourself. The key is not depending on what doctors or dieticians tell you. What they tell you may not mean what you are hearing. They may mean something else, but you need to figure that out for yourself. After all, we are not children, we cannot rely on what someone else tells you.
The 'V' is 'very [low carb]', basically <25g/day. Type 2 diabetics rarely need to go that low, but for Type 1 it was (until insulin became readily available) their only option for staying alive.
You're absolutely right about the quality of care in the UK compared to other countries, which is utterly disgraceful given the amount of money being thrown down the NHS black hole. Where I live, the State healthcare burden is about one-quarter of the UK figure (per capita) and service is vastly superior. The difference is that "lifestyle diseases" are not funded: if you have a disease like T2 diabetes or heart disease that you've inflicted upon yourself, you have to pay for treatment. Somewhat less fairly, it's the same with cancer, but that's what keeps the system accessible to everyone for the 95% of occasions when you just have something simple that needs fixing. People who don't like that risk level take out private insurance; however, even in that case, the premiums are modest.
As you said, the NHS seem more focused on shutting the stable door long after the horse has bolted (spending vast amounts of money on complex surgery or lifelong drug therapy) rather than preventing problems in the first place.
I reduced my HbA1c and lost a load of weight by doing LCHF.
I became T2 diabetic I was prescribed steroids for arthritis. It was discovered when I had an annual check up for the pre diabetes study I was taking part in so I was heading that way anyway.
I was shocked and did a bit of research and went totally LCHF. I bought a book by Dr David Cavan on How to Reverse your T2 Diabetes. Bought a blood sugar testing machine and did exactly what Dr C recommended. Three months later I had better blood sugar than ever and my HbA1c was no longer in the T2 range.
I started on a gluten free way of life to see if I could reduce my thyroid antibodies - it worked really well so I have never gone back to eating gluten.
I eat a lot of eggs, a two egg omelette every morning with either blueberries, mushrooms or a mashed up very ripe banana in it. Plus half a pink grapefruit. I suppose it could get boring but I love it and anything grain based totally spiked my blood sugar so I don’t tend to eat much of that sort of thing. Jacket potatoes do it too and I had some parsnip soup once and I was off the scale with that. I don't eat nearly as much fruit as I used to eat. Don’t drink fruit juices, fizzy drinks - even diet ones, avoid junk food etc. Using Dr Cavan’s method means you know for sure what spikes your blood and you can avoid it forever in my case.
Dr Cavan has a recipe book to go along with his Reverse your T2 book book but I prefer the one done by Dr Michael Moseley’s wife to go along with The 8 Week Blood Sugar Diet cookbook.
I eat a lot of nuts and seeds. I love soups, I’ve stepped up my veg intake as that’s where I tend to get my carbs from these days. I used the Diet Doctor website dietdoctor.com and got a lot of helpful information from them and also from diabetes.co.uk. Hopefully you will be able to fit LCHF round being vegetarian.
Love we're sharing knowledge in this way. Thank you
The lowcarbprogram do a set of menus for vegetarians, and have some vegan recipes too (they are developing a vegan low carb menu plan).
I've lost 2 stone so far by keeping under 90g of carbs a day - that is low enough for my blood sugar to keep well within the normal range without diabetic drugs and to maintain a steady 2lb a week loss (after the initial bigger loss 12 weeks ago).
Recent research shows that eating saturated fats with low carb does not increase LD cholesterol or triglycerides, and other research shows eating more eggs is also fine.
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