How to Fix Insulin Resistance?

[maree1234]

Is it possible to "fix" insulin resistance. I feel that my diet is the same sort of diet which another person would use to lose weight, but I lose nothing. And, yes I am not the most active person, but, as I have read, "exercise is the LEAST efficient way to lose weight" so I do not believe it can all be blamed on my sitting a lot. My grandfather , and 2 aunts, all on my mother's side had diabetes, my mother did not. i was overweight as a teenager, but through anorexia lost the weight and kept it off for 13 years till I had a stroke, and turned to food to get the pleasure that I used to get from just living. Since then, I have been using food to get pleasure out of life and initially stacked on 40 lbs but stopped several years ago and through the HCF (something like that) diet managed to lose around 4lb. I would prefer to be able to lose weight thru diet than a daily injection, and eating only 500 calories per day for 4 months. But even when I prepare for a colonoscopy, I do not lose weight. I am constantly tired and my thinking is slow, but my body refuses to use the fat it stored for just such a purpose. I know that the stroke has damaged virtually all my hormonal system and centime into early menopause (at 40), and has disrupted the production of neurotransmitters. So insulin resistance is a likely culprit for my inability to lose weight.

[BridgeGirl Administrator 2 stone]

Hello and welcome to the forum, maree1234

The reality is that most of us having the standard UK diet will develop some degree of insulin resistance over time and yes, it is possible to deal with it by adjusting your diet. The idea is to cut right back on those foods that stimulate insulin production, namely carbohydrates.

It sounds like you've done a lot of your own research but I will give you a link to this post which explains it very well healthunlocked.com/nhsweigh...

This report supports it phcuk.org/wp-content/upload...

The good news is that having a diet low in carbohydrate and with a healthy amount of fat is very enjoyable. You will find many of our members using the Daily Diary who enjoy that way of eating and are seeing the impact on their weight and wellbeing.

You'll find everything you need to get the best out of the forum in our Pinned Posts healthunlocked.com/nhsweigh... I recommend joining a weekly weigh in and using the Daily Diary; you'll find them both there, plus a Welcome message and all our other activities.

Active participation does pay off so I hope we'll see you out and about around the forum

PS I was going to mention the possibility of an underactive thyroid but I see you have found your way to the relevant forum. You will get good, informed advice there

[Pineapple27]

Welcome maree1234

We are a friendly bunch and there is plenty of support for you here during your weight loss journey.

I have a significant physical disability which affects my mobility (mobility further reduced in 2002 following a head on car crash, broken tib and fib which didn't heal well and then an ankle fusion).

I am also very short - as a result of my disability (4ft 8”) rather than genetics - my two "little sisters" are both a foot taller than I am! I use a wheelchair outside of the house, and cannot stand for long period of time because of pain in my hips, lower back and damaged ankle.

Pain, long term illness, ill-health, reduction in mobility or a disability doesn't make weight loss impossible - it just makes it rather more challenging - but hey - us folks who have to deal with pain and / or disability or illness on a daily basis are used to challenges, aren't we???

I started my weight loss journey at the end of February 2012, weighing in at 14 stone - over 8 years ago. I was 49 years old and had been trying to lose weight all of my life since the age of 9.

I managed to lose 4.5 stone in 2 and a half years through calorie counting and logging/weighing all of my food going from a size 24 to a size 16 and from 14 stone down to 9 and a half.

Then re-gained some.... lost some again and have now managed to more or less maintain for the past 2 years (upwards during main holidays and Christmas!)

BUT... ideally I would love to drop another stone and maintain there.

The one thing that I realised very early on in my journey was that I was just eating FAR TOO MUCH! As a VERY short (4ft 8”), middle aged, sedentary female and I was eating the same as 5ft 9" active man (my now husband!).

No wonder I was piling on the weight! I now think of the weight I lost as each half a stone being a new born baby... I lost 9 of them and can't really understand how I was ever able to lug all of that around with me all of the time!

I often wish I had dealt with my weight when I was a lot younger, but still, better late than never and also the risk of illness that is associated with being overweight increases once you reach 50 years plus....

I have shared some of my past posts which I hope you will find helpful and inspiring. I won't try and tell you that my journey was easy - and you'll see that there were many blips along the way, but 8 years down the line, I feel about 20 years younger than I did when I was lugging around 4 stone more.

A few things I've found that help me:

Cutting down on portion sizes (always read the recommended portion size on packaging),

Reducing the amount of bread, pasta and rice I eat - replacing with vegetables such as stir-fried cabbage and leek, mashed swede and carrot.

KEEP MOVING - I exercise for 1.5 hours most days, seated stretches on a gym ball and bouncing and flinging my arms about.

NEVER stop (I still log my food on a daily basis as there isn't much wiggle room).

EXERCISE isn't essential for weight loss - logging and weighing portion sizes is. If you can't move much, it's even more important to recognise that you have to eat less than someone who is more mobile / moves more.

Please do pop back to the forums and share your journey with us - we are here for you, day and night and happy to share your success or support you when you need it.

healthunlocked.com/nhsweigh...

healthunlocked.com/nhsweigh...

healthunlocked.com/nhsweigh...

healthunlocked.com/nhsweigh...

I've also got a blog that you might like to take a look at: flidfit.com

[TheAwfulToad Visitor]

There's a lot going on in that post. I'll try to separate things out:

1) Insulin resistance is not a disease. It's a mechanism that your organs use to say "that's enough, thanks" in response to glucose availability. Each cell is able to adjust the "no thanks" threshold in response to the general makeup of your diet. This only becomes pathological when all your organs are saying "that's enough" while glucose is still flooding into your bloodstream from carb-heavy meals. If you get into this state - essentially, prediabetes - the most reliable method of performing a system reset is to reduce your carb intake to a very low level, and consume fat for energy ... which you are doing, if I've understood correctly?

2) Starving yourself is a guaranteed way of staying fat. The reason is that bodyfat is the only thing preventing you from dying in that scenario, so logically your body will hold onto it. It sounds as if you have never had a healthy relationship with food, possibly because too many people have told you that eating less is the way to lose excess flab. Those people are wrong; horribly wrong. If you can accept this simple fact, you have a chance of getting your body and your mind back into a healthy place.

3) Food is supposed to be pleasurable. Again, it may be that experts in your past have told you that you're not meant to enjoy food, and that only starch-based pap is allowed, with no salt or fat in it, because those things taste nice, and niceness leads to sin. Or something like that. I sincerely believe that most of our "healthy eating" memes have their roots in Cromwellian puritanism. They certainly don't have anything to do with science.

Here's a few suggestions that you can try right now:

- Eat proper meals. Do not "count your calories", or "control your portions". If you are hungry, then eat. When you are not hungry, stop. If your diet contains the correct things, you will find that you naturally eat the correct amounts (just like every other animal on the planet).

- Check carefully that your LCHF diet (I think that's what you meant?) is correctly constructed. You should be eating mostly non-starchy vegetables, with meat/eggs/dairy products according to your taste. Everything should be the natural, full-fat, unprocessed version. No lean chicken breast; no turkey- or soy-based bacon-substitutes; no fake yoghurts made with sugar and starch. Feel free to cook things in butter, olive oil, coconut oil, lard, or similar.

- Give yourself permission to enjoy your food. If your meals aren't tasty, learn some new recipes! I recommend these websites:

carbdodging.com/

dietdoctor.com/

Both of these have lots of free recipes.

[Chappychap Visitor]

Diet and exercise brought my insulin resistance back down into the safe zone.

There's some debate about how best to measure insulin resistance, but in the UK the HbA1c test is for all practical purposes the closest you're likely to get. HbA1c is a common component of most blood testing, particularly if you have or are suspected of having any kind of heart condition. The NHS guidelines say an HbA1c score below 42 mmol/mol is considered normal, 42-47 is considered pre-diabetic, and 48 or over is diabetic.

Looking back over annual company medicals it was clear that my score had been slowly increasing, and indeed that trend was accelerating, until I found myself in the pre-diabetic category. With hindsight it was concerning that, before tipping over what is a somewhat arbitrary limit, at no time had the increases ever raised a red flag or led to additional testing.

I was fortunate in that following a heart bypass operation I found myself under the care of a very enlightened GP who passionately believes that insulin resistance is the underlying cause of most obesity and (along with smoking) a great deal of heart disease. His recommendation was a Mediterranean diet, but in particular he emphasised cutting out virtually all processed foods, added sugars (especially in drinks or fruit juices), and refined carbs.

After a few false starts and blind alleys I found a formula that worked for me. I must emphasise that just because something works for one person doesn't necessarily mean it will work for someone else. Whenever I hear someone banging on about some silver bullet solution I try and filter them out. You need to experiment with what works in the context of your lifestyle, your genetics, and your own personal preferences. Having said that here's what worked for me.

I went onto the 5:2 diet, with a Mediterranean diet that had a slight bias towards low carb in that I cut out starchy carbs like potatoes and virtually all bread. I still tried to eat 30 grams or more of fibre a day, which in my case meant an awful lot of vegetables, far more than the "five a day" guidelines. And even on non fasting days I ate three meals a day with no snacking and all meals taken sat down at a table. I also exercised fairly hard and incorporated both aerobic and resistance training into my schedule.

I very quickly lost two stones at which point I dropped the fasting days, although I still tend not to eat before lunchtime (simply because I'm not generally that hungry in the mornings) and I still have cut out all snacking. I keep up the Mediterranean diet , but I don't worry too much about calories. I used to play rugby at county level and I'm a naturally muscular guy, I keep my protein level at about 100-110 grammes a day and I suspect my resting metabolism is quite high because I have a high muscle mass...see what I mean about we're all different!

But most importantly for your question, my HbA1c scores have now plummeted and are back down in the high 20's to low 30's range that they were twenty years ago.

As I said, testing for insulin resistance is a contentious subject, but I'm fairly confident that for me personally a 5:2 Mediterranean diet, stopping snacking, ruthlessly cutting out processed foods and added sugars, allied to a vigorous exercise regime, has turned my insulin resistance around. However, I still work on the basis that I have a built in susceptibility to insulin resistance, so even though I'm no longer trying to lose weight I reckon I'll be following these guidelines for the rest of my life.

Good luck finding the formula that works for you!

[EAROCAN]

Now: very close to 70 years, 183 cm.

In 2010-2011 I had the chance to work from home a little more than a year. I was living in a building with a private fitness room, pool, etc. and I decided for the first time in my life to enter the gym. For one year I did 100 minutes daily, 5 times / week the following:

- 60 minutes elliptical (soft to moderate)

- 40 minutes (dumbbells of 20 pounds each, pulling at the machine with pulleys using the bar with weights, the same weights on the bench and some movements for the abdomen on the floor).

I ate as much as I wanted and what I wanted (so weekly sushi sessions on 20 pieces/session plus hot sake, serious porterhouse barbecue (and not 200 g), red wine to say 10 glasses a week, pastry etc, etc), much genmaicha tea.

in one year I dropped 12 kg (from 110 to 98). I was sweating like crazy in the fitness room.

so for me it meant that I was burning calories ONLY through fitness more than eating (and eating !!).

everything is how much calorie you burn and how much you eat.

if you go on a diet + workout everything is faster.

workouts have many positive effects for your health, diet too.

good luck.