<p>Thanks everyone! Miami DAP I am jealous.
No cake , crackers etc… today so far! This thread has helped. I am one of those people pleaser types that does better knowing that I have told someone else what I want to do.
It keeps me accountable somewhat</p>
<p>People have mentioned several phone apps on all these diet threads. Can someone point me to one that helps me count carbs? Often times, I have no idea how many carbs are in something like a fish taco at a restaurant. Is there some estimator that has a list of # of carbs per food item?</p>
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<p>You can check the nutrition parts of web sites of restaurants.</p>
<p>Fish tacos should not be too hard to estimate based on their components – tortillas, fish, and vegetables (salsa). However, if the fish is breaded and fried (as opposed to grilled), the carbs, fat, and calories all increase.</p>
<p>I’m not a counting type person. I just eat no bread (that includes wraps, buns, tacos, etc.), no crackers, no potatos, no rice, no pasta. Basically no “white” food. I don’t worry about the carbs in fruit, etc. There is still plenty on most menus to choose from without having to get a salad (no dressing!) each meal, like a hamburger patty, grilled chicken, scrambled eggs, stew, sashimi, etc., and cooked vegetables if possible. In a pinch, I will order a sandwich and immediately throw away the bread before it can tempt me, and just eat the insides. Today I had chicken and cashew stir fry and told them to hold the rice. I’m at the “maintenance” stage of my weight loss now. I probably wouldn’t eat that when I was actively trying to lose.</p>
<p>danceclass, you’d like my DH he eats the tops off pizza and throws away the crust.</p>
<p>mrscollege, try MyFitnessPal. I know it’s an iPhone app, and I think there is an Android version.</p>
<p>“Blood sugar tests are usually done while in a fasting state.”
-I was talking about tests that you do at home on a regular basis. Yes, when you have your test at the office, it is in fasting state. But it is important to test at home at least in my case. And in regard to not having time for exercise, you make time if it is your goal. I am a regular full time working person who also happen to have a very serious hobby that I would like to pursue on a daily basis, house, spouse, just like all here. If you have a goal to exercise, then you make time, if you do not, then you do not. It is entirely up to you as well as choice of your diet. Some people require certain food and others require something entirely different and it also changes drastically with the age. However, if you do not listen to your body and instead listen to everybody else in a world, it might not work, but again, it may. This is just a discussion, nobody is right or wrong, we are just expressing our opinions based on our personal experiences, no reason to judge, you can just ignore.</p>
<p>I have been diagnosed with T2 diabetes for almost 3 years. I maintain excellent blood sugar control (an HBA1C of 5.1 or 5.2) with a low carb diet. Part of the goal is to avoid big swings in BG. I aim at <em>usually</em> eating no more than about 15gms of carb at a time, usually combined with something that will slow it down, like fat and protein. So, despite the fact that a small apple only has about 15 gms of carb, I will not eat just an apple alone. I’ll cut it up and make it part of a chicken or tuna salad. I try to avoid eating carbs for breakfast, because for most of us BG is higher in the morning (the “dawn” effect as we call it) and we react to it more then. Pretty much the only breads I eat are low carb wraps and pitas…not just whole wheat, those are NOT low carb at all…Wasa rye crisp, and a whole grain bread I get at Trader Joe’s that has 13 gms of net carbs per slice. Reading labels to determine net carbs (total minus fiber) is absolutely essential. I do not eat potatoes at all. I eat very little of the starchier vegetables, like carrots. I eat a lot of kale, cabbage, broccoli, broccoli rabe, zucchini, spinach, eggplant, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, asparagus. I substitute green vegetables for pasta or rice: I eat things on a bed of grated zucchini, sauteed in olive oil, instead. I eat very little fruit, because most of it has too much sugar.</p>
<p>Miami’s assertion that sugar does not raise your blood sugar is, in a word, ludicrous. Something that people need to remember is that a sugar is a sugar, and a carb is a carb. Sure, it is better to eat a carb or a sugar that comes with fiber and nutritional value than an “empty” one, but eating a whole lot of whole grains isn’t necessarily a good idea either.</p>
<p>Eating sugar does raise blood sugar but a non diabetic’s body will respond to insulin and remove the sugar from the blood while a diabetic’s body will not absorb the sugar unless they take insulin to boost their own.</p>
<p>I work in a research hospital and attended a lecture by a breast cancer specialist. She showed mammary cancer cells in the presence of sugar. They grew like crazy!! Then she removed the sugar solution and replaced with a non-sugar medium and the cells died.</p>
<p>Another talk told of a colonoscopy of a frequent cheetos eater. The lining of the colon was orange just like the cheetos.</p>
<p>So the food we eat doesn’t just cause heart disease or diabetes but other things as well and Miami is right in that different people have different genetic ability to handle what we consume. A constant donut eater might never develop diabetes or heart disease but may develop colon cancer.</p>
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<p>When a normal teenage non-diabetic eats sugar (carbs), the blood sugar starts to rise, a little teeny bit of inuslin is released by the pancreas, and the body immediately responds to the insulin to clear the blood sugar (largely by shutting off the spigot from fat cells and burning glucose instead of fat).</p>
<p>The problem comes that, over years and decades, we become less sensitive to insulin (chronic sugar consumption is believed to be a major factor). So, more and more insulin has to be released to get the body to respond. The result of this “insulin resistance” is that we have larger and larger releases of insulin for longer and longer periods of time each day. Eating carbs compounds the problem.</p>
<p>This is bad news on a lot of fronts. When insulin is high, it prevents burning stored fat for energy so that the high glucose can be burned and it shunts excess energy into the fat cells. This is all a fancy way of saying that when insulin is chronically high, the body tends to store fat, not burn it. (middle age spread!).</p>
<p>It turns out that insulin resistance is also strongly associated with Type 2 Diabetes (when the pancreas can no longer make enough insulin), high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, PCOS, and – they are now finding – Alzheimers and some forms of cancer.</p>
<p>So, while we may have been able to handle carb-loading as healthy young adults, we may not be able to handle them as older folk, especially if we are insulin resistant. Generally speaking, it’s best to not overuse the blood sugar/insulin cycle.</p>
<p>Two ways to immediately improve insulin resistance: cut out sugar and do high intensity exercise regularly.</p>
<p>Thank you for your explanation, idad. I was going to respond to the statement you quoted, since it erroneously implied that ALL diabetics have to take insulin, which is of course untrue.</p>
<p>I have encountered people who tell me that their HBA1C is 6.3, and their doctor told them they were “pre-diabetic.” I have news for you, folks: you ARE diabetic. And the sooner you get your diet under control and beef up your exercise, the less likely it will be that you develop any complications and the less likely it will be that you ever progress to needing insulin. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, the standards promulgated by the ADA are license to kill yourself, and people in denial do just that.</p>
<p>Yeah, as I understand it, Type 1 or Juvenile Diabetes is the inability to make insulin, period. Most Type 1 diabetics will need to take insulin daily.</p>
<p>Type 2 or “Adult Onset Diabetes” is the type described earlier, where insulin resistance means more and more insulin must be made. Eventually, the pancreas wears out and can no longer increase production and insulin would be required. That’s a pretty advanced stage of Type 2 diabetes. Usually, they’ll treat with metformin (lowers blood sugar) first.</p>
<p>Anyone who is diagnosed with type 2 diabetes or “pre-diabetes” would learn a lot reading Dr. Michael Eades book, [Protein</a> Power](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Protein-Power-High-Protein-Carbohydrate-Health/dp/0553574752]Protein”>http://www.amazon.com/Protein-Power-High-Protein-Carbohydrate-Health/dp/0553574752). He does a great job explaining the whole insulin/blood sugar cycle in easy to understand language and talks about his success treating his patients with just dietary changes.</p>
<p>It’s hard to figure how nutrition advice for diabetics went off the rails. A hundred years ago, doctors knew that diabetics needed to avoid eating carbs. Here’s a Swedish doctor talking about this in a interesting lecture:</p>
<p>[The</a> Food Revolution - AHS 2011 - YouTube](<a href=“The food revolution - AHS 2011 - YouTube”>The food revolution - AHS 2011 - YouTube)</p>
<p>All type 1 diabetics need to take insulin to stay alive.</p>
<p>Thanks idad for explaining in better detail what I was trying to say. However, there are some people who eat a high carb diet and never become diabetic and yes, type II diabetics usually start out on oral medication, but frequently progress to injected insulin.</p>
<p>Thanks for a good conversation.</p>
<p>If T2 diabetics “frequently” progress to insulin injection, it is mostly likely because they do not control their BG through appropriate diet, thus burning out their remaining insulin-producing cells. Oral medications that push the pancreas to produce yet more insulin are likely only to exacerbate this situation, unlike metformin, which is not only the most effective drug out there according to many studies, but very cheap. (Unlike the newer drugs, which also expose T2s to the possibility of dangerous lows.) I really object to simply accepting this progression as inevitable, and would caution against making statements that make it seem inevitable. It is bad enough that the ADA publishes tripe that suggests that an HBA1C of about 7 is “close control” and risky to maintain. If you want to see why they study what they study and recommend what they recommend, just look at their corporate sponsors.</p>
<p>I happen to know a number of older T2 diabetics: one around 70 and the others their 80s. None of them are on insulin. The youngest is the only one with complications, and she is also the only one who consistently fails to control her diet.</p>
<p>All good points Consolation.</p>
<p>Mrscollege,
Carb master is a carb counting app for the iphone. It’s got the amount of carbs of various foods and restaurants already loaded on it</p>
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<p>Inactivity is likely the main factor. Inactive people’s muscles shrink, and what little muscle they have left do not need as much glucose as active people’s muscles. So when the brain is fed, the muscles are not taking up what glucose is left in the blood.</p>
<p>Of course, when someone is inactive, any excess energy, whether it be glucose or fats, eventually gets stored as body fat. Note also that muscle is metabolically active, so even at rest it consumes more energy than body fat does.</p>
<p>Thanks guys and gals. I’ve downloaded the myfitnesspal and carb master apps and I’m trying them both out now. I’m surprised how many carbs are in restaurant salads! How do you guys keep your carbs in control on salads?</p>
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<p>It could well be. Certainly exercise that builds muscle (especially resistance strength training) is a quick way to improve insulin sensistivity.</p>
<p>Dr. Robert Lustig believes that fatty liver is major player in insulin resistance which is why he fingers chronic over-consumption of sugar. In fairness, he also fingers that because sugar consumption is one big environmental change that correlates with the increase in type 2 diabetes on a population basis.</p>
<p>I think the two obvious lifestyle changes are to 1) cut sugar and 2) start exercising, especially muscle-building exercise. Nothing but good can come from those two changes and I don’t think there’s a health professional of any persuasion who wouldn’t agree with those two.</p>
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<p>The big culprit is sugar in store-bought and restaurant salad dressings. I make my own dressings. No sugar, other than what might be in balsamic vinegar. Typically 2 TBS of extra virgin olive oil, 1 to 2 TBS of some kind of vinegar, 1 ounce of danish blue cheese, a dollop of dijon mustard, a 1/4 tsp of minced barlic, salt and pepper. </p>
<p>My one foible in salad making is that I can give up my croutons. My gigantic lunch salad, with that dressing, romaine lettuce, onion, bell pepper, carrots, and celery is:</p>
<p>Cals 510
Fat 41 g
Carbs 29 g
Fiber 5 g
Protein 9 g
Sugars 9 g</p>