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Same. Pre-diabetic and all kinds of other health issues started creeping up (obesity, GERD, really bad heartburn, sleep apnea, etc). Most doctors would've just

• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• pascalxus 9y ago
  Great Work! that's awesome you could change your diet to a healthy one. These days there's such a huge stigma against eating healthily and responsibly, especially from friends and family.
  • throwaway0255 9y ago
    Yeah, it’s bizarre. The topic of diet has a lot in common with religion. The research is so murky and poorly conducted and everything is a contradiction, so people have a tendency to just pick a “team” and form beliefs around that. Team Vegan, Team Vegetarian, Team Keto, Team Paleo. If you’re on a different team, you’re an attack on their dietary beliefs. If you’re on any team, you’re a pain in the ass to anyone who hasn’t picked a team yet. People also have a tendency to form part of their identity around how they eat. “I’m a ______.” So now you’re not just questioning their dietary beliefs, you’re casting judgment on their identity. So I get why people are so sensitive about it. And like politics and religion, I try to keep it to myself.
    • DiabloD3 9y ago
      To be absolutely fair, Team Keto and Team Paleo are almost the same team. Keto people avoid foods with grains and refined sugars just because they're high carb; Paleo people avoid them because they're toxic, and often naturally fall into a lower carb diet (not necessarily "true" Keto lowness, but still usually a lot lower carb than they were pre-Paleo).
    • jimjimjim 9y ago
      tribalism. it pops up everywhere, sports, operating systems, code editors, vehicle manufacturers. and it is actively used by and encouraged by all sorts of power structures.
      • saiya-jin 9y ago
        and religion
    • gebeeson 9y ago
      I am still trying to dial in my diet Right Now. I am a Type 2 diabetic and cardiac patient; it all came on very fast and furious. I've tried LCHF before and it didn't work as described with my chemistry. Same with vegan (low fat super high carb). What diet Team am I rooting for now? Team I-Don't-Want-To-Get-A-Bad-Case-of-the-Dead's-Right-Now. Not sure what form that is but I am still testing.
      • devmunchies 9y ago
        If you want to get the "team vegan" take on reversing type 2 diabetes with diet then watch Forks Over Knives on Netflix. Its actually not a purely vegan film like everyone claims, because the doctors talk about limiting meat (e.g. 5% meat intake), if not completely removing.
      • eternauta3k 9y ago
        Try paleo?
      • tzs 9y ago
• gergnz 9y ago
  While I wasn't overweight or obese I had definitely gained 10+KG a few years back, and was bordering on overweight (according to BMI, which is just one indicator, not the only one, and again, take it with a grain of salt and in moderation). For a while I completely stopped drinking alcohol, soft drink, wheat and refined sugar. Basically meat, vegies, fish, whole fruit (not juice). Lost all the extra weight within a few months, and enjoyed great energy. Being 100% honest, I now find that soda is very sweet, and I now no longer drink alcohol at all. I have re-introduced some wheat and refined sugar, but keep it to a very minimum and try and combine it with other ingredients. (e.g. banana avocado cacao mousse). Never going back to drinking all that soda and buying everything as a sandwich.
  • pc2g4d 9y ago
    I started putting on some weight after beginning full time work after college (no longer walking around campus, always having a decent lunch--it made a difference!) Two years ago I decided to limit my consumption of refined sugar to two desserts a year. I cut out pop, fruit juice, don't drink alcohol or coffee, avoid white flours and aim for foods made of whole ingredients---fruits, vegetables, meats, nuts, etc. I'm at roughly 10lbs below where I was when that started, which is nice, but also it's transformed my feelings about sugar. Like gergnz, pop is really sweet! Unbearably sweet. Actually most sweets are just overwhelming concentrations of sugar, and they feel weird to eat. Sweetness is something that your body adjusts to. Once you're used to eating a brownie a day, brownies no longer seem so sweet to you. But go without sweets for six months and suddenly you'll realize just how pointlessly sweet they are. The thing that really drives me crazy is how _so much_ food is sweetened, even things where it makes no sense. It's like everybody's palette is so accustomed to sugar that now restaurants have to add sugar to their savory foods just to make them taste normal. It's a disturbing trend. Reminder: the US government spends $2 billion a year on sugar subsidies. Because there's just not enough sugar!! https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bitter-battle-over-sugar-subsidies-heats-up/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bitter-battle-over-sugar-subsid...
    • friedButter 9y ago
      >The thing that really drives me crazy is how _so much_ food is sweetened, even things where it makes no sense. Yeah.. thats restricted to US :) Visiting US from India, I ended up throwing away a loaf of bread cause it was as sweet as chocolate
• lr4444lr 9y ago
  The part almost no one goes into is, so what's your diet now that you've reached the baseline you'd like to keep? Total calorie intake (estimated)? Any food or food groups you still avoid? meal timing? Is it a sustainable lifestyle change?
  • throwaway0255 9y ago
    My caloric intake while eating at a deficit was about 1200-1500 kcal. Maintenance is about 2200. I eat a lot of meat, poultry, fish, eggs. No restriction on fats, but I try to favor animal fats and olive oil. Unlimited vegetables. Fruit, but only raw (no dried fruit or juice), and favor berries over bananas. Nuts and cheese in moderation. If I want carbs, favor sweet potato / regular potato over grains. Generally avoid that altogether though. No beer, favor wine and liquor, all in moderation. So that’s how I select, then from there I restrict to the calorie goal. If I do have pasta or cake, I go a little harder on myself the next day (or in the days prior). That’s rare though. It’s been really easy. Hardest day was day 1, second-hardest day was day 2. Sustained for about a year so far, and I’m not struggling at all.
    • enraged_camel 9y ago
      Is dried fruit bad?
      • nradov 9y ago
        It's not bad per se, but it contains a lot of sugar per unit volume. Some dried fruit even has extra sugar added (effectively fruit flavored candy). So it's easy to accidentally consume a lot of calories without feeling full.
        • vixen99 9y ago
          And it's fructose (metabolized mostly by the liver as with alcohol) not glucose which can be used anywhere.
      • throwaway0255 9y ago
• rsync 9y ago
  "A few months and about 50lbs in, I had no signs of insulin resistance whatsoever, my A1C was down to completely normal values, and I was able to discontinue my medication entirely." ... "Started calorie restricting and eliminated grains and sugar from my diet almost entirely, and all pre-diabetic symptoms disappeared within a month or two. Zero GERD, zero heartburn, no longer obese, no more disturbed sleep, lots of energy." A serious, well-intentioned[1] question for you and your parent: How has this changed (or not changed) your views towards classifying obesity/diabetes/metabolic treatments (as opposed to your cure) as unnecessary medical interventions ? How does this change, if at all, your perception of the responsibility of others to fund those treatments ? [1] Congratulations on this achievement and your good health.
  • dhimes 9y ago
    I lost 50 lbs and it didn't budge my blood glucose by a single point. So, not OP nor GP but I don't think we know enough to tell people to just figure it out. What did work for me, a little, was increasing the amount of beans I eat, and with it grains (rice), and curries, and not eating meat for at least two days a week. My bloodwork got better across the board (cholesterol, glucose) despite gaining 10 lbs.
  • throwaway0255 9y ago
    There's another component to all of this, and that's psychology. There are people who are anorexic/bulimic and it's a horrible affliction. There are also people on the other end who compulsively overeat, usually to cope with some kind of trauma or as a reaction to anxiety. Or just because they've been fed one way since they were children, and habits are really difficult to break. Distinguishing those people from the people who can just decide to make it better is probably impossible. So I see some validity to all approaches. The problem with treating it as purely a medical issue though is that, by doing that, society is being more permissive of the poor decisions people make. People who can choose to eat better and improve their health that way might never find that out, if they're just told it's all medical and we're dust in the wind. The problem with treating it entirely as a choice is your prescription becomes punitive toward people who genuinely can't control themselves. So I think the right approach is a balance between the two. Having said that, I think the current climate favors the dust in the wind hypothesis too heavily, and I think a lot of people are hampered and harmed by a complete lack of criticism and concern as they make and keep themselves obese.
• Mithaldu 9y ago
  > wear a mask that would breathe for me while I slept Dude, that's a really bad misrepresentation and very unhelpful to all the people who do need one. Many of them already struggle with self-worth issues, and seeing (whether intentional or not) lies like that spread, or worse, parroted back at them by others later does not help that. It's made a lot worse by the alternative being to gamble on suffocating in your sleep, or doing brain damage to yourself with prolonged apnea periods that drop your blood oxygen, or at the very least, having a shit life due to low energy levels every day from having been 8 hours with the blood oxygen level of a 90 year old. You're still breathing entirely under your own power with CPAP devices. All they do is basically balloon you up a little to keep your throat from closing up in your sleep, by providing a continuous flow of air pressure higher than the ambient air pressure. Yes they have an up/down rhythm that matches your breathing, but that's not because it breathes for you, but because it literally matches your breathing patterns so it won't obstruct your own breathing. > put my bed at an angle so I could sleep through the heartburn/reflux Also, to be honest, this is ridiculous. Medicines to help your body regulate gastric acid exist and aren't particularly expensive.
  • stordoff 9y ago
    FWIW, he didn't specify the type of mask. Something like a non-invasive ventilator is far closer to "a mask that would breathe for me while I slept" than CPAP. I used one for a time due to central sleep apnea - I'd go for 10s of seconds at a time without even _attempting_ to breathe (as opposed to obstructive apnea, where you attempt to breath but struggle due to the airway collapsing). Unfortunately it didn't help me that much (even with it, I would still not breathe properly which was reflected in my O2 sat. IIRC) and it aggravated other health issues, so I stopped using it after 4-6 months (which, when one of the first things I read after diagnosis was along the lines of "Rarely, CSA may result in sudden death", isn't a choice I made lightly!).
    • Mithaldu 9y ago
      Link to the exact device you were using? All of the "non-invasive ventilators" i found look exactly like CPAP. And a lot of CPAP devices have a "encourage the user to breathe by doing some flutter" mode.
• config_yml 9y ago
  I did the same, as a side effect. My GF had gestational diabetes and was put on a diet to prevent having to take insuling, so I just ate the same food. Even as a non diabetic, it was so obvious how much better I felt. A lot less tired as well, less tired, even with the erratic sleep cycle of a newborn.
• fuzzfactor 9y ago
  Far too many consumers are still craving the same old four major food groups: Junk, Fast, Frozen, and Artificial :)
  • JoeAltmaier 9y ago
    Sugar, salt, fat and caffeine. Which sensibly makes Chocolate nature's perfect food!