Eating like a diabetic

[DebJ]

15. Hi Tobin! Here's some good news you might be able to get...

and some bad news you want to avoid!

My husband was 120 lbs overweight on his 6'7" frame for many decades before I met him in his mid-fifties. He had a heart attack in his forties, was diagnosed diabetic, and never learned anything except to avoid potatoes. Seriously. ( I just met him 10 years ago.) High cholesterol. His medicine bag was enormous. In addition to two diabetes meds, cholesterol meds, and aspirin, he also had to take a med to regulate his heart rhythm, and two different meds for blood pressure.. Huge doses of everything, too. Plus nitroglycerin for chest pains. Absolutely all of this was due to his food addiction and overweight. ALL of it.

Now he's down to a good BMI. We took him down the 120 lbs over 10 months. At first he lost like 8-10 a week; by the
end it was just maybe 1.5 lbs a week (which takes two weeks of weigh-ins to notice just because of water weight.)

GOOD NEWS: He was just told by his doctor he is probably not diabetic anymore, and his cholesterol is not only normal, his 'good' cholesterol is better than mine, and his blood pressure requires almost no medication at all. The last two months he took just one Tradjenta twice a week; now he's not taking any diabetic meds. (But he also just started urinating a lot at night, so we might need more tweaking or to retain the lower dose. Getting him to take his blood sugar is very difficult! I'll have to play sergeant again!) He was also able to stop his cholesterol meds. No more worries about what those meds might be doing to him long-term from side effects, yeah!

PRECAUTION: While he was losing this weight, his blood sugar was going whacko. We ended up taking it six times a day (because I insisted) and we were able to determine from that how to adjust his diet and his medicines. Turns out the 'main' diabetic medicine had to be continuously lowered as he lost weight, or his blood sugar crashed. He'd be stable a week, then crash again, in the earlier weeks, because he was losing weight so rapidly. But within four months, he was off the 'main' med altogether (i forgot the name now it's been two years), and just taking Tradjenta. Usually Tradjenta is an add-on med, but he got to the point where it was his only diabetic med.
HOPE YOU/SHE DOESN'T DO THIS: Ask the doctor to jack up the diabetic meds doseage so one can overeat and keep blood sugar in a better range. That's what my husband did. AND he thought 160/90 was a 'good' range for blood pressure. End result: his kidneys now only function at 29%. Now he's on a really restricted diet, and it's not fun. THE ONLY THING HE CAN EVER DRINK AGAIN IS WATER, PRETTY MUCH. (Or a rare glass of tea.) It was the kidney give out that forced the weight loss. He just wouldn't do it before; serious food addict.

GOOD NEWS: His sleep apnea is gone. He used to snore something awful, and do that catch-the-breath-stop-breathing thing. He only snores rarely now. The weight was the issue. Healthy weight, no more apnea. Double gift!


DIET STUFF: Because my husband is so tall, he has to have 2700 calories a day to maintain 205 lbs. He's not very active at all. 2700 calories means about 385 carbs a day. You are lucky you got a dietician who said you could do 60 carbs at a meal. We got an idiot who said no one should ever have more than 120 carbs a day, 40 carbs max per meal. What a dolt. He'd have to have been downing a tub of fat a day to make up for necessary calories. He now eats 6 times a day to spread the carbs around.

A carb is not a carb is not the same as other carbs. One woman we know... pineapple would knock her for a loop, throw her blood sugar sky high, when the same amount of carb in other fruits did not do that. Depends on the person what certain foods will do.

I put my husband on whole grain whole wheat bread and whole grain brown rice, and it helped tremendously to smooth out the carbs because of the fiber content. Also made him feel fuller. White bread is candy. Period. That's what it is, candy mush.

Someone referred to wheat as a 'bad' carb. The medical facts are that 5-10% of people have a gluten allergy, and 0.5% have a wheat allergy. So I wouldn't worry about that. The gluten thing is largely a marketing device; sell the fear!

The advice on whole grain breads is excellent advice...really helped in our household. Also, when you do the whole grain bread, Pepperidge Farm has the lowest sodium breads. Anyone who has been overweight for a period of time will likely have issues with salt, too, if not now, it's coming unless the weight comes off quickly enough. Sodium is another kidney killer / blood pressure raiser. Most Americans get the largest majority of sodium from their bread intake. Fast food breads are truly hideous. A McDonald's breakfast sandwich has an entire day's limit of sodium in it. Control the sodium in whole grain whole wheat bread that tastes really good, and it's positively painless. You can cut like 400 mg a day of sodium and never notice it.


PRECAUTION: How's your blood pressure, Tobin? You say nothing is wrong, but kidney disease isn't diagnosed until its too late, except in the most rare of cases. You could have lost kidney function but no one will know that yet. There are five stages, with the last stage being kidney failure, but no one gets diagnosed until stage 3, and then it's really late in the game. Because as we age, our kidneys all lose function, so when you get to age 64 like my husband and you only have 29% function to begin with, and then through age they falter more... PLEASE don't go there!
My husband's kidneys not only suffered from the erratic blood sugar for years (even with megadoses of diabetic meds) and the high blood pressure, on top of that, apparently a blood pressure med did additional damage to his kidneys. (Lipitor, helps most kidney patients, but he's in the 30% that it doesn't help or actually damages the kidneys). Meds aren't a panacea. Every med has a side effect that can sock you later. If only he had lost weight earlier in life, he wouldn't be going through this hell now, with more to come because dialysis will eventually rear its hideous head.
I now have to do my husband's diet on Excel spreadsheets. I need the sodium and potassium amounts in every single bite of every single thing that hits his stomach, plus must balance the carbs/proteins/fats ...every single thing is restricted and yet must be balanced. I had to create a database of every single thing he eats, check the labels, check the FDA website because potassium is usually not listed (but may be a requirement to list soon). It takes me 30 hours a month to produce his menu plan for the month. Then I have to make sure I have everything he needs before grocery money runs out... I can't substitute one brand for another, even. It's a nightmare. Every single bite he eats is either counted, weighed, or measured. I go through 8 sets of tbsps and tsps every day, and have 6 sets of measuring cups and a scale. I am so disgusted with what it takes to keep him fed that now I'm not eating as I should anymore. I just can't bear the kitchen, so much work, enormous piles of dishes from 6 meals a day and all the measuring stuff. PLEASE DON'T GO THERE. We are going to have a kidney disease epidemic in this country, and since most people won't go to the trouble I go to for my husband, well, a lot of people won't have to worry about Social Security....they aren't going to make it.