Like a lot of other people, I've been living in denial for many years about the effect my lifestyle has on my health. With a family medical history that includes high blood pressure, heart disease and type 2 diabetes, I have no excuse for my ignorance. I've struggled with my weight for most of my adult life and at regular intervals around the big "0" birthdays I've managed to drop over 50 lbs through diet and exercise - twice. In both cases I went whole hog with the diet extremes - a restrictive low fat diet and then the Atkins diet. I threw myself fully into the programs, read the literature, bought the concept, counted the fat grams or carbs, and in both cases I finally hit the point where I couldn't stand the diet restrictions and slipped back into old ways of eating - a victim of fat or carb withdrawl. Along the way my sense of dietary balance and portion control fell by the wayside and my post diet conditions have always been worse than before I started.
Where does this leave me? I find myself on the cusp of 50 with the metabolic trifecta - high blood pressure, high cholesterol and type 2 diabetes. Thankfully, we caught this early before symptoms, we recently changed personal physicians. As part of the change over, my new doctor required baseline blood tests, EKG and chest X-rays. EKG and X-rays were clear but the blood test results were significant enough to get me put on Zocor and require a retest of my fasting blood sugar. With the results in, I am officially a type 2 diabetic. Thankfully, my sugar level is low enough to control with oral medication (Metformin) along with diet and exercise. I've had my first diabetic class, a short course in correctly testing my blood sugar and an introduction to a diabetic diet plan.
My first reaction to the news of my diabetes diagnosis was - I need to get back to a low carb diet - I mean - sugar = carbs and the best way to deal with diabetes has to be to take the carbs away right? A little research online seemed to support this, but if your search terms are "diabetes and low carb" your results are going to be skewed.
So, I geared up and started phase 1 (induction) on South Beach. My lovely bride of nearly 29 years got on board and agreed to follow it with me. She suffered through a week of protein and green vegetables and was going through cereal withdrawl before I went to class and found out I was wrong.
In my diabetic class the instructor placed me on a controlled portion balanced diet that requires (not allows) me to consume at least 65 grams of carbs a day - with at least 8 servings of starchy carbs, 3 servings of fruit and 3 servings of dairy a day. Of course I argued the South Beach arguments - her response - we're not focused on weight loss right now - you've got to learn how to live with diabetes - which seems to mean balance in all things. So far so good - a week in - I've still lost weight.
Thankfully, the wake up call came before my blood sugar levels hit 200, 300 or higher. My cholesterol levels were discovered before I had a heart attack or stroke. I'm still healthy enough to be able to dig my way out of this pit with good nutrition and regular exercise. Note, I didn't say diet. No matter whether I have the extra weight off or get off the Metformin, I'll be a diabetic for the rest of my life now so the diet cycle has to stop. I will be on a balanced, portion controlled meal plan for the rest of my life... and that will be good.
So if you, like me, have a family history that includes high blood pressure, heart disease or type 2 diabetes and you haven't had a physical or blood test in over a year - get tested now. You don't have to be 50 lbs overweight to have type 2 diabetes, it is genetic. If you are 50 lbs overweight and you've yo-yo dieted for years - get tested, get with a nutritionist and get a diet plan that fits and get in some type of exercise program. According to the American Heart Association - 81 million people in the US have some form of cardiovascular disease, 107 million Americans over 20 have high cholesterol, the National Institute of Health studies show almost 24 million Americans are type 2 diabetic - though 1/4 don't know it and another 57 million more are pre-diabetic. Get your wake up call.
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