ZERO CARB - WEEK 1 RESULTS

 A little over a week ago, I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes.  I was both surprised and not surprised at the same time.  The doctor said he did not mean to offend me or upset me by telling me this.  I assured him that I was neither.  It really does answer some questions for me, like why I have had such trouble losing weight and why my blood sugar raises into diabetic levels unless I eat extremely low protein and low carb.  Also, there is a genetic component to this disease, and my maternal grandmother was a needle-carrying Type 2 Diabetic, and others in my family appear to have developed the disease, but have not been diagnosed.

During the time that I have been doing Nutritional Ketosis, I have been periodically checking my blood sugar with a home glucose meter, and I have found that eating around 130 grams of fat, 57 grams of protein and less than 25 grams of carbohydrate per day has kept my blood sugar at an average of 86, including both fasting and after eating.  Eating this way has also kept my blood ketones in the ketogenic level, meaning that I am burning ketone bodies for fuel instead of glucose.  So that's good.

But wait, there's more...

The reason I started Nutritional Ketosis in the first place was that I suspected that I was eating too much protein.  And testing ketones did confirm to me that eating about half of the amount of protein that I used to eat did, indeed, raise my blood ketones and lower my blood sugar.  Both good things.

I do lose weight and feel good eating this way, but there is a problem...  Although, at first, I found that my appetite had been satisfied with this small amount of food, it has become increasingly difficult to feel satiety after eating.  In other words, I'm hungry!  Plus, with eating this small amount of food, I really have to only eat twice per day in order to get more than a few bites of meat at each meal.

So when my doctor advised me to change the way I was eating, I was all ears.  He said, simply, to...

Just eat meat.

He said that he, himself, just eats meat.  He said that he eats steak for dinner with a side of chicken.  Interesting!  I have been thinking about starting a zero carb way of life for several weeks and have been reading up on it, so, starting on July 21, I took the challenge to go Zero Carb, which does not mean literally no carbs, but only the trace carbs that come from animal products.  I am eating meat, a small amount of dairy, some healthy fats and I am drinking water only.  I am testing my blood sugar before meals and two hours after meals to see how I am reacting to cutting out all vegetable and berry carbs and increasing my protein substantially.  I am carefully tracking what I am eating.

Here is what I have learned so far about how my blood sugar reacts to food:

On July 22, I ate meat, healthy fats and water and found that my blood sugar was very stable and in the acceptable range, only a few points over my normal of 86.

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 On July 23, I added some dairy to each meal, based on my recent discovery that I am moderately intolerant of dairy, and I eat it no more often than every four days.  I also had some bacon for breakfast that had more sugar in it than my regular bacon.  My blood sugar was less stable, and close to 100 at times.  It is either the sugar in the bacon or the dairy that caused this.

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 On July 24,  it was back to just meat, healthy fats and water to drink, and my blood sugar went down with each reading, into a very nice range.

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On July 25, it was just meat, fat and water to drink, but I did try having the more sugary bacon for breakfast, and it raised my blood sugar.  The next time I eat dairy, I will then see if the dairy also raises it.

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On July 26, it was meat, fat and water as usual.  I saw a little bit of instability, but I'm not sure why.  At any rate, it was still in the acceptable range.

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On July 27, something interesting happened.  I ate dinner at a friend's house, and although I passed on the cake and ice cream dessert, I did have about a serving of vegetables and a very small salad.  With only that small amount of vegetables, I was surprised that my blood sugar went up to 110.  I know that it is not extremely high, but it is higher than what I am used to, and higher than a non-diabetic would get after eating a few bites of low-carb vegetables.  I had been wondering what would happen if I ate vegetables, and now I know.  I had been toying with the idea of putting veggies back into my diet, but I think I will wait a while before I think about that again.

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So this is my experience so far with eating zero carb.  Although the main reason I am doing this is to manage my blood sugar and be able to remain diabetic complications free, I also am hoping that it will help me lose these last few pesky pounds.  Along those lines, how did I fare eating zero carb?

I started new charts to show my progress.  You know how I love my charts!  Here they are, after the first week on ZC:

The charts speak for themselves, so I won't say much, except that my body size is going down.

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