T2 obsessed with Keto and interested in IF

newbies
fasting
(Dave) #1

I’ve been T2 for 20 years. I was maxed out on Metformin and Glipizide and about to go on insulin when I started Keto around 4-5 weeks ago (fuzzy on start date since I gradually transitioned into it). My A1c was 8.4% when I started and I weighed 160lbs. Within two weeks my avg BG dropped to 100. After dipping under 65 my doctor took me off Glipizide (also decided I don’t need insulin). I now weigh 147lbs.

In the past 2-3 weeks my BG has stabilized between 115-125. I’m happy with these numbers but I’d like to see if I can get them lower. It would be tremendous if I could eventually get off Metformin as well.

I’ve read/heard that IF can help tremendously with healing insulin resistance. I gave it a try this past week with mixed results.

Monday:
Fasting BG 119
Breakfast - Coffee with MCT oil powder and stevia
Dinner - Lemon Pepper Wings baked in avocado oil
MACROS: 1127 calories, Carbs 1g (0%), Fat 78g (62%), Protein 108g (38%)

Tuesday:
Fasting BG 115
Breakfast - Coffee with MCT oil powder and stevia
Dinner - 3oz Steak, brussel sprouts roasted with bacon, creamed spinach (cream cheese & parmesan)
MACROS: 567 Calories, Carbs 9g (6%), Fat 44g (71%), Protein 32g (23%)

Wednesday (switched to skipping dinner):
Fasting BG 123
Breakfast - Coffee with MCT oil, Bacon & Eggs, avocado
Lunch - Egg salad with avocado mayo
Snacks - Pork rinds, Keto chocolate truffles
MACROS: 1253 Calories, Carb 28g (9%), Fat 108g (76%), Protein 50g (15%)

Thursday
Fasting BG 98
Breakfast - Coffee with MCT oil, Bacon & Eggs
Lunch - Salad (feta, spinach, kale, pecans, chicken, ranch, olives, eggs)
Snacks - Pork rinds, Keto chocolate truffles
MACROS: 1049 Calories, Carbs 23g (8%), Fat 86g (71%), Protein 55g (21%)

Friday (Feast Day)
Fasting BG 108
Breakfast - Black Coffee, Bacon, Eggs, Celery with Almond Butter, Bone broth
Lunch - Spinach Protein Shake with MCT oil, pork rinds
Dinner - Pork Crack Slaw, Keto Chocolate Mousse
MACROS: 1461 Calories, Carbs 26g (7%), Fat 104g (65%), Protein 99g (28%)

Over the course of the week my BG went from hovering around 120 to dipping below 110. I think I pushed too hard and consumed too few calories the first two days when I tried to eat only one meal. The next two days when I skipped dinner my BG looked much better. Today, after my feast day my fasting BG shot back up to 124.

I’d really like to figure out a healthy rhythm of IF to improve my insulin resistance and bring my BG down. I’m pretty confused about how IF works for diabetics, whether calories matter, etc. I’d appreciate insights from the community here. I’ve been lurking on the forums and learning from the posts this past week. This place is a treasure trove of information!

Thanks in advance!

(KCKO, KCFO 🥥) #2

Have you been reading the Resources subforum. Tons of videos, books, podcasts etc are in there. Lots on fasting of all sorts.

I’m not diabetic, my husband is, the longer he waits to eat in the mornings, the better his numbers, he is keeping everything under control with diet and exercise. His morning numbers are just about daily around the 100-105 range and he eats some carbs at that meal. He doesn’t take his number first thing in the morning because of the dawn phenomenon. His A1C numbers dance around 6. either .1 higher or down to 5.8 on the lower side. His exercise is just walking and yoga, he has recently started to do some strength training and he is 69.

(Dave) #3

Thanks collaroygal I’ll take a look at the resource subforum. Very inspiring to hear about your husband. How long has he been doing Keto/IF? Does he do any extended fasting?

(Consensus is Politics) #4

I was Dx in Aug 2017. After six weeks of no improvements to my daily BG average, I went Keto. Carbonongrata. Zero carbs.

Next day my BG was in the 80’s, and has stayed pretty stable ever since. (Full disclosure: there have been a few time, 3 or 4 times in the past 5 months, where I ate too many carbs and felt horrible and had a BG reading of about 150 for maybe an hour).

One day, not intentionally, I missed all of my meds. Met form in and Metoprolol for blood pressure. Because life happens, and I missed it for three days in a row, and my BG and BP stayed normal I decided to see how long it would stay normal.

After about a month my BP went up to being pretty high again, but my BG levels seemed to continue to improve. So I restarted my BP meds and stayed off metformin. After about another month I restated metformin. Evidently it helps with healing insulin resistance. That’s a bonus. The other side effects are minimal at worst. So to me it’s worth it. I’ve asked my doctor if I could have the dosage reduced to 500 mg from 1,000 mg. He thinks that will cause my BG to spike :thinking: evidently he didn’t pay attention when I told him I was off metformin for two months and did very well, but oh well.

So I asked if it would be ok to break them in half. They are pretty big and hard to swallow :wink:. He said it’s fine. So now I only take the whole tablet with lunch, and the half tab at bedtime. Since I only eat one meal a day now, this seems to work pretty well.

(Dave) #5

Way to go Robert! That’s pretty incredible. I wish I discovered Keto when I was first diagnosed in the late '90s. Maybe getting off metformin is not as important as I think it is. I definitely want to improve my insulin resistance.

Did you just gradually transition to 1 meal a day because you weren’t hungry? Or was this an intentional shift that your worked up to with a regiment of IF and EF?

What does your 1 meal look like? How closely do you monitor your macros and calories? Do you just eat to satiety? Do you ever switch back to more meals/day? Do you snack at all when you are eating 1 meal a day?

(Consensus is Politics) #6

I pretty much went to one meal a day on day one. I didn’t stick to it strictly, sometimes if I didn’t eat enough for breakfast, I’d eat a late lunch. As for macros, it was a new concept to me. When I first tried keto a few years earlier, the only thing I knew to do to get into ketosis was eat less than 50 grams of carbs a day. I didn’t hear of the concept of macros. Matter of fact, that confused the heck out of me when I started reading it here. I’m a quick study, so I caught on rather quick. I did try counting them for a while. With in a couple weeks I just gave up and eyeballed everything. That’s one of my super powers I developed as a kid. I can guesstimate really well :sunglasses:

As for snacking. I did that too for a while. It was a bad habit. That’s what gave me diabetes to begin with. I’d snack on an entire family pack of little Debbie’s on the way home from the grocery store. And that’s just an 8 minute ride :scream:

The thing that helped me stick with one meal a day, and to give up snacking was once I found out about insulin and it’s effect on fat burning. That was new news to me. I was a bit torqued that I didn’t know this already. I’m a bit of a science geek. All through school, that’s the only classes I got strait A’s in. Science, biology, electronics, graphic arts (old school too, using California job case, and hand setting type😎).

Anyway, once I discovered that secret about insulin, I broke my weight plateau that week, and begun losing poundage again. So far since my initial weight loss of 40 pounds in my first two weeks of keto, I have lost another 15 pounds, in the past two months. Oct 17th I was 245 pounds. Today I’m at 190 pounds.

Yes, going one meal a day was also very easy to do. I just wasn’t hungry. I did still have an appetite, and I could eat anytime I wanted to do it, but I enjoyed the feeling of having another super power :cowboy_hat_face:

This just gets the wife’s goat too. I don’t plan on any extended fasts. They just happen. I especially like rubbing it in when she gets home from work, and she wants me to go and get her some take out (take away for you folks that drive on the wrong side of the road :wink:). She says, “oh, and get whatever you want” to which I reply, “oh, thanks, but I ate day before yesterday, I’m good” :cowboy_hat_face:

(Dave) #7

Nice Robert_Johnson! I guess I’m not fat adapted yet. I can skip one meal pretty easily but skipping two meals is tough. I struggle a lot with my energy a couple hours before I break my fast. I’m looking forward to the time when all of this starts feeling a lot more natural.

(KCKO, KCFO 🥥) #8

He has slowly worked his way into lchf in the last 18 months or so. He does not fast, but he also never, ever eats between meals. He does experience his highest numbers during first thing in the morning and he has experimented with delay breakfast or just having his normal one, His normal meal seems to push the numbers down better than the delaying does, so he enjoys his breakie.

If he is really busy, he might skip a lunch here and there, but he does not follow a fasting protocol of any sort. He exercises after every meal as well. Not a lot, 15 - 45 mins. He is a TOFI as well. He has pretty much followed the Zone diet since the '95,when it came out, that is a 40c/30p/30f diet, he has been working in much more fats and protein and cutting sugar and starchy carbs since being dx as T2D.