This is not a medical advise and it is more for your understanding the issue. Almost every second person in India post 40 is pre-diabetic. There got to be a reason!

Our body either doesn’t make enough insulin (type 1) or can’t effectively use the insulin (type 2) it does make.

Pre-diabetes is constantly living with high sugar in your blood but it is not enough to classify as ‘diabetes’. Not yet!!

Same consequence.

Argument – You are eating too much. No, I don’t. But then why are you not losing weight?

Isn’t our body has a fabulous warning system? The reason why we carry high sugar in our blood is either because our fat stores (adipocytes) are full or we are not able to produce the key (insulin) to work into the fat stores. Either way, its a signal to – Stop Eating!!

But can we stop eating?
No. Then?
Control?? YES.
Can we?
Difficult!
How about changing my platter to suit my condition?
YES. YES. YES.
Can I also lose weight if I control this?
YES.

Food – carbs (all vegs, dals, rice wheat, fruits etc. etc) & Fat (oil, ghee etc)

Damn!!

Carbs is ‘sugar’. Am running high sugar. I shouldn’t be eating more sugar. What do I eat?

This is where I would want you to think. Think hard here. Look for logic.

Fact: when we eat a mixed diet of carbs & fat
– fat gets stored as fat in our body directly mostly
– carbs get utilized to an extent, and then, the extra get stored as fact

Diabetes – when the latter stop getting stored as fat. Stays in blood leading to formation of several chronic diseases. It all starts with Insulin Resistance (IR) – meaning when cells stop taking directions from Insulin. And imagine there is no other way to direct your food into fat stores, cells, or liver. So our pancreas start making more insulin thinking our body needs it.

Solutions:

1) Continuous Glucose Monitoring – CGM: this will help you assess your foods as the hike in blood glucose will confirm whether what you are eating can be handled or not. Its a good tool to have. I may get spike from rice but not from potato. Bt my friend gets more spike from potato. CGM helps your to figure this out.

The google result for high glycemic foods or good carbs or complex carbs is never 100% accurate. It is our individual self that can make a highly complex food simple and vice versa. Therefore, do not go by hearsay or what applies to others, especially when you are undergoing a chronic ailment that can have serious repercussions like diabetes, cancer, alzheimer’s, etc.

2) Use energy from fat stores – directly related to our mitochondrial health. If we are gaining weight or stay over weight then most definitely, our mitochondrial health is compromised. And until we mend that, it is impossible to start utilizing fat properly.

How to utilize fat for energy or burn fat?

a) Leave your body with no choice but to burn fat – could be exercising in fasted mode, or could be improving mitochondrial efficiency with certain type of training.

b) Minimize carbs & start exercising – force your body to use fat

c) Cut out on carbs completely in breakfast & exercise – NO. Idly, bada, dosa, poha, daliya, are not healthy in this condition.

d) Cut out on fruits completely for 2/3 weeks (again with exercise) and see the effect – fruits are rich source of fructose that have shown direct relation with IR, mitochondria health, fatty liver. Do keep Vit C in your diet from other sources.

e) Have loads of water since high sugar/fructose have dehydrating effect

f) No munching – just meals. Yes even an ‘oats’ cookie is very very unhealthy taken with sweet tea and in between meals.

Ques: Can I be diabetic without extra weight?

YES. Type 1 diabetic. We see several examples of these phenotypes who stay lean regardless of eating too much or junk.

Reminder – If am healthy then I should gain weight if I start eating more without extra burn.

Unfortunately, high fat diet is not sustainable in Indian environment. However, if you can pick up one meal – breakfast, with ‘zero’ carbs then it would be great help. And if you can keep carbs minimal in dinner together with zero carb breakfast; then it would definitely help.

Exercise – don’t be scared of the word! For a lazy person, getting up from the couch, chair, or bed is exercising. Just climbing your stairs up and down a few times is exercising.

Where people fail? Or why exercising fail people?

Example: I start exercising by walking 40 minutes. I keep at it for months, years, or decades. Do you think those 40 minutes would have the same effect after 60th day as compare to 1st day? NO. Our body gets used to it and it accounts for that walk as a routine work. Our body has a fantastic mechanism of fluctuating our basal metabolic rate on the basis of what is available.

We must keep progressing forcing our body to adapt to new stimulus. Increase the time, or increase the speed, or break and do some exercises in between, or climb a few stairs over and above 40 minutes – increase the stimulus. Yoga, running, walking, weight training, stretching….all make into a good stimulus provided we, either, take it to maximum or smartly maneuver and keep shocking our body with something new.

The increase in load/or different kind of load, will force our body to adapt at various levels including the metabolic level. This is where we will regain health besides of course benefitting ourselves physically.

#insulinresistance#diabetes#diabetesawareness#fruitsandvegetables