27 Dec 2011 - Two week diet to lose diabetes

I read an article today in the Daily Mail entitled 'Dieting for two weeks stopped my diabetes'.

What was all this about - if I could diet for two weeks and lose a stone and lose my diabetes, this would be a miracle.  Not only this but the guy in the story was also able to come off his blood pressure pills which was something I wanted to do as well.

The story was about a guy who had read about a controlled study carried out at Newcastle University, funded by Diabetes UK that researched into the observation that patients that underwent gastric band surgery often reversed their type 2 diabetes as a side-effect of rapid weight loss.

The study with 11 volunteers carried out by Prof Taylor simulated gastric band surgery by putting the people on meal replacement regime that only provided 800 calories per day for eight weeks.  This caused rapid and substantial weight loss and when the body started burning its own fat reserves (known as Ketosis) from the liver and pancreas (fat stored in the wrong places is used up first), apparently the pancreas started working properly again and producing insulin hence the reversal of diabetes.

The meal replacement product used in the study was called Optifast which is not readily available in the UK.  In the US, Canada and Australia it is only available as part of clinic based and medically overseen programme.

Because Optifast was not available in the UK, the guy in the Daily Mail article decided to do his own DIY programme with an own label meal replacement product bought at relatively low cost from ASDA.

This was beginning to sound interesting - here is a link to the Daily Mail article that kicked off my interest.

25 Dec 2011 - Christmas Day 2011 - Contemplation

Christmas Day - everything was out of the window - diet, diabetes control, exercise plans, etc.   Surrounded by chocolate, sweets, biscuits, cream soda and other treats plus full traditional Christmas Day dinner with all the trimmings - just gave in to temptation.

Same thing again on Boxing Day.


There is a chart that I use with my quit smoking clients called the Cycle of Change - I was at the stage called 'Contemplation' which basically means I was aware of the problem but hadn't made any commitment to do anything about it.  Here is a picture of this chart:

You can download a copy of this chart from cycle_of_change.pdf .