Many Type 2's Eat More on Oral Medications

Tim called 11 of us together the other evening. When I arrived, Ben, Barry, Allen, Jason, Sue, and Bob were already there. Shortly Brenda, A.J, Jerry, and Max arrived. Tim asked all of us one question – What were our eating habits shortly after diagnosis?

Tim continued that most of us may have changed immediately, and the rest changed slowly. All of us reduced our carbohydrates greatly or slowly as we saw improvements in our meter readings. Others of us did a lot of reading and started reducing our carbohydrates because of our reading. Some of us learned from others, like David Mendosa and a few other writers. By the time the six of us that were original to this group met, we were all eating low carb and medium to high fat. Some of us were eating higher protein until we learned that we needed to bring this back to normal levels and increase the amount of fat we were eating.

Allen asked what had caused this analysis. Tim said we have several possible new members for our April meeting and several of our current members that are continuing to eat more carbohydrates than when diagnosed. Sue said that is a problem and you want a different program for our April meeting. Brenda said this sounds like a plan and Jason added that will help Brenda and I work on our presentation even more.

Tim said, Yes, and I will let you continue your presentation if you are ready as we have postponed it too many times. Brenda said that this problem is more pressing and deserves our attention. Allen said we would go with what is decided tonight.

Tim thanked us and said he felt we needed to be concerned for a few of our members and help educate everyone about low carb high fat way of eating. Sue asked why that terminology? I answered because this is not a diet and is a way of eating that needs to be long-term. Most diets are at best short-term and then weight is often regained and the process starts over.

Brenda said this is a conversation that she and her daughter had recently and diet was a term her daughter did not like when it came to people with diabetes. She continued that 'way of eating' sounds very good and she would change to that. Sue agreed with her and added way of eating is something we needed to change when we were diagnosed.

The rest agreed and asked Tim where he had heard this. Tim said that I was the first place he had heard it and I added that I had found it on a diabetes forum. In addition, I would suggest we use 'eating to your meter' as a way of communicating with the potential new members.

Allen said this is what we have done in the past and now don't need to worry as much because most of the foods we eat now are familiar to us and we know what the effect will be from past testing. Barry said this may be of help for the new members and some of the recent members.

Allen said we will do our standard of having questions and talking about the VA and other topics that we want them to be aware and know. Tim thanked us for reminding him of this as he had forgot the topics we needed to cover for all new members. With that, we concluded our discussion and talked a little while before heading to our homes.