10 Things I Told Myself Which Turned Out To Be Completely Wrong – Part 4

I told myself a bunch of things about diet, exercise, and wellness that turned out to be completely wrong.

In my last 3 posts, I told you about 4 things I told myself which turned out to be completely wrong.

One of them, I told myself I would never get married – I was wrong.

Then I told myself I would never learn to drive.

I was wrong about that too.

Then I told myself I was a words person, not a numbers person.

I was wrong about that too.

I told myself I could invest like Warren Buffett.  If you read my last post, you will understand why I wished I hadn’t told myself that. Luckily I came to my senses

This post focuses on things I told myself in the diet, fitness, and wellness area which came between me and living my best life. When I learned the truth, I then had to summon the willpower and determination to deal with the truth. Read on to learn more.

Imagine you are under the impression diabetes is all about “sugar”.

When the words “pre-diabetes” shows up in your lab report after a routine physical, you are taken aback. You are not overweight, and you exercise regularly.  Though you eat sweets, no one would accuse you of overdoing them.  However, your mother was a diabetic, and her father was a diabetic before that.  So you shrug your shoulders, “must be the genes”, you think.

Then as your pre-diabetes worsens, you find out the truth about pre-diabetes. Which is it’s not just about sugar. It’s about carbs. All carbs turn to sugar in the body.  The worst are rice, wheat, dairy, potatoes, fruit and grains.  These are the main constituents of your diet.  You have not been eating right. No wonder your fasting blood sugar is now at 107 (from 99 when you were first diagnosed).  “I have to start eating right for my condition” you tell yourself.

So slowly, but surely, you change your diet, cutting out all the foods you now know are harmful, foods (unfortunately) you have been in the habit of eating since you were a child.

Where does your willpower come from?

Your willpower comes from what you find out about diabetes.

Uncontrolled diabetes can lead to terrible things:

•       Heart disease and a higher risk for heart attack and stroke
•       Eye and vision problems, including blindness
•      Kidney disease that can lead to kidney failure
• ·    Neuropathy (nerve damage) that can cause tingling and pain the hands and feet
•      Infections
•       Dental problems
•     Amputations due to infections in the feet

You are terrified at the thought of getting any of these things - as you should be.

On one side of the scale is a life with no biryani (Your brother-in-law's biryani – how are you ever going to live without that, is live worth living without that?), no dosas, no idlis, no upma, no samosas, no bondas, no bread, no bagels, no donuts, no tacos, no burritos, no nachos.

On the other side of the scale are blindness, amputations and stroke.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, it is a choice you have to make.

Pleasure or health, health or pleasure, which is more important?

You are a long-term thinker.

Pleasure is short-lived, health is forever.

If you don’t do anything, you may be damning yourself to a bleak future.

So you choose to act for your health, and you give up rice, potatoes, bread, cereal, milk, yogurt, and more.

And you introduce in your diet, nuts, avocado, garbanzo, greens, oily fish and coconut oil.

You are eager to find out if your new diet is working.

You shed 37 lbs within a few months, but weight loss is not your goal. Your goal is to bring your fasting blood sugar and your Hba1C (average of blood sugar over 3 months) down.

Which means you now have to confront another thing you have been telling yourself you are not prepared to do - which is to do anything which involves a needle.  Checking your blood sugar at home will involve a needle.

For a while, you do nothing. The fear of the needle is too great.

Then better sense gets hold of you. “I’ve got to get over my fear of needles,” you say.  “It’s the only way to find out which foods raise my blood sugar, and which foods don’t.”

So after doing some research and learning that Walmart’s Relion Prime blood sugar meter and blood sugar strips will be the most economical option, you take the plunge.

You begin to test your blood sugar, 1 hour, 2 hours, and 3 hours after you eat or drink anything.

Your Relion Prime meter clears up any illusions you have about what’s good for your blood sugar, and what isn’t.

Many familiar foods are bad, such as rice, wheat, grains, dairy, fruit, and potatoes.

You are shocked by what a slice of bread can do to your blood sugar, just one slice of bread.

Many high calorie, high-fat and (so called high cholesterol foods) are good for your blood sugar, such as butter and eggs and cream.

This leads you to eliminate some foods and substitute them with other foods.

You progressively move from the HCLF part of the diet spectrum (High carb low fat) to the LCHF (Low carb high fat) part of the diet spectrum.

It is logical and automatic.  It is what your Relion Prime blood sugar meter is telling you to do.

You continue your research.

You discover Bullet proof coffee and MCT oil. You add that to your diet, because they give you satiety.

In the early days of giving up carbs, satiety is an issue. You need to find ways to stave off hunger.

You discover Dr. Richard Bernstein’s Diabetes Solution and Dr. Michael Eades and Mark Sisson and Jimmy Moore and David Mendosa.

All your life you couldn’t stand garbanzo beans. You can’t remember when you first told yourself you couldn’t stand garbanzo beans, it was probably when you were very young.

Now you begin scarfing them down as if they are caviar.

Indeed, you discover avocados and salmon and garbanzo are caviar for those with blood-sugar problems.

Meanwhile, you stumble upon Dr. Jason Fung’s Intensive Dietary Management website, and you find out about Intermittent Fasting.

You do some more research.  You discover fasting is an ancient cure for a variety of illnesses.

You learn that biomarkers are improved by fasting.

There are many studies of Ramadan fasters to prove this.

All your life, you have told yourself you cannot skip a meal. You will collapse; you will faint. You have to eat every meal on time.

Now you decide to skip breakfast and see what happens.

You do this on a Saturday, because you are home, you can immediately reach out for food, if you feel weak or faint.

When your stomach growls in hunger, you ignore it.  After a while, your stomach stops growling.  And you don’t faint.

You are intrigued.

You are able to go till 2:00 p.m. without eating and without fainting.

A little while later, emboldened, you decide to do 3 consecutive 24 hour fasts.

Other than black coffee, you eat only one meal on those 3 days, an evening meal between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m.

This fast goes well too.

What made it possible for you, a person who couldn't be 5 minutes late on a meal all your life, to be able to do these fasts?

There is no doubt in your mind - it is the low carb diet you have been on.

With a diet predominantly made of carbs, blood sugar spikes and then precipitously drops.

You are no longer on that roller coaster.

Your new diet pattern has taken you out of that up down cycle.

No more acute hunger moments - when you feel you will faint, if you don’t eat something fast.

No more of those “hangry moments" (you know - angry because you are hungry).

Your diet patterns being so different from what you were once used to, you decide to schedule some lab tests to see how your other biomarkers are doing.

You can’t believe how far you have come.  The girl who told herself she was terrified of needles, scheduling her own blood tests.

Your HDL is 90 - great, your triglycerides are 43 – great again, but your LDL is 145, oh-oh.

Maybe you have large fluffy LDL particles.  You could do the NMR test to find out.  Oh–oh, bad news, you discover your LDL-P is high at 1634. It’s time to make changes to your diet again.

You reduce the fats, increase protein.

You continue to dedicate hours of research on diet and exercise.

You start to read food labels.

You are shocked to find most brands of bread have high fructose corn syrup; so do many cereals, such as Froot Loops; so do many beverages; so do many condiments like ketchup. High fructose corn syrup is high on the glycemic index.

In general, you are shocked by the number of ingredients in every packaged food, from ice-cream, to bread to snacks.

You pick up many packaged foods only to put them back on the shelf after reading the labels.  You are especially interested in the number of carbs and the sugar content. Even the so called high protein bars have tons of sugar.

I have told you all of the above to give you an idea of the kind of person I am today, dear reader.

And I got here, because I stopped telling myself this thing and that thing, based on insufficient knowledge and zero experience, and instead I got down to seriously finding out the truth for myself.

Going in to this, I did not think I would be motivated enough to do all of these things in the last few years…

*Drastically change my diet

*Try my hand at intermittent fasting, and regularly skip a meal or two

*Regularly test my bio-markers

*Dedicate hours of research to diet and exercise

*Test my blood sugar every day, sometimes several times a day on weekends

*Give up some foods almost totally – rice, wheat products, grains, potatoes

* Eat some foods sparingly – corn, legumes, tomatoes, carrots, onion

*Eat some foods regularly – garbanzo beans, salmon, avocados, nuts, cheese

*Do extensive research on diabetes and pre-diabetes

*Become an avid reader of food labels

*Do BodySpec scans to find out my lean tissue to fat ratio.

There have been some scary moments in this adventure, dear reader.

When I got flu, a year and a half ago, it hit me bad.  I wondered whether it was because my immunity and reserves were low.  My weight was down to 95 lbs by the time the flu ended.

Every other month, I am laid low - usually for a day. This is scary too.

But I wake up the next day, and I feel as good as new, and ready for battle.

I never stop trying new things.  And I never stop researching.

In fact, I think of something new to research almost every day.

I have researched everything from Mahatma Gandhi’s fasts, to whether you can have too high an HDL, to how to get enough electrolytes on a low-carb diet.

The answer to the electrolytes is to consume more salt, plus have a potassium based salt substitute so you can get some potassium, and to drink a packet of Electro Mix by Emergen C in water, as needed.

These are some of the things I have discovered I can do to live healthier, while trying to dodge the diabetes bullet.

“Minoo, it seems like a lot of work!”

I don’t think of it that way. In fact, I find it highly interesting.

Besides, why wouldn’t I want to try to live healthier?

No matter what health problems you have, you can try to live healthier, by not aggravating those problems. And if anything is reversible, it’s good to try to aim for that.

On that note, I will leave you dear reader.

If you have any questions, or need any pointers, shoot me a line. I would be happy to share whatever I have learned.

My intention in writing this post is to put a spotlight on all the erroneous thinking I had been prey to, and which you may be prey to.

The worst is to imagine sugar and fat are the big diet no-nos.

In fact, as I continue to research, I have found information that seriously calls into question the link between dietary fats and cholesterol. Seriously calls into question.

If you have a blood sugar problem, rice, wheat, grains, potatoes, high carb dairy, fruit and all starchy foods are the big diet no-nos. Those are the foods to avoid. Fat will be your ally in helping you do that. And of course, fasting may be helpful too.

If you take medication for any condition, you can always do a medically supervised fast, such as they offer at the True North Health Center in Santa Rosa, California.

If you are not on any medication, you can experiment at home with a fast like I did. Or you can try ProLonFMD, the 5 day fasting mimicking diet invented by UCLA professor, Dr. Valter D. Longo.

P.S.  I would love to hear about your own dietary and lifestyle experiments.  It is always fun to find out what other people are doing. Also, if you want to plug in your HDL, LDL and Triglycerides into a handy dandy tool which will spit out your risk for atherosclerosis, and also give you your Friedewald LDL-C numbers, as well as your Iranian LDL-C numbers, here's where to go.

Do come back next week for the fifth part of this series, 10 Things I Told Myself That Turned Out To Be Completely Wrong.

Acknowledgements

Thanks for the feedback, (comments, likes, shares) on Part 1, 2 and 3 of this series. I appreciate the kudos from old friends, new friends, and relatives who have become friends. You keep me going.

NEXT, Thanks to all readers, current and future, for sharing my journey to wisdom, meaning and a better life.  Like you, I am trying to find my way through this complex maze we call life, and I am honored to have you share my journey, as I continue to seek the wisdom hidden in plain sight.

FINALLY, A Happy Birthday shout-out:  to those with June birthdays. If something you have been telling yourself is completely wrong, hope you use your birthday month to face reality and change course.

Have a blessed week, and hope to see you next week.

P.S. Not sure if you have time, but if you do, you may enjoy these other posts:

Friendships

The United States of Friendship – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6,Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12

Family

Our Cake Boss Family, Family Songs, The Nightdress Brigade, Family Advice I Am Grateful For, The Porki And Bonkers Tradition, No Need for 23 and Me,Letters to Lucas, Flying Lessons

Pets

A Fresh Perspective on Pets, Secrets of The Super Models In Our Family,BowWow, Meoww, Why You Should Not Abandon Your Pet

Nature

Post on Trees, Reprising Joy Kilmer

Hobbies

Cricket, Glorious Cricket, Splendid Post, What!

Managing Your Money

Yoga for Investors, How to Turn Your Girl Scout or Cub Scout Into a Stock Scout, Financial Piece of Mind, Financial Piece of Mind – Part Deux, A Retirement Planning Formula You Won’t Find on Oprah

Simplifying Your Life

You know what Wesabi is, How About Wabi Sabi?  The Simple Life, The Element of Simplicity and Its Hope for Living a More Satisfying Life

Getting Over Your Self-Consciousness

The Element of Release From Inhibition, The Element of Being Less Self-Centered and Its Hope for Seeing Things in The Correct Light, The Element of Getting Out of Our Comfort Zone and Its Hope For Experiencing More of What Life Has to Offer

Learning to Laugh

How To Deal With The Sheldon Coopers in Your Life – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3,Part 4, The Nightdress Brigade, You Aced the SAT, How About the LAT?, How To Cause Atmost Confuzen at the Scripps Spelling Bee, How To Go From Madonna to Lilly to Myrtle in The Course of A Single Evening - And Even Have a Sex Change, A Facebook Face-Off, A Short Stint in Advertising

Learning to Relax

How To Become a Low Maintenance Person, Connected Minds, How To Become The Kind of Person People Want to Work with, How Many Times a Day Do You Visit Ireland? The Art of Carrying Things Lightly

Health

Raising the Bar, 4 Healthy Eating Ideas I Learned from My Friend Julia, The Element of Becoming More Focused and Precise In Our Goals and Its Hope for Achieving Powerful Results

Pursuing A Dream

What’s Next For You? The Element of The First Step and Its Hope for Getting Big Things Started In Our Lives, She Victories

Changing in Good Ways

Maybe Its Time To Become More Receptive, Maybe It’s Time To Live More Purposefully, Maybe It’s Time To Bust Some Myths, Maybe It’s Time to Walk In The Direction Of Your Fears, Maybe It’s Time To Understand What Freedom Is, Maybe It’s Time To Turn the Page, Maybe It’s Time To Rock The World, Maybe It’s Time For Freshness