Guess what! I found the culprit... Because many of my glucose readings were going way higher than last week, and the weight loss has stopped cold, I started thinking about anything else that may have changed and my doctor had put me on clonidine to help with opiate withdrawal since I'm trying to get off as many meds as I can.  I looked up clonidine and it causes high blood sugar by causing gluconeogenesis! And it causes weight gain.

So I'm going to just hold the course, take the extra insulin I need for now (which is still tons less than before starting this program), and know that soon ill be off this other drug and things should then start improving again...

Hello and welcome! I feel your pain I weight 350# and I also 5'4". I've been in and out of the hospital for all kinds of problems. Congestive heart failure among them. What I've done is take my favorite leather jacket and hung on the wall so I can see it all the time. Because one day soon I'm going to wear that jacket again. Don't give up!  I'm not! This time I have the road map. This time it's all the way because if I don't I know I won't have long on this earth.

Thanks for writing, Souper!  It's nice to meet another one in similar shoes as me and since we already understand each other, we'll be a great support as we both go through this journey

Thanks for the suffers tigons, TooSweet! I definitely plan on trying those muffins but have to give hubby a chance to get to the health store for the flour!

Does anyone ever use the Jimmy Dean breakfast bowls? Was wondering about that as another option...

Hard to say about portions... I'm making sure everything fits on a small plate... Like the roast beef was a portion cut by hubby and that plus the broccoli all fit on the small plate - more was beef than broccoli.

Haven't yet started counting carbs as I'm just trying to avoid them until I know what I'm doing!

Today the scale went UP 1 lb! I guess after the rapid 29-lb loss in just 2 weeks, my body is just taking a breather - but it FEELS like its never gonna move again!

I'm in a situation where dr has said I must weigh every day due to congestive heart failure (which I'm hoping will reverse the more weight I lose)...

Anyway I just started last week and the scale was dropping 2 lbs every day! Very encouraging since I had 200 to lose... But now ever since Friday it's been stuck

I'm eating the same things as last week - almost NO carbs yet because I haven't finished the book to see what exactly to do so I've stuck with protein... I can't afford to have the weight quit coming off already! I'm panicking because for some reason everything I try works great at first and then stops.

I'm also eating very small portions!

Jacki

Wow, thanks SO much for the warm welcome! I look forward to learning all I can here and getting to know y'all better!

Doug, absolutely on the insulin watching! I've been checking my sugar about 6-8 times a day and pretty much immediacy had to cut my insulin about 1/3! I'm now wondering if the high doses of insulin were causing all that inflammation in my body...

Hi, Everyone...

I have struggled with yo-yo dieting since age 7 when I was put on a diet and wasn't even fat - it's just what our family did...  I ended up in the 200's in my twenty's and then into the 300's in my 30's.  I'm now 53 and have suffered as well with Type 2 diabetes for 20 years, what we thought was Chronic Fatigue Syndrome since age 29 (eventually diagnosed as Lyme Disease), Fibromyalgia, sleep apnea, etc.  I have been virtually chair-bound for MANY years - sitting home while my husband does all the "going out and living."  Most recently I found out I have bone-on-bone arthritis in both knees and just went through a series of injections in the left one - really hoping this will buy me some time, because they refuse to give me a knee replacement now because of my morbid obesity. In a nutshell, this is NO way to live...

Upon the verges of just giving up and accepting this is "it" for me and that it just will never get any better, my Lyme doctor recommended a low-carb diet for me since my diabetes is totally out of control and I weigh(ed) 330 lbs. and need to lose 200 lbs. I'm only 5'4!

So I started my quest...  I originally found Dr. Bernstein's "The Diabetes Solution" and have also started reading that one, but then I was talking with my sister and she recommended this one, so I just downloaded it in iBooks yesterday - was so excited to find it! Anyway, I had spent a few days reading and "thinking about it" but thinking I probably needed to jump in and do this even though it sounded daunting. Then last Wed. I ended up in the hospital with confusion (didn't know my own birthday) and that turned into rapid heart rate (165) which caused an admission for 5 days.  I just got out on Sunday, along with a diagnosis of Cardiomyopathy and Congestive Heart Failure.  Not to mention the VERY high blood sugars that weren't coming down even on almost 400 units of insulin a day

After I got home, I realized I now had no choice - SOMETHING has to change or I'm not going to make it much longer (I'm 53 BTW). So I started just cutting out the carbs for the most part, and tracking my sugars a lot more closely to see what was really going on.

THE VERY FIRST DAY my husband and I were both totally amazed that my sugars came DOWN - pretty drastically(!) - and have stayed much lower than before my hospitalization.  I did some figuring and here is the difference (in just 3 days!) between what I was doing and what I'm doing now:

Insulin 2weeks ago - 240 Novolog, 120 Lantus daily
Glucose 2 weeks ago - 256.5 avg. (with some 500+ readings)

Insulin this week - 110 Novolog, 75 Lantus Daily
Glucose this week - 125.7 avg. (with readings like 88
66
84
99
100
89 - which I haven't seen in YEARS!)

I've also already taken off 29 lbs. (20 in the hospital, but 9 since I got home and started low carb!). I know some of this is water, but still - it's quite encouraging.  And I'm thinking that since I'm so large, it might come off pretty quickly.  My Lyme doctor said it would melt off me similar to people who have gastric bypass surgery... I'm absolutely AMAZED at how fast it's melting off me - and even a long-standing SEVERE lower leg swelling condition literally totally resolved after just ONE DAY of eating this way!!  I looked down and saw ANKLES!!  And BONES, etc.!!  I thought something was wrong with my feet until my husband showed me that's how they're supposed to look!!

Just wanted to share all this and introduce myself!  I'm excited - and am finally feeling some glimmer of HOPE to finally resolve this all-encompassing problem "for good".  I told my sister I'm going to do this if it's the LAST thing I do - but then I changed my mind - it's going to be the FIRST thing I do - and then I can finally get my life back!

So glad to have found you!

- Jacki