Grandma's Diet Update

RJM62

RJM62

Touchdown! Greaser!
Joined
Jun 15, 2007
Messages
13,157
Location
Upstate New York
Display Name
Display name:
Geek on the Hill
About six or eight months ago, I went on a diet that I call "Nonna's Diet," "Nonna" being Italian for "Grandma." The diet basically consists of not eating anything that my grandmother wouldn't eat. I also restrict net carbohydrates (total carbs less fiber) to < 100 grams a day, and completely avoid refined sugar in all its forms.

What this means in practical terms is avoiding all processed foods, most starches, and all sugars except those in fresh fruits. I prepare all my own meals from fresh ingredients and bake my own bread. I don't feel like I'm dieting at all because I eat well and always leave the table satisfied.

Today I saw the doctor for my annual physical, and here are some excerpts from the 21 pages of lab results, compared to those from last year's physical:

Weight: 207 (down from 228)
BP: 110/76 (down from 134/90)
Total cholesterol: 217 (down from 275)
HDL: 60 (up from 38 -- this is a good thing)
LDL: 132 (down from 202)
Triglyceride: 223 (down from 399)
FBG: 117 (down from 162)
A1C: 6.1 (down from 7.6)

The cholesterol, LDL, and triglyceride levels still need work, but they're down considerably from last year, with no medications. The A1C was a very nice surprise, though, because that puts me in normal range for a non-diabetic. The doctor said that's about as well-controlled as diabetes gets. (I do take metformin 850 t.i.d. for the diabetes.)

I'm going to do some tweaking in the areas of selecting leaner meats, eating less cheese, eating more fish, and a few other changes. The current goal is to bring all the lipid levels to normal range, without medications, and without bumping my A1C out of normal range, within 120 days.

Rich
 
frfly172 said:
Congrats,are you mixing any exercise in with the diet?
Click to expand...

Other than squats, push-ups, and sit-ups, mainly just walking, hiking, and incidental exercise. I'm not the gym type, I'm afraid. The snow-shoveling season is also around the corner, and I've thus far resisted the temptation to buy a snow blower.

Rich
 
Keeping active is the secret to keeping fit. Sounds like a primo hiking area where you live. Good low impact exercise you can do year-round.
 
steingar said:
Keeping active is the secret to keeping fit. Sounds like a primo hiking area where you live. Good low impact exercise you can do year-round.
Click to expand...

Indeed it is. Because of the terrain, even fishing involves some hiking. And the DEP has opened up vast tracts of their owned lands in the watershed to hiking and other activities, so those areas are no longer verboten. (Previously only very limited areas were accessible, and only for fishing.)

I also do some stock photography that involves some serious hiking and climbing, although not quite as much since the railroad non-renewed the contract that previously made it legal for me to be on their tracks and bridges. TSA is almost as much of a PITA on the rails as at the airport, so the loss of the contract and the ID has been a bummer.

Flying trikes is also mildly physically demanding, but I only had a few occasions this season to fly, mainly due to family and work reasons. I'm going to try to get some more time in before the weather turns so frigid that flying a trike carries the risk of emasculation by freezing.

Rich
 
Last edited:
Great job, Rich! Keep on keeping on as what you're doing is having positive results.
 
I am on the NONONO diet.

When I try to eat something my wife comes running to me, takes my food away and screams, "No no no you can't have that." She is 4'9" and all of 80 pounds.

She scares me.....
 
RJM62 said:
I also restrict net carbohydrates (total carbs less fiber) to < 100 grams a day, and completely avoid refined sugar in all its forms.

What this means in practical terms is avoiding all processed foods, most starches, and all sugars except those in fresh fruits. I prepare all my own meals from fresh ingredients and bake my own bread. I don't feel like I'm dieting at all because I eat well and always leave the table satisfied.

Today I saw the doctor for my annual physical, and here are some excerpts from the 21 pages of lab results, compared to those from last year's physical:

Weight: 207 (down from 228)
BP: 110/76 (down from 134/90)
Total cholesterol: 217 (down from 275)
HDL: 60 (up from 38 -- this is a good thing)
LDL: 132 (down from 202)
Triglyceride: 223 (down from 399)
FBG: 117 (down from 162)
A1C: 6.1 (down from 7.6)

The cholesterol, LDL, and triglyceride levels still need work, but they're down considerably from last year, with no medications. The A1C was a very nice surprise, though, because that puts me in normal range for a non-diabetic. The doctor said that's about as well-controlled as diabetes gets. (I do take metformin 850 t.i.d. for the diabetes.)

I'm going to do some tweaking in the areas of selecting leaner meats, eating less cheese, eating more fish, and a few other changes. The current goal is to bring all the lipid levels to normal range, without medications, and without bumping my A1C out of normal range, within 120 days.

Rich
Click to expand...
Hi Rich--

A couple questions:

Are you taking anything to lower BP?
Why did your HDL nearly double? I'm told it's very hard to change.
Aren't you very concerned about your triglycerides and LDL? I know it's an improvement, but they seem still way too high to me--on the order of more than double. :eek:

Of course, I'm no MD nor nutritionist. I'm just wondering if you eat too much fruit or other natural sources of sugar, like raisins? Don't get me wrong, I think it's great you're making strides. Keep your stick on the ice!

dtuuri
 
dtuuri said:
Hi Rich--

A couple questions:

Are you taking anything to lower BP?
Click to expand...

No. I also use salt freely.

dtuuri said:
Why did your HDL nearly double? I'm told it's very hard to change.
Click to expand...

Not a clue.

dtuuri said:
Aren't you very concerned about your triglycerides and LDL? I know it's an improvement, but they seem still way too high to me--on the order of more than double. :eek:
Click to expand...

They are still high. But I believe that lowering them with medications is basically pointless. The numbers are markers. Lowering them chemically is like putting Bondo over rot, as far as I'm concerned.

Neither did a nearly all-vegetarian diet help when I tried it. In fact, my lipid profile was never worse than it was after a year of living as a vegetarian (except occasionally when eating at other people's homes). My triglyceride was > 400 then.

dtuuri said:
Of course, I'm no MD nor nutritionist. I'm just wondering if you eat too much fruit or other natural sources of sugar, like raisins? Don't get me wrong, I think it's great you're making strides. Keep your stick on the ice!

dtuuri
Click to expand...

Thanks.

I probably do each too much fruit when it's in season locally. I also eat a bit more cheese than I should; and I should eat more fowl, and especially fish, in proportion to red meats. All of those tweaks have been implemented.

I also have to find some more incidental exercise to bridge the gap between lawn-mowing season and snow-shoveling season. Leaf-raking season isn't quite intensive enough, salt-schlepping season is too short, and no one wants a fallen-tree-cutting season because that would mean another major storm.

I suppose I could dredge the drainage ditch, though... that would kill an afternoon.

Rich
 
RJM62 said:
They are still high. But I believe that lowering them with medications is basically pointless. The numbers are markers. Lowering them chemically is like putting Bondo over rot, as far as I'm concerned.
Click to expand...
Agree partially. For example, they're finding out that meds used for increasing HDL aren't as important as they used to think. Seems it depends more on the quality of HDL, but unfortunately having that quality tested is still only done in research labs, IIRC.

RJM62 said:
Neither did a nearly all-vegetarian diet help when I tried it. In fact, my lipid profile was never worse than it was after a year of living as a vegetarian (except occasionally when eating at other people's homes). My triglyceride was > 400 then.
Click to expand...
Judging from your fondness for cheese, if you ate dairy products, nuts and vegetable oils while vegetarian that could account for the LDL. I'd think you could reign in the triglycerides by checking your post prandial blood sugars to see what foods cause them to spike and how high. They now say fasting BS should be 80-90 and anything over 140 after eating causes permanent loss of beta cells. Logic tells me the excess gets turned into triglycerides, since it isn't being used by the cells. :dunno:

dtuuri
 
dtuuri said:
Judging from your fondness for cheese, if you ate dairy products, nuts and vegetable oils while vegetarian that could account for the LDL. I'd think you could reign in the triglycerides by checking your post prandial blood sugars to see what foods cause them to spike and how high. They now say fasting BS should be 80-90 and anything over 140 after eating causes permanent loss of beta cells. Logic tells me the excess gets turned into triglycerides, since it isn't being used by the cells. :dunno:

dtuuri
Click to expand...

Thanks. I've always had a weakness for cheese. As a child my pediatrician told my mother to practically force-feed it to me because I didn't like drinking milk. The cheese habit's a tough one to kick.

Just as an aside, what do you think of Gymnema sylvestre? Some of the early research is very promising.

Rich
 
RJM62 said:
Just as an aside, what do you think of Gymnema sylvestre? Some of the early research is very promising.
Click to expand...
Haven't heard of it. Turned this up though: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20856101

Did you say you consume under 100g of carbs/day? Do you count the fruit and starchy vegetables, like corn, beets, carrots and potatoes in that? I've been limiting the fruits to three servings/day and only eat bread once in a while, maybe a serving or two per week. Practically no potatoes. Two or three small corn torillas once or twice/day takes its place and seems to have dropped my FBS about 20 points without any meds. Took me out of the pre-diabetic range and is getting close to ideal. As you probably remember from other threads, I don't eat fish or meat anymore.

dtuuri
 
dtuuri said:
Haven't heard of it. Turned this up though: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20856101

Did you say you consume under 100g of carbs/day? Do you count the fruit and starchy vegetables, like corn, beets, carrots and potatoes in that? I've been limiting the fruits to three servings/day and only eat bread once in a while, maybe a serving or two per week. Practically no potatoes. Two or three small corn torillas once or twice/day takes its place and seems to have dropped my FBS about 20 points without any meds. Took me out of the pre-diabetic range and is getting close to ideal. As you probably remember from other threads, I don't eat fish or meat anymore.

dtuuri
Click to expand...

I really concentrate more on the non-processed part than the carb part. But I do try to keep it to 100 grams / day of net carbs or less, based on a carb counter I downloaded from the Atkins site some time ago. 100 grams / day seems to be the balancing point for me. If I go very much over that, the weight loss stops, and the blood sugar starts to creep up.

I avoid potatoes and most other starchy vegetables (except for carrots) pretty much completely. I do eat less-starchy vegetables such as broccoli, spinach, escarole, lettuce, legumes, eggplant, olives, tomatoes, peppers, kale, and others, and reasonable portions of most fruits. I'll occasionally have small servings of whole-wheat pasta, and I do eat reasonable portions of whole-grain bread that I bake myself.

I'm not OCD about the carbs, especially if I eat at someone else's home. In that case I do the best I can to keep to the diet given what's served, and make it up the next day if need be. It's easy to drive yourself crazy fretting over food. I figure if you're religious about it 95 percent of the time, then you have some wiggle room for the other five percent.

But on the other hand, most of my friends and family are supportive and have started asking me what I would like them to prepare that's compatible with my diet.

Oh, yes: I also drink one glass a day of red wine, which I don't count as anything. A whole string of doctors have recommended it for me, so I just consider it medication. :wink2:

Rich
 
Congrats on getting the diet under control, Rich.

I think the BP is your silent killer.

The meds for BP control have been around long enough that they're pretty much known quantities at this point, and high BP, as Doc Bruce stated numerous times when he hung out here, is a "time under the curve" killer.

If you're open to advice on it, and I'm not pushing, I'd say to always control BP with meds until it no longer needs to be controlled. Then stop.

The risk is stroke. Docs, multiple Docs, have said my father likely wouldn't have died at 61 from an inoperable stroke to his brain stem if he'd have simply taken a single BP pill per day.

The longer you wait, the more weakening of "pipes" simply not designed for the pressure they're carrying, to put it in engineering terms.

They'll eventually blow.
 
P.S. Looking at the numbers again, you made significant strides in the BP. So I guess you're at a crossroads on it. If it stays reasonable.
 
denverpilot said:
P.S. Looking at the numbers again, you made significant strides in the BP. So I guess you're at a crossroads on it. If it stays reasonable.
Click to expand...

Thanks. My BP has always tended to be low. The reading last year was the highest it had ever been, but it came down pretty quickly with the new diet and weight loss.

Rich
 
Here are some more numbers from last week's draw. The number on the left is from last year's annual physical. The second number is from October 2014, about six or eight months into Grandma's Diet. The third set is from last week's labs.

Code: 
[FONT=Courier New][U]Variable             10/13      10/14        02/15[/U]
Weight:               228        207          203
BP:                134/90     110/76       110/80
Total Cholesterol:    275        217          200
HDL:                   38         60           59
LDL:                  202        132          119
Triglyceride:         399        223          171
FBG:                  162        117          122
A1C:                  7.6        6.1          6.0[/FONT]
Just as a recap, this "diet" mainly consists of eating like my grandmother did, meaning little or no processed foods. I also tightly restrict carbs and completely avoid refined sugars. Other than that, I don't count calories, grams of fat, or anything else. Really, I eat pretty much what I feel like eating, but I prepare it all myself from the freshest- and least-processed ingredients available.

Health-wise, I have Type 2 diabetes. No other known medical problems. Medication-wise and herb-wise, I take Metformin 850 TID, and 1.2 grams red yeast rice, 1.5 grams cat's claw, and 2.0 grams fish oil daily.

Rich


​
 
Congratulations Rich. What is even better than the numbers is the fact that you have been on this regimen for almost a year and you are still motivated and seeing improvement. Even if the numbers weren't so great, if they are going in the right direction for a sustainable time period you are succeeding. It is overall permanent, healthy life style changes that are going to make a difference in the long run.

Keep it up and keep us posted. Progress reports like that help motivate the rest of us.
 
Thanks.

It's easy to stay motivated when you can eat well. This diet doesn't take a whole lot of thought and it's not boring. Just cook like Grandma did (and in my case, watch the carbs).

Rich
 
You weigh 203. How tall are you? I go to a cardio doctor every six months. He teaches heart studies at Johns Hopkins. He always produces a tape measure and checks my waist. I'm 6 foot even, weighed 200 when I first went to him . He Said 185 tops and waist from 38 to 36. Claims fat at waist is always prelude to trouble along with blood pressure which is deadly. I now take toprol and a baby aspirin , B pres. is usually 120/70 which he likes. He also likes daily walking, working up to a brisk pace for at least half an hour. I now weigh usually between 183-186. I dislike fish except tuna and eat a big load of oat meal with blue berry sin the AM . Cut down a lot on portions otherwise. I also dig cheese now and then, and drink some one percent milk. He claims my blood work looks pretty good. I don't smoke or drink. Did both years ago.
 
I'm 5'9", and the doc wants me at 175 based on his measurements. That also happens to have been my weight when I got out of the service, when I was in the best shape of my life, and until I hit my mid-30's. My waist size is 38, down from 42.

I have this odd pattern of always gaining weight in the winter, even when I a kid. It was a real challenge to stay under 160 for wrestling in high school during the winter despite running five miles five days a week and 18 miles every Saturday. This winter I managed to lose a few pounds for the first time... well, ever. I expect I'll lose more in the spring and summer.

Rich
 
I made zucchini noodles for the first time tonight. Julienned, sauteed in olive oil with some garlic for a few minutes until al dente, and then added my usual tomato sauce and cheese. They were really good!

RJM62 said:
Thanks.

It's easy to stay motivated when you can eat well. This diet doesn't take a whole lot of thought and it's not boring. Just cook like Grandma did (and in my case, watch the carbs).

Rich
Click to expand...
 
RJM62 said:
I also tightly restrict carbs and completely avoid refined sugars. Other than that, I don't count calories, grams of fat, or anything else.​
Click to expand...


I heavily cut carbs this past year and started looking at more fresh food. I barely work out but do have some level of exercise/cardio regularly.

Dropped nearly 10 lbs (only 150lbs so that's pretty significant) and saw huge improvement in HDL/LDL. I was really blown away with the results.

Glad to hear you are still on the positive run, congrats!
​
 
guardrail said:
I heavily cut carbs this past year and started looking at more fresh food. I barely work out but do have some level of exercise/cardio regularly.

Dropped nearly 10 lbs (only 150lbs so that's pretty significant) and saw huge improvement in HDL/LDL. I was really blown away with the results.

Glad to hear you are still on the positive run, congrats!
[/LEFT]
Click to expand...

Good for you, as well. It's amazing how much eating fresh helps.

Rich
 
Old Thread: Hello . There have been no replies in this thread for 365 days.
Content in this thread may no longer be relevant.
Perhaps it would be better to start a new thread instead.
Back
Top