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Dr. Mcdougall eats turkey, so I guess he's out too



I hope I've explained that sufficiently above in relation to my husband's diabetes, but I'll also note that tofu and nuts are both permitted foods in the McDougall diet, for healthy people of normal weight. You'll notice that I didn't post any recipes in the MWL section using them.



My husband followed it for six months (admittedly with time off for good behavior) and I'm the one who prepares the food around here so I'm more than familiar with the MWL program. I didn't suggest people should live on salad, I thought it was clear that my salad dinner was meant for those times when you want to give your weightloss a kick start. Just because it wouldn't work for you doesn't mean that the idea should be immediately discarded.



How about giving people some credit for having basic intelligence? Like Dr. McDougall says, it's not a religion, although I wonder how you see this WOE. In the real world, most people would consider someone like myself who doesn't eat any meat or dairy, or oils, as a radical, but apparently my WOE isn't good enough to be made to feel welcome by you. Which is a shame, because I've already been alienated from the folks at the diabetes forum I was on because I was a vegan. I think we should be sticking together, not judging one another.

He has said he does that once a year at most. Please don't spread rumors like that.

He's a type 2 who was overweight and had an Ac1 of 8.9. We saw forks over knives and decided that we are going to go vegan to try and get the weight off him as a means to reversing his diabetes. I found the McDougall website almost straight away and started him on the MWL program. We did that for about three months, and indeed he was losing weight and feeling better. I then read reversing diabetes by Neil Barnard, and realized that we were supposed to be testing his blood which we hadn't done at all up to that point. I started keeping a food diary and was really shocked to realize that potatoes and the oats he ate each morning for breakfast were spiking him up to 220. That's when I started experimenting with nuts and tofu, when I realized that they are completely non-spiking for him. Obviously they are more caloric, so it's a fine balancing act trying to keep him from spiking and still eating a low-fat diet. Luckily he can eat modest amounts of brown rice, lentils and chickpeas without spiking also, so I think we're lucky there.



I think you're very fortunate because that is a typical problem for McDougall diabetics, and there have been several threads discussing it of late. What confuses me, is that even during the phase when he was spiking from potatoes and oats unbeknownst to us he still managed to bring his Ac1 down to 6.5, and his bloodwork was fantastic. Does that mean that it's acceptable to put up with some spiking when it's accepted medical knowledge that any level over 140 can cause permanent damage? No one seems to be able to answer me on that.



Yes, that's Dr. Barnard's theory too and we're counting on it being true. My husband is at an optimum weight now and he's exercising daily to tone up and turn any residual fat into muscle. We're hoping that it will lead to an eventual reversal of his diabetes, and of course the spiking. As it's only been six months it's still early days for us, hopefully he'll be able to enjoy potatoes again eventually.

Did you ever email Dr. McDougall to ask this question?

I think I'd quibble with the characterization of that as a "problem" for those of us McDougall diabetics who still have weight to lose, even though you are quite correct, it's often discussed here.

Have you carefully looked at Dr. McDougal's article How I Treat Diabetes?

According to that link, he takes his diabetic patients off all their meds except (sometimes) insulin, and if he has them on insulin he shoots for a number between 150 and 300 (which I take to mean, he's only using the insulin to control grossly high sugars). He also discourages his patients from taking blood sugar numbers after eating, because "The finding of elevated sugars later in the day after eating just upsets the patient and does not add any useful information." From all that it's pretty clear to me he's not specifically worrying about postprandial "spikes" above 140. But he does believe, and my own experience is bringing me to believe, that eating his way will eventually bring all the blood sugar levels into line.

However Dr. McDougall does talk about a diagnostic goalpost of "weight loss to the point of normal body weight", saying "at this time the blood sugars of most patients diagnosed with type-2 diabetes will normal." And if I've understood your story correctly, your husband is at normal body weight and still has abnormal sugars, so it sounds like he might be one of the outliers. But I'm not sure; McDougall may be talking about people who are both at normal body weight and eating very low fat as he recommends, which may not describe your husband based on what you've told us. So there might still be that to try.

Thanks for finding that! I searched and searched b/c I KNEW I had seen that somewhere, and I couldn't find it! Yes--all this focusing on postprandial blood glucose is unecessary and can be damaging b/c then folks don't eat correctly.

Part of me wishes I had never started all the testing, but I did and it is a widely accepted medical fact that blood sugars over 140 have the potential to cause nerve damage. So I do feel like we're caught between a rock and a hard place. He actually doesn't have nuts that often, but the tofu scramble in the mornings doesn't spike him at all, and if he spikes at breakfast his readings tend to be extra high all day plus he enjoys it. It's not very appealing to give him something like oats when I know what it's going to do to the meter.

I have seen that information on diabetes from Dr. McDougall and I assume he's talking about not worrying about spiking in the short term, I'm sure he didn't mean that it was acceptable as a permanent thing. I wonder if I should e-mail him, I hate to bother him, or put him into a position of giving medical advice which I'm sure he wouldn't want to do for legal reasons. I had hoped that by now the spiking would have slowed down as husband is really getting lean and mean, but I gave him a small amount of wheat noodles tonight with a lot of veggies and he tested at 160 @ 1h30, and I know that if he had skipped the noodles he would have been at 125. Sigh.

I don't want you to get the impression that he's eating a high-fat diet, his typical daily menu looks like this:

breakfast: tofu scramble (which mainly consists of vegetables) and a cup of chicory
lunch: brown rice with eggplant curry
dinner: large salad with a dish starring legumes and steamed vegetables

He never eats fruit or any sugar, so although it might be considered too much fat for a MWL person, considering the fact that he's no longer trying to lose weight it's not too bad.

He is careful--he won't give you specific advice. But he can give you general advice based on what you tell him. Just do it. He's very nice about it.

Forget me. I hate salad. I love vegetables, but they must be cooked. I'll eat a small salad with lunch or dinner, more in the summer... but never as a dinner any time of the year..

I am still wondering about the spiking. After twenty years with T2 and on no meds my HbA1c just tested at 5.4. I never worried about post prandial spiking since my morning fasting levels are usually between 75 and 85 on average. However, just having had a heart attack I have to re visit this. People say (and Dr. Mirkin says on his web site) that spikes over 140 are dangerous and cause sugar to stick to the cells. Dr. Oz has said that sugars are like sharp crystals that stab into the artery walls, cause injury and cause the blood to clot over the injury. However, I have been looking for a study or two in a peer reviewed journal to show this is true. And then there is the problem, even if it is true, of this being tested on people who are either following the SAD or are on meds or both. So then you still have to ask what about people on a plant based or starch based diet? Does it hold true for them. Although I have no other complications from diabetes, a heart attack and blocked arteries and going into v fib are pretty big complications.

Re: big salads for dinner. So far as I can tell from everything I have read on McDougall, he seems to say to include starches in the diet because other wise you will be hungry and then be tempted to overeat. He says there are whole populations who eat starch based diets and who are healthy. So this is another reason to eat this way. But I have never read that he says that eating salads or other vegetables raw or cooked is unhealthy--just that you will be too hungry without the starches. Nor have I read that he said that without starches you miss important nutrients that you can't get in raw or cooked vegetables and fruits and would thus jeopardize your health.

But sometimes, I just have a huge bowl of salad and maybe a piece of fruit and I do not get hungry until the next meal time. Am I obliged to eat the starch anyway? That doesn't make much sense. And unlike Fuhrman, McDougall says it is okay to eat several times a day. So if you get hungry from just a big salad before your next meal, you can always toss a potato or sweet potato into the microwave and still be in compliance with the McDougall diet. Now, if I were at a McDougall live in program where all you can eat meals are served at certain meal times, I would probably make sure I also ate the starch along with the salads and vegetables because I would know I wouldn't be eating until the next meal was served.

Didi

Very good point, Didi! I have been following this thread and trying to think of what is worrying me about it. And your point is it. On MWL, I have had several times when I would eat a big salad at the beginning of my meal, just as Dr. M describes in his Set Point article (http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2005nl/ ... ushing.htm),
and then I'd be way too full to eat anything else for hours. I was totally following MWL, and I didn't feel I was doing anything not on program. I also have had about once a week, days when all I could have for dinner was a handful of cherry tomatoes and a potato, and I was not at all worried because I would be having my oatmeal and cherries for breakfast.

So the meal described by Nordgirl at the beginning of this thread is not at all unusual for MWL. I think the thing that bothered some people is calling it a weight loss tip. But it is a very nice way to encourage our bodies in that direction, so I think it's valid. Note that she never said to "go hungry," but simply to just eat that big ol' salad for dinner!

It is important that we don't let ourselves get too hungry, especially if we have been noshers, gorgers, or overeaters in our previous WOE. However, that point does not equate to being in the "clean plate club" and eating whenever we get the chance. We eat until we are comfortably full, and if we get comfortably full on a salad once in a while, there is no harm in waiting until the next time we eat to have our starches. I get plenty of starches in my life, so I'm not worried.