Not the lovely, talented creator of said diet, and not the nice Russian man who took my blood sample at the lab. Not even my thyroid doctor, who is the person who wrote the prescription for the blood work (and is therefore obviously responsible for the results). Obviously not me, because I was eating nothing but leaves and organic meat during the phase when I had blood drawn. But someone is going to pay, somewhere, and when I find out who it is, I’ll let you know.
I’m thinking that eastern Europe is responsible, or at least the version of it that existed hundreds of years ago, since conditions then were such that a person with a very slow metabolism and a low tolerance for sugary foods would do well. My ancestors were basically bred for starvation, not plenty. We were the last people standing once the food died and the government had driven everyone away from their land and everyone else had starved to death. I picture us, hungry but still chubby, rooting around in the earth and finding one last turnip with delight: “A turnip! Our family can last two weeks on that. Look, Dorota, it’s Christmas dinner!”
But enough of the ancestors. My problem right now is trying to get a straight answer out of someone, in terms of what to do next. My regular doctor says my A1-C is fine, and that I don’t have diabetes. My thyroid doctor says, well, let me see if I can remember the quote. It went something like, “You’re fine … today. I mean, you’re not going to keel over next year, or anything.” He wasn’t thrilled with consistent fasting sugars around the 100 mark, though, and neither am I.
The problem is, once you’re losing weight and monitoring your labs and trying, as Monty Python once advised us, to get some walking in, there’s not much you can do with a slightly too-high sugar. Eat cinnamon, I guess. My thyroid doc advised that, and I’ve heard it can help. Also, cinnamon is delicious. I bet my ancestors would be delighted at that prescription, if they could get their hands on it.
Image: ICanHasCheezburger
I don’t know this is related, but a friend who got rid of all sugar from her diet — and was feeling great, losing weight, all kinds of good stuff — reported that, after a few months at a doctor’s visit, her practitioner told her she had high blood sugar. She was flabbergasted. She wrote, “Well, my friends, it seems that the liver will turbo charge its own sugar production if it recognizes that you’re suddenly not getting much. So I asked the doctor, ‘Do you mean to tell me I need to add more sugar into my diet?!’ No. I need more protein.”
That would be just like my liver. I don’t want to pick on it, because God knows it has a hard job, but really.
So did she eat more sugar? Or more protein?
Protein. She doesn’t eat a lot of meat, so she started putting protein powder in smoothies.