People who ‘can’t fit into jeans they wore aged 21’ risk developing diabetes | Hacker News Reader

People who ‘can’t fit into jeans they wore aged 21’ risk developing diabetes

theguardian.com

38 pointsmelling44 comments

Aside: after 3 months of a keto - no/low carbs,sugars - diet I've lost ~10% body weight.

Avocado smoothie with MCT oil, chia seed, hemp, cocoa, collagen powders breakfast at 9am. Egg, cheese, leafy green vegetable lunch. Meat/fish and veg dinner at 6pm. Blueberries and cream with 85% dark chocolate dessert.

Energy levels are more even during the day.

recipes?

For lunch I will eat Prosciutto or another cured meat thats high fat with a cheese. Otherwise it’s meat on top of a salad with homemade Red Wine Vinaigrette. EVOO whipped with Dijon mustard, red wine vinegar, salt, pepper and dried herbs to taste.

Breakfast is a decent quality egg (orange yolks) plus a generous portion of coconut oil.

Don't mean this as insult, but this can't make sense: "prosciutto or another cured meat"

Am I crazy or are you just substituting something (i.e. a carb) with something else (cured meat) that comes with a different set of problems?

I'm remain perplexed by keto diets. Yes, stabilizing glucose levels and removing spikes/crashes is important, but some of the alternatives don't make a ton of sense.

Yeah, cured meat everyday is also quite bad. Especially if you are getting a considerable portion of your calories from it (leafy greens have very few calories).

This is the problem with trying to get healthy - no matter what you do, somebody somewhere will insist that you're wasting your time because you do this other unhealthy thing. The most important thing I learned about trying to eat/live healthy, a long time ago, is never tell anybody else what you're doing to improve your health.

I've lost a fair amount of weight over the last year and what I've noticed is that a lot of it comes down to finding the details that work for you. To this end, I find it really useful to hear what other people are doing. It gives me ideas and especially things to look for when troubleshooting, but there is no silver bullet.

How else do you get energy? I need fat if I’m replacing carbs. It’s either coming from the EVOO in my dressing or fat in some kind of dried meat. I also dont think nitrates are as bad as some people make it out to be. Same with salt. Eating cured meats twice a week isn’t hurting anyone.

Too much protein will lead to more body fat (glucose) via gluconeogenesis. Carbs will spike your glucose and lead to more snacking and tiredness in the afternoon. Bodies should be burning fat for energy.

Edit: Just checked and the Coppa I have doesn’t even contain nitrates. The entire package is 85g and last me 2.5 meals. Prosciutto di Parma doesn’t even contain nitrates.

Fair enough. The way I thought through this was simply that you’d focus on the most basic version of the food: uncured pork (like tenderloin), chicken, beef, and some specialized variations like organs meats.

“Light” Keto, I don’t think full Keto is something you should do long term. You can still get your body to produce ketones without doing the full Keto style diet.

I’m almost done reading The Fatburn Fix by Dr. Catherine Shanahan.

I’ve been doing a light keto diet and the energy gains are significant when I stick to it. Eggs with coconut oil in the AM with bacon (not daily), protein + leafy green salad with homemade EVOO dressing for lunch, and meat/fish plus 2 veggies for dinner. Nuts and cheese if I need to snack.

When I stick to it I am not tired in the afternoon. Lost 13 pounds and saved 20 points off my glucose levels. Cholesterol is a little higher but that’s going to happen with a higher fat diet.

Try pork bellies instead of bacon. No sodium nitrates. Just add a bit of salt after cooking. Tastes the same or better than bacon.

Keto increases your risk of kidney stones. Not recommended for anybody concerned about that. Not to mention blueberries, chocolate, and spinach are considered very high risk for people who form oxalate kidney stones.

I eat these daily. How would I know my risk of this?

I'm far from a doctor, so I'd say do a lot of research and start a conversation about it with your primary care physician. Being male (especially mid-twenties or older) and having family history increases your risk. I don't know if there's any way to calculate one's specific risk, but you can do things like have a 24-hour urinalysis, ultrasounds, MRIs to see if you have any kidney stones right now. Then, whether or not there's anything you can do about them is another topic to research.

In my research, there doesn't seem to be a solid, universal consensus on much. However, I've seen these points get a lot of support:

- kidney stone formation scales inversely with hydration. Less water, higher risk of stones. More water, less risk. I can't say how much you have to drink or where it tapers off, but my doctor prescribed me "buckets" of water, so that's a starting point. - there are various kinds of kidney stones. One type is formed by oxalates, which is a chemical only found in plants. There's zero oxalates in meat or animal products, and the highest concentrations around in things like spinach, beets, chocolate, nuts. - Being a carnivore isn't necessarily a cure. Meat changes your urine composition because of uric acid (iirc), which can increase your risk of kidney stones. - Depending on the type of stone formed, any protein can increase risk (I forget what kind this one is) - Calcium can bind with oxalate in the body and prevent the oxalates from binding to themselves and your kidney, which is what forms kidney stones. So ensuring that you get enough calcium daily, and especially eating calcium with high oxalate foods, may reduce risk - Various other things may help. Citric acid may change your urine composition in a way that helps prevent stone formation. For example, apparently drinking beer and wine reduces stone risk by 33% according to some sources.

Frankly, a lot of this comes down to your comfort. Kidney stones are very likely my absolute worst fear in life for personal reasons, so I've gone to considerable lengths to do whatever I can to feel informed and minimize my perceived risk. A friend of mine has an elderly relative who often gets kidney stones, but apparently would rather deal with that than change their diet/lifestyle. So don't take this info dump as a reason to panic, but instead gauge your concern/interest and if you think it's worth looking into, again, do your own research and talk to your doctor.

Tulsi tea apparently "melts" kidney stones.

It's all about keeping a balance.

If you have a medical or academic source for that, I'd love to read it. I did research and could only find this tea mentioned on no-name websites. The closest I could find was this article about dandelion tea from Livestrong, but even that has no sources and mentions 'purported' benefits rather than giving any evidence

https://www.livestrong.com/article/546304-the-benefits-of-da...

It reduces uric acid levels among other benefits.

"The Clinical Efficacy and Safety of Tulsi in Humans: A Systematic Review of the Literature" - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5376420/

In some cases the problem is a lot more of sugar, soda, and overall bad food. Drink a lot of water, eat two meals a day, and make those meals more with chicken and meats, less of carbs, and far less sugar.

Completely agree with your assessment of the problem, but I suspect the US diet is already much too meat and animal products based, and encouraging people to lose weight by eating more meat is both bad for the environment and probably not great for their health.

"Eat food, not too much, mostly plants."

> The standard american diet (SAD) is characterized by high amounts of processed foods, refined carbohydrates and added sugars, refined fats, high fat dairy products and red meat.

The problem isnt too meat and animal products it is the whole thing. Litterally any diet choice that deviates from the SAD has positve value.

I agree with "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." but the thing to do more of is to rip the whole diet up and start again.

I agree with this one; keto works wonders. It's not for everyone, but it is worth a try. Combine it with intermittent fasting it will develop good benefits for the body.

I followed a keto die for ~2 years. I lost a lot of weight and generally felt good. The moment I reintroduced carbs though, it all came rushing back with interest. So I only agree with this if you think you can keep it up forever. Another thing to note is my ability to perform high intensity exercise was severely limited. Moderate exercise was fine, but heavy lifting, sprinting, crossfit etc... was really difficult on keto.

The idea that type 2 diabetes is related to obesity has been around for a long time, and probably has merit.

The idea that I am at risk because I cannot fit into jeans I wore at 21 is a joke. I weigh 32% more now than I did at 21, but my BMI is healthy. I was VERY skinny at 21, almost to the point of being unhealthy.

My first thought... This might be a true statement for people with the same path.

I was ridiculously athletic at 21, I can't maintain that index forever

Why do you think you can't maintain that index forever? Were you extremely heavy with muscle, or extremely skinny and low-muscle?

Super duper lean, never was able to hold onto much muscle.

Probably more to do with my activities of choice though, mostly 'cardio' from skateboarding/swimming/running I'd wager.

This has completely fallen on its face though, admittedly way too sedentary for my own good anymore...

There's a useful article that was posted on HN recently about how metabolism doesn't change from years 20-60. Except for legitimate health conditions, the only reason for weight change from 21 years old is lifestyle and diet. Hence this thread's original topic is entirely plausible: there's no biological reason one shouldn't wear the same jeans one wore when they were 21. In your case it also holds true: it doesn't take extreme athleticism to be lean, just a healthy and moderate diet. That may not seem normal today where obesity is becoming an everyday thing, but the average weight today is what's unhealthy, not being able to wear the same jeans you wore at 21.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58186710

Here's the BMI chart: https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/educational/lose_wt/BMI/bmi...

My weight at 21 was below the "Normal" range for my height. Today (at 59) it is at the upper-end of "Normal".

I think what is happening is that when we increase our weight, at some point our internal organs are storing the fat. "Fatty" liver or pancreas. Not sure how the body decides where to put the excess fat.

Getting the body to lose the fat inside the organs is the goal. Starving ourselves, for example, would cause muscle to burn first.

Starving ourselves, for example, would cause muscle to burn first

Incorrect. Fasting is very muscle sparing.

Indeed, strength training during fasting will also further protect muscle tissue from breakdown during fasts.

Starving works fine to lose weight

Can't say about your particular situation, but I think that, in general, our view of what is "normal weight" is very distorted due to the fact that most people around us are kinda fat. The same goes for exercising habits; people who don't move much often see twice a week jogging or something as a good amount of exercise. While it is certainly better than nothing and probably more than many people get, it's still much, much less than an average person exercised a hundred years ago by just living a normal life.

A person who doesn't provide any kind of stimulus to maintain their muscle mass can have low BMI too much body fat at the same time.

This is such an HN comment to take a statement that's broadly true and a good one-liner that's understandable for most people, point out an exception, and conclude that the whole thing is false, pointless and they should have phrased it super precisely to account for edge cases that people with any amount of common sense get immediately.

* If you were underweight when you were 21 you probably shouldn't strive to be underweight again.

* If you were overweight when you were 21 you probably shouldn't strive to be overweight again.

But if you're in that HUUUGE in-between where you have that pair of jeans you wore in college and really liked but now don't fit into anymore and rationalized it as "well I'm not young anymore" you are the target of this messaging. Because if you want stay healthy as you age and "slow down" putting on weight is the worst thing you could do.

I'll go one more: if your waist is bigger than your chest, you're not in good shape.

There are ways to use and abuse this rule, but it holds pretty true.

There are bound to be a lot of people who don't WANT this to be true and will look for any possible evidence that it might not be.

Generalizations have ruined science/media/reporting

This has nothing to do with particular dimensionality of jeans.

This is US Political Correctness gone wild. Cant say "People who got FAT risk developing diabetes", it could hurt someones feelings! Just google "all shapes and sizes" and be bombarded with stuff like https://www.bostonmagazine.com/health/2020/01/24/health-at-e...

    Accept your size.
    Trust yourself.
    Embrace size diversity.

The title is clickbait but the stat is incredible:

> They completed three rounds of this programme until they lost 10 to 15% of their body weight.

> After weight loss was achieved, scans showed reductions in the fat in the liver and eight of the 12 participants had their type 2 diabetes go into remission, which was defined as having blood sugar levels under control and patients no longer needing any medication.

Here's the professor's own site and explanation: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/magres/research/diabetes/reversal/#pub... , https://www.ncl.ac.uk/press/articles/archive/2017/09/type2di... (2017)

It seems that people can get excess fat in their liver and pancreas, which causes Type 2 diabetes in some people who aren't even considered overweight.

Getting your body to use the excess fat in your organs seems to be the problem.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/may/12/type-2-...

Basically having type 2 diabetes indicated 10-15% excess body weight for optimum function (irrespective of level of current weight/bmi/etc) and loss of 10-15% reversed diagnosis.

That is how I read the results.

I wish people would pay me to write headlines like this.

How about this idea for an article:

"People who find baseball stadium chairs uncomfortable risk developing diabetes.

More alarmist nonsense from the Guardian... Their links should be banned from HN.

Presumed takeaways:

1) All Taliban members are at risk!

2) Sure, everyone is "at risk". I won't click on the stupid link but I bet that the risk is small enough not to be worth the time required to read the article.

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