When I turned 40, the threat of diabetes is the main thing that made me stop every unhealthy thing I was doing and start getting back into shape. My uncle told me that one day when he was about 40, he woke up with an incurable thirst and knew he had diabetes. I wasn't going to let that happen. I'm about 60% of the way to my weight goal now. My blood pressure is back into the "normal" zone from Stage II hypertension, even though I still have a very high stress job sometimes. :-)

You just have to be disciplined about it.

One things I'd like to add, you just have to learn to cook and then actually cook good meals at home.

I started learning how to cook with cast iron a year or two ago. Braising tough cuts of meat and so forth. I just got a 7.5qt Le Creuset dutch oven yesterday, which is pretty much the mack daddy of enameled cast iron dutch ovens. You can literally make hundreds of different healthy meals for a whole family with that thing (braised dishes, roasted poultry, stews) and it will last damn near forever. Having some good tools to do the job really helps.

the price of "brand" diabetic drugs would blow your mind. 100 Januvia cost us over $600..for both 50 and 100 mg no less. One would think the 50mg would cost 1/2 as much, or 1/2 + a little premium. (they pull same crap with lunesta where the 2s and 3s cost the same..and viagra 50s and 100s)

one of the 'brand' diabetic drugs, fortamet or glumetza has gone to over $800 a bottle/100 our cost ! And some ins cos will pay for it. (these are nearly identical to generic counterpart metformin that is under $100 for 500 pills)

No wonder the postal service can't afford to pay its retiree heathcare costs.

Surely this will help:

http://money.cnn.com/2012/11/16/news/com....

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Surely this will help:

This is like NYC limiting the size of cokes you can buy. From a Statist's perspective who wants to manage the population, that may appear to be a solution to them. I disagree. I think individuals need to make the choice to educate themselves, make the decision to change their diet and then eat healthily. That is the only way to effect real, organic change throughout the population.

Besides, Twinkies and some sugary junk food will always be available.

Yeah, that was what we call sarcasm.

Momma goes to work fulltime now. She's also the main house slave. She's the one choosing Mac and cheese for dinner for the kids.

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She's also the main house slave.

This isn't the 1600s. Women can vote now. Free your mind and your ass will follow.

One of the luxuries of the US Lifestyle is the low cost of food. I think that problem will be resolved next year, those increased input costs are gonna show up big time!
Food stamps shouldn't pay for junk food or processed foods. Momma could cook for the whole week on the weekend, the sidedishes, prepared daily from fresh produce,etc...
Well, at least we can't blame Hostess for the epidemic.

Rather than Obama Care, they just should have just charged a fat tax and make government benefits subject to your weight.

If you are on food stamps, it would be easy enough to add another field in the data base signifying your weight situation. Then adjust the SNAP card to omit certain foods until your weight improves. No sugary cereals, sugar, sodas, pizza etc. Each modified card will have a pic of Mayor Bloomberg shaking his finger at you...

How about some positive reinforcement; sex is better when you are 50 pounds lighter (atleast in my case)

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A new study finds that the longer immigrants from Mexico, and their U.S.-born offspring, spend in the United States, the greater their odds of becoming obese.

I pointed this out years ago and it did not take a study. If you listed all the large countries by obesity, the US was number 1 and Mexico was number 2.

It goes to figure that if we have immigrants enter the country that are already predisposed to obesity, that if their standard of living improves, they will become more obese on average.

It is amazing the massive amounts of evidence linking GMO foods to sterility and death in lesser mammals (and specifically "organ damage"), as well as diabetes and other illnesses in humans. Well doesnt diabetes qualify as "organ damage"? Derp. Yet even now, with a critical threshold of the population afflicted, almost no one really bothers to educate themselves about GMO. It takes some serious power to make a population be that ignorant. This is mass eugenics at work. And the people just love it. They want more of it. In fact, you're some kind of conspiracy theorist if you even suggest how bat**** crazy this all is. It's right there in everyone's faces.

So women can vote their way out of taking care of the kids and working fulltime, Jotapay? Now that I think about it, that' s exactly what the female FSA have done. I hadn't realized that until now.

Karl is wrong here and you're taking health advice from a computer programmer. Atkins has been proven wrong many times as junk science. The only way to ward off cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, cardiovascular disease, etc is by a strict VEGAN DIET.

Read THE CHINA STUDY. Eating animal fat will kill you.

God was wrong?

Mexican cuisine is heavy on carbs. But when you are suddenly 'rich' - compared to what you were in some little village up in the mountains - it is very easy to have six tortillas instead of four.

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It would be real nice if that same CDC would stop telling people to eat lots of high-glycemic carbohydrates, which materially complicate maintaining a healthy body weight

And as in my case I would remove the last word from this quote, "weight" and replace it with "and mind too".

Damn right.

Let me explain that.

A few weeks ago I went to my NMD for a followup meeting for my detox phase II to see how that was going (i.e. taking oral glutathione). Long story short she asked me to go on grain-free diet for a month to see if that would help my acne (over my body not just face) problem that I have been having for most of my life. I was to replace those calories with more healthy fats.

Anyway I did not like the idea since quinoa or brown basmati rice and gluten-free oats were daily staples of mine. They were most of my favorite foods since as of a few years ago I changed my diet to eat sickeningly healthy (or so I thought).

Anyway I said ok and the first 36ish hours were tough I almost (immediately) gave up. But I muddled though and after about 36 -48 hours I found that my craving for those foods and carbs in general greatly subsided.

Anyway it has been a week and no grains what-so ever and my skin is healing, my brain fog is gone, my anxiety is almost non existent (no thanks to Karl and his happy, uplifting 'blue sky' writing, ha ha), I am much more calm, at peace with myself and all without taking any neurotransmitter type of supplements which only worked sporadically and are very expensive. My concentration is also much, much, much, much improved. I am a much happier person. BTW, I have been struggling with this for 3/4 of my life. I am now 39.

I will continue the 'experiment' for 3-4 more weeks before making a final decision but I have never had such a good outcome in so short a time by removing something from my diet.

Grains for me will now be strictly off limits - all grains. (period) I also physically feel better than I have since I was 10! I already feel stronger and can jog longer and longer without stopping.

I also did some research this week (after I started to feel the very positive effects of the grain-free diet) and came up with this, Nora Gedgaudas - Google her and learn. I also learned (I do not have an excuse of why I did not know this before) that all carbs, including complex ones like brown rice, quine and gluten-free oats and oats in general are still carbs and their end-product is to break down in to sugar just like all the other (very) bad types of carbs. And that our body can run on sugar (bad - like constantly having to keep your woodstove going but by using kindling (that is sugar)) and using key-tones (the energy units of fat) to keep your body going is like using a few big, dry oak logs to keep your woodstove going- you are then free to not be constantly preoccupied with keeping your body (i.e. woodstove) going and can concentrate on other things.

I am also finding out that beans and lentil also break down into sugar at the end so I am trying to do away with them to.

But it has only been a week.

We have become a nation of motorized wheelchairs. People don't even push their own wheelchairs any more.

Jalibb, I hope you enjoyed your extremely brief stay at TF. The China Study has been debunked numerous times.

Mexican food is heavy on lard -- rather than the fake veggie oils, so while it is higher carb, it still isn't terrible food compared to the crap we eat here.

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How about some positive reinforcement; sex is better when you are 50 pounds lighter (atleast in my case)

I would not know. I'm a zeta male. (Google it)

Personal experience (not me, but uninsured sibling):
Drastic weight loss essentially CURED fairly bad diabetes.
Most symptoms resolved, numbers became normal without medication.
Neurological and eyesight problems cleared up without the need for new pharma-poison. It became possible to discontinue medications already being taken.
All that from weight loss only. Fear is a powerful motivator to the awake & rational. This was done under light medical supervision, however, just to stay safe.

Personal experience (me):
Numbers were a little high, but never quite into diabetic range.
Then I got old.
Constant joint pain and other arthritis issues eventually wrecked my appetite.
Dropped a ton of weight - simply from calorie reduction - and my sugar test numbers dropped into the normal range and below.
It wasn't a deliberate course of action, but it certainly worked. And I buy a lot fewer groceries. Still can't outrun the zombies with this cane (and occasionally a walker), though.