My Doctors Want Me to Lose Weight… But There’s a Problem…
I’m On Drugs to Increase Insulin Production… and I Need Better Solutions
That’s right, I’m on a daily dose of Glimepiride, which stimulates my pancreas to make insulin.
Insulin lowers blood glucose by storing it in fat cells until they become full or insulin resistant. But it’s also making it harder to lose weight.
Ever since I’ve been on this drug, I’ve struggled to lose any weight. And I’m in the habit of weighing myself every day. I’ve done this daily weigh-in since the end of January 2014. I have older numbers I kept from doctor weigh-ins, but those are not recorded in an app.
My reason for tracking my weight is to monitor sudden spikes from psychiatric medications, not classic weight management. This is how I quickly discovered I had a sudden problem with the psychiatric drug, Geodon, a few years ago. It allowed me to alert my psychologist of the problem and we adjusted my medications associated with my comorbid mood disorder.
But the historical reality is I’ve always been obese according to BMI, as well as having a good amount of belly fat. This is true even when I was little. Being overweight can be a problem for some autistics, like myself, and those with intellectual disabilities, like my youngest.
For me, the problem is I love carbs and sugar. I’m genetically predisposed to sweets versus sour things. My wife is the opposite genetically.
The only thing that’s recently turned this off was the drug Rybelus. Supposedly Rybelus works by increasing insulin, decreasing sugar from the liver, and slowing the food, leaving the stomach. I think the slowing of the food from the stomach is providing more feedback time to my brain, allowing me to use willpower to stop eating. Prior to this, I would stuff my stomach until I was about to burst. It was the only way I would feel full. More than likely, my vagus nerve has some poor connections.
What’s also helped my diabetic condition is the restoration of my neural pathways through my cervical spine. A herniated disc blocked the nerve connection to my gut. It’s an odd reality, and the doctors don’t want to say it’s the absolute reason my pancreatic functions are better. But soon after this repair to my neck, my blood glucose levels returned to more normal levels, including a better A1c level. I have impressed endocrine with the new levels post-surgery. But they still want me to lose weight and exercise more.
Except exercise is still difficult for me because of the post-surgical depression I’m still suffering from. This doesn’t mention the two other medical conditions that make me exhausted all the time-drug-induced anemia from blood thinners and chronic migraines. This also doesn’t include my IBS-like symptoms, which have periodically gotten worse post-surgery.
I also stopped doing routine massages in part because of my neck issues, and because of the expense which is not covered by our health insurance. But this helped me remove trapped fluids in my legs and body. A couple of days after each massage, I would typically lose two to five pounds of water weight from the trapped fluids. The fluids that the diuretics I’m on don’t seem to remove.
Sure, the fluid would come back, but for a time it was gone from my body.
Losing Weight While Diabetic
To lose weight, people with diabetes should increase protein, avoid added sugar and processed foods (source: MedicalNewsToday). It even suggested a Paleo diet along with a low-carb diet.
Eating protein boosts glucagon, the opposite of insulin, says the Society for Endocrinology. Whereas the consumption of carbohydrates promoted insulin.
Insulin stores sugar in fat cells, while glucagon releases stored sugar for muscle activity. Adrenaline also helps with raising blood glucose. This is why your blood glucose can rise while doing physical activity. It’s all about supplying your body with energy.
But right now, my endocrinologist is trying to keep my blood glucose in a flat range. This makes losing weight difficult because I need it to vary more if the fat cells are to release the energy and then have it transferred into my muscles. This is assuming that I can physically do any activity at all.
You’d think eating less would do the trick to losing weight. But it doesn’t with the insulin load I have onboard right now. Anything I’m consuming, that’s carbohydrate, is being stuffed into fat cells along with the associated water.
When my cervical spine had a herniated disc, the only diet I could do to manage my blood glucose was a full keto-like diet. I ate lots and lots of protein, which didn’t help my diabetic constipation issues. I also didn’t lose any weight during this time but went up.
A note of caution for a diabetic going on any diet… check with your doctors and monitor your blood sugars closely. The reason has to do with hypoglycemic events that can occur with a diabetic being on a diet. Especially one that’s promoting higher protein content.
Wrapping Up Here…
I can only speak for myself, but I’m going to have to blend a combination of lowering caloric intake (calorie counting is recommended for diabetics trying to lose weight), at the same time increasing protein consumption with any amount of exercise I can squeeze in.
The downside of lowering calories is managing my anxiety that comes with it. This can happen when you have an anxiety disorder, and you try to lose weight. This is one of many reasons I’m a poor candidate for gastric-bypass surgery (which was suggested for me at one point).
This also doesn’t include the habit I have of using sugar to help with migraine symptoms. The reason is sugar in the digestive system can increase dopamine, which helps to lower migraine pain. This probably explains why people with migraines like to eat chocolate. Not to mention autistics who are obese because we are eating away the constant pain of living with stress and sensory issues.
I understand the science behind weight issues associated with cardiovascular and endocrine problems. But there’s also a serious psychological neurochemical dimension to these problems for some of us. For too long, society and medicine have seen this issue as one that’s the individual’s fault. But for people like me, I need society to adapt a little to my needs.
The U.S. doesn’t have a national sales tax. Maybe we should adopt a sugar tax like the U.K., but more expanded for sugary or high carbohydrate products, and use that to help fund Medicaid and Medicare.
Americans should see this problem like it did smoking back in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Smoking never went away, but it was reduced. While it’s true that obesity doesn’t directly harm others, and secondhand smoke does. Obesity can harm family members indirectly as it runs in families (80% if parents are obese) and can make an obese person a burden.
This is just one way to fight obesity and diabetes in the U.S. We need many solutions. More than just doctors telling people to lose weight as they prescribe drugs that cause them to put on fat.
