My Prediabetes and Weight Loss

Hi friends. I’ve had a few inquiries about my weight loss and how I beat back my prediabetes/diabetes diagnosis in three months. I figured I’d put some thoughts on that down here for anyone to see. This post discusses pathways to weight loss, visits to the doctor, frank language about medical issues related to being overweight and eating disorders (BED), so if any of that triggers you, please be warned. If this post helps you in any way, I’m so glad.

On September 27, 2021 I got some pretty bad news regarding my health. After routine bloodwork, my A1C levels came back at 6.1. Which in plain language means I was in the prediabetic range. At the doctor’s office that I go to they consider it within the diabetic range, so I was instantly set up with foot exams, eye exams and put on Metformin, a diabetic medication. I was put on a strict eating schedule. I was told it was in my best interest to try to lose weight as soon as possible. They offered me a dietician but I declined.

I had not been feeling good in the months leading up to this diagnosis. Really woozy when I would eat late. Energy levels were tanked (never been great.) I was getting gnarly rashes in my skin folds that were making me miserable. I just felt BAD. So this diagnosis, while unexpected, was not especially surprising. Diabetes runs deep in my family. My number just came up. I watched my grandma check her sugar before having a Coke for years. I did not want to be that person. Between pressure from my PCP, who I very much trusted, and my knowledge that a diabetic person has a much harder time getting weight off, I knew it was time to really make an effort towards weight loss. I’m a huge proponent of Health at Every Size and I really believe in it, but for me personally, the signs were clear that I was NOT healthy. I figured I would do everything in my power to combat my diagnosis and I would either reverse it or at worst be in a better shape to handle diabetes.

I did have the great fortune of being in physical therapy for my pelvic floor with the absolute most excellent therapist I have ever encountered, and she had been encouraging me to move more, so by the time my diagnosis came up I was starting to take more walks and build up my stamina. I was able to move into more physical movement when I discovered Caleb Marshall, “The Fitness Marshall” on YouTube. He does workout dance videos with size-inclusive dancers and he is flamboyant and exuberant. The music is great, the dances are great and it’s just really, really fun. He has hundreds and hundreds of videos on his YouTube channel and they are separated into categories by light sweat/moderate etc so it makes it really easy to find videos that match your abilities/taste in music. If you need to move more and like dancing, I can’t recommend him enough. Anyway I made a playlist of videos and started working out every other day for 30 minutes. I also started walking 7500 steps a day.

This is the video I saw that enticed me into checking out this man’s channel. Maybe it will do the same for you??

I want to talk about my struggles and my relationship with food but for the sake of getting to the point, I want to get my diet plan out there for y’all, like, the actual thing (besides working out) that led to my weight loss and subsequent conquest of prediabetes. We can talk about the struggles afterwards if you want.

I am 5’1 and weighed 240 pounds. I know in my heart that weight loss literally occurs when the body expends more calories than it takes in, also known as CICO for a weight loss technique. I’ve never done more than dipped my toes into calorie counting so I figured I’d give it a go. I went for a goal of 1500 calories in a day and began logging everything I ate. I cut out all sugar that I possibly could, all bread and pasta, and processed meat. Going from eating whatever I wanted to a very regimented diet sucked (still sucks,) and also trying to give myself a whirlwind course on how many calories are in things was exhausting. So here are some examples of meals that I have found work for me.

Breakfast 1:

Smoothie: 1/2C unsweetened nondairy milk

1/2C frozen fruit

1/2 banana

1/2C nonfat greek yogurt

fresh ginger to taste

Coffee w/ 1T half&half

Breakfast 2:

Fried egg using 0cal pan spray

kimchi

1/2 cup brown jasmine rice

Coffee w/ 1T half&half

Breakfast 3:

Oatmeal w/Smart Balance, unsweetened nondairy milk and fruit

Coffee w/ 1T half&half

Lunch 1:

Athenos hummus and veggies

Fruit

Chicken leg

Seltzer

Lunch 2:

SALAD (see below for what I like in my salad and dressing reccos)

Seltzer

Lunch 3:

Black bean veggie burger w thin sliced cheese, low cal mayo (I add chipotle and lime), whatever veggies and sandwich thins

Veggie straws (1/2 serving)

Seltzer

Snacks:

Light string cheese (I stg they taste better than regular)

Crackers w Laughing Cow cheese, tomato, cucumber, olives (lil crudités)

Veggies w/ hummus

Fruit

Almonds (must be careful to eat only one serving which is like 12 lol)

Tea, savory tea or low sodium broth

La Terra Fina makes some delicious dips that are very low cal, I especially like the Everything But the Bagel dip.

Dinner 1:

Salmon

Roasted veggies

Polenta

Seltzer

Dinner 2:

Chicken enchiladas packed with black beans, chilies, bell pepper, corn or whatever I can find. I use regular corn tortillas and regular enchilada sauce, and a small bag of regular shredded cheese

Salad

Seltzer

Dinner 3:

Chili w/ ground turkey (this is another situation where I put extra veggies in it, zucchini, bell pep, mushrooms, corn, olives, all the beans, tomatoes etc

Salad

Seltzer

Tips:

• I use nonfat Greek yogurt on EVERYTHING. It is the best thing. You can use it in place of cream in a lot of things if you can handle the tangy flavor (I love it.) Mac and cheese if you’re being naughty but not too naughty, frittata, cream soups, polenta etc. I use it as sour cream, soup topper, I use it to make dips and spreads. It’s a miracle.

• I use 0cal pan spray for stirfry, sautéed veggies, veggie burgers, anything fried in a pan.

• Light mayo is pretty decent. There’s like, fat free mayo too but it’s gross imo. The fat is worth it if you’re going to use it, especially if you’re making an artichoke dip or something.

• Thin sliced cheese is awesome, but the pepper jack is impossible to separate. I also recently discovered low-cal provolone (50cal a slice) and I love it.

• Personally, I think the very most important thing to keep in mind if you want to lose weight and are a chronic over-eater like I am, is PORTION CONTROL. Serve yourself the correct portion of the thing you’re going to eat. Don’t guess. Scales are cheap. Self control feels really good if you let it.

• If you are trying to stave off diabetes, don’t eat sugar. I know it sounds obvious but like… just don’t. I bought myself a bottle of agave nectar for when a recipe or whatever calls for sugar (like tomato sauce.) It tastes great, has a low glycemic index and it’s much sweeter than sugar so you only need a drop (especially if you haven’t been eating sugar, wow)

SALAD:

Here is what I like to put in salad. If I’m having salad as a meal I’ll put like, everything in it. If it’s a side salad I keep off some of the more carby items, or leave off protein.

Cherry/grape tomatoes

English cucumber

Red bell pepper

Red onion

Olives

Chickpeas, black beans, etc.

Corn

Avocado

Apples

Blueberries

Fat-free feta (it def doesn’t taste as good as regular but I really like it when my salad is low on protein cuz you can put a LOT.)

Seeds/nuts

Grilled tofu

Ham

Chicken

Salad secret weapons:

Salad toppers!!! Fresh Gourmet. Those like, bags of fried bell pepper and jalapeno and wonton and tortilla strips. I put one kind on every. Single. Salad. I eat. Measure out 2T tho because it‘s so much less than you want.

Bacon bits. The real bacon things that are dried up in the salad section. The suck all the fat out of them so it’s just smoky chewy texture left. Great on salad.

Croutons. Yeah the bread kind. You’re doing so good, eating so healthy. Look at that salad. Treat yo’ self. Just remember a serving is literally like 5 croutons lol

Sundried tomatoes that aren’t packed in oil. I get the Smokey kind, they’re low cal and taste awesome.

Salad dressing secrets:

Don’t make your own. Unless you’re just adding like, vinegar and water to fat free yogurt, you’ll never be able to make a dressing that matches store bought low-cal dressings, calorically speaking. Dressing is just traditionally made with so much oil it’s too tough (at least for me) to bother trying to figure out. Unfortunately a lot of low-cal dressing sucks. Here are some kinds that don’t:

Girard’s Champagne Dressing (60cal) my favorite on salad w/ frittata

Girard’s Caesar (80cal) not quite as good as the Champagne, but still good

Red Shell Sesame Soy (45cal) SO good

Red Shell Japanese Miso (60cal) even better

Bolthouse Farms Chunky Blue Cheese Yogurt Dressing (35!!cal) Y’all this is the one. Delicious.

Bolthouse Farms Honey Mustard (40cal) Tangy, this one was gone fast

General YES:

Halo Top Ice Cream. Halo Top was crucial in my first few months. I was dying from not eating any sugar AND portion control AND not snacking and UGH. Some of the flavors are really good. If you haven’t had it, it has a bit of a salty strange taste to it, but satisfies that craving for sugar. And if you’re trying really hard to stay on track, a bite or two feels really rewarding and the calories/sugars are negligible. I recommend the flavors that work well with the salty factor, like Salted Caramel and Lemon Cookie. I have since moved on to light ice cream like Ben & Jerry’s, since I am no longer in the diabetic range and really only need a bite or two to be satisfied. I don’t need sugar every day, but once a month I will literally cry until I eat some chocolate ice cream.

Having a snack. When I say I wasn’t snacking, I mean I stopped binge-eating an entire bag of chips in a sitting. I can’t tell you how many calories I was eating in a day, but it was a lot more than 400 a meal. Those first few months had me reeling and I was so, so hungry all the time. The time between lunch and dinner seemed infinite. Having a healthy snack that comes in under like 200 cal really helped me through that adjustment period.

Frozen meals. Did you know that frozen meals don’t suck anymore? I didn’t! But I was stuck one day at work and needed to grab lunch from the market next door. With so many temptations everywhere, I wound up in the frozen aisle and lo and behold! A bounty of Asian, Mexican and Indian inspired meals, all coming in at less than 500cal a meal. And they’re good! I am especially fond of the Saffron Road brand Indian inspired meals. I keep a stockpile in my freezer for busy workdays or exhausted nights alone.

General NO:

Calorie counting. I counted every calorie I ate for a month. It was an important time for me because it was a crash course in the nutritional content of the food I was eating. But if you’re not eating out of a box for every meal, it can get really complicated to log every gram of vegetable. I was staying up late trying to calculate everything I ate and it was adding to my misery at that time. After a month I felt like I had a decent grasp of the general calorie content of things. I decided to estimate my calorie intake and if I didn’t see continued weight loss I would begin counting again. It has worked for me so far. I weigh my food if I don’t feel confident estimating it or it’s new (since starting.) I always look at the label if I’m unfamiliar, or look a food up online. I don’t count veggies or fruit at all and allow myself to eat as much as I want. If I eat more at one meal I will eat less at another meal, like if I have extra carbs in the morning I will cut carbs from my dinner (slice of bread at breakfast means no croutons on my salad at dinner.) I am making a lifestyle change, and I don’t want my life to revolve around fastidiously counting every calorie I take in.

To wrap up:

Talking about health, fatness, dieting, diet culture, eating disorders etc is SO monstrously taboo that I haven’t even shared any pictures of myself since my weight loss on social media, even though I’ve lost 70 pounds so far and I look like a different person. I’m afraid of talking about it. I don’t want to alienate fat culture and I don’t want people to think I’m like, crash dieting or treating myself unhealthily because I’m losing weight. I don’t want people to think I’m judging them because they’re not dieting.

Anyway I wrote this months ago and then left it in draft form so I’m posting it now. I hope it helps anyone who is curious how I blasted out 70 pounds.

One last thing I’ll mention, looking back on this, is that due to my weight/height ratio, those first 50 pounds came off very quickly. Like, they wanted to leave. The next ten were a struggle to get off and the last ten felt like they took as long as the first 50. Now at 70 pounds lost I haven’t lost any weight on about two months. I’ve been incorporating more regular food into my diet and eating more at a “maintenance” level. Which has been nice but I do miss losing weight - I have about 20 pounds left to lose to be at my first goal and move into the “overweight” BMI category. I’ve been reading a book on Intuitive Eating given to me by my therapist. Not sure how I feel about it but I’ll update this in a few months maybe when I get a chance to explore it more.