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I empathize a lot with this comment. I did not go through a drastic life change like you did. I was just always a skinny guy whatever I ate ... until I turned about 22.
I started gaining weight slowly. An additional 10 to 15 pounds a year, but I went from skinny to pushing the obese BMI weight category in 5 years. And then suddenly I started losing a bunch of weight. I thought it was great until I visited a doctor ... my liver was getting destroyed by sugar. I had type II diabetes and I wasn't even 30.
Its been a few years. I've managed to get my blood sugar levels in line. I completely quit sugar, started intermittent fasting, and I'm on metformin which gives me explosive diarrhea anytime I fail myself and eat too much sugar (and no, the punishment of explosive diarrhea was not enough to really stop me from eating sugar).
I think quitting sugar has easily been the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life. Not that I've racked up a whole bunch of difficult life experiences. But quitting sugar is always gonna be on that list of metrics.
I had a lifetime of bad diet and mediocre exercise habits. And it took 25 years before I paid the price. In an alternate world where obesity related problems aren't treated as a medical issue, I'd be fucked. The battery of blood tests that diagnosed the diabetes and liver problems wouldn't have existed in that alternate world. I would have just blissfully kept eating sugar for a few more years before organ failure and possibly death.
I'm glad you seem to be doing better. I'm glad there is another tool in toolbox for dealing with obesity.
Holy balls. You might want to talk to your doctor about MODY - maturity-onset diabetes of the young. Is there a strong family history of diabetes? 28 is very young to wind up with diabetes, poor dietary habits or no. I've seen it, at 25...but that person had a BMI of 70.
My dad has diabetes, but he was diagnosed with it in his old age, after me actually.
My A1C is under control these days. But yes it is strange how early it happened, the doctor was very confused.
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