Re: Pre-pre-diabetic at 14 years old...
Well done and keep at it.
I put on a lot of weight (about 60 pounds) when my thyroid failed and when I was at my heaviest my blood sugar was higher than it should have been too. Too much abdominal fat around the liver and spleen seems to cause elevated blood sugar.
I
know it's a bore but you
need to record everything you eat and you'll probably have to stick to a diet of about 1500 kcalories a day. When I was trying to lose weight, the thing I found which really worked was to use a pair of kitchen scales to weigh absolutely everything and I wrote it all down on an Excel spreadsheet which calculated how many calories I was having each day.
Because I added the nutrition information for foods I ate I could also use the spreadsheet to keep track of the amount of fibre, protein, saturated fat and total fat.
I managed to lose a lot of weight very successfully doing this. I stopped losing weight as soon as I stopped calculating everything
If you aren't able to lose weight you'll have diabetes to look forward to. It really isn't worth it. My father developed diabetes (and he was slim and very healthy - an air force pilot in fact) when he was in his thirties. He was dead at 43 because although he was an exceptionally well controlled diabetic, he couldn't fight off pneumonia which was diagnosed too late. He died in the emergency room of one of the UK's top hospitals having been taken there by ambulance.
Diabetes increases the risk of all sorts of problems. You can lose your sight with
diabetic retinopathy as the blood vessels at the back of the eye get damaged by high blood sugar and you can lose feeling in your feet.
I have a friend who is a badly controlled diabetic in her fifties. We walked around Oxford looking for a restaurant a few weeks before christmas. We missed it and ended up walking too far. She had new boots on and they were rubbing her toes badly but she didn't know. When she went to the hospital to get her feet checked they kept her in for a week because she'd done so much damage.
You really don't want to have a future like that.
Try to increase the amount of fibre (or fiber if you use the American spelling) in your diet - you should aim for just under an ounce a day (24g minimum). This will help you feel more full and also help reduce your blood sugar.
Cut down on fats and unrefined sugars and get help from a dietician.
It's going to be tough but we're here to give you our support.
