We are dealing with lifetime weight problems, for the most part. Remember, there are two parts to any diet, equally important:  First, the diet itself and Second the protocol for staying on it.  The Accountant's Diet deals with the protocol.  You choose the diet.  Your editor began a two week test of Dr. Barnard's "Reversing Diabetes" diet on April 1, 2010. As fasting bloodsugar is the key, we start with that. Look at Editor's Low Carb Diet if you forgot the drill:

To your editor's surprise, there are quite a few of you who glance occasionally at his pathetic efforts at diet. At the beginning of the third quarter (July) of 2009, he weighed 250 and had normal fasting bloodsugars of about 150.  He has stayed on that diet (Atkins), more or less, for three quarters (until March 31, 2010).  Doing so brought his weight down to 238 and his fasting bloodsugar down to an average of about 110. Pretty good. Thanks Dr. Atkins. But your editor misses fruit and is cheating on Atkins more and more.

Under the rules of the accountant's diet, he now has two weeks to see whether he will move to a new diet.  He has chosen Dr. Neal Barnard's "Reversing Diabetes" diet, based largely on a PBS documentary which touted it.  He is not taking his weight or fasting bloodsugar for a couple of days out of fairness as his system is adjusting from the high fat Atkins diet to the Dr. Barnard's no-fat Reversing Diabetes diet.  Basically, your editor is exchanging meat, bacon, eggs and other Atkins staples for fruit and brown rice and other Reversing Diabetes staples.  We will see.  Your editor will post his results here in the next few days.  He has no confidence in the new diet, yet, but does so look forward to a bit of fruit.

Those of you who follow along, do so properly: check first with your doctor before starting any new diet.

Your editor just returned from a long Sunday walk.  Reflecting is easy on a walk.  But reflecting on Type II diabetes can be depressing.  We see from Prevention's Diabetes magazine, on newstands now, hope.  Hope that somehow we can eat well while at the same time managing our diabetes. Your editor is not too sure that Prevention's approach works.  Remember:  our job is to lose weight.  That, dear friends, is not easy.  Certainly not easy over the long term.  We get so much in the way of conflicting advice.  Prevention tells us we can eat lots of good stuff.  Not "lots" perhaps, but "good stuff" nonetheless.  For your editor, this does not seem to be true. 

Your editor loves beer, brown rice & apricots. Those of you, particularly registered users, who frequent this page know that he began the original, slightly stricter, version of his current "no carb" lifestyle on July 12, 2009 (basically, meat, fish, dairy products, eggs & leafy vegatables and hard liquor). Because on July 11, his fasting bloodsugar was 167. He then weighted 250 lbs. . On beginning that diet, he said that if he reached 240, he would try to put some carbohydrates back in his diet, or at least designate some carbs as "emergency" food, the idea being that if the diet is not so strict, he might stay on it longer.. He reached 240 lbs on August 18. On August 18, his fasting bloodsugar was down to 117. He then added some "emergency" foods.. Even though he knows his bloodsugar will spike the next morning, he added small amounts of red wine, brown rice, apricots, home-grown grapes, and non-peanut nuts (and nothing else) to his no-carb diet. Sparingly, at least til he gets down to something around 200 lbs. Then perhaps he will add beer to this work in progress.. The basic idea is to "lose" weight forever and too strict a diet won't do that.

(The first bloodsugar number is Accu-Chek Compact (the meter used throughout all editor's tests)..the second bloodsugar number is from a recently purchased TrueTrack bloodsugar meter). "Yesterday" generally refers to a deviation from your editor's strict low-carb diet. On November 2, 2009, based on responses to our poll, he added One Touch Ultra. Here is latest posting.  Read More to get earlier results).

Several years ago, the Journal of Diabetic Nursing did a comprehensive test of numerous bloodsugar meters and found:

Given that the mean of this variation was nearly 14%, these study results would also suggest that glucose meters are not performing to an acceptable standard and that glucose meters can only operate with satisfactory analytical performance in ideal conditions.