New member intro, very long story

Hi it’s my first post here. I need advice.

About 2 years ago I decided to get in the best shape of my life. My progress has been very slow. Too slow. But I’ve been consistent about some things and Ive researched a good amount.

Here’s my stats:
45 year old male
6’2”, 250 pounds, probably at my heaviest weight ever.
Type 1 Diabetic

Binge drinks one night every 5-10 days, I’m talking more than a pint of straight booze.

I have estimated 25% body fat
My goal is 12% body fat
My lean body weight is 179 pounds
My goal weight is 200 pounds
Meaning, I have to lose 60 pounds of fat
Yikes
If I did everything perfect my goal might be reached in 8 months time.

Quitting drinking has been particularly difficult, and it’s basically the reason for having 60 pounds of fat. Plus I have Type 1 Diabetes, thus, it’s a tough combination. Having T1D is literally a different kind of fat loss journey than people without T1D.

So I got a gym membership about 6 months ago. I am in there 3-5 mornings per week for like 45 minutes. I do the tread mill lightly and then so some weights in between the tread mill. So it’s a deliberately light but consistent workout. If I workout hard, my cravings for alcohol go way up, so I have to be consistent but light workouts.

Then I tend to do a good amount of walking eachday and about 3 days per week I add in some body weight exercises. One of my goals is to do pull ups which I’ve been trying to get for about 1 year, but I’m carrying 60 extra pounds of fat from booze so the pull ups are not quite there yet.

My diet is all over the place. I have to go back to doing a low carb diet but it’s hard to not get alcohol cravings when I’m limiting carbohydrates. So diet can be tricky for T1D’s.

I’ve spent many many hours trying to calculate calories and carbs and proteins and measuring everything and I GIVE UP WITH CALORIE COUNTING. It’s the most maddening thing, and most packages are WAY OFF on the calculations written in packages. So I’m done counting.

I’ve got a scale for my weight, and a scale for food (that I don’t use) and a ruler for measuring my waist

I’ve taken photos of myself as before photos but I’ve never made any progress to see myself losing weight.

My blood sugar is not always on target. I dunno what to say other than T1D is a massive, massive undertaking. Constantly researching and trying to balance blood sugar with exercise and diet is not the same ball game as a non-T1D. It’s such a huge undertaking.

So I binge drink one night about every 5-10 days it happens. The craving gets the best of me. So I drink like a pint or more of booze. Then when I wake up I get back into a healthy routine until around 5-10 days I slip again. So the booze completely highjacks my ability to cut fat. It probably takes 5-10 days for my fat burning metabolism to kick into gear and once it does my body must panic so I end up getting drunk again. So it’s a cycle I’ve been trying to quit for a while now.

My fat burning heart rate is around 120 so I’m starting to target that number on the tred mill each morning.

For a while I was dry fasting through the morning. So I’d wake up and not drink anything and just head to the gym real early. My intention was that dry fasting in that pattern would burn fat faster. It’s feel okay for several days but then my body would crave booze.

So I’d estimate more than 100% of my exercise gains are eliminated by a night of binge drinking. What the booze does to my hunger hormones and my insulin absorption and the entirety of my metabolism is just completely high jacked by a night of drinking hard. So I’m really frustrated with my time working on myself and seeing no improvement.

I live in a tiny apartment with no refrigerator. but I have a cooking setup in my apartment. So I grocery shop 3-4 times per week getting fresh stuff. I can prepare some good meals but it’s time consuming cooking and cleaning so often and not having meals ready to go in the fridge. Thus not having a fridge kinda makes me overeat whatever I cook fresh.

My diet is generally very simple and all natural, low carb to very low carb. Lots of eggs, meats, nuts and seeds (I’m specific about which ones), healthy fats, low carb veggies. Almost no fruits other than avocado. A few weeks ago I removed cheese from my diet because I overdo it with cheese and it messes with blood sugar. So my diet is relatively healthy until I drink a pint of whiskey and eat a whole giant pizza, or something similar to that from a night of drinking hard.

But Type 1 Diabetes limits what I can do in the gym. On the bright side I’ve got no physical handicaps. All my bones and limbs work good and I’ve got no gym injuries. And maybe once per week I will do quick sprints outside, in quick bursts of activity, which I heard helps burn fat. I guess my real goal is burning off this fat and keeping it off, and balancing my overall health and completely kick alcohol for good.

To sum it up: It’s a tough balancing act with diabetes. Alcohol use disorder derails all my progress. And I must be eating too many calories (or when I eat too little it triggers cravings). So my hormones are out of wack.

I’ve got no workout friends, it’s just me.

My sleep is pretty terrible. I try to be at the gym early but some mornings I feel yucky. It’s hard to maintain a steady sleep schedule. Plus neighbors can wake me up frequently. And alcohol destroys my sleep architecture so it’s just this constant inadequate sleep. Often if I exercise in the morning I’ll come home and sleep very deeply for 30 minutes, wake up and be hungry.

I seriously cannot calorie count. It drives me insane trying to balance fiber and carbs and fats and protein. I’d need a professional calorie counter to prepare all my meals and I can’t afford a personal chef.

But I’d like some advice from members here because I’ve done research, read books, calculated everything and I’m not giving up on this. My life’s goal is to slim down and maintain a good physical shape into my older age. Thanks

 

Welcome to the forum, and thank you for being so open about what you’re dealing with. There are actually some positives in your post: you’ve kept going to the gym, you’re walking regularly, you’re thinking seriously about your health, and you haven’t given up despite making slower progress than you hoped.

The first thing I’d say is that this probably isn’t mainly a workout problem. Your current exercise routine sounds like a sensible starting point, particularly if harder sessions cause stronger alcohol cravings. In your present situation, regular moderate exercise is likely to be more sustainable than repeatedly pushing yourself hard, burning out and starting again.

The alcohol is the issue I would tackle first, but not simply by relying on willpower. Drinking more than a pint of spirits in one session is a considerable amount, especially alongside Type 1 diabetes. Alcohol can also cause dangerously low blood sugar several hours later, while exercise may increase insulin sensitivity and the risk of further lows.

Please speak honestly to your diabetes team or doctor about how much you’re drinking, the cravings and the effect it is having on your blood sugar. Ask for help with both issues together rather than treating them as two separate problems. If you experience shaking, sweating, nausea, agitation or other withdrawal symptoms when you stop drinking, seek medical advice rather than attempting to manage withdrawal alone. Withdrawal can sometimes be dangerous and should be discussed with a healthcare professional or alcohol service.

I would also stop the dry fasting. Going to the gym without drinking anything is not a shortcut to fat loss, and dehydration combined with exercise, diabetes and variable blood sugar creates an unnecessary risk. There is no special “fat-burning” heart rate that overrides the rest of your diet, either. A heart rate of around 120 may give you a sustainable cardiovascular workout, but you don’t have to hit an exact number for the session to be worthwhile.

A drinking episode probably doesn’t literally cancel every benefit from the previous week or prevent your body from burning fat for the next 5–10 days. However, the alcohol calories, pizza or other food, disrupted sleep, impaired blood-sugar control, and reduced activity afterwards can collectively wipe out the calorie deficit you created. That distinction matters because your exercise is not wasted—you need to address the recurring event that is overwhelming its effect.

You don’t necessarily have to count every calorie. You could try a simpler structure:

• If it suits your insulin regimen and your diabetes team agrees, a regular meal structure may be easier to manage than unplanned grazing.
• Include a consistent portion of protein with each meal.
• Measure calorie-dense foods such as nuts, seeds, oils and spreads, even if you don’t measure everything else.
• Use plenty of suitable vegetables and agree on your carbohydrate approach with your diabetes team.
• Avoid cooking much more than you intend to eat if you cannot refrigerate the remainder.
• Record your waist and average weekly weight rather than judging progress from individual days.

Nuts, seeds, oils and other “healthy fats” are nutritious, but they contain a lot of calories in relatively small portions. It is possible to eat an entirely natural, low-carbohydrate diet and still consume more energy than you use. Very low carbohydrate intake can substantially affect your insulin requirements and blood glucose levels. So plan this with your diabetes team rather than trying to solve it through trial and error.

Your body-fat estimate may not be accurate enough to conclude that you need to lose exactly 60 pounds. At 250 pounds and an estimated 25% body fat, the calculation would suggest approximately 187.5 pounds of lean mass. If you retained that lean mass, 12% body fat would put you nearer 213 pounds. Home body-fat figures can be quite inaccurate, though, so I would initially concentrate on losing the first 10–15 pounds safely rather than treating 12% as an eight-month deadline.

For the pull-up goal, keep working on assisted pull-ups, lat pulldowns, rows and controlled negative repetitions. Gradually reducing your body weight while maintaining or improving your strength should also make the movement more achievable.

You also mentioned that you have no refrigerator. Please check your insulin-storage arrangements with your pharmacist or diabetes team. Unopened insulin normally needs refrigeration, while insulin in use can only be kept at room temperature for the period and temperature specified for that particular product.

Most importantly, you don’t have to solve all of this alone. You’ve identified the cycle very clearly, which is an important first step. Getting proper help with the drinking and a diabetes-specific plan for food and exercise could do far more for your progress than finding the perfect treadmill heart rate or diet calculation. Please keep us updated—we’ll support the training side, but the medical and alcohol support should come first.