We tried the Rice Diet and I lasted maybe six or eight months. I was miserable and hating life the whole time. I'm sure I was pretty intolerable to live with.
Maybe, if I hadn't also been going batshit from the blandness and the boredom.

Okay, so my story. Not for Shaw, but for the thread:
I'm not a huge fan of doctors. I have to go to a couple fairly regularly, to get my insulin scripts re-written for the year, but have never been great at preventative stuff. I had some minor issues .with depression, but have had this feeling that I wasn't going to make it to 60 (my mom and most of my grandparents didn't), so why try too hard? But lately, I'm thinking, what if I can get my shit together and get healthy? What if I could stick around longer? Oddly enough, deconverting had an impact, too: once you realize that this one life is all you get, wasting it is a terrible thing. So, I don't want to waste it.
We've been doing the Paleo thing since Saturday and I'm loving it. I have energy and better focus and mood already. My blood sugar has started to respond, too, but not steadily. Have to keep an eye on my numbers and adjust my insulin accordingly.
I had an issue over the summer where a slow build-up of a problem became serious. There was a blurry spot in the middle of my right eye. Not like John's. Found an ophthalmologist that took my insurance near my office and got the fun news that it wasn't going away: cataract. I now have an artificial lens (I call it my bionic eye) that, in addition to suddenly giving me 20/20 vision for distance (I've always been nearsighted), does this cool little trick of glowing if the light hits it just right. (The cataract is a result of the diabetes, but didn't have to be, if I'd taken care of myself better. I might have gotten one eventually, but not at my current age.)
One scare I remember was just freaky. I was at work and suddenly was very dizzy - room spinning dizzy. I actually crawled under my desk and started to cry. Someone called my dad and he drove out to get me. My doctor at the time was sort of a quack, but he was the kind of doctor that would see you quickly, call half of your visits "follow-ups" so insurance would cover them, write prescriptions for almost anything (within reason) and write you a note to get out of work. Anyway, he diagnosed me with "vertigo," which is a
symptom, not an illness and ordered me to bed for a week, in the dark, with no books or TV. Fat chance (slightly ADD and being still for that long while awake was SO not going to happen). I wised up after another episode and saw an ENT and found out it was Miniere's. A bitch, but less scary having a name to put to it. Luckily, I don't get all the bad symptoms (long-term ringing), just occasional bouts of vertigo that last a couple hours at most.