In your Mother's case, Eva is right - stopping meds quickly while changing your diet does NOT equal lower blood sugar. Also, thyroid issues within a population of people with diabetes is challenging. If it has only been a few days, your mother might consider re-starting her meds (in the manner she was instructed when she was first prescribed metformin). Please also be aware that her doctor has prescribed both the metformin and synthroid in doses that will work together!

When working to bring down blood sugar (and 122 isn't terribly high, relatively speaking), you must expect that it will take AT LEAST 30 days to notice significant and lasting change. Depending on her blood glucose levels over time, what the range was, and how she has been feeling, this could take up to 6 months. If any longer than that, then the thyroid condition is playing a significant role.

Another way to make her insulin more responsive is to take a walk after every meal. Nothing elaborate, but 15-20 minutes at a leisurely pace makes a WORLD of difference to older folks (I'm assuming your mom is at least >50yo). Resistance training 2-3x/week helps too. I don't recommend HIIT in the beginning stages as that typically causes too much cortisol release, which starts the cycle of higher than predicted BG.

As for you, you're on a slight junkfood binge! Those processed foods contain a lot of sugar and sodium, so yes your tissues are holding on to more water. If you are female, hormonal changes can also cause more gain (or really not much change on the scale). I doubt your addition 5lbs is 100% fat.

Plan your splurges, and make them SMALL if you need them.

You said your mother went off her medication for a few days. This would likely cause her blood sugar to go up. Improvement from eating low carb paleo does not usually happen over night or even in a few days. Typically, improvement progresses slowly over the course of months. I would advise against suddenly going off meds like that. What you should be doing is monitoring blood sugar daily and only cut back meds GRADUALLY if blood sugar is going too low. But don't go cold turkey like that and give the food time to do its work. After years of abuse, the body can't recover in just a few days.

I'd say the same with the weight loss. Weight varies according to glycogen levels, water rentention, how much food in in the intestines, etc. Much of sudden weight loss is usually glycogen and water retention being lower. Actual weight loss progresses slowly. So you've cheated some but still lost a few pounds is what I am seeing so far. The more you cheat, the slower you will go.

Some here will probably feel the urge to mention pork rinds aren't that healthy, even if they are lowcarb. I tend to be of the school of thought that sometimes you just need to do what you can to stay on track and if pork rinds help you get off carb addiction, then they are OK for now, but long term, you don't want to be eating thousands of calories worth of those things.

I don't want to comment on your mom because it deals with meds and conditions I know nothing about. In your case, however, I feel that you acclimated to paleo and then had some cheats and your body couldn't handle it, having habituated to eating less sugar.

Fructose intake determines fat gain/maintenance. Obviously eating chocolate is bad idea, but blueberries and even lettuces have somewhat high amounts. If you really want to lose all of your fat, eat potatoes for carbs and skip all fructose.