Noob here

[GlennHarris]

Hi all new to the site and reasonably new to the diabetes scene!

I was diagnosed with type 2 just over a year ago now. This was on the back of trying to find out what was going on with my knee. Blood tests sent off to check for loads of potential things.

Turns out I broke my knee cap around 9 years ago and it has set awkwardly and I have a bone spur growth that is constantly pushing on my cruciate ligaments. So my exercise has been impacted if I push it too much I can’t exercise it for over a week.

I had the diagnosis and did the Xpert course. Of course I have done the denial stage of it must have been the COVID jabs elevating the blood sugar and the lack of exercise pushed it over the limits.

I was sort of doing OK after the xpert course but even though I questioned them and they said it would be OK. The advice I was given was that items like butter would be good for cooking with and better than oils in most cases. So I went all in using full fat butter to cook just about everythin. My personal mot came in and sure enough I had raised cholestero!

I am trying the low carb route but with some minor adjustments to watch what fats I’m eating.

I have made some adjustments and have cut out the standard butters to cholesterol friendly ones.

I have had none of the classic symptoms and have not noticed any changes other than struggling to get rid of the dad belly!

I don’t really drink alcohol at most it would be around 6 pints in a year!

My fitness to be frank is rubbish. If I have a good day I am ok walking the dog around the fields for a few miles. On a bad day my legs are elevated and I feel rubbish.

Phoning the Drs is a joke when the next telephone appointment is over a month away! That is just a call to discuss, no idea how long before sat in a room with a Dr!

I have a rollercoaster of emotions around all of this and all the good days get thrown out the window with one bad day where I feel rubbish and binge on pizza, pasta or sweets! It is harder when family keep asking do you want this lovely chocolate pudding and when you say no, they ask if you are not sure. Makes you feel like they are not listening to what the issue is with doing that!

What am I hoping for? To read and see that others have been there and understand and have come out the other side. Not necessarily clear but happy knowing they can manage it.

Anyway, that is me as such and please feel free to ask any questions. It is hard to offend me, I am a Yorkshireman born and inbred!

 

[Leadinglights]

Welcome to the forum
I fully sympathise with your knee issue as I am recovering from knee surgery last October, ruptured patellar tendon and tibia fracture and progress is painfully slow, It is hard to know if you are doing too much or not enough.
Anyway it is good you are now setting your mind to tackling your diabetes diagnosis but getting your family on board would make it easier.
I also went down the low carb route and my other half also did the same (not diabetic) and benefited from losing some weight. This link might help you find a way of modifying your dietary regime as it is low carb with real food which sghould make it easier for family meals. https://lowcarbfreshwell.co.uk/
You may also find the recipes on the website sugarfreelondoner for things like low carb cakes, puddings and biscuits that would be something everybody could have.

 

[Windy]

Hi Glenn, welcome to the forum. Sorry to hear about your diagnosis and bad knee.

Did you set yourself any goals after going on your xpert course? I didn't do this particular course, but did a DESMOND course which I suspect was similar. I can't comment on butter for cooking with - I thought that fats were fats and I'm trying to eat less of them as I also have raised cholesterol

After I found out I was diabetic, I read everything that I could about T2 diabetes so I could make a plan to follow. I read a book by Professor Roy Taylor and decided that I needed to lose weight and wanted to see if I could get my diabetes either controlled better, or reversed. So, I put myself on a diet, which I'm still on until I hit my target weight, and cleared the house of all the tempting food which lead me astray. Some health authorities offer a low calorie diet programme for diabetics, you could ask your GP about it if you live in one of the areas.

Can you try to have a half portion of pizza/pasta/sweets if you're having a bad day, rather than a whole one? Ask yourself, if you have two slices of pizza, are you twice as happy as if you have a single slice? And get some strawberries or other nice berries, and have some strawberries instead of the sweets? The thing I've found is to distract myself when I want to eat lots of bad food. If you make a cup of tea, or have a few strawberries or take the dog out for another walk, would that keep you away from the sweets? You'll have days when it doesn't work, be kind to yourself if it's a bad day.

There's no one right way to tackle your diabetes, I'm sure other people will pitch in with other ideas, but you need to have an honest talk with your family when they try and give you chocolate pudding etc if you decide to go on a weight loss or lower sugar diet, as it's easier to fall off the diet wagon if your family isn't supportive.
Best wishes, Sarah

 

[GlennHarris]

Thanks for the responses and links. I will take some time and go through them.

I don’t want to ban certain foods for the house as it is not fair on the others. I just need to build my own habits.

I don’t do fruit that much as was told it can be as bad with the natural fructose than some carbs.

As I said I think I am now through the denial stage and now need to focus on getting the right info for me and a diet that does not feel so beige!

For normal days I eat nuts and no chocolate. So I have peanuts, walnuts and pistachios as evening snack.

Pizza wise I make ours and mine is generally thinner than a wrap so I try and keep the carbs down that way.

My wife is veggie so it is always tricky coming up with meals that everyone can have and some chicken or other meat can be added in for the rest. The family love, pasta, rice and bread with just about anything that is not so good for me!

I make my own sauces so that is very minimal on carbs compared to off the shelf offerings.

I don’t mind the family having snacks and stuff around it is the asking once and then asking if I am sure when I say no. I was trying to find any videos around that shows them the impact of what they are doing to see if that helps. Not found anything as yet. They just think I’m getting grumpy with them.

 

[pinkjude]

I feel your pain. Like you diagnosed type 2, finally went low carb and it did make a big difference as I lost one and a half stones and got my HBA1c down to 47 with no meds. GP delighted. However the last few days my BS are running high and I dont know why. My only thought is I was away for 2 weeks , didnt test once and ate foods that I know are not good for me so wonder if my sugars ran high then and now it will take a while to get them back down? Its a real rollercoaster

 

[pinkjude]

Thanks for the responses and links. I will take some time and go through them.

I don’t want to ban certain foods for the house as it is not fair on the others. I just need to build my own habits.

I don’t do fruit that much as was told it can be as bad with the natural fructose than some carbs.

As I said I think I am now through the denial stage and now need to focus on getting the right info for me and a diet that does not feel so beige!

For normal days I eat nuts and no chocolate. So I have peanuts, walnuts and pistachios as evening snack.

Pizza wise I make ours and mine is generally thinner than a wrap so I try and keep the carbs down that way.

My wife is veggie so it is always tricky coming up with meals that everyone can have and some chicken or other meat can be added in for the rest. The family love, pasta, rice and bread with just about anything that is not so good for me!

I make my own sauces so that is very minimal on carbs compared to off the shelf offerings.

I don’t mind the family having snacks and stuff around it is the asking once and then asking if I am sure when I say no. I was trying to find any videos around that shows them the impact of what they are doing to see if that helps. Not found anything as yet. They just think I’m getting grumpy with them.

My husband is veggie. Sometimes we cook our own meals. I love roasting veg like mushrooms, different coloured peppers, courgettes, red onions etc then its nice with fish/ chicken/ stirred through pasta so its adaptable.I cook a roast dinner with chicken for me veggie sausages or whatever for him and lots of veg. I dont have any potato but pile on the green veg.Its not easy

 

[Leadinglights]

When I was a child many many years ago, my father was vegetarian and in those days there was no alternative meat products so what we had on a day to day basis was eggs, cheese and vegetables even though Mum and I were not veggie. I was a great shock to me that when I went to primary school I had to eat this horrible meat stuff. I hated it but you had to eat it.
I did start to eat meat and enjoy it but even now we do often have veggie meals.

 

[GlennHarris]

We have veggie days regularly but I have to do things different for me. Same sauce but I then need to swap out the pasta for courgette. Wife does not like courgette and neither do the kids really so even when trying to simplify I end up having to time 2 meals.

I use a grated courgette as a rice replacement too with some grated mushrooms when we have them in.

I do see some posts on here saying they use fruit and yet we were advised that we have to be careful of the fructose which is just as bad as carbs. I am slowly coming to a realisation that the course did have some conflicting information. On one session they said stay away from fruit and dry fruits where possible. Then they showed a typical menu for a day and for breakfast they suggested an overnight muesli with oat, yoghurt and fruit. This is part of what really confuses me. At one point broccoli was good for me, then at another it was bad!

I have no idea if it would be beneficial for me to look at how I can regularly self check (no point with Dr when it takes over 1 month to just get a phone call!). Or if that would just make me more anxious.

I don’t expect there to be any easy answers but I would have thought that by now there would be some form of consistency in any advice.

I need to start a proper food diary as I seem to be able to keep sub 150g in the day on most occasions. If I have a bad day due to knee then I can blow that with some biscuits or other non appropriate snack.

I am hoping to spend a few days designing a rotating menu for 3 weeks. Just so we don’t get bored with the same thing week in week out. Test it with the family and see how it goes.

 

[Windy]

Some fruit is more sugary than others, so I've made a spreadsheet where I record all the calories and carbs for the foods that I eat, looks something like this:
Blackberries 100g, 36 calories, 5.1g carbs
Blueberries 100g, 66 cals, 13.9g carbs
cherries (fresh) 100g, 55 cals, 11.5g carbs
Strawberries 100g, 32 cals, 6g carbs
Watermelon 100g, 34 cals, 7.1g carbs
Greengages 100g, 41 cals, 9.7g carbs
etc.
and I decide I'll have 100g of blackberries, or 50g strawberries or whatever, based on how carby the rest of the meal is.

I log all my meals, as I don't have any self control, and it keeps me on track, once I'm out of calories for the day, I stop eating.
Hope your knee is gets better, so that the Siren song of the biscuit isn't so loud.
Sarah

 

[Leadinglights]

We have veggie days regularly but I have to do things different for me. Same sauce but I then need to swap out the pasta for courgette. Wife does not like courgette and neither do the kids really so even when trying to simplify I end up having to time 2 meals.

I use a grated courgette as a rice replacement too with some grated mushrooms when we have them in.

I do see some posts on here saying they use fruit and yet we were advised that we have to be careful of the fructose which is just as bad as carbs. I am slowly coming to a realisation that the course did have some conflicting information. On one session they said stay away from fruit and dry fruits where possible. Then they showed a typical menu for a day and for breakfast they suggested an overnight muesli with oat, yoghurt and fruit. This is part of what really confuses me. At one point broccoli was good for me, then at another it was bad!

I have no idea if it would be beneficial for me to look at how I can regularly self check (no point with Dr when it takes over 1 month to just get a phone call!). Or if that would just make me more anxious.

I don’t expect there to be any easy answers but I would have thought that by now there would be some form of consistency in any advice.

I need to start a proper food diary as I seem to be able to keep sub 150g in the day on most occasions. If I have a bad day due to knee then I can blow that with some biscuits or other non appropriate snack.

I am hoping to spend a few days designing a rotating menu for 3 weeks. Just so we don’t get bored with the same thing week in week out. Test it with the family and see how it goes.

Edamame or black bean pasta is much lower carb than normal pasta, 15g carb per 100g dry weight, not to everybody's taste but you couls still have pasta when the other do.
You might find the book or app Carbs and Cals useful for carb values for various portions of a whole range of foods.
Many do find home monitoring a useful tool in deciding what foods and meals they can tolerate. Inexpensive monitors can be bought on line, the GuucoNavii is one with the cheapest strips.
You can then test before you eat and after 2 hours and if the increase is no more than 2-3mmol/l then the meal is OK.

 

[ianf0ster]

I 'd just like to clarify a couple of points that came up in the above posts.
1. Total Cholesterol measure is completely meaningless. Even breaking out the HDL and LDL isn't meaningful when considering cardiac risk. Only a CAC test or a full Lipid ratios reading can be correlated to the cardiac risk.
Low Carb eating (which is normally higher fat - or as I think of it traditional amounts of traditional fats from back when people eat lard and dripping and hardly ever got heart attacks) raises HDL , reduces Triglycerides and usually also reduces LDL (but not in all cases). However even with higher LDL than before Low Car, my lipid ratios are healthier than they were back when I was not only eating low Fat, but taking Statins as well!
2. Fructose is a carb, in fact it is a sugar. It's said to be more dangerous than glucose because it's thought to cause non-alcoholic fatty liver and also to fuel cancer cells (they prefer fructose).

 

[harbottle]

My lipid profile improved dramatically after 3 months of low carb, and even more so after 6 months. After 3 months the total went up, but I wasn't worried, as the ratios were good. The GP called me to get me on statins, but I refused.

After six months total was down to normal and the GP stopped harassing me about statins ("In my opinion," he said. "You don't need them. How did you change your diet to get it down?" He seemed surprised that I hadn't changed a thing.)