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newly diagnosed type 2 & wd love some advice

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P

Pookie

Active Member
Relationship to Diabetes
Type 2
I'm a newly diagnosed type 2. I'm all at sea.... I do not need to lose weight and am struggling a bit with what to eat as I'm always hungry but now avoiding my usual breakfasts (eg natural yoghurt, apple puree & nutty granola). I was given a Freestyle Libre sensor which I've set up but that breakfast pushed me up to 11.2mmol/L . Can anyone tell me if I should worry about that figure, what top & bottom figure I should aim for and what yoghurty breakfast I can have? Also does anyone recommend a diabetic food advice book? Sorry to be so useless but I don't know how to organise myself foodwise!
 
Welcome to the forum.
You are going to have lots of questions as people do seem to be left to their own devises. You have a Libre which is good but you need to know how to make use of the data it gives you. Already you have seen that your breakfast is pushing your level up but when was that, as you would be looking for it not to increase by more than 2-3mmol/l 2 hours after your meal and preferably no more than 8.5mmol/l
You could try having Full fat Greek yoghurt with blueberries or any other berries as they are lower carb than the apples and then just add a small amount of the granola 10-20g. Many people find a low carb breakfast better as they are more sensitive to carbs in the morning. Full fat will help you not to feel hungry. What you had was not all that bad but it is easy to underestimate the portion size of things like granola and muesli. A good investment is having a digital scales always to hand.
Have a look at the Learning Zone (orange tab at the top) and it will explain lots of things you may be vague about.
The book Carbs and Cals or various apps will be a good guide for carb values of a whole range of foods which will help you make better choices. Remember it is ALL carbohydrates which convert to glucose. Info can also be found on the back of packets and doing a google search for Food X TOTAL carbs.
Have a look in the food forum for recipes and the What did you Eat Yesterday for ideas of what Type 2 folk have for meals bare in mind some people will be dietary managed or on a variety of oral meds or even insulin so may have different amount of carbs per day.
Do you know what your HbA1C is that has given you the diagnosis as that will indicate how much you need to do to get levels down to normal.
 
Hi Pookie, sorry to hear about your diagnosis and that it's a bit of a shock. It does get easier as time goes on. I remember after diagnosis, that I stared into the fridge when I got home, and had no idea what I could eat. Good suggestions from @Leadinglights .
There's some book recommendations here - I bought the blood sugar diet book and the Caldesi diabetes weight loss cookbook, though I appreciate you're not wanting to lose weight, but the recipes in both are nice. You could up the quantity of some of the ingredients to get more calories in. I bought my copies second hand from Amazon.
Best wishes, Sarah
PS information on blood glucose levels here. Don't fret if they're higher than it suggests, you can make changes to your diet and wait for any diabetes medication to kick in to help with that.
 
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Hi Pookie, welcome to the forum.

Knowing what to eat following a diagnosis of diabetes can be tricky so hopefully with time you'll be able to see what works for you.

The testing link that Windy kindly shared above gives you a guide of average levels and how to test routinely so you can measure against your readings, generally between 4-7.

We've got a really good food section and a thread about what people eat daily which may provide inspiration. https://forum.diabetes.org.uk/boards/threads/what-did-you-eat-yesterday.30349/
 
SugarfreeLondoner has a recipe for low carb granola, if you wanted to have a go making that instead of your normal granola, and had it with yogurt plus raspberries/blueberries/strawberries?
 
Leadinglights said:
Welcome to the forum.
You are going to have lots of questions as people do seem to be left to their own devises. You have a Libre which is good but you need to know how to make use of the data it gives you. Already you have seen that your breakfast is pushing your level up but when was that, as you would be looking for it not to increase by more than 2-3mmol/l 2 hours after your meal and preferably no more than 8.5mmol/l
You could try having Full fat Greek yoghurt with blueberries or any other berries as they are lower carb than the apples and then just add a small amount of the granola 10-20g. Many people find a low carb breakfast better as they are more sensitive to carbs in the morning. Full fat will help you not to feel hungry. What you had was not all that bad but it is easy to underestimate the portion size of things like granola and muesli. A good investment is having a digital scales always to hand.
Have a look at the Learning Zone (orange tab at the top) and it will explain lots of things you may be vague about.
The book Carbs and Cals or various apps will be a good guide for carb values of a whole range of foods which will help you make better choices. Remember it is ALL carbohydrates which convert to glucose. Info can also be found on the back of packets and doing a google search for Food X TOTAL carbs.
Have a look in the food forum for recipes and the What did you Eat Yesterday for ideas of what Type 2 folk have for meals bare in mind some people will be dietary managed or on a variety of oral meds or even insulin so may have different amount of carbs per day.
Do you know what your HbA1C is that has given you the diagnosis as that will indicate how much you need to do to get levels down to normal.
Click to expand...
Hello Leading Lights, thank you so much for replying to my rather panicky message. I do feel rather at sea and left to find out for myself what to do, which will be fine when I DO know but meanwhile is rather scary. My HbA1C is 50. Does that mean that I panic less when, like just now, the Libre reads at 12.8? That's after Bircher muesli and coffee. Should I rush out and run up and down a hill? Should I have eaten scrambled egg instead? (I've never been into cooked breakfasts!). I suppose I just need to work out a regime that works for me and then relentlessly stick to it? The other thing I don't really understand is why all diabetics eat differently. Anyway, all advice from this forum is so, so helpful because its from diabetics rather than from people who they think they know but perhaps don't really...
 
Windy said:
Hi Pookie, sorry to hear about your diagnosis and that it's a bit of a shock. It does get easier as time goes on. I remember after diagnosis, that I stared into the fridge when I got home, and had no idea what I could eat. Good suggestions from @Leadinglights .
There's some book recommendations here - I bought the blood sugar diet book and the Caldesi diabetes weight loss cookbook, though I appreciate you're not wanting to lose weight, but the recipes in both are nice. You could up the quantity of some of the ingredients to get more calories in. I bought my copies second hand from Amazon.
Best wishes, Sarah
PS information on blood glucose levels here. Don't fret if they're higher than it suggests, you can make changes to your diet and wait for any diabetes medication to kick in to help with that.
Click to expand...
Hello Windy, thank you so much for responding to me. I've got some good sources to follow up here which perhaps will make things less rather than more confusing. There is just so much to absorb and take in.....
 
Thank you everybody! I had simple salmon and veg for supper last night and the measurement never went over 8.1 so that must be good. I don't really understand why it went up to 12.8 after breakfast (coconut milk yoghurt bircher muesli & coffee) this morning. Is diabetic food advice different according to what your HbA1c, age, weight etc is? When is the best time to take my daily strenuous walk - or doesn't it really matter? So sorry to keep asking questions.... Any replies are so gratefully received. Also, is there a mentoring system anywhere so I could pair 1:1 via whatsapp with someone who is similarly diabetic to me but knows all the answers (ok I know that sounds rather optimistic!)?
 
Hi and welcome from me too.

Pookie said:
The other thing I don't really understand is why all diabetics eat differently.
Click to expand...
This is because we are all different/individual with different tastes, different metabolisms, different medication, different gut biome, different insulin response, different types of diabetes and even within different types like Type 2 there will be differences in what is causing their diabetes. Some people who are obese may be struggling with insulin resistance and others who are slimmer Type 2s who are perhaps carrying fat in and around their visceral organs which maybe causing the liver and pancreas to miscommunicate and/or be less efficient and mean that they don't produce enough insulin at the right time. The body is a very complex system with so many things affecting BG levels that we all respond slightly differently. This is the reason why we encourage people to get a BG meter and test how their body responds to food and tailor what they eat to their body's response and of course their tastes and lifestyle. It doesn't have to be regimented or boring unless you want it to be.

As regards your HbA1c result of 50, that is only just over the threshold of 48, so the good news is that there is every chance that with minimal changes to your lifestyle you should be able to push that back.
 
If you consistently get high readings after breakfast then either before breakfast or just after is probably the best time to go for a walk to help bring your levels down.
Morning time is usually when our levels are highest. Our liver, which trickles out low levels of glucose throughout the day and night when we are not eating/digesting food to keep our vital organs supplied with energy, ramps up glucose release in the morning to give us energy for the day. (A throw back to prehistoric days when we had to go out and hunt down a wooly mammoth before we could eat) If your insulin production doesn't notice this (poor communication between liver and pancreas) or is slow to respond, your levels start to rise. It is called Dawn Phenomenon or colloquially "Foot on the Floor" syndrome. It is a pain in the backside!

Did you test your levels just before you ate breakfast as you might find that they were already a bit high at that point and then the breakfast pushed them a bit higher rather than the breakfast being responsible for a large spike itself.
Many of us test as soon as we wake up, before we get out of bed and then again before breakfast so that we can see how DP or FOTF is affecting our levels. It gives us a better idea of how our body is working and may show you that your breakfast choice is fine (less than 2-3mmol rise from the food, 2 hours after eating) or perhaps that there are too many carbs in your breakfast for that time of day, which is usually when we are most insulin resistant and a slightly lower carb breakfast would be better. Slightly less Bircher muesli and more yoghurt. Weighing portions can be really important so you can adjust things slightly to get a reasonably reproduceable response.
 
LOL I keep typing a reply and @rebrascora keeps beating me to it with the info :D

So Ill just say welcome to the forums and theres usually plenty of folks about to help answer questions.
No question is too silly to ask either x
 
To try to answer a couple of your questions.
An HbA1C which is an average of your blood glucose over the previous 3 months and is in mmol/mol of 50 puts you on the first rung of the diabetes ladder (48 being the level to give you the diagnosis) so not desperately bad but still needing action.
The readings you are getting from the spot testing be that from a finger prick or from your Libre are telling you your glucose level at that moment in time and is given in mmol/l. The higher those readings are the more likely your HbA1C will be higher than if those spot readings were lower.
The reason for people being on different dietary regimes are because individually everybody is different in their tolerance to carbohydrates and some may be managing their condition with diet alone or some may be taking medications.
One person may be able to eat a slice of bread with out it raising their glucose level but others may not. The amount of carbohydrate that somebody can tolerate per day may be quite different from somebody else. They will determine what suits them by testing and adjusting their meals to stay within their own tolerated carb intake.
Walking is good exercise and needs to fit into your lifestyle and people do find that a walk after they have eaten rather than sitting helps but just fit it in when it suits you.
Don't dismiss something you have had for a meal from a one off, have the same thing again and see.
I would say do weigh your muesli as things like that are surprisingly heavy for the amount it looks so you may have had far more carbs in that breakfast than you thought.
I bought a different Granola and thought I would weigh my 10g portion to put on my yoghurt and it was barely more than a teaspoon full. So if I was guessing I would have been way over the amount.
 
rebrascora said:
If you consistently get high readings after breakfast then either before breakfast or just after is probably the best time to go for a walk to help bring your levels down.
Morning time is usually when our levels are highest. Our liver, which trickles out low levels of glucose throughout the day and night when we are not eating/digesting food to keep our vital organs supplied with energy, ramps up glucose release in the morning to give us energy for the day. (A throw back to prehistoric days when we had to go out and hunt down a wooly mammoth before we could eat) If your insulin production doesn't notice this (poor communication between liver and pancreas) or is slow to respond, your levels start to rise. It is called Dawn Phenomenon or colloquially "Foot on the Floor" syndrome. It is a pain in the backside!

Did you test your levels just before you ate breakfast as you might find that they were already a bit high at that point and then the breakfast pushed them a bit higher rather than the breakfast being responsible for a large spike itself.
Many of us test as soon as we wake up, before we get out of bed and then again before breakfast so that we can see how DP or FOTF is affecting our levels. It gives us a better idea of how our body is working and may show you that your breakfast choice is fine (less than 2-3mmol rise from the food, 2 hours after eating) or perhaps that there are too many carbs in your breakfast for that time of day, which is usually when we are most insulin resistant and a slightly lower carb breakfast would be better. Slightly less Bircher muesli and more yoghurt. Weighing portions can be really important so you can adjust things slightly to get a reasonably reproduceable response.
Click to expand...
Thank you for all your advice. It's so helpful of you. I feel less befuddled by it all!
 
Hi there thank you so much for reaching out. We completely understand how overwhelming a new Diabetes diagnosis can be. Our Helpline team would be more than happy to offer you some advice and support to get you started. You can contact them by calling 0345 123 2399 or helpline@diabetes.org.uk 9am-6pm Mon-Fri.

We're here to help you in whatever way we can 🙂
 
I KNOW marmalade is almost solid sugar, but I make it for my family, and I just checked it out in my old GI & GL Counter book which says it is low GI and low GL. Surely this would imply that it is good for a type 2 diabetic to eat - whereas I am quite sure that it isn't. Is there a better 'dictionary' to be checking out foods in? If I looked it up in the Carb & Cal Counter book that is on its way from Amazon would that show that marmalade was not a good choice? This is such a maze. Can anyone explain?
 
Pookie said:
I KNOW marmalade is almost solid sugar, but I make it for my family, and I just checked it out in my old GI & GL Counter book which says it is low GI and low GL. Surely this would imply that it is good for a type 2 diabetic to eat - whereas I am quite sure that it isn't. Is there a better 'dictionary' to be checking out foods in? If I looked it up in the Carb & Cal Counter book that is on its way from Amazon would that show that marmalade was not a good choice? This is such a maze. Can anyone explain?
Click to expand...
I have found that GI and GL just do not apply - I digest things too well.
The carb count is the key - and making things yourself removing the carbs - I make real custard, no sugar, almond sponge also without sugar.
I have a small notebook in which I list low carb foods and the typical carb content, which seems to be a good resource.
 
Yes a bit of a minefield.
As Drummer says it is the TOTAL carb count that matters for diabetics not GI or GL.

The glycemic index (GI) is a measure of the blood glucose-raising potential of the carbohydrate content of a food compared to a reference food (generally pure glucose). Carbohydrate-containing foods can be classified as high- (≥70), moderate- (56-69), or low-GI (≤55) relative to pure glucose (GI=100).
Consumption of high-GI foods causes a sharp increase in postprandial blood glucose concentration that declines rapidly, whereas consumption of low-GI foods results in a lower blood glucose concentration that declines gradually.

From which I glean, it how quickly or slowly the same amount of carbohydrate is digested so would make blood glucose levels more even.
The glycemic load (GL) is obtained by multiplying the quality of carbohydrate in a given food (GI) by the amount of carbohydrate in a serving of that food.
So really not relevant.

Your Carbs and Cals should help you make some good decisions about food choices.
 
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