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Confused Newbie!

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Pattye

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At risk of diabetes
Hi,
I'm high risk diabetes 2 and need to lose weight. Do I count calories or carbs or both. I understand the charts of healthy foods but can't find any reference to how many calories or carbs per day for folks like me at risk of diabetes. Thanks
 
Could you explain why you are at risk of diabetes?
If - for instance - you have been told that you are prediabetic, with a Hba1c over 41, then you would only be at risk of diabetes if you did not take action to alter things.
For many people simply reducing the amount of carbohydrate they consume will take them back to normal numbers.
Weigh loss is often a side effect of this - but people do not become diabetic because they weigh too much. Weight gain is often the result of their inability to cope with the carbohydrates in the modern diet and it a symptom not a cause.
Have you had a Hba1c test? If you tell us the result it would help to fine tune the advice we could give.
 
Thanks for your reply. I am pre-diabetic (45) I had blood test. My doctor told me to diet and more exercise! Offered me the option of a NHS courses which are out of my area.
 
Hello @Pattye welcome to the forum. With an Hb1ac in the pre diabetes range you stand a very good chance of turning this around.
Many here lose weight on a low carbohydrate diet , how low is very individual as it has to be something you can easily live with as you don’t want to set yourself up to fail.

I know you don’t have diabetes but are trying to avoid it so am going to give you some links that newcomers to diabetes find very helpful, they will also help you too.

This is a long one so make yourself comfy
maggie-daveys-letter-to-newly-diagnosed-type-2s.

Many of us with T2 test ourselves to find out how the various carbohydrates affect us , this is how we do it
test-review-adjust.

If you wish to self test, as someone who is pre diabetic it’s extremely unlikely the you will be prescribed a glucose meter .
The SD Codefree glucose meter is the cheapest one we know of to self fund the ongoing cost of the test strips, £8 for a pot of 50 rather than £15 or more for a pot of 50 from brands sold at chemists
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Codefree-Glucose-Monitor-Monitoring-Testing/dp/B0068JAJFS/ref=as_li_ss_tl?s=drugstore&ie=UTF8&qid=1506485682&sr=1-1&keywords=sd+codefree+meter+mmol/l&linkCode=sl1&tag=xfm-21&linkId=f39210144fdc26c27738e45b6d957003&th=1

Ask all the questions you need , we’ll do our best to help

Losing weight if you need to and exercise if able will definitely help you .
 
First I suggest looking at what you have been eating day to day, particularly the higher carbohydrate foods, and perhaps cutting right back of sugary foods, but halving the amounts of such things as bread, potato, rice, porridge, pastry, pasta and replacing them with lower carb veges and salad stuff. You can eat proteins and fats, they do not really impact on blood glucose levels for most type twos.
Reducing carbohydrate usually results in more energy, so an increase in activity is not so difficult as it might have been, and weightloss is normal too.
You can go the whole hog with testing and quite low carb diets, but you are only a little above the top of normal so - from what I did after diagnosis with fully fledged type two, if you are lucky and stick to lower carb foods you should have got back to normal when you are tested again.
I find my salads and stir fries give me energy, I don't feel hungry even on two meals a day, and my diabetes is fully under control, and has been since stopping the high carb 'cholesterol lowering' diet I was instructed to stick to or I'd be ill - hmmmm.
 
Ljc said:
Hello @Pattye welcome to the forum. With an Hb1ac in the pre diabetes range you stand a very good chance of turning this around.
Many here lose weight on a low carbohydrate diet , how low is very individual as it has to be something you can easily live with as you don’t want to set yourself up to fail.

I know you don’t have diabetes but are trying to avoid it so am going to give you some links that newcomers to diabetes find very helpful, they will also help you too.

This is a long one so make yourself comfy
maggie-daveys-letter-to-newly-diagnosed-type-2s.

Many of us with T2 test ourselves to find out how the various carbohydrates affect us , this is how we do it
test-review-adjust.

If you wish to self test, as someone who is pre diabetic it’s extremely unlikely the you will be prescribed a glucose meter .
The SD Codefree glucose meter is the cheapest one we know of to self fund the ongoing cost of the test strips, £8 for a pot of 50 rather than £15 or more for a pot of 50 from brands sold at chemists
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Codefree-Glucose-Monitor-Monitoring-Testing/dp/B0068JAJFS/ref=as_li_ss_tl?s=drugstore&ie=UTF8&qid=1506485682&sr=1-1&keywords=sd+codefree+meter+mmol/l&linkCode=sl1&tag=xfm-21&linkId=f39210144fdc26c27738e45b6d957003&th=1

Ask all the questions you need , we’ll do our best to help

Losing weight if you need to and exercise if able will definitely help you .
Click to expand...
 
Hi Ljc,
Thank you so much for your answer. I will read up on what you suggest and hopefully learn more about Diabetes and the do's and don'ts.🙂
 
Drummer said:
First I suggest looking at what you have been eating day to day, particularly the higher carbohydrate foods, and perhaps cutting right back of sugary foods, but halving the amounts of such things as bread, potato, rice, porridge, pastry, pasta and replacing them with lower carb veges and salad stuff. You can eat proteins and fats, they do not really impact on blood glucose levels for most type twos.
Reducing carbohydrate usually results in more energy, so an increase in activity is not so difficult as it might have been, and weightloss is normal too.
You can go the whole hog with testing and quite low carb diets, but you are only a little above the top of normal so - from what I did after diagnosis with fully fledged type two, if you are lucky and stick to lower carb foods you should have got back to normal when you are tested again.
I find my salads and stir fries give me energy, I don't feel hungry even on two meals a day, and my diabetes is fully under control, and has been since stopping the high carb 'cholesterol lowering' diet I was instructed to stick to or I'd be ill - hmmmm.
Click to expand...
 
Hi, Drummer, thank you so much for your answers. I will do as you say and look closely at the food amounts I've been eating. Which is the best low carb diet plan you recommend I follow? I've always followed low fat diets at WW when needing to lose weight so this low carb scenario is all new to me. 🙂
 
Way back in the 1970s I worked on the packaging up of the Cambridge diet when Dr Howard came to the Allied Lyons pilot plant to get samples made up - I thought that eating a low carb diet of proper food would be a better idea, and when I found Dr Atkins New Diet Revolution I did not need any convincing.
It was ideal for me to go back to the 50 gm of carbs a day which is my carb level on Atkins - I don't think that is a coincidence - but I was a full blown diabetic with Hba1c of 91 at diagnosis and I was no longer in the diabetic range after just 80 days.
Eating low carb is so effective that I would expect that someone prediabetic would not need to reduce to really low levels, with any luck a few months of moderate reduction, substituting low carb foods for those on the reduced list, avoiding low fat, as fat provides energy, stops hunger being a problem, and doesn't seem to be the problem food we are told it is.
The Atkins Corporation isn't following the guidelines Dr Atkins laid out, but you might find a copy of New Diet Revolution on line and it is an interesting read - plus it has lists of foods, recipes and meal plans - my copy is from 2003, and I suspect it is the last edition Dr A oversaw. I think that a hard copy could be got for pennies if you prefer to read it in the real world.
 
Thank you so much for your suggestions I will check the diet out.
 
Pattye said:
how many calories ... per day for folks like me at risk of diabetes.
Click to expand...
For me, how to loose weight is unrelated to whether you have, or are at risk of diabetes. The general advice, for the general population, for calories and loosing weight apply. (Off hand I don't remember the numbers.) This is where things like fats and oils come in, they have plenty of calories. And sugar, which gives you empty calories. It has no nutritional or diatry value.
Pattye said:
... or carbs per day for folks like me at risk of diabetes.
Click to expand...
Now, carbs are more relevant for diabetes and blood glucose levels. Food generally doesn't raise BG level, it's carbohydrates in particular. You can see the effect when self testing. For me, breakfast ceriel makes a much bigger difference to my BG level than four roast potatoes & chips (in a roast beef dinner). Jacket potatoe with tuna was in the middel. (No idea difference pasta makes as I've not tested on that!)
The roast beef dinner will have had more calories though.
 
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