You sound a lot like me.
I have PCOS and was on Metformin for that for years and it made me gain weight and I didn't like how I felt with it.
When I was diagnosed with Type 2 I did not diet to lose weight.
Despite that I have gently been reducing my weight but not on purpose and not with any kind of feeling as though I have been hard done by - because in fact the changes I made to my way of eating have made my relationship with food completely better than how it was.
I used to wake up in the morning dreading breakfast and being afraid to start eating because it was so tied up with feeling guilty and feeling fat and every time I tried to diet it was depressing upsetting and I ended up getting fatter when I inevitably stopped dieting and went back to eating 'normally.'
I spent decades avoiding fat, cream, butter, fried foods, bread, cheese, steaks and basically all the things I loved to eat and ate wholemeal stuff, brown rice, lentils five a day and felt iller and iller and my health got worse and worse.
When I got my Type 2 diagnosis I decided to just concentrate on getting my numbers straight and I cut out sugar first and then carbs. But I didn't just stop having the carb foods - I swapped them for things I actually wanted to eat.
I had never had a sweet tooth but I started wanting cakes and desserts. So I had them. In our house chocolate was often thrown away because it went off because nobody liked it.
I discovered 100% cocoa chocolate powder and started making my own dessert by just mixing a small amount of that with two tablespoons of double cream and a teaspoon of erythritol and a I had a single frozen strawberry with it.
I made myself bacon and egg for breakfast.
I learned how to make incredibly nice keto yeast bread.
I slathered butter on my broccoli and green beans - I found celeriac and made myself cottage pie or shepherds pie with 10% fat mince beef.
I have never 'fallen off the wagon' for three years. Because I enjoy the food I am eating better than I enjoyed the way I ate before. Also I never worry about calories and eat in a way that prior to my diagnosis I would have been convinced would make me gain and gain weight.
Instead I have been steadily and very slowly losing weight - the same way I gained it in the first place - as a side effect of how I eat rather than as a main intention.
I made these yesterday:
Each roll has fewer than 2 g carbs and they are a sensible size not teeny things.
This morning I had two of them with butter and a hard boiled egg and a huge hot dog sausage and a pot of home made lemon jelly ( 8g gelatine to 300 ml of liquid and I used 300 ml hot water and 300 ml lemon juice and lemon zest for flavour and erythritol to sweeten which made six pots of jelly ) - I was stuffed full and the total carbs of that meal was
4g - rolls
0.7g - hotdog
0.5g - egg
4g - jelly from the lemon juice
= 8.7g total
I had peppermint tea to drink.
I had no sugar spike and my bloods were 5.9 an hour after eating.
What I am trying to say is that with a sort of adventurous attitude and a determination to enjoy yourself and your food you can be conquering the diabetes and PCOS and having a happier time.
I just decided I was not going to be miserable about food any more and I was going to eat exactly what I wanted but I was going to find a way to make my favourite treats good for me by using different ingredients to get them.
Tomorrow I will be making keto ice cream - I haven't decided yet whether to have chocolate or strawberry.
Last night I wanted a fast cool treat so I blitzed four frozen strawberries with zero carb unsweetened almond milk and a teaspoon of finely milled flax seed and sweetened it to taste, I added a teaspoon of Greek yoghurt because I like some zing and I like to have some fermented food in each day to keep my friendly bacteria happy - I keep a jar of erythritol with a vanilla pod sitting in it and I use that for desserts. It took five minutes and it was lovely. And it was absolutely fine for my diabetes - the only carbs were whatever were in the four small strawberries and a tiny bit in the flax and yoghurt.
I am 60 now and I am feeling better and looking better than I did in my thirties.
