Eating out

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Mary Randle

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Hello, thanks for your welcome- I’ve just been diagnosed as pre diabetic - so this is all new to me! I’m going to a luncheon and have to choose between fruit crumble and custard or crème caramel - which should I have….. or nothing at all?
 
Mary Randle said:
Hello, thanks for your welcome- I’ve just been diagnosed as pre diabetic - so this is all new to me! I’m going to a luncheon and have to choose between fruit crumble and custard or crème caramel - which should I have….. or nothing at all?
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Hi and welcome.

I would go with the creme caramel every time. The fruit crumble will have carbs in the fruit, carbs in the crumble and carbs in the custard. Just a bit of sugar in the creme caramel. Or you could skip dessert altogether or is there not a cheese option? I usually opt for the cheese board but don't have any biscuits with it.... maybe just a few apple slices if they have them.
What are the main courses like? Diabetes is about all carbs not just sugar, and there are likely to be more carbs in the main course than the dessert, certainly the creme caramel dessert. Potatoes, rice, pasta, pie, dumplings, Yorkshire puddings etc will all impact your blood glucose levels as well as the desserts.
There are no carbs in cheese though. :D
 
Welcome to the forum @Mary Randle

Sorry to hear you’ve been told you are at risk of diabetes :(

Were you told your HbA1c result? for prediabetes / at risk of diabetes this would be a number from 42-47mmol/mol, with 48mmol/mol being the diagnostic level for diabetes.

This can give you a hint as to how difficult your metabolism has been finding things recently, and how significant the tweaks and changes to your menu might need to be.

As for eating out, you might decide that you’d prefer to start as you mean to go on, and opt for the lowest carb options available - which might mean you can relax and enjoy your meal all the more.

Alternatively, you might feel that as meals out are only a rare thing for you, it’s more about what you generally eat with your carefully adjusted daily menu, and an occasional one-off treat would help you stick to your adjusted menu for the rest of the time?

Over the years I‘ve seen both of those strategies used effectively by different people 🙂
 
Mary Randle said:
It seems the HbA1c level is 43 mmol/mol
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That puts you closer to normal (41) than diabetes (48) so I wouldn't think you need to do more than tweak your diet a little to turn things around, eg by reducing portion sizes and sweet treats.
 
Mary Randle said:
Thank you so much for your reassurance - I am also “high cholesterol” so managing sugar, carbs and fat has been taking over my life!
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Many find that reducing carbs improves their cholesterol, it looks from your results it doesn't look too bad as it doesn't say any action needed.
A bit of work on the diet should bring you down a bit further on your HbA1C.
 
I agree, nothing there to be overly concerned about. You are definitely not "high cholesterol" from those results. 5.1 is maybe a little bit higher than the doctors might like, but it is not "high" by any stretch of the imagination. Mine was 5.2 at diagnosis and came down by following a low carb diet despite eating a lot more fats.
A few little tweaks to your diet should see things improve. The stress of worrying about all this is likely to do you more harm than those results which are really just very borderline and in fact taking into consideration that as we get older our red blood cells don't renew as quickly as when we were younger, there is a case to say that you are probably not even at risk of developing diabetes with an HbA1c of 43, it is just that your red blood cells have hung around in your blood stream a bit longer than a younger person and therefore attracted a few more glucose molecules during that slightly longer period.
Not saying you should do nothing but definitely don't fret about it (as that can raise your BG levels) and some very minor changes should be enough. I am a few years behind you and I will be lucky if I ever manage to get my levels down to 43 let alone below that. 45 is the best I have managed so far in nearly 5 years and I was having far to many hypos to achieve it (I am Type 1 so have to balance glucose and insulin). My consultant will be very happy if I can achieve 50 without too many hypos, and I do not expect that level to shorten my life of cause any notable complications, so if you can even maintain 43 you will be fine.
 
Some more recent NICE guidelines are that for more 'mature' people then the threshold for a prediabetes or indeed a diabetes diagnosis should be more lenient and there should be individual goals for what is acceptable.
That is not to say you shouldn't focus on having a healthy diet.
 
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