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Greetings

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D

Dai

New Member
Relationship to Diabetes
Type 2
Hi everyone,

I am new to the forums but was diagnosed with Type 2 in March 2016. I started on Metformin but within two weeks, had to change to insulin injections as well.

I am not great with handling my diabetes if I am honest and am hoping to get help especially with making a food plan for a four week cycle.
Hope to get to know you all more over the coming weeks, months and years. 🙂

Dai
 
Hi @Dai and welcome to the forum. Getting your diet sorted is a good plan. What sort of things do you eat now?
 
Hi @Docb

Thanks for the reply. I eat mainly frozen processed meals purchased from Iceland that I heat up in the oven.
I realise that this is not a good way to monitor my diabetes but I have sort of lost the will to try and home cook meals.
Having a plan would assist me, even if I start off slowly as the time has come to really get my diabetes under control.
 
Hi @Dai, the easiest way to maintain a freeze-and-reheat regime is to batch cook your own food. It's a pain doing it, but it's worth the effort and you can do it with chilli, curries, bolognaise, casseroles, soup etc.

I eat the same as the rest of my family but I have extra green leafy veg in place of potatoes or rice. I gave those up along with bread and pasta when I was diagnosed.

Take a look at the thread "What did you eat yesterday" - it's full of great ideas which has increased the things I eat no end. You could mix and match from there to create a 4 week plan.

The main thing to remember is to keep carbs to a minimum, but to ensure you have sufficient fat as your body needs something to offset the lack of carbs.

It's also worth keeping a food diary. Do you monitor your blood sugar? To start with I monitored everything I ate, noted it in my diary so now I have 8 months worth of data which means I know what I can eat without spiking my blood sugar.

Best of luck
 
I do what @Vonny suggests, but no problem with frozen ready meals, not everybody has an interest in cooking!

One thing you can start to do is to become a nutritional label checker. Maybe telling you something you already know, but the only important writing on a packet is the nutritional label, its usually in black, somewhere round the back of the packet and can often be a bit small. As far as your diabetes is concerned there is only one thing of importance on the label, that is the total carbohydrate content. As a starter, next time you are in Iceland, check the nutritional labels and pick out the things you fancy with the lowest total carbohydrate content. Sometimes you might even find that two versions of the same meal might have quite different carbohydrate contents - if you like both, then take the lowest.

I also like @Vonny's idea of a food diary. Just write down what you are eating, adding where you can the carbohydrate content. After a couple of weeks have a look over it and see if anything stands out as being particularly high in carbs and look for a substitute.

I think you just need to get going on a plan as a way of getting your Mojo working.
 
Thank you both for some great suggestions. Upon further research, I went and treated myself to Tom Kerridge's Dopamine Diet Book on my Fire Kindle and so will be doing some reading later today.

One good thing that I noticed is that the book has all low carb meals with ingredients etc listed so it looks like at the end of this month, I shall be shopping for fresh items since forever. 🙂
 
Hi Dai, what kind of frozen meals do you eat, there may be some that are easy to make at home yourself. Chilli can be an easy one to make, also low carb and freezes well. If you try batch cooking say once or twice a week, you would within a month have a store of a variety of homemade ready meals which you could just reheat to save cooking. This is how i find easiest to eat as i live alone and so it can be hard to find the will to cook every day.
 
Hi Lucyr,

I love chilli, just not too spicy but Iceland ones do tend to warm me up a little. 😉
I also enjoy a lot of Asian and Mediterranean meals. Massive fan of gherkins and olives as well.
Living on my own, I tend to think much easier for an oven ready meal but joining these forums has helped me look at things differently and also spurred me on to begin cooking healthy low carb meals.

Thanks!
 
Chilli would be a good one to try then, it's quite versatile as can be served with many different things. If you have a big enough pan (or i make it using a slow cooker) you could make a double batch of say 8 portions. In one cooking session you've then got enough portions to have it twice a week for a month. I have some small pots that i freeze it in, in individual portions, but you can use bags also. Do the same thing for one other recipe, maybe a curry if you like asian meals, and you're on homecooked meals half the week for a month in just two cooking sessions.
 
I always enjoy cooking a lot more when I have music playing and a glass of wine on the go.

Gherkins and olives are both great low carb snacks so don't hold back on those and go really nicely with a glass of G&slimline T as I have found recently. Not that I am encouraging you to drink but do be aware that there are low carb options for alcohol as well as food and a glass of something whilst you are cooking just seems to make it more of a pleasure than a necessity. Always in moderation of course...

Omelettes are a great quick and easy low carb meal and you can vary the fillings with whatever you have that needs using up. I usually have them with a large salad and a big dollop of (cheese) coleslaw. Works great for breakfast, lunch or evening meal.
 
Welcome to the forum @Dai

Good luck with your home made lower carb ready meals - I love a good chilli too, and home made out of the freezer is a great option!

Are you a frequent cyclist / exerciser? If exercise is something you aren‘t currently doing, and you’d like some help getting started you might find DUK’s ‘live well, move more’ helpful

forum.diabetes.org.uk

Live Well Move More

Would you like to be one of the first people to try Diabetes UK’s new service? We know that moving more can really help people to manage their diabetes, and we will be helping people to making it part of their day-to-day. If you’re struggling with being active then one of our Helpline Advisors...
forum.diabetes.org.uk forum.diabetes.org.uk
 
Thank you everyone for all the responses and ideas. I have begun to cook fresh batch meals, more vegetarian than anything and have been freezing them. Made to date the following:

Lentil Dahl.
Sweet & Sour Quorn - closely monitored the sugar and carbs.
Ratatouille.

I have seriously reduced my carb intake to just under 100grams a day and feel so much more relieved that my blood sugars have come down massively. Now hitting roughly 6-8 mmol a day and this is all thanks to everyone for their wonderful support and ideas.
 
That sounds good, did they all taste okay after reheating?
 
Great stuff @Dai 🙂

Onward and downward!
 
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