Hello there

[Atomlins]

Hi
Although I've had diabetes for over a year now, I'm new to the site.
I'm hoping you lovely people can give advice on how to deal with diabetes in every day life. I've been trying to deal with it myself, which I do for a while then revert back to how I was before diagnosis, any help, guidance that gives me a greater understanding will be very much appreciated.
Kind regards
Atomlins

 

[Inka]

Welcome @Atomlins 🙂 Do you mean how to deal with diet or do you mean fitting diabetes into your life generally? Are you on any medication for your diabetes?

 

[Atomlins]

Dealing with the diet side of things, understanding foods and affects on my body.

 

[EllsBells]

Do you want to give some examples of what you eat on a normal day to start the ball rolling. Also, do you use a spot blood glucose monitor to test your BGs during the day?

 

[Inka]

Dealing with the diet side of things, understanding foods and affects on my body.

OK 🙂 Well, as @EllsBells implied above, your blood glucose meter will be your friend and give you answers. Although you’re Type 2 and might have been told you don’t need a meter and don’t need to test, having one and testing at appropriate times can be really useful and help put you in control.

Diabetes is something where a lot of the burden of care falls to the patient. We have to become our own experts really, and learn as much as we can about what works for us. This forum will also help you because you’ll see what works for others and pick up a lot of suggestions of things to try.

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

Welcome to the forum @Atomlins

Glad you have joined us!

Feel free to dip into the Learning Zone (linked in the menu above) which has lots of modules you can work through.

Alternatively, lots of people on the forum have found Maggie Davey’s Letter and Gretchen Becker’s book T2 Diabetes, the first year, very helpful introductions to T2.

And ask away with any questions you have too - nothing will be considered too obvious or ‘silly’

 

[Atomlins]

Do you want to give some examples of what you eat on a normal day to start the ball rolling. Also, do you use a spot blood glucose monitor to test your BGs during the day?

Hi there
Apologies for the late reply. Please see examples below.
Breakfasts, cereals, bacon egg mushroom wraps, boiled eggs with toast, grapefruit with blueberries or just toast.
Lunch. Salads, baked potatoes, soups, sandwiches with crisps.
Tea, spaghetti bolognese, fish, oven chips, steak, egg, roast dinner.
Meals depend on whether I'm in hotels or not as I agile work.
I am a sacker.

Do you want to give some examples of what you eat on a normal day to start the ball rolling. Also, do you use a spot blood glucose monitor to test your BGs during the day?

 

[Drummer]

To have normal numbers I need to avoid breakfast cereals, bread, high sugar fruits (so I stick to small amounts of berries) no potatoes, so no crisps or chips, no pasta - they are all high carb foods and would push my glucose levels far too high.

 

[Inka]

Do you test your own blood sugar @Atomlins ? I see you quoted the question but I can’t see your answer.

Your diet looks, well, normal. That is, not ‘adjusted’ for diabetes? But perhaps your portions are smaller? What changes did/have you made since your diagnosis?

 

[goodybags]

Hi there
Apologies for the late reply. Please see examples below.
Breakfasts, cereals, bacon egg mushroom wraps, boiled eggs with toast, grapefruit with blueberries or just toast.
Lunch. Salads, baked potatoes, soups, sandwiches with crisps.
Tea, spaghetti bolognese, fish, oven chips, steak, egg, roast dinner.
Meals depend on whether I'm in hotels or not as I agile work.
I am a sacker.

Hi There that looks a bit like my diet was (when my HbA1c was running out of control)
although admittedly I was so eating a McDonald’s or BK meal most days (plus Crisps & Chocolate bar)

Hey, I’m no diet expert
but think you need to be looking at cutting down on the carbs
I’m thinking look at how your chosen foods are affecting you - bread,potatoes,pasta,chips,crisps
I would suggest are raising your sugars - are you testing your Blood Sugar levels ?

might be worth looking at and following the the thread
what did I eat yesterday to see what other people are eating

personally I have recently started eating bread again (but only a few slices per day) and I’ve found a lower carb wholemeal loaf, pasta rarely eat it but a wholegrain pasta, potatoes & chips - I only occasionally eat a few chips, but I do find air fried sliced sweet potato a good alternative and doesn’t affect my control - but we’re all different

 

[Atomlins]

Hi There that looks a bit like my diet was (when my HbA1c was running out of control)
although admittedly I was so eating a McDonald’s or BK meal most days (plus Crisps & Chocolate bar)

Hey, I’m no diet expert
but think you need to be looking at cutting down on the carbs
I’m thinking look at how your chosen foods are affecting you - bread,potatoes,pasta,chips,crisps
I would suggest are raising your sugars - are you testing your Blood Sugar levels ?

might be worth looking at and following the the thread
what did I eat yesterday to see what other people are eating

personally I have recently started eating bread again (but only a few slices per day) and I’ve found a lower carb wholemeal loaf, pasta rarely eat it but a wholegrain pasta, potatoes & chips - I only occasionally eat a few chips, but I do find air fried sliced sweet potato a good alternative and doesn’t affect my control - but we’re all different

Hi Goodybags
Thank you for you info, very much appreciated, I asked my nurse at the Dr's but she said they don't advise using a tester as I would only get sore fingers, but I dis ask how can I keep a check on my levels. So I purchased one and now I'm getting stressed out because I can't always get below 8

 

[EllsBells]

You don't actually want your levels to come down too quickly - and there are all sorts of things that can affect your levels on a day to day basis - someone listed about 42 somewhere!

The trick is to evaluate your meal impacts on your BGs and modify them if you see rises of 3mmol or more. As you tweak and increase your movement (to use glucose up) your numbers will start reducing. If you've weight to lose then as this comes off, they will also improve.

Single figures is good for that initial step.

 

[rebrascora]

Hi.

Try not to stress about the numbers as much as anything because stress increases your BG levels.
Try looking at it from the point of view that you are doing well because some of your numbers are below 8 and that's better than 10 or 15 and aim to try to get a few more readings below 8. Set yourself small achievable targets.
The readings you get will also be very dependent upon when you do the tests.

Do you have a good testing strategy? Ie Are you testing before and then 2 hours after a meal and keeping a food diary with notes including roughly how much carbohydrate was in the meal.... so 4 pieces of potato or 2 slices of medium bread or 3 serving spoons of rice etc. This will allow you to figure out how to change your diet to suit your body's individual intolerance to carbs. So if you test before a meal and your reading is 7.2 and you test 2 hours after eating a meal where the main carbs are 4 pieces of potato and your reading afterwards is more than 3 whole mmols higher.... say 10.6 .... then it suggests your body didn't cope well with 4 pieces of potato so try just 3 or 2 next time and have more of the lower carb foods like cabbage and broccoli and cauliflower or salad and maybe a bit more meat to fill your plate up as well. Adding some cheese to your cauliflower or butter to your cabbage or full fat mayonnaise or coleslaw to your salad are good ways to introduce some fat which will also help to keep you feeling full (ie not hungry afterwards) without adding carbs and will also slow the digestion of the carbs you do eat, so reduce their impact on your BG levels.

Hope that makes sense. It is about reducing the portion size of the carbs you eat to a level that your body can cope with and finding other foods that you enjoy to fill you up. For instance I always keep lots of low carb snacks readily available so that if I get peckish I have things that I can eat which will not cause my BG levels to rise...
Things like boiled eggs (I boil at least half a dozen at a time) and have one or two with a bit of mayonnaise. Vegetable sticks with Sour Cream and Chive dip.. the sort from the chilled counter not the highly processed stuff from a jar, pepperami sticks, olives with feta, lots of different cheeses (cheese is my new chocolate), nuts (in moderation) and my guilty pleasure, pork scratchings. Sometimes I will just have a plate of salad leaves with a big dollop of cheese coleslaw. These things may not appeal to you but finding low carb snacks which you do enjoy is important to help keep you on track.

You can also do substitues for high carb foods, so have mashed cauliflower with your bangers instead of mashed potato. It is quicker and easier to prepare as no peeling of spuds and cauli cooks quicker and mashes easier than tatties. Add a good dollop of cream cheese and a teaspoon of wholegrain mustard and you can hardly tell the difference. You can also use cauliflower grated instead of rice with chilli or curry or to replace couscous. Spiralised courgettes instead of spaghetti with your bolognaise sauce etc.

Hope that gives you some ideas to help you through this difficult patch.

 

[trophywench]

Sore fingers? Why on earth would you if you've been told which bit of your fingertips to prick and aren't pricking too deep? Has she ever met a 71 year old Type 1 who's been testing multiple times daily since home test meters were the size of half a housebrick?

 

[Atomlins]

OK 🙂 Well, as @EllsBells implied above, your blood glucose meter will be your friend and give you answers. Although you’re Type 2 and might have been told you don’t need a meter and don’t need to test, having one and testing at appropriate times can be really useful and help put you in control.

Diabetes is something where a lot of the burden of care falls to the patient. We have to become our own experts really, and learn as much as we can about what works for us. This forum will also help you because you’ll see what works for others and pick up a lot of suggestions of things to try.

Many thanks to you all for your support and guidance xx

 

[Atomlins]

Hi.

Try not to stress about the numbers as much as anything because stress increases your BG levels.
Try looking at it from the point of view that you are doing well because some of your numbers are below 8 and that's better than 10 or 15 and aim to try to get a few more readings below 8. Set yourself small achievable targets.
The readings you get will also be very dependent upon when you do the tests.

Do you have a good testing strategy? Ie Are you testing before and then 2 hours after a meal and keeping a food diary with notes including roughly how much carbohydrate was in the meal.... so 4 pieces of potato or 2 slices of medium bread or 3 serving spoons of rice etc. This will allow you to figure out how to change your diet to suit your body's individual intolerance to carbs. So if you test before a meal and your reading is 7.2 and you test 2 hours after eating a meal where the main carbs are 4 pieces of potato and your reading afterwards is more than 3 whole mmols higher.... say 10.6 .... then it suggests your body didn't cope well with 4 pieces of potato so try just 3 or 2 next time and have more of the lower carb foods like cabbage and broccoli and cauliflower or salad and maybe a bit more meat to fill your plate up as well. Adding some cheese to your cauliflower or butter to your cabbage or full fat mayonnaise or coleslaw to your salad are good ways to introduce some fat which will also help to keep you feeling full (ie not hungry afterwards) without adding carbs and will also slow the digestion of the carbs you do eat, so reduce their impact on your BG levels.

Hope that makes sense. It is about reducing the portion size of the carbs you eat to a level that your body can cope with and finding other foods that you enjoy to fill you up. For instance I always keep lots of low carb snacks readily available so that if I get peckish I have things that I can eat which will not cause my BG levels to rise...
Things like boiled eggs (I boil at least half a dozen at a time) and have one or two with a bit of mayonnaise. Vegetable sticks with Sour Cream and Chive dip.. the sort from the chilled counter not the highly processed stuff from a jar, pepperami sticks, olives with feta, lots of different cheeses (cheese is my new chocolate), nuts (in moderation) and my guilty pleasure, pork scratchings. Sometimes I will just have a plate of salad leaves with a big dollop of cheese coleslaw. These things may not appeal to you but finding low carb snacks which you do enjoy is important to help keep you on track.

You can also do substitues for high carb foods, so have mashed cauliflower with your bangers instead of mashed potato. It is quicker and easier to prepare as no peeling of spuds and cauli cooks quicker and mashes easier than tatties. Add a good dollop of cream cheese and a teaspoon of wholegrain mustard and you can hardly tell the difference. You can also use cauliflower grated instead of rice with chilli or curry or to replace couscous. Spiralised courgettes instead of spaghetti with your bolognaise sauce etc.

Hope that gives you some ideas to help you through this difficult patch.

Many thanks x