Hi Ste and welcome
Your reading of 66 is well into diabetes territory (48 being the red line) but not as high as many of us who hit 3 digits, so whilst it needs to come down, you are looking at a hill rather than a mountain. 😉 The good news is that diabetes is a condition which can be well managed with a bit of effort and we can help you with how to tackle it, so don't panic. Your GP may wish to start you on medication at that level and Metformin is usually the first line of attack. If you are very motivated, you might want to negotiate a 3 month hiatus on that to see if you can make significant improvement through dietary changes and exercise alone but these things need to be worked on even in conjunction with medication, so it's not an either or situation if you want to get back to healthy Blood Glucose levels.
The thing about diabetes is that it is a slow moving condition, so whilst 3 months may seem like a long time it is a life long condition so spending 3 months changing your lifestyle and reducing levels result in the rest of your life being healthier rather than the other way around.
Diabetes is essentially an inability to efficiently metabolize carbohydrates. The carbs we eat, and that is all carbs not just sugars, get broken down into glucose in our digestive system and absorbed into our blood stream to provide energy for our cells. If we don't need that much energy because we are not running about like we used to, our cells store it as fat. Eventually you reach a point where the fat storage capacity is all taken up and the cells don't want to accept any more glucose because they already have plenty of stores (this is quite individual and some people can store much more fat than others without a problem) and the cells start becoming resistant to the insulin trying to get them to accept more glucose. The pancreas starts to produce more insulin to try to get rid of the glucose in the blood but the cells start to ignore the insulin and BG levels start to rise because you are still putting more carbs into the system at every meal than you need.
Reducing the amount of carbs you eat(and drink) and doing more exercise to burn off some of the fat can reverse the process in many cases.
The other option is to go on a very low calorie crash diet like the Newcastle or fast 800 diet, to reduce the fat, but after that you will still need to maintain the weight loss to manage the diabetes. I'm a bit of a Yoyo dieter, so changing my diet to a low carb diet was the better option for me to manage things longer term.
Not sure how much you know about nutrition, but carbohydrates are sugars and starches. Sugar is present in a lot more healthy foods than you might think, so the obvious added sugar in hot drinks is easy to understand, but milk also contains sugar (Lactose) so having a milky coffee is also going to be a problem for your system. Interestingly, double cream contains almost no carbs, so many of us enjoy our morning coffee with cream instead of milk. Fruit in all its forms (fresh frozen, dried and juiced particularly) also contains a lot of sugar. The tropical fruits are generally higher in carbs so the likes of bananas and pineapple and mangos. Grapes are a problem because we usually end up eating far more of them than we should and they can be little sugar bombs. Berries like blackberries and raspberries and strawberries tend to be lower carb but portion size is still very relevant. I usually have 8-10 rasps as a portion with my breakfast yoghurt and seeds. Similar with blueberries. Maybe just 3-4 strawberries and that will be my portion of fruit for the day.
All grains and grain products (flour) are high in starches, so bread, pasta, rice, couscous, wholegrains, breakfast cereals, porridge, pastry and batter etc. Root veg like potatoes are also high in starch and parsnips, sweet potatoes and carrots are high(ish) in both starchy carbs and sugars.
I am not saying that you should not eat these carbohydrate rich foods but reducing the portion size is important and prioritizing them so that you perhaps cut your less favourite ones out of your diet to allow you to have a small portion of the ones you really enjoy.
The best way to start it to keep a food diary for a few days and do be honest in documenting everything you eat and drink and then start to look at where you can "make savings" and cut carb rich foods and drink.
It is also useful to do some intensive home testing. This will show you how your body responds to particular foods/meals/drinks and help you to decide which ones cause the most BG (Blood Glucose) upheaval and which you can get away with and it can be highly individual. So, some people can get away with a small portion of pasta but others see their levels sky rocket after a pasta meal. Some can get away with porridge and sadly others can't. Some can cope with a slice of sourdough bread and others decide that bread isn't worth having high levels for. It is about personal taste and also how your body responds. GPs almost always advise against home testing for Type 2 diabetics unless you are taking particular medication, but here on the forum, they are considered an invaluable tool in showing you which foods are OK and which to avoid and helping you to tailor your diet to your individual needs.
The 2 BG meters most frequently recommended on the forum as being reliable and cost effective for self funding are the Spirit Healthcare Tee2 and the Gluco Navii. Both are available online. If you decide to go that route you will need at least 2 extra pots of test strips and a box of lancets to get you started. Basic meters like those mentioned are about £15 and extra pots of strips for them about £8 for 50 test strips and a box of lancets will be about £5. You get through a lot of test strips in the early days of testing because you test just before each meal and then 2 hours after to see the effect it had. After a couple of months of testing you usually have most of your meals sorted out and less intensive testing is needed.
Sorry if that is info overload but hopefully some of it will be helpful. There is a huge amount to learn with diabetes and it takes time and trial and improvement to get to grips with it, but there are many inspirational members here on the forum with fantastic success stories following this approach.
Forgot to mention, exercise doesn't have to be anything particularly exertive. A brisk daily walk is ideal if you can manage it..... Be mindful that walking the dog is often more of a saunter so if that is a part of your daily routine, consciously pick up the pace a bit. Breathing more deeply and getting a bit sweaty is a good thing.
