Hi Everyone. I am new to Diabetes UK .

[Heather Hove]

I was diagnosed as Pre Diabetic Dec 2020 at a level of 50 and the advice I received by a diabetic nurse was to cut out all root vegetables as when cooked they turn to sugar, and all pastas and rice, look at the diabetic website and buy a book ! Needless to say I was not impressed. I have not had sugar in tea/coffee since in my early 20's. I did cut out the root veg/pasta and rice replacing with plant based and reduced intake of bread/cakes/biscuits/chocolate/ the next reading in Feb 2021 was 44, woo hoo, I continued and also cut out no added sugar biscuits. I do not eat desserts unless fruit, Reading in June was 48?? and is now back up to 50!! and also now diagnosed as having high cholesterol.. I am not a happy chappy, and am at a loss as to what I can further do, apart from cutting out cheese. I am almost 70 yrs old, 5'6, and weigh 10st 4lbs (was 11st 4lbs). I have another appt with the nurse next week but any advice from anyone who has experienced the same fluctuations in levels would be welcome. Thanks for listening

 

[trophywench]

What did they tell you about other things with carbs - eg anything whatsoever with flour in it?

 

[Heather Hove]

What did they tell you about other things with carbs - eg anything whatsoever with flour in it?

thanks for your reply I have done a lot of research myself and cut out flour, cakes, pies etc. I don't eat takeaways, ready meals and am very careful when eating at a restaurant. Can't remember the last time I ate a dessert.

 

[Heather Hove]

If you've reduced bread, cakes, biscuits and chocolate I wonder if it's time to try cutting them out altogether to see if that helps? Also, fruit varies a lot in terms of carbs, from low for berries through to high for tropical fruits like bananas and very high for dried fruit. What sort are you eating for dessert?

Cholesterol is trickier. Mine was high at diagnosis but normal now. I started tracking my intake of saturated fat so that I stayed below the RDA of 30g per day and I can only assume that that's what's done it. There's plenty of unsaturated fat in my diet, mainly from nuts, but those are considered to be 'good' fats.

Thanks for your reply. I only eat fresh apples and pears. cakes, biscuits and chocolate are now a treat about once a month or longer. Bread is now German rye bread but not every day, others are ryvita dark rye, and plain rice cakes, not the sweet type,

 

[helli]

Are you testing your blood sugars?

Annoyingly, blood testing meters and strips are rarely made available to people with type 2 diabetes. However, as all of us are different and tolerate different amounts and types of carbs (not just sugar because all carbs are broken down into sugar by our bodies), just cutting out root vegetables and just eating German rye bread as a treat may be great for one person but another person may find they are less tolerant to the carbs in tomatoes for example (that was a randomly chosen item, please don't read anything into it).

What a fair number of members of this forum have found is that by testing their blood sugar just before they eat and 2 hours afterwards, they get a good insights into how their body reacts to the carbs in the particular meal they have just eaten. They can use this data to decide whether they can continue with the meal in the future or whether they ned to make tweaks or avoid it all together. Over a pretty short time, they have a menu of what suits them.

Each of us are different so we all need to make different tweaks. And the only way we know what tweaks to make is to gather data through testing.

 

[ianf0ster]

Hi @Heather Hove and welcome to the forum.
As has been mentioned, we have different bodies and thus have different tolerances to different carbohydrates in different quantities. Thus if you are serious about controlling your Blood Glucose then a Blood Glucose meter is extremely valuable.
I used a BG meter to test my body's reaction to the meals I ate. The 2 most popular cheap meters (all meters sold in the UK conform to the same standards) are the SD Gluco Navii and the Spirit TEE2 both of which have relatively cheap test strips - the major cost for the first few weeks until it's possible to predict the reaction to any of the meals you frequently eat.
I'm now in remission from Type 2 diabetes.

Just as many foods commonly thought 'healthy' foods are certainly unhealthy for Type 2 diabetics (and indeed help push us farther along the road to developing Type 2D), the same confusion applies to Cholesterol. My total cholesterol is now higher than when I ate Low Fat and took Statins, yet on my Low Carb, High Protein, Higher (traditional) Fat way of eating my total cholesterol is much higher yet my Lipid Ratios are all much better than before i.e. my triglycerides are now much lower and my HDL cholesterol is much higher. So I still eat fatty meat, fatty fish and full -fat dairy (including cheese).

 

[Drummer]

@Heather Hove I'm afraid that bread, apples, pears, crispbread and rice cake can all add up to quite a lot of carbs over the course of a week, so they are not very good choices for type 2s.

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

Welcome to the forum @Heather Hove

Sorry to hear you‘ve been seeing slight rises in your HbA1c levels despite working really hard at your menu, and substantially cutting back on your carbohydrate intake.

As others have suggested, using a BG meter might really help you fine-tune things, and could put your mind at rest about eating some things, while identifying others to which you have a particular sensitivity. The really tricky thing is that blood glucose responses to various foods are highly individual (and not always logical), and it can be impossible to say which types and amounts of carbohydrate will ‘spike’ your BG without checking for yourself.

By checking immediately before a meal or snack, and again 2hrs after the first bite, you can get very focussed feedback on how your body responds to a particular meal.

Many members here aim for a ‘meal rise’ of 2-3mmol/L or less at the 2hr mark. Where a couple of checks for a particular meal seem to indicate a bigger raise in BG, they might try a reduced portion size, an alternative source of carb, a lower carb swap, or to eat that item at a different time of day (breakfast time is usually trickiest).

The most affordable meters members here have found are the SD Gluco Navii or the Spirit Tee2 - which both have test strips at around £8 for 50.

It’s important that you end up with an eating plan that is enjoyable and sustainable for you long-term. And one of the benefits of a meter, if you fancy that approach, is that it os tailored specifically to you, rather than based on assumptions, or reactions of foods that other people have. Diabetes can be infuriatingly fickle, and you may be absolutely fine eating things that cause big bumps in other people’s BGs 🙂