I'm 53 now and have been diabetic for about 7 years. I'd say that I'm the healthiest I've been for 30 years. I'm now 30kg lighter than I was then and dance and laugh a LOT more. It's not that diabetes is a good thing, obviously, but basically you're just going to have to be take control and the good news is, the things you'll do to control it will all make you healthier. Being overweight is the obvious one, but there's a strong chance that you're overweight because of the diabetes rather than diabetic because you're overweight - and eating a low carb diet is not only going to get your blood glucose down to levels where it's no longer a health problem, but it'll make you lose weight and the even better news is that it's not a deprivation diet, you'll be able to eat good, tasty and healthy food when you're hungry.
E.G. Yesterday's meals for me were:
BF: Full fat greek yoghurt with some dried cherries, walnuts and seeds (15g carbs in the cherries, 4g in the yoghurt, 5 in the walnuts)
Lunch: Some left over chicken curry, (about 10g carbs in the chickpeas and 5g in the tomatoes)
Afternoon snack ( I went to the gym at lunch and ran 5Km so I was starving) - a tin of mackerel fillets (0g carbs)
Tea - Subway Salad with lots of full fat chipotle mayonnaise and a date and cashew energy bar, (about 5g carbs in the salad, 15g in the energy bar)
with mixed nuts for grazing during the evening (about 10g carbs) (went to the gym again as daughter is getting into it now and needs support, burnt off another 500kcal so, again was hungry)
This morning I had a diabetic-friendly brunch - Black pudding, mushrooms, tomatoes, spinach, poached eggs with Hollandaise sauce and some low carb toast and marmalade. (about 5g carbs in the black pudding, a couple more in the tomatoes, 10g in the slice of toast, about 10g in the marmalade)
I also went out on a Park Run (5km), but I wouldn't want you to think the exercise schedule is normal or necessary for me or any other diabetic.
Diabetes isn't a death-sentence by ANY means. True, you'll have to re-evaluate your relationship with food, treat carbs not calories as the enemy, embrace fat in your diet and ideally, exercise. I'm a big fan of Eddie Izzard and he does this sketch about the church of England - how they used to torture and burn people, but now it's all about cake, and the running joke is 'cake or death?' Well, to MASSIVELY oversimplify it, your choice now is 'NO CAKE or death'. (Hint: Cake's OK but it's not that good)
Of course it's not just sweet things, it's any starchy or sugary things - potatoes, pasta, rice, flour as well as biscuits, toffees or cake. And it's not even that you can't eat them at all, you just have to set a limit. That's different for everybody and only testing with a blood glucose meter will help you find what works for you and what doesn't - I love porridge and some Type 2s can have a decent bowl of it and it's doesn't cause their BG to go too high ('spike') - but for me it really did, so I've had to compromise, so I can have a small bowl, but with cream instead of syrup like I used to have and I can add nuts and seeds to bulk it up, and incidentally make it taste great. I've found that a good rule of thumb for me is 25g per meal - you'll have to start really reading the nutritional values on everything, but can ignore everything but carbohydrates.
I have found that a doughnut doesn't spike me too much above acceptable limits, which is odd, but I rarely have them anyway, as I've found that when I have a budget of 25g I'd prefer to 'spend' it on something nicer than a deep-fried cake covered in sugar then stuffed with more sugar.
You'll be surprised how many nice things are low enough in carbs that you can eat reasonable satisfying amounts of them:
Dark Chocolate
Chocolate eclairs/Choux buns (choux pastry is mostly air)
Chocolate Mousse,
Eggs,
Cheese
Cream
Butter
Gelatti (fruit and cream basically)
Peanut butter
I'm rambling on now, but the other thing to remember is that, and it really does pain me to say it, as 99% of the time, it's terrible advice - but for diabetes, the NHS has pretty much got it completely wrong and their view of diabetics is in essence: "Diet and exercise could work, but people won't stick to it and it's not our job to help them with that anyway, so we'll give them increasing levels of drugs, and watch out for the inevitable decline in their health and early grave'. They seem to be stuck with some very old and out of date research in all this and especially their views on diet.
Lots of people here and on other diabetic forums have reversed their diabetes or are in remission thanks to self-help and diet and exercise. Admittedly there are people who won't take that route - they'd rather be passive and let it happen to them with someone else making the decisions, but you're here asking, so hopefully you're not one of those people and you'll soon be thinking of diabetes as an inconvenience at worse and possibly something that's been somewhat positive and kickstarted you into a better, happier lifestyle.
