Since i went to the GP who told me to just test 2 times per day i have lost the plot.. sometimes dont test at all, have felt ill again for a week now, although felt great at weekend.
The reason he is saying 2 per day is purely down to cost - probably pressure from the PCT to reduce strip prescriptions and reduce the budget.
In my first months after diagnosis I tested a lot. I learned a lot, but then once I knew how most meals affected me, I tested a lot less. I don't test that much these days because I already know roughly what the BG rise is going to be from a meal. Lets face it, even before diagnosis a lot of the time we eat the same few meals every week - particularly for breakfast and lunch.
So if you are limited on strips, there is an approach which can help. Take it one meal at a time and we'll start in the morning and work onwards.
So for the first week, you test breakfast and work out what meals do not raise your BG too much. You find a couple of options that do not raise your BG too high, then stick with those while you move on to test lunches for a week. Then stick with a couple of lunch options which work for you and then test around dinner.
After all of that, you can revisit breakfast and play around till you find some more options which work for you and so on. Fine tune things and find more options.
During this, if you are going to snack, have nuts. Not salted, no raisins, no dried fruit. They do not have much carbs in so will not have a huge effect on your BG but should keep you out of trouble either way. You can work out what snacks do to you once you have the meals sorted out.
That's 2 strips a day, plus the odd one if you feel "odd" from being high or low.
I would suggest you test before the meal and an hour after. This is to see how much your BG is raised by. The less BG rise you can get from a meal the better, so you are looking for the change, rather than the actual numbers really. The reason I say an hour rather than 2 is that you will commonly see the peak BG at one hour, so you will see the worst that it gets.
Once you start to control the BG rise, the actual numbers will start to fall gradually until you are back towards a more "normal" level.
Now breakfast in particular is a problem because many people have greater insulin resistance in the morning than later in the day. So any carbs you have for breakfast are likely to have a greater effect at breakfast than if you had them later.
Here's a link to my breakfast suggestions (Link to Alan's breakfast suggestions at the bottom of it):
http://www.diabetes-support.org.uk/joomla/diabetes-blogs/Shopping-For-Breakfast.html?blogger=VBH
Get breakfast cracked and its half the battle.
As for what to eat generally and eating to your meter, Jennifer's advice gives some guidance:
http://www.diabetes-support.org.uk/joomla/jennifers-advice
Plus if you bulk up your meals with the "free veggies" then they will not affect your BG too much:
http://www.diabetes-support.org.uk/joomla/free-veggies
Finally, you have a very high fasting level, but this is probably due at least in part to your running high numbers all day anyway. Get your numbers down for the rest of the day and you should see your fasting level come down as well.
You are probably also suffering from dawn phenomenon. This is where your BG drops overnight so the liver dumps glucose in your bloodstream to bring it back up - but because your insulin system is "broken", your BG goes high.
What works for most people is a snack of a few slow carbs, with some protein and fat. The closer to sleep you are when you eat it, the more effective it is, and it should be at least 3 hours after your last meal to be most effective. I find it can knock at least 1mmol/l off my fasting BG the next morning.
This explains in more detail:
http://www.diabetes-support.org.uk/joomla/dawn-phenomenon
Get your BGs under control and you will feel FAR better all day. After being out of control I was amazed at how much better I felt once I got under control.
I know this seems like a lot of stuff at once, but it does work for any T2 who gives it a serious try. Its aimed at what works for you rather than "diet x". At the end of it you should be able to find meals which can fit in with your life and do not feel too restrictive, so in the long term you are less likely to rebel against it all.
Hope this helps.
(now I have to go write this up as an article cos it takes ages to type this out every time I post it to a forum lol)
