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Need some advice

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woody38

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Relationship to Diabetes
Type 2
Hi I have had diabetes for about two years now, my problem is getting the right information regarding what I can & cannot eat. i am on Dapagliflozin 10mg & Metformin 500mg. My HbA1 level is stubbornly at 68. I have tried to change my diet by cutting all pastry out of my diet, eating mostly fish & chicken. my treats are going out for a meal Sunday where I do eat potatoes & one glass of cider
I have substituted the cakes for fruit, but this is where the problem could be. I was udder the impression you could eat as much fruit as you wanted because it’s not man made.
My doctor has increased my Metformin to two tablets daily & told me my kidneys are at risk, it has entered my blood stream but not my kidneys yet. No other help has been offered no Dietician, no help with what I eat that could be effecting my HbA1 not going down.
 
Hi and welcome, lots of helpful folk on here.
General advice for T2D (as far as I know, I'm not medically trained) is to reduce carbs, but thats ALL carbs, so not just sugary stuff, eg: sweets, cakes, biscuits, crisps, etc. It included all high carb items, eg: bread, pasta, rice, pastry, some fruit and some veg, etc, etc.
Lots of fruit (and veg) contains higher carbs than others.
Things like bananas, grapes and any exotic fruits, eg: pineapple, etc tend to be high in carbs.
Most root vegetables (or those that grow underground) tend to have higher carbs, whereas most above ground veg tend to be lower in carbs.
Lots of really good and useful on this site, (see the Learning zone at the top of the page), plus there is a lot of info on food, recipes, etc here.

Also checkout the Lowcarbfreshwell site, also very good info on there, See link here:
Then theres the Sugarfreelondoner website, also very good and loads of recipes, See link 2 here:

Lastly there a few good books, I swear by the "Carbs and Cals" book, written in conjunction with Diabetes UK, See link3 here There are other good books out there too.
It shows actual photos of portion sizes, so is a good visual reference to know how much you can eat of something.

Sorry to hear you're not getting the support you should. As a diabetic you should now get free prescriptions, plus an annual foot check and an annual eye check (all free). A lot of GP surgeries do now have a specialist diabetic nurse or other HCP, so maybe ask if your has one.

If you need to lose weight there are also a few schemes, mostly based on the Newcastle diet, pioneered by a couple of GPs, (I think) and now sometimes called the "T2D Pathway to Remission", which is a one year supported scheme and starts with a 12 week diet, based on a very low cal diet, mostly soups and shakes, each 200cal, and you have x4 a day, so roughly an 800cal a day diet, which promotes rapid weight loss and can put diabetes into remission. So maybe ask about that too. Not everyone can be referred to it, but you may meet the criteria.

If you want to provide more info I'm sure others will chip in with more advice. And let us know how you get on....Cheers
 
Hi, you have had lots of good advice already so I will only comment on fruit. I was taken to a Weight Watchers session once and the "unlimited fruit" advice (nonsense) given out. I pointed out that many fruits had a high fructose content, and hence high calories, and that a morning five-fruit smoothy was a huge hit. During the session the leader also said all cheese was empty calories and I pointed out that it (particularly cottage cheese) was a valuable source of protein and calcium. When we were leaving I was asked not to attend again! My friend moved over to Slimming World but said the fruit nonsense was also part of their mantra.

This was a good decade or so ago so hopefully advice has been updated. I felt it was particularly unhelpful for those that were diabetic or pre-diabetic!
 
I was udder the impression you could eat as much fruit as you wanted because it’s not man made.

It still has carbs in though @woody38 and things like bananas and tropical fruit have quite a few carbs. If you ate lots of fruit, you’d put your daily carb total up a fair bit. Try sticking to lower carb fruits like berries and limiting the amount you have.
 
I think diet is so personal that I would not tell you what you can or cannot eat (apart from the obvious limiting refined carbs and sugar). I can only share what works for me 🙂
I use a meter. It is only by using a glucose meter that I know I can eat fruit, small amounts of potatoes and even some refined carbs. But I have to be careful, small quantities is the keyword, I can eat practically everything in tiny amounts, but for example 2 small potatoes and some swede with my chicken was too much. I don't count carbs, measuring my BG is my 'counting'.
I'm trying to work out if wholewheat vs refined, and carbs/fats/proteins ratio makes a difference, but I think I'd have to use a CGM which I will do at some point.
My GP gave me the option to sign up for some courses/apps, I did but the one I signed up to is too strict for me, might work faster but not sustainable. Others focus on weight loss which is not suitable for me because I have a history of disordered eating.
In a nutshell, it's only by doing it that you will find you what you can eat, research shows that different paths can take you to the same results, personally I went with what would me more sustainable as a lifelong lifestyle.
Exercise is as important as diet for me, even just energetic housework, walking, climbing stairs is good.
Stress is another element. The trinity of diabetes are diet, exercise, stress. Weight is another element, but plenty of research shows that the vast majority of people put it all back, so for me the success rate is too low to make it worth my while, but it works for other people.
Good luck in your journey 🙂
 
Hi @woody38 and welcome to the forum
You have already had some helpful tips, but diabetes can be an individual thing and what works for one may not work for another, it's a case of finding out what works for you and the links already posted should help.

Alan 😉
 
Welcome @woody38 it must be frustrating not seeing any improvement in your HbA1c result but I have found the information and guidance both from Diabetes UK and more importantly in these forums to be really helpful in giving me the guidance to make changes that I need to try and control my diabetes.

Your reference to fruit has hit a nerve with me as I was for many years someone who has eaten large quantities of fruit daily thinking it was good for me. However, when I had my first meeting with the diabetes nurse at my local surgery, she suggested that the whole five a day message failed as fruit should really only be one of those five things with the other four being vegetables. And following that I have also seen that eating any significant volume of fruit can be a trigger for increased BG for me specifically so I keep my intake low and use things like rhubarb in my breakfast yoghurt or 2-3 strawberries with a low carb chocolate mouse in the evenings after my main meal.

As others have said using a BG monitor to see what foods drive high BGs is a good technique.
 
Welcome to the forum @woody38

You certainly aren’t alone in having that thought about natural and man-made things. When I was first diagnosed I initially wondered whether honey would be OK as a way to sweeten things as it was ‘natural’. It can be tempting to focus on the 5g teaspoon of sugar in a thing, rather than the 50g of flour that’s in it.

But the body doesn’t really care so much about whether the carbohydrates have come from a factory or straight from a plant in your garden, it breaks them down into glucose just the same.

Things like fruit have the benefit of fibre and vitamins, but as others have suggested, getting the portion sizes and frequency right for you as an individual is really important 🙂
 
I remember being told and I think reading initially about avoiding added sugar more than anything else and maybe that's true in a normal balanced diet but it seems what's critical for us is the overall amount of carbs. I still watch my sugar intake as well - a nice cinnamon bun with icing or a smoothie might fit in my carbs allowance for the day if I compromise big time elsewhere but I'm pretty sure they'll also spike my blood sugar sky high.
Personally I use the Nutricheck app on my phone to look at pretty much everything I eat. It's not great for restaurants but I've yet to find something in a supermarket it didn't have info for. It helped a lot in the early days working out a meal plan and understanding what I was eating a lot better and really useful for understanding what's actually in that new recipe you try.
 
I find red, amber and green food lists are helpful for guidance:
- https://www.lowcarbfreshwell.com/documents/8/Freshwell_Red_Amber_Green.pdf
- https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zfenN1cLfGNHa7qBp9KDh1u1iqxvTGJF/view (more comprehensive)

Many of Dr David Unwin's patients have gone into remission following his diet sheet and advice:
- https://phcuk.org/wp-content/uploads/A_5_page_low_carb_diet_leaflet_Unwin_2021-converted.pdf

I found the section on Weight Loss in this article illuminating:
- What should we eat? https://www.zoeharcombe.com/2021/08/what-should-we-eat/

We buy basic green/amber ingredients, weigh them and use Cronometer (free version) to track 'micro' and 'mini' nutrients.
 
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