New here

[CaptTony]

Hello I am new here. I am healthy and fit but having recently moved house had a blood test that revealed a blood glucose fig of 48. The doctor has said change my diet and we will do the test again in 3 months. That was 6 weeks ago. I have changed my diet as I want to get it right down. I am very fit, never smoked, haven’t drunk alcohol for 20 years and was not over weight. I was shocked to find I had high blood sugar, am scared. I was 86 kg and am now 80kg or lower. I am struggling to understand food labelling and worry that when in restaurants or formal dinners that I am inadvertently eating sugars or white carbs. I don’t know what “balanced” means and how not to worry. I am desperate to get my sugars to normal and to then find a balance that keep them there that is manageable. (I exercise daily hiit type exercise). I travel a lot so have to rely on restaurant food a lot. Any advice gratefully received.

 

[Leadinglights]

Welcome to the forum, you will get lots of advice from people in your situation. Eating at home is the easy part as you can control what goes into your meals but eating out can be challenging and if you are doing it a lot then the sensible choices can become very samey.
Avoiding things with chips. potatoes, rice and pasta and things in lots of sauce will help.
Choosing or asking for extra veg or salad and coleslaw to go with meat or fish based dishes, steak, gammon, salmon, omelettes, Caesar salad, are all good options.
Avoiding cereals and too much toast for breakfast and going for bacon and eggs or cooked meat and cheese are fine.
Food labelling is confusing and you need to look at the TOTAL carbohydrate not just the sugars as many things are low sugar but high carb.

 

[CaptTony]

Thank you. That is very helpful. In my diet changes at home brown rice has replaced white rice and multigrain bread for white bread. Cereals are off the menu. I am also minding portion sizes of rice. I assume this is all ok and brown rice is ok. Same re wholewheat pasta. We eat a lot of veg anyway and are now having alternatives to potatoes. My big mistake has been eating way too much of the white staples, burning it off but….

 

[ianf0ster]

Thank you. That is very helpful. In my diet changes at home brown rice has replaced white rice and multigrain bread for white bread. Cereals are off the menu. I am also minding portion sizes of rice. I assume this is all ok and brown rice is ok. Same re wholewheat pasta. We eat a lot of veg anyway and are now having alternatives to potatoes. My big mistake has been eating way too much of the white staples, burning it off but….

Unfortunately for Type 2 diabetics there is little difference between 'brown' wholegrain carbs and white carbs. Both spike our blood glucose to around the same extent. So rather than a straight switch to wholegrain it is better to cut down or replace completely with something with less carbs. For example cauliflower 'rice' instead of rice, egg noodles or pasta made from beans instead of either normal or brown pasta/noodles, celeriac instead of potato.

 

[Leadinglights]

Portion sizes of things like pasta, rice and noodles that are served are usually very large so it gives the idea that that is an acceptable portion but when you then look how much carb is in that it is staggering. About 12 pasta twists is about 10g carb and most people would have 4 times that much as a portion as 12 twists looks very skimpy on a plate. So it is very easy to be misled by portion sizes.
The book or app Carbs and Cals has pictures and weights of a whole range of foods and meals so is a good resource.

 

[CaptTony]

Again very helpful thank you. You have got the nail on the head of my issue. I would not want to state what the multiple of what you mention would have been my usual portion size. Smaller now but probably not small enough. Although given my weight loss I need to consider how to counter balance. Thank you (to all) again. This is so emotionally draining as well as complex.

 

[Leadinglights]

Again very helpful thank you. You have got the nail on the head of my issue. I would not want to state what the multiple of what you mention would have been my usual portion size. Smaller now but probably not small enough. Although given my weight loss I need to consider how to counter balance. Thank you (to all) again. This is so emotionally draining as well as complex.

If you are worried about losing too much weight, you do not say if you are overweight or not, but reducing carbs to manage the blood glucose but then compensating by have more fat and protein will keep your weight stable.

 

[ianf0ster]

Again very helpful thank you. You have got the nail on the head of my issue. I would not want to state what the multiple of what you mention would have been my usual portion size. Smaller now but probably not small enough. Although given my weight loss I need to consider how to counter balance. Thank you (to all) again. This is so emotionally draining as well as complex.

As a 'slim' Type 2 (also called a TOFI - thin Outside Fat Inside) I understand your concern about too much weight loss.
You have a lower HbA1C than I had at diagnosis and may well have less weight you might like to lose than I did - I was officially just 2 lbs overweight, but over 2 stone heavier than I had been into my 50's. It was just since 2000 that my weight had started to increase (when I was persuaded to get serious about low fat - a terrible decision in retrospect).

I approached T2 with the idea that I didn't want to lose more weight than required. All the talk about losing 10 to 15 kg was just completely crazy for me. So although initially I was strict about only eating when hungry and not snacking, I eat every meal until I felt 'full'.
Now I feel (no proof since I didn't count calories) that the calories in fat contained in the cheese , eggs, fatty meat etc. more than outweighed those lost due to cutting back hard on the carbs. But that I was eating a smaller volume of food and so eventually my stomach grew a little smaller and so my calorie intake may have eventually dropped below what it had been before diagnosis - without me noticing. This was what I call my 'weight-loss' phase.

By this time my HbA1C was in the lower part of the pre-diabetic range so I started to ease up and allowed myself the occasional low carb snack etc. This was the start of what I call my maintenance phase. I was at a weight not seen this century and not at all keen on it dropping any further. I have increased Fats and Proteins a little and gained back another 5 lbs in the 2 yrs since that point, but my BG continued to fall for around a year, then stabilised at non -diabetic level of 37.

 

[CaptTony]

Brilliant thanks. Just finished my second black tie event in 2 nights and am hungry - at both events they asked for dietary requirements and were told. My requirements were ignored so very little to eat. In my car eating almonds on the way home. There must be a better way than this - I know there is but I’m on a mission to get the blood sugar levels down before a formal diagnosis and will then get to the maintenance phase as you put it. I am 5’10” and was 86kg. I exercise a lot and do weights so quite muscular. I am now at 79-80kg. I’m 60 years old. I can afford to lose some more but not significantly more and I need to maintain my energy levels for gyming. Anyway, the advice given is very very helpful and gives me hope.

 

[rebrascora]

For me, increasing fat intake was the game changer, both in terms of not feeling hungry, not feeling deprived and providing slow release energy whilst stabilizing BG levels.
I am guessing that there will be a cheese board option at your Black Tie events so help yourself to that, just go steady on the biscuits and fruit with it, particularly grapes. Cheese is my new chocolate, especially blue cheese, and I have it almost every night often with a glass of port or red wine and i start the day with double cream (the real stuff, not Elmlea) in my morning coffee. Cream is lower carb than milk and the fat helps to keep me fueled for the day.... and it tastes really good, so I don't feel deprived.
I'm 57 and have been following a low carb higher fat way of eating for 2.5 years now. I feel fitter and younger than I have for 20+years and interestingly, despite eating maybe double the amount of fat I used to eat and most of it saturated fat (cream, cheese, fatty meat, eggs as well as occasional avocados and olive oil) my cholesterol levels are reducing and my consultant says "just keep doing what you are doing".

 

[Leadinglights]

Brilliant thanks. Just finished my second black tie event in 2 nights and am hungry - at both events they asked for dietary requirements and were told. My requirements were ignored so very little to eat. In my car eating almonds on the way home. There must be a better way than this - I know there is but I’m on a mission to get the blood sugar levels down before a formal diagnosis and will then get to the maintenance phase as you put it. I am 5’10” and was 86kg. I exercise a lot and do weights so quite muscular. I am now at 79-80kg. I’m 60 years old. I can afford to lose some more but not significantly more and I need to maintain my energy levels for gyming. Anyway, the advice given is very very helpful and gives me hope.

That is a shame that you were not able to enjoy your evening. Can I ask what you asked for and what you actually got, then we might be able to suggest what you could fairly safely have eaten.

 

[CaptTony]

Yes you can. I asked for no free sugar, no white carbs (diabetic). The starter was ham hock parfait and quail scotch egg with some sweat dressing. I ate this, scraping off the dressing. The main was beef cheek mashed potato and a carrot. So ate the beef cheek and carrot (no way of asking for extra carrots the staff were overwhelmed as they were). Dessert was some sort of flan but obviously very sweet, no cheese option. So avoided it and obviously did not touch the chocolates with the coffee. What was most frustrating at both dinners was that they expressly asked for dietary requirements and then promptly ignored them.

As you may have noted from my earlier commentary I am currently on a mission to ensure my next blood test is below the threshold, my logic being that if my last reading was caused by over eating and too much of the white carbs and sugars (I thought that as I was exercising hard, burning it off I could eat what I liked with impunity- bad mistake and one I had been making for 60 years) then we should see what the start point is at the next test and just how much my body has become averse to processing sugars. At that point I can start, with some help from a dietitian, to find a better balance, as one of you good people referred to as the maintenance phase - which will of course be a lifelong phase, but hopefully a manageable and ok one.

I am off to Greece for 2 weeks next Sunday for work, so a Mediterranean diet should be ok- but of course they eat a lot of bread - I will have to find a substitute.

Thank you to all of you for your time and care- it helps a great deal. Logically I know I am better off than 90+% of the world’s population and have no right to feel sorry for myself but that is easy to say and as eating has always been my thing - being a non-drinker, it is very hard when you have to question everything you look at before eating it.

 

[Felinia]

Hope you do better in Greece. Your meal reminded me of one I was given in Sardinia on a coach tour where you eat what you're given. A plate of lettuce to start. A steamed fish fillet with more lettuce for main. To make it worse, the fish was definitely off - it stank. So I basically had a few lettuce leaves and that was it. The rest of the party tucked into pasta, beef and potatoes with lettuce, followed by ice cream with fruit and a biscuit, plus lashings of bread throughout. They said they enjoyed it, but the other diabetic and I got up and left before the end

 

[Leadinglights]

That does sound like a pretty poor effort at a specially requested type of meal and shows the chef hadn't a clue.
You might have been better just having what everybody else had and leaving some of the more carby bits, you couldn't have done much worse.
Greece should be ok food wise as long as you avoid the baklava, almost pure sugar. My daughter struggled as a vegetarian as most main meals were meat so she ended up having three starters as her main course.

 

[ianf0ster]

That does sound like a pretty poor effort at a specially requested type of meal and shows the chef hadn't a clue.
You might have been better just having what everybody else had and leaving some of the more carby bits, you couldn't have done much worse.
Greece should be ok food wise as long as you avoid the baklava, almost pure sugar. My daughter struggled as a vegetarian as most main meals were meat so she ended up having three starters as her main course.

It's interesting that in order to make the numbers fit his theory, Ancel Keynes visited Piopi during lent. That way he could claim that their low incidence of heart attacks was due to them not eating meat (which as good Catholics they didn't during lent). Of course the rest of the year most so-called mediterranean diets are full of saturated animal fat !

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

Fingers crossed you see the results of your efforts at your follow-up HbA1c check @CaptTony

Let us know how it goes!

 

[trophywench]

We love Greece - just remind me - what type of animal are olives ?

 

[CaptTony]

That does sound like a pretty poor effort at a specially requested type of meal and shows the chef hadn't a clue.
You might have been better just having what everybody else had and leaving some of the more carby bits, you couldn't have done much worse.
Greece should be ok food wise as long as you avoid the baklava, almost pure sugar. My daughter struggled as a vegetarian as most main meals were meat so she ended up having three starters as her main course.

It was pretty poor. I complained to one of the organisers who I know well, he blamed the Covid situation, i.e. 18 months off, they were rusty. As for Greece, I can imagine the problems being a vegetarian, it reminds me of that wonderful line in A Big Fat Greek Wedding when the groom said he was vegetarian. The response from the mother in law was, "well eat lamb then" 🙂 I think I should be fine, as there is grilled meat, and Greek salads. I have 3 days in Cyprus too, but that will be much the same. I have already warned my colleagues that the usual fare they supply for lunch so we can work through won't cut it for me (greasy pizza, burgers and chips etc.) One of the ladies there that I have worked with for over 25 years is on the case, so I am in good hands.

 

[CaptTony]

Fingers crossed you see the results of your efforts at your follow-up HbA1c check @CaptTony

Let us know how it goes!

Thank you, will do. Apologies to all for the delay in my responding to your helpful messages. It has been very busy at work (what is new)

 

[ColinUK]

I had

It was pretty poor. I complained to one of the organisers who I know well, he blamed the Covid situation, i.e. 18 months off, they were rusty. As for Greece, I can imagine the problems being a vegetarian, it reminds me of that wonderful line in A Big Fat Greek Wedding when the groom said he was vegetarian. The response from the mother in law was, "well eat lamb then" 🙂 I think I should be fine, as there is grilled meat, and Greek salads. I have 3 days in Cyprus too, but that will be much the same. I have already warned my colleagues that the usual fare they supply for lunch so we can work through won't cut it for me (greasy pizza, burgers and chips etc.) One of the ladies there that I have worked with for over 25 years is on the case, so I am in good hands.

I had a stint of being vegetarian a few years back. Cue conversation with mum about food at an upcoming big family bash…

“So I’ll do you something else other than chicken. How about fish?”
No mum, I’m vegetarian.
“OK so I’ll make you some sort of stuffed vegetable thing as a main. What if I make lamb will you eat that?”
No mum I’m vegetarian.
“Fine ok I’ll make you stuffed peppers or something. You’ll have the soup though right?”
What soup are you making?
“Chicken.”

She means well bless her!