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Please Remember: Members are only permitted to share their own experiences. Members are not qualified to give medical advice. Additionally, everyone manages their health differently. Please be respectful of other people's opinions about their own diabetes management.
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- Thread starter Mc@home
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admc26
Well-Known Member
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
Hi there @Mc@home and a very warm welcome to the forum! There's plenty on the forum that can help you with this and I'm sure others will have far more knowledge than me on this topic (I'm type 1 so my T2 specific info is rusty at best)!
I encourage you to look through or post on the Food/carb Queries section of the forum. Has your medical care team given you any info about this?
But please do ask away any questions that you may have as there is always someone with an answer and feel free to tell us more about yourself!
I encourage you to look through or post on the Food/carb Queries section of the forum. Has your medical care team given you any info about this?
But please do ask away any questions that you may have as there is always someone with an answer and feel free to tell us more about yourself!
Inka
Well-Known Member
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
Welcome @Mc@home 🙂 There are various diets that Type 2s eat. What’s important is to find out what works for you and for your blood sugar. In general, Type 2s need to keep an eye on the amount of carbs they eat - all carbs not just sugar. Some Type 2s can tolerate more carbs than others. Also, you might have other things that affect your diet choices - a need to lose weight, another health condition, etc.
If you can tell us a little more, you’ll get more tailored advice. Do you know your HbA1C result, which was probably the blood test used to diagnose you? Are you on any medication for the diabetes?
If you can tell us a little more, you’ll get more tailored advice. Do you know your HbA1C result, which was probably the blood test used to diagnose you? Are you on any medication for the diabetes?
rebrascora
Well-Known Member
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Hi and welcome from me too.
It might help if you could tell us a bit ,more about yourself and your diabetes. Things like how your diagnosis came about ie routine blood test or symptomatic, the result of your most recent HbA1c blood test.... this is usually a number of 48 or above if you have been diagnosed diabetic and gives us an idea of where you are on the diabetes scale. That can indicate how much of a lifestyle change may be needed to get things back down to safer Blood Glucose levels. What if any medication you have been given? Roughly how much, if any, weight you have to lose? Have you been supplied with a Blood Glucose meter to test your levels at home?
There are 4 main approaches with Type 2 diabetes, in no particular order...
Lose weight.... Rapid weight loss via a very low calorie diet like the Newcastle diet or Fast 800 has been shown to improve the outcome and reverse Type 2 in a reasonable amount of cases, but the weight loss needs to be maintained, so if you are a YoYo dieter this is probably not going to be successful long term, but definitely works well for some people. It usually involves meal replacement shakes but then you have to find a way to sustain the weight loss with real food afterwards.
Increased exercise/activity. It doesn't have to be anything too exertive if you are not fit. A brisk daily walk is as good as anything. Needs to be something that gets you breathing more deeply and maybe a bit sweaty, so a bit more than just a stroll. I pretty much "yomp" everywhere now which I define as a brisk walk with extended stride. Incorporating hills or steps into your walk will all help. Doing resistance training or muscle building exercise will also help in the long run as the bigger muscles, the more glucose they can store and therefore remove from the blood stream, which is where it causes problems for us diabetics. Cycling and swimming are also great exercise but the important thing is to find something you enjoy and can fit into your day. If mobility is an issue, seated exercises are also good. Anything that gets your heart beating a bit faster and you breathing more heavily, even if it is only for 10 mins 2 or 3 times a day.
Following a lower carb way of eating..... All carbohydrates (both sugars and starchy foods) are broken down into glucose by the digestive system and absorbed into the blood stream where, as diabetics we have become inefficient at transferring it to where it needs to be, so our BG levels become too high. If we put less glucose into our blood by eating less carbohydrates, it gives our bodies a chance to cope with the backlog and clear the decks more efficiently ie lowers our BG levels. This means cutting out the obvious sweet stuff like added sugar and cakes and biscuits and sweets etc but also reducing portion sizes of starchy carbs like bread, pasta, rice, couscous, potatoes and breakfast cereals. Even foods which are considered "healthy" like porridge and fruit can cause us problems and need to be selected and portioned with care. For example, bananas are one of the highest carb fruits so best restricted to a very occasional treat and just a small one or maybe half a larger one. Grapes can be full of sugar and of course they don't usually come in little portions so the temptation is to start eating a few and then forget to stop, when really just 4-6 would be about a portion size. Berries are usually the lowest carb fruits and they are often more densely packed with nutrients and flavour so a little portion goes a long way without providing too much glucose. (raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, black currants, blueberries etc) Many of us have them as our daily fruit allowance in some whole milk natural Greek yoghurt (not low fat) for breakfast with mixed seeds and/or chopped nuts and perhaps a sprinkle of Low Carb Granola.
Meat, fish, eggs, mushrooms, cheese are all low carb. Nuts need to be selected and portioned with care. Peanuts are one of the highest carb nuts whereas Brazils and Walnuts are about the lowest, so a better choice. Eating lots of green leafy veg is a good idea and don't be frightened to add a knob or butter in the cooking or a big dollop of creamy coleslaw with your salads. Cauliflower makes a great alternative to potato when mashed with a dollop of cream cheese and maybe a spoon of mustard if you like that. It can also be grated and used to replace rice with chilli or curry's and a big plate of cauliflower cheese with a few high meat content bangers or a gammon steak works well as a hearty meal.
Anyway, that gives you a flavour of low carb eating. Most people use a BG meter to test their levels before and 2 hours after a meal to see how their body responded to the amount of carbs they ate and use that info to tailor their diet and reduce carb portion sizes to whatever their body can tolerate and it can be highly individual. Using a BG meter can be an invaluable tool if you are looking to help control your diabetes at least in past through diet. Unfortunately many Type 2 diabetics have to self fund this and the 2 meters most often recommended on the forum for reliability and economy of use are the Spirit Healthcare Tee2 and the Gluco Navii. Price of test strips for them is the key factor in self funding and can vary dramatically between different meters. The 2 mentioned are both about £8 per pot of 50 test strips.
Low carb eating can be quite difficult to get your head around for the first couple of months but once you learn how to avoid the carb rich foods you amazingly often stop craving them and find this new way of eating quite enjoyable, which makes it sustainable for the rest of you life. I wouldn't go back to a regular diet now even though I could and I loved bread and potatoes and I was a sugar addict pre-diagnosis.
Anyway, the final factor is or course medication, but don't expect it to do all the work because unless you are injecting insulin, it won't, so medication needs to be used in conjunction with the other factors above. If your HbA1c result is not too high, you may be able to negotiate a period of time to reduce levels via weight loss, dietary changes and exercise, but sometimes if levels are high then medication may be needed to help reduce levels.
Anyway, that is the basics. If you can give us more info about your particular circumstances, we can give more individual advice.
PS. Sorry I wrote War and Peace. I don't do summaries very well 🙄 Hope some of it is helpful.
It might help if you could tell us a bit ,more about yourself and your diabetes. Things like how your diagnosis came about ie routine blood test or symptomatic, the result of your most recent HbA1c blood test.... this is usually a number of 48 or above if you have been diagnosed diabetic and gives us an idea of where you are on the diabetes scale. That can indicate how much of a lifestyle change may be needed to get things back down to safer Blood Glucose levels. What if any medication you have been given? Roughly how much, if any, weight you have to lose? Have you been supplied with a Blood Glucose meter to test your levels at home?
There are 4 main approaches with Type 2 diabetes, in no particular order...
Lose weight.... Rapid weight loss via a very low calorie diet like the Newcastle diet or Fast 800 has been shown to improve the outcome and reverse Type 2 in a reasonable amount of cases, but the weight loss needs to be maintained, so if you are a YoYo dieter this is probably not going to be successful long term, but definitely works well for some people. It usually involves meal replacement shakes but then you have to find a way to sustain the weight loss with real food afterwards.
Increased exercise/activity. It doesn't have to be anything too exertive if you are not fit. A brisk daily walk is as good as anything. Needs to be something that gets you breathing more deeply and maybe a bit sweaty, so a bit more than just a stroll. I pretty much "yomp" everywhere now which I define as a brisk walk with extended stride. Incorporating hills or steps into your walk will all help. Doing resistance training or muscle building exercise will also help in the long run as the bigger muscles, the more glucose they can store and therefore remove from the blood stream, which is where it causes problems for us diabetics. Cycling and swimming are also great exercise but the important thing is to find something you enjoy and can fit into your day. If mobility is an issue, seated exercises are also good. Anything that gets your heart beating a bit faster and you breathing more heavily, even if it is only for 10 mins 2 or 3 times a day.
Following a lower carb way of eating..... All carbohydrates (both sugars and starchy foods) are broken down into glucose by the digestive system and absorbed into the blood stream where, as diabetics we have become inefficient at transferring it to where it needs to be, so our BG levels become too high. If we put less glucose into our blood by eating less carbohydrates, it gives our bodies a chance to cope with the backlog and clear the decks more efficiently ie lowers our BG levels. This means cutting out the obvious sweet stuff like added sugar and cakes and biscuits and sweets etc but also reducing portion sizes of starchy carbs like bread, pasta, rice, couscous, potatoes and breakfast cereals. Even foods which are considered "healthy" like porridge and fruit can cause us problems and need to be selected and portioned with care. For example, bananas are one of the highest carb fruits so best restricted to a very occasional treat and just a small one or maybe half a larger one. Grapes can be full of sugar and of course they don't usually come in little portions so the temptation is to start eating a few and then forget to stop, when really just 4-6 would be about a portion size. Berries are usually the lowest carb fruits and they are often more densely packed with nutrients and flavour so a little portion goes a long way without providing too much glucose. (raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, black currants, blueberries etc) Many of us have them as our daily fruit allowance in some whole milk natural Greek yoghurt (not low fat) for breakfast with mixed seeds and/or chopped nuts and perhaps a sprinkle of Low Carb Granola.
Meat, fish, eggs, mushrooms, cheese are all low carb. Nuts need to be selected and portioned with care. Peanuts are one of the highest carb nuts whereas Brazils and Walnuts are about the lowest, so a better choice. Eating lots of green leafy veg is a good idea and don't be frightened to add a knob or butter in the cooking or a big dollop of creamy coleslaw with your salads. Cauliflower makes a great alternative to potato when mashed with a dollop of cream cheese and maybe a spoon of mustard if you like that. It can also be grated and used to replace rice with chilli or curry's and a big plate of cauliflower cheese with a few high meat content bangers or a gammon steak works well as a hearty meal.
Anyway, that gives you a flavour of low carb eating. Most people use a BG meter to test their levels before and 2 hours after a meal to see how their body responded to the amount of carbs they ate and use that info to tailor their diet and reduce carb portion sizes to whatever their body can tolerate and it can be highly individual. Using a BG meter can be an invaluable tool if you are looking to help control your diabetes at least in past through diet. Unfortunately many Type 2 diabetics have to self fund this and the 2 meters most often recommended on the forum for reliability and economy of use are the Spirit Healthcare Tee2 and the Gluco Navii. Price of test strips for them is the key factor in self funding and can vary dramatically between different meters. The 2 mentioned are both about £8 per pot of 50 test strips.
Low carb eating can be quite difficult to get your head around for the first couple of months but once you learn how to avoid the carb rich foods you amazingly often stop craving them and find this new way of eating quite enjoyable, which makes it sustainable for the rest of you life. I wouldn't go back to a regular diet now even though I could and I loved bread and potatoes and I was a sugar addict pre-diagnosis.
Anyway, the final factor is or course medication, but don't expect it to do all the work because unless you are injecting insulin, it won't, so medication needs to be used in conjunction with the other factors above. If your HbA1c result is not too high, you may be able to negotiate a period of time to reduce levels via weight loss, dietary changes and exercise, but sometimes if levels are high then medication may be needed to help reduce levels.
Anyway, that is the basics. If you can give us more info about your particular circumstances, we can give more individual advice.
PS. Sorry I wrote War and Peace. I don't do summaries very well 🙄 Hope some of it is helpful.
Hi welcome to the forum.
So sorry to hear that you're struggling with your diet but hope the helpful info above will be useful.
I just wanted to pop in with a link to some info on our site. The link talks more about options but has a planner and recipe ideas that may help also. https://www.diabetes.org.uk/guide-to-diabetes/enjoy-food/eating-with-diabetes/i-have-type-2-diabetes
Do let us know if you like clarity on anything or have any other questions.
So sorry to hear that you're struggling with your diet but hope the helpful info above will be useful.
I just wanted to pop in with a link to some info on our site. The link talks more about options but has a planner and recipe ideas that may help also. https://www.diabetes.org.uk/guide-to-diabetes/enjoy-food/eating-with-diabetes/i-have-type-2-diabetes
Do let us know if you like clarity on anything or have any other questions.
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
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- Status