It's tough. No one believes I have type 2 diabetes either, it's frustrating. "You don't look like you have diabetes", "How can you have diabetes?"... The diagnosis was a real kick in the teeth to be fair. I'm not overweight, never been big on junk food, I'm pretty active (less so now though), never really drank, and never touched drugs. Pretty boring.
I was diagnosed in January. Getting the initial diagnosis was absolute torture. If you're under 40 and look "fit" you're just a hypochondriac looking for attention. I was drinking gallons of water all day and night, constantly going to the toilet, every workout session was an absolute disaster and progressively getting worse. I was so incredibly lethargic all of the time I was losing steam far too quickly. One of my ankles would swell up quite a fair bit randomly too. I knew something was wrong and I had to get quite forceful with the surgery in the end to take it seriously... Well, as serious as a 60 second phone call with a GP counts. At least it got the ball rolling.
Eventually, I got my first HbA1C and it was about the same as yours, 91 or something ridiculous. My diet was heavy in carbs from cereal, potatoes, sweet potatoes, bread, and pasta. I was eating even more of it at that point too to bulk up. I was making it so much worse and washing it all down with apple juice was the icing on the cake.
When I saw the specialist I was encouraged to try and put weight on. Additional tests were done to confirm it was type 2 and not type 1. My second HbA1C was around 40 something and I'm due my third test soon. I did end up putting some weight back on but nothing like as quickly as I lost it.
I was on gliclizide initially and it seemed to work ok. Once it ran out, they couldn't wait to get me on Metformin, which just made me ill and tired. I ended up refusing to take it as a result. Getting them to swap me back to gliclazide was an absolute ordeal of course and I got attitude because I wouldn't take metformin.
The low-carb, high-fat diet does seem to work quite well for me for keeping my levels down. I switched to it asap. Eggs and bacon first meal, soups, dairy, vegetables, (not potatoes), lots of chicken, fish and other meats are also good. It's fairly basic I know and tea with no sugar takes a bit of getting used to as well. Honey isn't a replacement for sugar. I don't know why that's recommended for diabetics.
I avoid anything with too many carbs in it (I still have them in some things, just not in the quantities as I was before). Avoiding sugar alone wasn't enough. Standard greek yogurts (not the vile low-fat variety) are ok and mixed nuts for snacking too are ok, cashews are a bit higher in carbs than mixed but should be fine. Never been a big salad eater, most people tend to blunt salads anyway by smothering them in salad cream and the like.
Recently my mmo/l levels have started being wild but I think that's mainly down to me being less active at the moment and my inability to sleep all that well (this will spike your results too). I've suffered from my inability to sleep for over a decade now. It's particularly bad at this time of year.
I take the gliclazide occasionally to help bring down the levels but sometimes they work and other times they don't, it's only 80mg though and I only take the one. The readings from the monitors aren't constant and bounce around quite wildly. I have several brands of monitors and they'll vary from 8 to 18mmo/l at the same time on the same finger. I'd recommend not relying on one brand of meter as a result so you don't end up getting stressed over bogus readings like I did.
Reducing your carb intake is a good first step I think and then you can start looking at changing your diet in the future to suit your needs. It's miserable right now for sure, it's a big change but it does get easier. You'll have off days, possibly even a week or two. It's like that with anything like this. It just takes time.
I was diagnosed in January. Getting the initial diagnosis was absolute torture. If you're under 40 and look "fit" you're just a hypochondriac looking for attention. I was drinking gallons of water all day and night, constantly going to the toilet, every workout session was an absolute disaster and progressively getting worse. I was so incredibly lethargic all of the time I was losing steam far too quickly. One of my ankles would swell up quite a fair bit randomly too. I knew something was wrong and I had to get quite forceful with the surgery in the end to take it seriously... Well, as serious as a 60 second phone call with a GP counts. At least it got the ball rolling.
Eventually, I got my first HbA1C and it was about the same as yours, 91 or something ridiculous. My diet was heavy in carbs from cereal, potatoes, sweet potatoes, bread, and pasta. I was eating even more of it at that point too to bulk up. I was making it so much worse and washing it all down with apple juice was the icing on the cake.
When I saw the specialist I was encouraged to try and put weight on. Additional tests were done to confirm it was type 2 and not type 1. My second HbA1C was around 40 something and I'm due my third test soon. I did end up putting some weight back on but nothing like as quickly as I lost it.
I was on gliclizide initially and it seemed to work ok. Once it ran out, they couldn't wait to get me on Metformin, which just made me ill and tired. I ended up refusing to take it as a result. Getting them to swap me back to gliclazide was an absolute ordeal of course and I got attitude because I wouldn't take metformin.
The low-carb, high-fat diet does seem to work quite well for me for keeping my levels down. I switched to it asap. Eggs and bacon first meal, soups, dairy, vegetables, (not potatoes), lots of chicken, fish and other meats are also good. It's fairly basic I know and tea with no sugar takes a bit of getting used to as well. Honey isn't a replacement for sugar. I don't know why that's recommended for diabetics.
I avoid anything with too many carbs in it (I still have them in some things, just not in the quantities as I was before). Avoiding sugar alone wasn't enough. Standard greek yogurts (not the vile low-fat variety) are ok and mixed nuts for snacking too are ok, cashews are a bit higher in carbs than mixed but should be fine. Never been a big salad eater, most people tend to blunt salads anyway by smothering them in salad cream and the like.
Recently my mmo/l levels have started being wild but I think that's mainly down to me being less active at the moment and my inability to sleep all that well (this will spike your results too). I've suffered from my inability to sleep for over a decade now. It's particularly bad at this time of year.
I take the gliclazide occasionally to help bring down the levels but sometimes they work and other times they don't, it's only 80mg though and I only take the one. The readings from the monitors aren't constant and bounce around quite wildly. I have several brands of monitors and they'll vary from 8 to 18mmo/l at the same time on the same finger. I'd recommend not relying on one brand of meter as a result so you don't end up getting stressed over bogus readings like I did.
Reducing your carb intake is a good first step I think and then you can start looking at changing your diet in the future to suit your needs. It's miserable right now for sure, it's a big change but it does get easier. You'll have off days, possibly even a week or two. It's like that with anything like this. It just takes time.
