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Newbie. Hi everyone, just wanted to introduce myself.

Diane O said:
Hi,
I cook occasionally, but my husband does the majority of it, and we shop together, but sometimes if there’s a few bits he wants then he’ll go alone first thing in the morning before it gets too busy. We both have no clue what contains a lot of carb and what doesn’t. We do try to check labels but sometimes the print is so small it’s difficult to read, or it may be against a wrong colour background which also makes it difficult to read but we have to try.
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Great question from @trophywench; simple but so pertinent. Like @Leadinglights, I still lean very heavily on the book Carbs and Cals (C&C). There is also an app, but given your husband's reluctance to engage with the Internet, no point in the app for you two; I personally think the app is not just expensive but poor in its failure to use the calculating capacity of whateverdevice it might be sitting on, to immediately provide the carbs per 100 gms from the outset - rather waiting to be asked.

With my C&C book I regularly add sticky notes to an item I frequently refer to. My well thumbed copy is thickened by my many stickies. Adding details I've gleaned from the packaging or labelling PLUS notes on foods that didn't seem to match the carb count that it theoretically should have been.

I think it's pretty important to develop a background sense of which foods are lower carb or not so good. Fruit is a great illustration of this: some fruits are pretty reasonable in the 5-9% zone of carb content, others in the higher 15% category. C&C provides helpful one page carb lists/summaries for most fruits so at a glance you can get a sense of what might work for you both. But most fruits can be higher than assessed, depending on their degree of ripeness. An underripe banana might have less carbs than the theoretical assessed figure of 20% (without the skin); a very ripe banana, turning soft and brown can be even higher than the given 20% figure [I love them like this and I'm always the beneficiary of my grandson's dislike of overripe bananas].

Getting into the habit of weighing individual recipe items is really helpful. Then the carb content of each of the components can lead you to a total carb content of the end product before dividing that into the number of individual served portions.

The C&C book also has some typical "eating out" meals and some generic "ready made" meals. Even if you don't routinely food shop for ready made stuff, C&C's figures give you a start point. AND it is highly likely that shop bought ready made will have preservatives and fillers that make those carb counts higher, so using C&C numbers provide a conservative or safe start point.

All of this doesn't need to be daunting; having a good set of digitally accurate kitchen scales is a great help. Good luck.
 
Leadinglights said:
If you shop regularly at the same shops then if you check their website as it will have the carbohydrate content of all the branded products they sell under nutritional information, the number you want is carbohydrate per 100g or per portion or each as in crackers or biscuits. You may then need to work out the carbs for the portion you are going to have. Fresh foods you can look on the internet for carb content of X.
The book Carbs and Cals is useful as it gives the carbs for various suggested portion sizes of a whole range of foods. It will become second nature to check out the information and decide on how much you can have and stay within a certain amount of carbs for your meal.
If you are aiming at no more than 130g carbs per day including drinks and snacks that equates to on average about 30-35 g carbs per meal.
Meat, fish, eggs, cheese, are all pretty well zero carbs so basing meals on those with the addition of fresh veg and salads would be a good start, avoiding cakes, biscuits, sugary drinks and high carb foods like potatoes, rice, pasta, other than in small portions and keeping an eye on how much fruit other than berries which are low carb.
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Thank you so much for this information, I didn’t know about this but will definitely check it out.
 
A big thank you to each and every one of you for your warm welcome and all the help you’ve so kindly given us, it’s been so much needed and very much appreciated, THANK YOU ALL.
 
Hi Diane and Richard. I'm down that way, in the Eastbourne area. So far based on experience of myself and others on this site it seems like our local services supporting diabetes care are pretty good.

If you're around the coast I was offered either an online course or a face to face one around what to expect from type 2 diabetes and choose face to face which was 2 short-ish half days, I imagine the NHS trusts up in Wealden and Rother will run similar. If you're in the area covered by the DGH and Conquest hospitals then the nurse running the face to face was nice, the course was worth while and the patient is encouraged to bring someone(s) along so you'd both be welcome. It did take a few months for the invite for the face-to-face to come through, I think the online are quicker to get on. If you do go it's worth taking a notepad and pen as like the early doctors appointments there's lots to take onboard even though they have some hand out materials.

I would also add though that the information available here, both the website and the experience of a lot of the people in the forums has probably been the best resource I've found
 
Hi Mark72, thank you so much for this information, I didn’t know this was available as this is the first I’ve heard of it. We haven’t been offered anything as Richard hasn’t been able to see a doctor yet or anyone else, but he’s due another blood test tomorrow so we’re hoping to get more information when the results are in, but we’ll have to make some enquiries as well, as this seems what he needs, or what we both need to kickstart his journey.

And you’re right, the information available here, both the website and the experience of all those lovely people on the forums has been invaluable to us both. Everyone has been so kind, caring and helpful, yourself included. I feel so lucky to have found the forums, especially for my husband, and he’s so grateful too.
 
And a very warm welcome from me too @Diane O ! 🙂
 
Hi Hayley R, thank you so much for your warm welcome, it’s very much appreciated.
 
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