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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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Newbie
- Thread starter mango56
- Start date
- Status
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Welcome to the forum @mango56
Sorry to hear about your diagnosis
One of the biggest questions when trying to get to grips with your diabetes is often ‘what can I eat’ and while there are obvious things like cakes, biscuits, sweets and sugary drinks that you will want to cut out straight away, you might be surprised how much *all* carbohydrate affects your BG levels, including rice, pasta, potatoes, bread, pastry, grains, cereals and many fruits.
Many new members find it can be really helpful to keep a brutally honest food diary for a week or two. Note down everything you eat and drink, along with a reasonable estimate of the total carbohydrate content (not just ‘of which sugars’) in your meals and snacks. It might sound like a bit of a faff, and will involve weighing portions, squinting at the fine print on packaging, and possibly looking up things on the internet, but it will give you a really good idea of which foods are the main sources of carbs in your menu.
Once you can see which meals or snacks are your ‘big hitters’, and where carbs might be unexpectedly lurking, your diary might also suggest some likely candidates for swaps, portion reductions, or using lower carb alternatives (eg celeriac or swede mash, or cauli ‘rice’).
If you would like a good overview of T2 diabetes, to add to the knowledge you’ve already picked up, you might want to register for an account with the Learning Zone (the orange tab in the main menu) which is packed full of informative bite-sized modules that you can work through at your own pace.
And you can keep asking questions here too. Nothing will be considered ‘silly’.
Sorry to hear about your diagnosis
One of the biggest questions when trying to get to grips with your diabetes is often ‘what can I eat’ and while there are obvious things like cakes, biscuits, sweets and sugary drinks that you will want to cut out straight away, you might be surprised how much *all* carbohydrate affects your BG levels, including rice, pasta, potatoes, bread, pastry, grains, cereals and many fruits.
Many new members find it can be really helpful to keep a brutally honest food diary for a week or two. Note down everything you eat and drink, along with a reasonable estimate of the total carbohydrate content (not just ‘of which sugars’) in your meals and snacks. It might sound like a bit of a faff, and will involve weighing portions, squinting at the fine print on packaging, and possibly looking up things on the internet, but it will give you a really good idea of which foods are the main sources of carbs in your menu.
Once you can see which meals or snacks are your ‘big hitters’, and where carbs might be unexpectedly lurking, your diary might also suggest some likely candidates for swaps, portion reductions, or using lower carb alternatives (eg celeriac or swede mash, or cauli ‘rice’).
If you would like a good overview of T2 diabetes, to add to the knowledge you’ve already picked up, you might want to register for an account with the Learning Zone (the orange tab in the main menu) which is packed full of informative bite-sized modules that you can work through at your own pace.
And you can keep asking questions here too. Nothing will be considered ‘silly’.
Leadinglights
Well-Known Member
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 2
Welcome to the forum, I hope it will help you get to grips with what is a serious condition but one that can be managed and needs to be to avoid all those unpleasant consequences one reads about and many here suffer.
Learning about the condition so you can make the needed changes to your lifestyle and you will see how important it is to take action now.
Diet is one of the most important things but what dietary approach is suitable will depend on a number of things, What your HbA1C is as that will indicate how far you are into the diabetes zone, are you on any medication and do you need to lose weight.
Have a look at this link for a straightforward explanation, some menu plans to give you a idea of what you should be doing as well as some do's and don'ts. This is an approach which many have found successful.
Freshwell Low Carb Project - Home
lowcarbfreshwell.com
- Status