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- Thread starter Burkey
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I have type 2 diabetes had it for about 20 years, I generally need advice on diets, I have buried my head in the sand for year's and now realised I need to loose weight to improve my life.
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Welcome to the forum @Burkey
And well done on deciding to give your diabetes management a bit of an overhaul and see if you can lose some weight and begin to feel a bit more well in yourself and have more energy.
As @Anitram says, the single biggest component of your diet that you will have to pay attention to is carbohydrate. That includes sugar, sweet things, and fruits, bit also things like cereals, bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, root vegetables and pulses.
It’s not that you have to completely avoid all these things forever, but all carbs, not just sugars, are broken down to glucose in the blood stream, and the body is very efficent at digesting it!
A very helpful strategy can be to keep a food diary for a week. Be brutally honest and write down everything you eat for meals and snacks, along with an estimate of their carb count. This will involve scouring the backs of packets and maybe using a book or app like ‘carbs and cals’ to help you, which might sound like a real faff, but is a really good opportunity to begin to see where most of the carbs in your diet are coming from.
Next, if you’d like to see how your meals affect you as an individual,
you can use a BG meter, taking a reading before and again 2hrs after eating, to see what the differences are.
The really tricky thing is that blood glucose responses to various foods are highly individual, and it can be impossible to say which types and amounts of carbohydrate will ‘spike’ your BG without checking for yourself.
Initially in a way the numbers themselves matter less than the differences between them. Once you can see how you respond to different foods you can begin experimenting with reducing amounts of carbohydrates (eg only half as many potatoes and more leafy veg) or trying different types (a lower carb or seedy bread... wholemeal versions... sometimes just having things at a different time of day makes a difference). Gradually tweaking and tailoring your menu to find one that suits your tastebuds, your waistline and your BG levels 🙂
If you are interested in this approach you may find test-review-adjust by Alan S a helpful framework.
If you need to self fund your BG meter, the most affordable meters members here have found are the SD Gluco Navii or the Spirit Tee2 which both have test strips at around £8 for 50
Good luck and keep asking questions
And well done on deciding to give your diabetes management a bit of an overhaul and see if you can lose some weight and begin to feel a bit more well in yourself and have more energy.
As @Anitram says, the single biggest component of your diet that you will have to pay attention to is carbohydrate. That includes sugar, sweet things, and fruits, bit also things like cereals, bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, root vegetables and pulses.
It’s not that you have to completely avoid all these things forever, but all carbs, not just sugars, are broken down to glucose in the blood stream, and the body is very efficent at digesting it!
A very helpful strategy can be to keep a food diary for a week. Be brutally honest and write down everything you eat for meals and snacks, along with an estimate of their carb count. This will involve scouring the backs of packets and maybe using a book or app like ‘carbs and cals’ to help you, which might sound like a real faff, but is a really good opportunity to begin to see where most of the carbs in your diet are coming from.
Next, if you’d like to see how your meals affect you as an individual,
you can use a BG meter, taking a reading before and again 2hrs after eating, to see what the differences are.
The really tricky thing is that blood glucose responses to various foods are highly individual, and it can be impossible to say which types and amounts of carbohydrate will ‘spike’ your BG without checking for yourself.
Initially in a way the numbers themselves matter less than the differences between them. Once you can see how you respond to different foods you can begin experimenting with reducing amounts of carbohydrates (eg only half as many potatoes and more leafy veg) or trying different types (a lower carb or seedy bread... wholemeal versions... sometimes just having things at a different time of day makes a difference). Gradually tweaking and tailoring your menu to find one that suits your tastebuds, your waistline and your BG levels 🙂
If you are interested in this approach you may find test-review-adjust by Alan S a helpful framework.
If you need to self fund your BG meter, the most affordable meters members here have found are the SD Gluco Navii or the Spirit Tee2 which both have test strips at around £8 for 50
Good luck and keep asking questions
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