Hi Deb and welcome.
It often comes as quite a shock getting that diagnosis and can be a bit overwhelming. 83 is quite a high reading so you will need to be pretty strict and it is a little surprising that they have not insisted on medication straight away. The good news is that it is possible to re-educate your palette and change your diet to a healthier one even with a sweet tooth and I am living proof.... I was a self confessed sugar addict pre diagnosis and now I very rarely eat sweet stuff or even use sweetener and I enjoy my diet, but it takes a bit of time and trial and error to get there. It took me about 5 weeks to break it and I did kind of do it gradually (the phrase "diabetes is a marathon, not a sprint" is often used) but my HbA1c was dangerously high so I had more of an incentive and I was given medication from the start.
It is important to understand that it is not just sweet stuff which causes us problems but carbohydrates in general, so both sugars and starchy carbs. That means artificially sweet foods containing sugar and honey and maple syrup etc but also fruit/dried fruit and fruit juice AND possibly more importantly starchy carbs like bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, couscous etc including breakfast cereals and even so called healthy porridge can cause us problems.
It may seem like that doesn't leave much to eat but meat, fish, eggs in all their cooked forms, mushrooms, full fat dairy like butter, cream, cheese, creamy natural yoghurt etc (low fat contains more carbs than full fat versions) Mediterranean veg like courgettes, aubergines, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers etc, salad leaves and leafy green veg like cabbage, kale, spinach etc (cooked with butter/cream/cream cheese all taste really good and don't make you feel deprived) and broccoli and cauliflower particularly is a wonder veg for us diabetics as it can be cooked and mashed with a good dollop of cream cheese and a spoon of mustard to replace potatoes and eaten with good quality high meat content sausages or burgers or used to top a cottage or fish pie. It can also be grated to replace rice or couscous in recipes or of course made into cauliflower cheese and who doesn't love that. Eating more fat is important to help you feel full for longer and also provides a form of slow release energy as well as making things taste good so that you don't feel deprived.... this needs to be a lifelong dietary change so enjoying it is really important. Many of us have our morning coffee with cream instead of sugar or sweetener and creamy Greek natural yoghurt with a few berries like rasps or strawberries and some nuts and mixed seeds for breakfast, or an omelette with whatever filling you like... mushrooms, onions and cheese is my fav or even a cooked breakfast with sausage, bacon eggs mushrooms and tomatoes but beware of baked beans and skip the toast and hash browns. Salads with eggs, meat or fish and coleslaw (I love cheese coleslaw and it is one of the lowest in carbs) work well for lunch and meat or fish with plenty of veg for dinner. Boiled eggs, nuts, olive and cheese all work well for snacks depending upon your tastes, so no need to go hungry but some nuts contain more carbs than others so you need to learn to read labels and allot yourself a small portion. Brazils, walnuts and hazelnuts are lowest in carbs, so they are the best choices in nuts. Cashews and peanuts need to be rationed more.
Anyway, I hope my rambling post has given you a few ideas and some hope moving forward with this. A low carb diet can be really enjoyable once you introduce more fat. I appreciate that this will be contrary to everything you have been advised by your health care team but there is a growing wave of scientific thought that fat is not threat to our health that was initially believed and that our low fat diet has in part lead to the epidemic of diabetes which we are now seeing. Eating fat in itself does not make you fat and it is self limiting... very few people could eat a lot of fat and want more. Eating excessive carbohydrates (including sugars) can make you obese and the more you eat, generally, the more you want, so it is self perpetuating. Breaking the cycle is not easy but well worth while. Many of us have found that our diagnosis has given us the impetus to start a new, healthier and more enjoyable diet and lifestyle. Hopefully a few months down the road, you will feel the same.
