Recently diagnose T2

[mumof3things]

Hi all,

I have also been recently diagnosed type 2 after many years of being borderline. I have had gestational diabetes twice (1st and 3rd pregnancies!) and was using insulin and have been on metformin for PCOS insulin resistance. However, I have been advised to control things with diet now and I am really struggling. My blood sugars are consistently high and it's starting to affect my work.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

 

[Northerner]

Hi mumof3things, welcome to the forum 🙂 Sorry to hear you are struggling What sort of levels are you getting? Many of our members find the best approach is to write a food diary, recording all the carbohydrates you eat and drink each day, then reviewing this to see if there are areas where you might substitute items for more 'diabetes-friendly' alternatives, or reduce portion sizes. Using a meter, you can test before and after eating to find out what items you tolerate well, and what you need to reduce or exclude in your diet. Have a look at Test,Review, Adjust by Alan S for an explanation of how to do this efficiently 🙂 I'd also suggest reading Jennifer's Advice and Maggie Davey's letter, and perhaps getting a copy of Type 2 Diabetes: The First Year by Gretchen Becker - all highly recommended sources of information which should help with your understanding of what you need to be watching out for and how best to tackle it 🙂 To further increase your library (!!) I'd suggest getting a copy of the GL Diet for Dummies, which explains a method of selecting and combining foods that will have a slow and steady impact on your blood sugar levels 🙂

It can take a little while to learn what works best for you, but once you have established the basic items that you eat regularly and can tolerate well, you won't need to test as often. The problem with a lot of healthcare professionals is that they send you away and tell you to eat a 'healthy diet' without really explaining what that is, or possibly suggesting items that you actually can't tolerate well. Everyone's tolerances are different, so it's a very individual thing - there are obviously some very basic truths, such as not overloading on carbs, especially sugary or white flour products, but there are many other less obvious things that you will need to determine for yourself whether they are on or off the menu! 🙂

Please let us know if you have any questions and we will do our best to help! 🙂

 

[Stitch147]

Hi and welcome to the forum. Good advice there from Northerner, keeping a food diary is definately a good idea. I was put on metformin straight away but my levels were regulary in the 20's! A food diary was good to see what brought my levels up and what was ok. It was surprising what brought my blood levels up!

 

[Libbie Taylor-Thomas]

I can Thirdly advise a food diary, I recently found out I am diabetic and pregnant, which is causing my levels to fluctuate and although I am now using insulin I still have to watch the carb intake.
Looking through my Food diary I can tell now that I can maintain lower levels on my readings if I stick to 20-30g of carbs per meal, If I want to eat more than that I can counteract it with a little more fat or protein with the meal and get a similar result although that's not entirely the best way it is nice to still have a few crackers and cheese! Since the 2nd December I've gone from readings of 12 to the last few days of 5.5-8 which is still high, but nowhere near 12 and its still going down.
I think a lot of people don't realise that its not just sugar you have to watch when you are diabetic but also carbohydrates and what kind of carbohydrates you eat as well ( read the carb content on EVERYTHING ).
I can't tolerate white bread, white rice, savoury pastry ( haven't even bothered with sweets) white flour/cakes any of that but I can eat new potatoes, noodles, fettuccine pasta, sweet potatoes. There is a lot to learn but I've found a few basic rules to stick to help get my readings down. Higher amount of lean protein, a little more fat than I was used to and a similar amount of carbs at each meal, its just the amount you can personally tolerate that you have to experiment and test on.
I'm still learning, and I will for quite a while but this site and the people here have been amazing and just reading the threads has been enlightening I hope you get something out of it too.