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Some Advice from the forum

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E

Eugh

New Member
Relationship to Diabetes
Type 2
Hi All,
I have been diagnosed with type 2 in November 2017 with an HBA1C of 125 and have managed to reduce this down to an HBA1C of 47 in February 2018. In this time I have reduced my weight from 17 stone down to 14 stone, my cholesterol from 5.4 to 4.3, my BMI from 32 down to 28, my waist from 40 inch down to 35 inch and have had no damage on the eyes, kidneys or feet. I have done this through a low carb, low sugars diet with loads of protein and healthy fats, plus doing more active work on the family farm has helped.

For the last few months I have been trying to stabilise my weight by eating more protein, fats and some more carbs particularly on the morning. I am also doing more walking and exercise, and have managed to stabilise my weight. I have also been monitoring my blood sugar level on a morning and two hours after a meal, and I am on 2 metformin pills a day. I have my annual check up in July.

I have a couple of questions of advice advice from the forum.
a) If I continue with the above should my HBA1C come down when I have the next test in July. I am just a bit worried that the HBA1C might go up as I try to stabilise my weight. Any advice or other peoples experience.
b) All the way through I am having porridge for breakfast in the morning still. I no that this does spike things in the morning - but I know that this energy is long lasting and sees me through the day well. Just wondering if I should continue with having porridge or try to find some alternate breakfast food. Any ideas?
c) After a meal now my fingertips go red sometimes and my head becomes a little heavy sometimes. Not sure if the redness in the fingers is down to the increase in blood sugar levels or whether I am allergic to some foods. Just wondering if anyone else has experienced this after a meal.

In summary, I have done well over the last 5 months since diagnosis but am just trying to make sure that things stabilised - am wondering if anyone found the above issues after a big weight loss. How do you know that your coming out the other end?
Thanks

Eugh
 
Hi Eugh, sounds like you have done really well so far. I’m still a fairly newbie myself and still learning so don’t want to give advice that might be wrong. I’m sure one of the others will have a much better idea than me but I just wanted to say well done so far :D
 
You have done amazingly well and should be very proud of your achievement, well done. Can't help on the weight issue as I have never had a problem with that. Porridge spikes me so I have an egg and a piece of high protein bread such as Livelife and find that good for keeping me going. Your body has had to do a lot of adjustment in the last five months so I don't think I would worry too much about feeling a bit "headachy" and the fingers. Would I be right to assume that there are no sensitivity problems with your fingers? A nutritionalist told me to try a brisk 10 minute wak after each meal to get the metabolism going. Seems to have helped and of course goes towards the exercise target for the day. I hope things continue to improve and I a delighted that you have done so much in a short time. Good luck with it. Give yourself a big pat on the back, it is well deserved. 🙂
 
I bet you feel much better loosing weight. Your pancreas may have been surrounded with fat & not working to good. Good luck 🙂
 
I was diagnosed a year before you - at three months my Hba1c was 47 like you and at 6 months it was 41 - but I do not eat cereals.
If you have a tester and can check your BG levels to see which foods spike you are which are safe then it will be a lot easier to get normal BG levels.
 
Well I was gong to say more or less the same as Drummer re testing, and of course if you do then you'll have some idea whether you are on track or not. Sounds to me as if you're on the right lines though, except the porridge. Did you know that protein actually staves off hunger pangs and keeps you feeling full longer than carbohydrate can? This means you are better off with bacon and egg than any cereal known to man.
 
It sounds like you have done brilliantly @Eugh. The weight loss will have helped your insulin sensitivity and as Hobie has said, if you’ve lost ‘visceral’ fat around the organs as part of that then your pancreas will be able to work better.

As to whether the symptoms you are experiencing are Blood Glucose related (and whether or not you are fine eating porridge) you really have to use a BG meter to check.

Several members here rely on porridge, it keeps their BG steady and it suits them really well, but others find it causes large BG rises so they avoid it. The only way to find out what happens for you is to use a meter and then decide based on that 🙂
 
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