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T2 Diabetes and Autism. And probably Angina now too. (Long-ish post)

Jason592

Jason592

Member
Relationship to Diabetes
Type 2
I've thought long and hard about posting this as I've been around the internet long enough to know that if certain things don't fit a preconceived notion of "normal" then they're labelled as 'trolling' but this certainly isn't the case here. And I know you were all very nice when I first posted back in 2021 so I'm going to give it a try.

Basically, I've struggled with managing my diabetes for years and certainly a lot further back than my first thread here about struggling on Ozempic. Whenever I've been to various medical appointments, including those with my diabetic nurse who doesn't like me, I've been quite transparent about the fact that I manage my diabetes horribly.

I don't do my finger pricks and I basically haven't changed the vast majority of my eating habits. I'll still eat chocolate, cakes, crisps and I've even had the odd trifle here and there. I'm obese (22 stone) and my lifestyle could be considered 'sedentary' because I don't exercise. this is probably the reason why I found out less than 48 hours ago that I now have Angina.

I also found out about 3 years ago that I'm very likely autistic as well and I was accepted onto a waiting list for a formal assessment and, hopefully, a formal diagnosis.

Over time, i think it's become clear to me that this is very likely the reason I'm struggling, mainly because the amount of change needed to manage this properly just overwhelms me and I basically shut down. This has caused a lot of friction between me and my diabetic nurse at my local GP as I keep trying to put in to words the kind of help I need and I apparently don't explain myself well enough as she always reverts to type with either "We don't do that" or "It doesn't work like that" and variations of that.

Whenever I get the usual mantra of "Well you need your 5 portions of fruit and veg per day" and "Try adding this pulse and that nut" and about 900 recipes for steamed mackrel, which I wouldn't eat, i just can't deal with it so I stick with familiarity and repetition, regardless of whether or not it's the 'right' thing to eat.

So what I'm kind of looking for, at least I think so, is something simplified to a point that I can make it work for me. As an example, about 10-15 years ago I lost 8 stone in a year for a bet, which I won. I read somewhere that, supposedly, if you read the food label and saw that the fat content of what you were buying was less than 15g per 100g then it was "proper" low fat food.

That "clicked" for me and absolutely worked. Whether or not it was accurate is/was irrelevant because it was the kind of thing I could laser my focus on and I stuck to it and my eating habits slowly fell in to line around that over the months to the point where I regularly had actual fruit in my trolley on some shops 🙂

So while I'm pretty sure there's nothing like that for diabetic food or low sugar food, it's a good example of what I'd like. Either that or literally saying "Well you can eat X for breakfast, Y for lunch and Z for dinner" and know that X, Y and Z are 'safe' diabetic-compatible foods of the 'open packet and eat' variety.

So if you've got this far then thankyou and I'm sorry .. lol 🙂. I completely understand if nobody has anything but I'd also ask, as politely and respectfully as I can, that if your instinct to reply is along the lines of "Well you should do it for your health" then please don't.
 
Jason592 said:
I've thought long and hard about posting this as I've been around the internet long enough to know that if certain things don't fit a preconceived notion of "normal" then they're labelled as 'trolling' but this certainly isn't the case here. And I know you were all very nice when I first posted back in 2021 so I'm going to give it a try.

Basically, I've struggled with managing my diabetes for years and certainly a lot further back than my first thread here about struggling on Ozempic. Whenever I've been to various medical appointments, including those with my diabetic nurse who doesn't like me, I've been quite transparent about the fact that I manage my diabetes horribly.

I don't do my finger pricks and I basically haven't changed the vast majority of my eating habits. I'll still eat chocolate, cakes, crisps and I've even had the odd trifle here and there. I'm obese (22 stone) and my lifestyle could be considered 'sedentary' because I don't exercise. this is probably the reason why I found out less than 48 hours ago that I now have Angina.

I also found out about 3 years ago that I'm very likely autistic as well and I was accepted onto a waiting list for a formal assessment and, hopefully, a formal diagnosis.

Over time, i think it's become clear to me that this is very likely the reason I'm struggling, mainly because the amount of change needed to manage this properly just overwhelms me and I basically shut down. This has caused a lot of friction between me and my diabetic nurse at my local GP as I keep trying to put in to words the kind of help I need and I apparently don't explain myself well enough as she always reverts to type with either "We don't do that" or "It doesn't work like that" and variations of that.

Whenever I get the usual mantra of "Well you need your 5 portions of fruit and veg per day" and "Try adding this pulse and that nut" and about 900 recipes for steamed mackrel, which I wouldn't eat, i just can't deal with it so I stick with familiarity and repetition, regardless of whether or not it's the 'right' thing to eat.

So what I'm kind of looking for, at least I think so, is something simplified to a point that I can make it work for me. As an example, about 10-15 years ago I lost 8 stone in a year for a bet, which I won. I read somewhere that, supposedly, if you read the food label and saw that the fat content of what you were buying was less than 15g per 100g then it was "proper" low fat food.

That "clicked" for me and absolutely worked. Whether or not it was accurate is/was irrelevant because it was the kind of thing I could laser my focus on and I stuck to it and my eating habits slowly fell in to line around that over the months to the point where I regularly had actual fruit in my trolley on some shops 🙂

So while I'm pretty sure there's nothing like that for diabetic food or low sugar food, it's a good example of what I'd like. Either that or literally saying "Well you can eat X for breakfast, Y for lunch and Z for dinner" and know that X, Y and Z are 'safe' diabetic-compatible foods of the 'open packet and eat' variety.

So if you've got this far then thankyou and I'm sorry .. lol 🙂. I completely understand if nobody has anything but I'd also ask, as politely and respectfully as I can, that if your instinct to reply is along the lines of "Well you should do it for your health" then please don't.
Click to expand...
Sorry to hear of your recent addition of angina into the mix but I'm sure that will be very manageable especially if you are able to lose some of the weight.
There is a similar thing to your fat yardstick in that you could say that foods with less than say 15g carbohydrate per 100g would be good choices rather than those with 50g carbohydrate per 100g.
As it is all carbohydrates which convert to glucose then reducing those in your diet is going to help both with your blood glucose and help you lose weight. Portion control is also something to look at, a good start is to have less of any high carb foods rather than try to change your diet all in one go.
I don't know if having a meal plan would help you but there are several different ones in this link https://lowcarbfreshwell.com/
It is based on having no more than 130g carbohydrates per day
 
My daughter is autistic so I get what you mean about being overwhelmed, I also know that a lot of people don’t get it (maybe your diabetes nurse is one?). My daughter can come across as quite rude and opinionated, but if you get to know her and make an effort to understand the autism, then you realise that that isn’t how she intends to be at all. She has a very “beige” diet and would live entirely off bread products and ice cream if she could! She is type 1 so can manage it with insulin, but I do wonder if she will ever eat anything remotely resembling a fruit or vegetable once she leaves home!

So in terms of your diabetes management, you could try getting the carbohydrate number as low as you can on your meals and don’t worry so much about the fat. If you want sample meals, you could try the following: breakfast - natural yogurt with berries and maybe a sprinkling of nuts, OR bacon and eggs; lunch - salad with whatever meat or fish you fancy, or an omelette with cheese/onion/mushroom/peppers (choose whichever you like); dinner - steak with green vegetables, or some sort of homemade stew with veg.

I hope that’s clear enough, I’ve tried to give you a little bit of choice to find something that you like, but once you’ve picked your favourite there is nothing to stop you having the same every day if that works for you. If you can reduce the carbs in your diet, you may also find that it helps you to lose weight too, which will be an added bonus.

I hope you can get your autism assessment soon, we found that once we knew it became much easier to work out coping strategies and so on, and lots of things suddenly made sense, such as why she doesn’t enjoy going to parties or being touched. Good luck
 
Jason592 said:
I don't do my finger pricks and I basically haven't changed the vast majority of my eating habits. I'll still eat chocolate, cakes, crisps and I've even had the odd trifle here and there. I'm obese (22 stone) and my lifestyle could be considered 'sedentary' because I don't exercise. this is probably the reason why I found out less than 48 hours ago that I now have Angina.

Whenever I get the usual mantra of "Well you need your 5 portions of fruit and veg per day" and "Try adding this pulse and that nut" and about 900 recipes for steamed mackrel, which I wouldn't eat, i just can't deal with it so I stick with familiarity and repetition, regardless of whether or not it's the 'right' thing to eat.

So what I'm kind of looking for, at least I think so, is something simplified to a point that I can make it work for me. As an example, about 10-15 years ago I lost 8 stone in a year for a bet, which I won. I read somewhere that, supposedly, if you read the food label and saw that the fat content of what you were buying was less than 15g per 100g then it was "proper" low fat food.

That "clicked" for me and absolutely worked. Whether or not it was accurate is/was irrelevant because it was the kind of thing I could laser my focus on and I stuck to it and my eating habits slowly fell in to line around that over the months to the point where I regularly had actual fruit in my trolley on some shops 🙂

So while I'm pretty sure there's nothing like that for diabetic food or low sugar food, it's a good example of what I'd like. Either that or literally saying "Well you can eat X for breakfast, Y for lunch and Z for dinner" and know that X, Y and Z are 'safe' diabetic-compatible foods of the 'open packet and eat' variety.
Click to expand...
I used to work in the food industry and I can tell you that the 'five a day' advice has no scientific basis whatsoever - like a lot of stuff we are told is healthy - it is just something someone made up and started to repeat and repeat.
My simple method of controlling type 2 is to eat things with under 10% carbs and these days I limit my intake to under 40gm a day - but I got the same results with under 50 gm a day. I eat twice a day and have two proper meals, not 'breakfast' type foods as they tend to be really carby.
I don't bother to count up fats or protein intake, as it never did any good before diagnosis so I can't see what might have changed it.
I do have a square of high cocoa chocolate from time to time, but not all that often as it is so high of the chocolate spectrum it does the job of a whole bar of high sugar content stuff.
 
I understand your feeling of overwhelm, I have come to realise in recent years that I am probably on the spectrum myself, although at almost 60 years old it doesn't seem worth pursuing a formal diagnosis.

The way I manage my diabetes is quite rigid but it works for me. Having a routine to follow helps.
I don't count fat or protein and I limit carbs to around 40g a day. I don't usually eat breakfast but have a large mug of coffee with cream. For lunch I have a low carb wrap or a home made low carb bread roll with meat or cheese and salad.
In the evenings I eat various things but no potatoes, rice or pasta.

Any pre packaged food I buy has less than about 10g carbs per 100g, so no cereal, crisps, cakes etc.

So what does that leave? Meat, fish, eggs, cheese, yogurt (full fat), most vegetables and some fruit. My partner makes a mean bolognese sauce and I have it with zero noodles (konjac) and it doesn't affect my levels at all. If you like stir fry you can use the zero noodles to make that as well.
İf you like curry you can use cauliflower rice or konjac rice instead of normal rice.

Unfortunately this alone isn't enough to fully control my diabetes as I don't seem to have much of my own insulin and I have to inject insulin as well. But for a lot of type 2s, along with some weight loss, it works well.

Good luck!
 
I'm autistic too (and probably ADHD too but I don't have a diagnosis yet) and totally understand how hard it is to change things. There have already been some good suggestions about food so I'm going to ask whether you are able to do a short walk everyday and make that part of your daily routine? It doesn't need to be long, just pick a time, I go in my lunch break, and decide how long you want to walk for it might be anything from 5 minutes to 30 minutes depending on your current fitness.

Have you looked at your local autistic support service? Ours is called CASS (community autism support service). They usually offer group or one to one support sessions for autistic people and you don't need a diagnosis to access support. You might need a referral from your GP or other health professional for the one to one sessions but that doesn't mean you need a diagnosis. If that isn't available and you can afford it, autism coaching might help you - they might be able to help you make changes gradually in a way that is easier for you to manage or they might be able to work with you to make a meal and exercise plan.
 
Thankyou very much for all your replies. This really is the nicest forum on the internet 🙂

I don't usually multi-quote as it looks a bit messy so I'll 'at' everyone (even though doing that probably seems more confusing than messy .. hah 🙂

@Leadinglights That's a great tip about looking at the food labels for around 15g of carbohydrates per 100g. That's exactly the sort of thing I'm looking for, although having a read of some of the food labels today I suspect it will make my shopping trips significantly longer 🙂

@Sally71 Thankyou for the suggestions 🙂.

@Drummer @Lisa65 I must admit I quite like the idea of just eating twice a day as that could potentially simplify things even further. My only hesitation in the short term would be figuring how this would work with all this new medication I've been given for the Angina. The doctor did suggest I take most of it in the morning and to try and eat something with the Asprin at least.

I take my metformin and empagliflozin in the morning as well, along with a multi-vitamin and minerals tablet (for all the good that does) so if I could find something particularly low in carbs, like the yoghurt maybe, then that could work.

At least my tablet-taking routine is fairly solid 🙂

@Natalie123 With the Angina diagnosis, at the moment, it's kind of turned my world upside down with regards to physical activity so even a short walk at the moment becomes a big problem. I've only really started the medication for it today so I'm hopeful that once it kicks in and starts working then I could potentially start to look at that again.

I've tried creating plans with people over the years and it doesn't really work because that mindset just kicks in again because it all starts to get complicated again.


As a more general question, let's say for the sake of argument I had three microwave meals in front of me for breakfast, lunch and dinner and the total number of carbs-per-100g came to, say, 40g then would that be basically the main thing to aim for ?.

Or even maybe as high as 50 ?

So I could kind of even mix and match as well - say 10g for breakfast, 10g for lunch and, say, 30g for dinner ?

Almost like a 'Tetris' approach ? 🙂

Or would a better 'rule' be to just try and minimise the carbs as much as possible and use 50g per day essentially as a 'line in the sand' that you shouldn't really step over if you can but once in a while wouldn't hurt ?
 
What number you aim for is entirely up to you, “low carb” usually means less than 130g of carb per day but some people find they are happy with much lower levels, say 40-50. You have to find a level that works for you and that you can sustain, some people find it difficult or even impossible to go too low. Any reduction from whatever you are eating now will be beneficial.
Whatever total you decide on though, certainly you can share it out between all meals. So if you decide that 50g per day is your limit, then breakfast 10, lunch 20 and dinner 20 is fine for example, as is breakfast 0, lunch 25 and dinner 25 etc. Or maybe you could just stick to a particular limit for each meal, it’s entirely up to you. You may have to experiment a bit to find out what works best for you.
 
@Jason592 I found that I was more resistant to insulin in the morning, so I have 10 gm of carbs, or thereabouts for breakfast. I might have scrambled eggs, add grated Leicester cheese when it is just about done, then I drop finely sliced tomato on top and cover it with a plate until I get settled to eat it, then just tip it onto the plate. The tomato gets just warmed through.
I do sometimes have a chop or steak first thing, cooking some stirfry separately and mushrooms with the meat. In hot weather a salad is nice. I have tuna or salmon or chicken with that, most times, but boiled eggs and cheese is good too
At no set time I have real coffee with cream to drink fairly often, or lemon tea.
Particularly with the Asprin, taking tablets with a meal could be a good idea to protect the stomach lining.
The meals you mention - if they had 40 gm of carbs per 100 gm, then the total per meal could be several times that if the weight is 300 or 400 gm. It is easy to stack up the carbs with prepared foods as carbs are the cheaper ingredient choice.
 
Just a couple of comments.
The empagliflozin is a medication where it is advised not to have too low a carb diet but somewhere around the 130g per day is usually OK for most people, the risk is from something called euglycemic ketoacidosis from too few carbs, Also metformin is better tolerated if taken with a substantial meal rather than a snack.
You can always look up the carb content of the food you are thinking of buying on the internet, the shop websites are a good source as they show all the nutritional information for all the products they sell. Look at the carbs per 100g but take the portion into consideration with things like microwave meals. 20g carbs per 100g would mean if it was a meal for 1 of 300g then the carbs would be 60g for that portion.
 
I'm aware of the maths behind the grams per hundred information.

The empagliflozin, combined with my poor management of the diabetes, has given me a semi-permanent case of Thrush (which I'm sure you wanted to know ..). I've had it for at least 4 or 5 years as the various treatments have no effect.
 
Jason592 said:
I've thought long and hard about posting this as I've been around the internet long enough to know that if certain things don't fit a preconceived notion of "normal" then they're labelled as 'trolling' but this certainly isn't the case here. And I know you were all very nice when I first posted back in 2021 so I'm going to give it a try.

Basically, I've struggled with managing my diabetes for years and certainly a lot further back than my first thread here about struggling on Ozempic. Whenever I've been to various medical appointments, including those with my diabetic nurse who doesn't like me, I've been quite transparent about the fact that I manage my diabetes horribly.

I don't do my finger pricks and I basically haven't changed the vast majority of my eating habits. I'll still eat chocolate, cakes, crisps and I've even had the odd trifle here and there. I'm obese (22 stone) and my lifestyle could be considered 'sedentary' because I don't exercise. this is probably the reason why I found out less than 48 hours ago that I now have Angina.

I also found out about 3 years ago that I'm very likely autistic as well and I was accepted onto a waiting list for a formal assessment and, hopefully, a formal diagnosis.

Over time, i think it's become clear to me that this is very likely the reason I'm struggling, mainly because the amount of change needed to manage this properly just overwhelms me and I basically shut down. This has caused a lot of friction between me and my diabetic nurse at my local GP as I keep trying to put in to words the kind of help I need and I apparently don't explain myself well enough as she always reverts to type with either "We don't do that" or "It doesn't work like that" and variations of that.

Whenever I get the usual mantra of "Well you need your 5 portions of fruit and veg per day" and "Try adding this pulse and that nut" and about 900 recipes for steamed mackrel, which I wouldn't eat, i just can't deal with it so I stick with familiarity and repetition, regardless of whether or not it's the 'right' thing to eat.

So what I'm kind of looking for, at least I think so, is something simplified to a point that I can make it work for me. As an example, about 10-15 years ago I lost 8 stone in a year for a bet, which I won. I read somewhere that, supposedly, if you read the food label and saw that the fat content of what you were buying was less than 15g per 100g then it was "proper" low fat food.

That "clicked" for me and absolutely worked. Whether or not it was accurate is/was irrelevant because it was the kind of thing I could laser my focus on and I stuck to it and my eating habits slowly fell in to line around that over the months to the point where I regularly had actual fruit in my trolley on some shops 🙂

So while I'm pretty sure there's nothing like that for diabetic food or low sugar food, it's a good example of what I'd like. Either that or literally saying "Well you can eat X for breakfast, Y for lunch and Z for dinner" and know that X, Y and Z are 'safe' diabetic-compatible foods of the 'open packet and eat' variety.

So if you've got this far then thankyou and I'm sorry .. lol 🙂. I completely understand if nobody has anything but I'd also ask, as politely and respectfully as I can, that if your instinct to reply is along the lines of "Well you should do it for your health" then please don't.
Click to expand...
I'm sorry that you've got so much going on - and I'd like to say that I admire your bravery in posting. You may want to check out relevant advice offered by the National Autistic Society: https://community.autism.org.uk/f/h...d-diabetes-are-you-autistic-and-have-diabetes
 
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