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Bond672

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Relationship to Diabetes
Type 2
I have been reading other's posts, some people have a unique ability to just change. To say yep, I got this. I'm not one of those.

I was diagnosed type 2 after some routine blood tests. Then more and more blood tests. So my blood is at 8? And my other reading is 89. Then it turns out I have high blood pressure, high cholesterol and some liver numbers are 3 times higher than normal.

Wow. I have a qrisk score of 35. So I'm pretty screwed. I have been a carb and sweets man my whole life. Now I have tried to change, less bread, less potatoes. More veg. Tried prunes for breakfast instead of cereal or toast. But it tastes awful. I have had the runs for 2 weeks as I change my food. It's driving me up the wall. I want to change. But it's just a massive struggle. Do more exercise. I'm always exhausted. Zero energy.

I'm on metformin. A statin and something for cholesterol. Pill after pill after pill. With no changes. Or so it feels. Now with Xmas too?

I can't say all this to my wife. I'm a bloke. We don't talk to people we love, we talk to strangers as a rant. That's what this is. Even this has been hard to write. I keep feeling, I'm going to drop any second. I don't sleep. So I'm more tired. Someone must have been in my shoes before and it got better. Is there? I want to change. I am trying but nothing seems to be showing. I want my energy levels back. That will do for a start.
Anyway. Rant over.
Simon.
 
Welcome to the forum @Bond672

Sorry to hear you’ve been having such a tough time :(

It can feel like a really big change, and the lack of a quick fix can feel frustrating - but it can actually be easier on the body to make small and sustainable changes gradually.

And it can take a while to find the more BG-friendly options that suit you. Don’t lose heart! It will take a while for your body to adjust, and your tastes to begin to change. You aren’t the only new member to have found it a difficult transition to make.

Keep going. Maybe another breakfast would suit you better? Something based on eggs? Or creamy Greek yoghurt, with some raspberries and a sprinkle of granola or mixed nuts/seeds for crunch?
 
Welcome to the forum, it is a good place to have a rant about the s..t that happens but by calming down and thinking things through you will start to feel better. Your blood glucose is high, the 89 you mention is your HbA1C result so you are well into the diabetic zone, the threshold is 47mmol/mol.
Metformin is usually the first medication prescribed as it can help the body use the insulin it produces more effectively so along with dietary changes will hopefully bring your blood glucose down which should start to make you feel better.
The statin will have been prescribed to help reduce your cholesterol but reducing your carbohydrate intake can also help with that.
Having a good idea what are high carb foods and what are not will allow you to have a varied diet. I'm afraid prunes are not a good choice as they are high carb. A good option for breakfast is Greek yoghurt and berries with a very small portion 15-20g of a low sugar granola or something like All Bran or eggs in any form with bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes and maybe a small slice of toast.
Basing meals on protein and healthy fats with vegetables, salads and small portions of any high carb foods.
This link may help you with some meal ideas, there are some do's and don'ts and some menu plans to suit various tastes and budgets. https://www.freshwell.co.uk/
 
Sorry to hear you are feeling so down about making some changes to your diet and managing your health better. I wonder if perhaps the information you have is not very helpful. Yes, diet wise it is about reducing carbs but eating prunes in not low carb. You would be better off with bacon and eggs and mushrooms which has pretty well no carbs rather than prunes. One prune contains about 5g carbs and I am guessing you had quite a few! 😱 If they were from a tin in fruit juice or syrup then that makes them an even worse choice possibly worse than toast or cereal! Not suggesting you have bacon and eggs every morning as bacon every day is not good for you, but eggs can be cooked in lots of ways. I particularly like an omelette because you can vary the fillings to make it interesting and there is no runny yolk that needs bread to soak it up and it doesn't need toast as a carrier.
Many of us have creamy Greek style natural yoghurt with mixed seeds or chopped nuts and a few berries. It doesn't sound very filling but it is. I also have cream in my morning coffee as that is lower carb than milk and the fat helps to make me feel fuller and it is a little luxury instead of the 2 sugars I used to have in my coffee. Having little luxuries like that stop you from feeling badly done to.
 
I looked at freshwell. Made my own salad dressing. Not much but it's a start.

So I can eat all bran? I will try that. Yoghurt and berries tends to get expensive, so I went back to toast and low sugar marmalade

Simon.
 
I appreciate your comments, I truly do. Been feeling so low. Try to put a brave face on for the wife and kids with it being Christmas but it's a struggle.

Just want some energy back then I can exercise more, feel more alive.
Simon.
 
Why would yoghurt and berries be expensive. I buy my Creamy Greek yoghurt from Lidl in a 1kg tub and it lasts me about 10 days and it is delicious and relatively cheap. Aldi also do a 1kg bucket of it, which is equally nice and economic and I buy frozen berries and just have a few each day during the winter but have fresh berries when they are in season and cheaper in the summer or pick my own from the garden.
 
Bond672 said:
I looked at freshwell. Made my own salad dressing. Not much but it's a start.

So I can eat all bran? I will try that. Yoghurt and berries tends to get expensive, so I went back to toast and low sugar marmalade

Simon.
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If you don't want to bother making your own salad dressing the normal mayonnaise is OK.
The Freshwell site has a budget meal plan. The advantage of that approach is that is uses real food so can fit with family meals with maybe a few substitutions for potatoes, rice and pasta.
Perhaps you can get your wife on board by looking at some of the recipes for low carb meals.
It is easy to think up reasons why you can't do something but diabetes is a serious condition and needs changes if you are not going to get the unpleasant consequences of uncontrolled blood glucose levels.
It brought it home to me when my other half was recently in hospital the other 3 people in the ward were there because of diabetic complications. You don't want that to happen to you.
People here are willing to help with ideas and suggestions to find a way forward.
 
Bond672 said:
I know, I appreciate the support. I'm a neanderthal bloke, terrified of change. I know I need to change. I have started, I just don't feel any tangible results yet and it's frustrating.
Simon.
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Don't be too impatient, it will take time and it is better for your eyes and nerves to bring blood glucose down gradually.
Especially if you have previously had a very high carb diet then it can be a good idea to reduce you carb intake by a thirs for a couple of weeks, then another third etc. The suggested amount of carbs is no more than 130g not just sugar per day.
Keeping a food diary of everything you eat and drink with an estimate of the carbs then you can see how far you are from that.
 
Bond672 said:
Just want some energy back then I can exercise more, feel more alive.
Simon.
Click to expand...

High glucose levels can make you feel really lethargic, and mess with your mood too. Hopefully as you find some BG-friendly choices that suit you, and your levels continue to gently fall, you should find that your energy levels improve.
 
Just another word of support for you @Bond672
I also had /have a pretty full whack of pills and jabs looking to address cholesterol, thyroid (and insulin) and the old liver has been throwing out some pretty nuts numbers too. It certainly doesn't help with multiple conditions and symptoms as the doctors don't know which to go to first...

But two things I want to say.
1) it will settle and get easier. Please do keep plugging away. It will take a bit of time
2) the one constant from my situation anyway is that the doctors are all 100% of one voice that blood sugar is the thing to focus on. If you can concentrate on that (and if my weird old body is any indicator) then the other elements will become easier too
Good luck with it all and rant away whenever you want to
 
Same as the others, getting your BG sorted will take time but you will get there if you plug away. Lots of us have and there is no reason why you shouldn't.

You could do worse that writing down all the things you eat and looking for the carb big hitters. Notorious things are anything containing lots of flour (shop bought pies and pizzas and bread), potatoes, cakes, sweets and snacks. Then look for ways and means of reducing the intake of them. I went from drinking cappuccino to tea and no cake on a visit to a cafe, halved the amount of potato on a plate, more sauce and less pasta when going Italian, veg bhaji with a curry rather than naan bread, home made granola rather than prepared granola for breakfast etc, etc. Did not actually change my "diet" much, just shuffled stuff around to cut down on my carbohydrate intake. Early days I estimated the carbs in meals but soon dropped that.

Just plug away!
 
Thanks. Thankyou for taking the time to write replies. It's good to know I'm not alone and there is hope.

Simon.
 
You can do this
 
It's tough. No one believes I have type 2 diabetes either, it's frustrating. "You don't look like you have diabetes", "How can you have diabetes?"... The diagnosis was a real kick in the teeth to be fair. I'm not overweight, never been big on junk food, I'm pretty active (less so now though), never really drank, and never touched drugs. Pretty boring.

I was diagnosed in January. Getting the initial diagnosis was absolute torture. If you're under 40 and look "fit" you're just a hypochondriac looking for attention. I was drinking gallons of water all day and night, constantly going to the toilet, every workout session was an absolute disaster and progressively getting worse. I was so incredibly lethargic all of the time I was losing steam far too quickly. One of my ankles would swell up quite a fair bit randomly too. I knew something was wrong and I had to get quite forceful with the surgery in the end to take it seriously... Well, as serious as a 60 second phone call with a GP counts. At least it got the ball rolling.

Eventually, I got my first HbA1C and it was about the same as yours, 91 or something ridiculous. My diet was heavy in carbs from cereal, potatoes, sweet potatoes, bread, and pasta. I was eating even more of it at that point too to bulk up. I was making it so much worse and washing it all down with apple juice was the icing on the cake.

When I saw the specialist I was encouraged to try and put weight on. Additional tests were done to confirm it was type 2 and not type 1. My second HbA1C was around 40 something and I'm due my third test soon. I did end up putting some weight back on but nothing like as quickly as I lost it.

I was on gliclizide initially and it seemed to work ok. Once it ran out, they couldn't wait to get me on Metformin, which just made me ill and tired. I ended up refusing to take it as a result. Getting them to swap me back to gliclazide was an absolute ordeal of course and I got attitude because I wouldn't take metformin.

The low-carb, high-fat diet does seem to work quite well for me for keeping my levels down. I switched to it asap. Eggs and bacon first meal, soups, dairy, vegetables, (not potatoes), lots of chicken, fish and other meats are also good. It's fairly basic I know and tea with no sugar takes a bit of getting used to as well. Honey isn't a replacement for sugar. I don't know why that's recommended for diabetics.

I avoid anything with too many carbs in it (I still have them in some things, just not in the quantities as I was before). Avoiding sugar alone wasn't enough. Standard greek yogurts (not the vile low-fat variety) are ok and mixed nuts for snacking too are ok, cashews are a bit higher in carbs than mixed but should be fine. Never been a big salad eater, most people tend to blunt salads anyway by smothering them in salad cream and the like.

Recently my mmo/l levels have started being wild but I think that's mainly down to me being less active at the moment and my inability to sleep all that well (this will spike your results too). I've suffered from my inability to sleep for over a decade now. It's particularly bad at this time of year.

I take the gliclazide occasionally to help bring down the levels but sometimes they work and other times they don't, it's only 80mg though and I only take the one. The readings from the monitors aren't constant and bounce around quite wildly. I have several brands of monitors and they'll vary from 8 to 18mmo/l at the same time on the same finger. I'd recommend not relying on one brand of meter as a result so you don't end up getting stressed over bogus readings like I did.

Reducing your carb intake is a good first step I think and then you can start looking at changing your diet in the future to suit your needs. It's miserable right now for sure, it's a big change but it does get easier. You'll have off days, possibly even a week or two. It's like that with anything like this. It just takes time.
 
It is hard at first, but like anything new you will get used to a modified diet over time and it does get easier over as you learn off by heart what carbs are in what foods and what you can tolerate. A blood sugar meter is vital and becomes your new best friend, which I might add you can step away from and not use so much after a good few months as you learn to second guess your readings. The new diet is annoying, especially when out and at lunch times where the western quick foods are geared towards a high carb quick fix, i.e. the pasty, sausage roll, portion of chips, the sandwich etc. With tweaks there are bonuses as you can still have many of your favourites with slight modifications, i.e. a curry or Chinese for instance, use cauliflower rice instead of rice, full fried breakfast is fine without the toast or fried bread, I use a substitute bread which has a couple of carbs a slice. I also used a low carb roll to substitute any meal which has potatoes, so a roast dinner is little different from what everybody else has. Your stomach will get used to the new regime and shrink with smaller portions so you wont feel hungry, your energy levels will increase once blood sugars are under control, mine did dramatically, especially if you loose a little weight, if appropriate. In my case the biggest help was finding the bread substitute, its been a godsend, meaning I can still have a sandwich, cheese in toast and a good 'filler' instead of potatoes. The low carb wraps (5g) are great also, so can use with currys,or other meals. Breakfasts for me are an important start to the day now and if you like avocados, (with toast), can be amazingly filling meaning I don't feel hungry and skip lunch. The kvarg protein yoghurt things are good, all varieties of egg meals, i.e. omelets, scrambled on toast with ham, full fried, poached etc. Some low carb fruit, strawberries, raspberries, small amounts of mellon are possible. Unless your very lucky all cereals will be a no no, oats can be a possibility though. So in a nutshell your training your body to live off proteins, fats and fibre, not the carbs, I eat tons more cheese than normal, have cream in coffee etc. Contrary to popular belief my cholesterol numbers have gone down, as the body is forced to use these fats for energy, where as in the past it skipped them and went for the easy low hanging fruit - the carbs! Don't despair, you can do it! and.......if good at it you will be able to ditch the meds! I don't take any, except lowest dose of ramapril for blood pressure.
 
Wow that's amazing. Thankyou so much for taking the time to write your reply. It's a marathon I guess, not a sprint.
 
Bond672 said:
Thanks. Thankyou for taking the time to write replies. It's good to know I'm not alone and there is hope.

Simon.
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You’re certainly not alone. And you’re welcomed and encouraged to use this forum to rant or ask questions as you need. We all do that here and it’s a place of great support that extends beyond just diabetes.
 
Gromit said:
I was diagnosed in January. Getting the initial diagnosis was absolute torture. If you're under 40 and look "fit" you're just a hypochondriac looking for attention.
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I’ve copied your reply, and the replies it received, into your own thread @Gromit so that others can share their experiences of getting their diabetes reclassified.
 
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