My lifestyle before diagnoses (one week before xmas) was pretty awful. I got up, dressed, showered, 4 weetabix for breakfast with 2 deserts spoons of sugar (or 4 slices of white bread toast). Drive to work (75 mins) sit at my desk and rarely move from it except to get cups of tea or hot chocolate. Lunch time would be a cheese and ham baguette and a couple of chocolate bars then sat at my desk until I would leave work at about 7pm or 8pm. Then drive home (60 mins) and have dinner: huge plate of chips with some meat, and a large portion of something sweet. My drink with my dinner would be a pint of milk or a pint of coke/orangeade... Then it was either off to the sofa or sit on the computer and either play world of warcraft or work on my latest project. Then off to bed and start all over again. A lifestyle that I expect many recognise unfortunately.
When I was diagnosed, which wasn't unexpected as I had issues getting to work without wetting myself (I needed to go for a wee every 50 mins), I was still left in shock. I saw the doctor a week earlier when he did a finger prick test and I came out at 24mmol/L which meant nothing to me at the time and tested for ketones (there weren't any). He asked me to do a fasting blood glucose and HbA1c blood test with the nurse and gave me a prescription for 2x500mg metformin if the results of diabeties comes out positive and a load of literature from diabetes.org/nhs and for getting myself on courses etc. So I had all this information and just sat in limbo for week until the 18th December when I rang the surgery and got told yes my result indicated I was diabetic. So straight round, got the tablets, and decided "right time for a lifestyle change". The first thing though was to understand what I had and not just in layman's terms. So I got my daughter's biomedical science texts (degree) and read these cover to cover in the areas around the function of the liver and pancreas. I also researched metformin to understand what it was doing to help my body cope. I ordered a static stand for my bike which my wife wrapped up as a xmas pressie and up until xmas I started to cut down my portion sizes. So breakfast went from 4 weetabix with sugar to 2 weetabix no sugar through stages (still not had toast since the day of diagnosis). No chocolate bars or cakes, and my meal sizes were reduced. I added the only real veggies I like to my diet (raw carrots) and I scoff them even today. I also research nuts and found that hazelnuts were full of monunsaturated fats and arginine which stimulates the pancreas to produce more insulin and started adding these to my diet.
So not a huge change up to this point. After xmas I found that I wasnt fit enough to actually get on my bike and cycle for even 5 mins. Now that was more of a shock than the diagnosis. So I had to start gently using Wii fit plus (where I recorded my weight changes originally). I would start with managing about 10 mins of exercise at most. Within weeks I was doing 20 to 30 mins of jogging around the room before breakfast. My diet I also changed. I went thought the OMG carbs moment and my lunch went to a handful of chicken, 6 carrot sticks, 4 raspberries, 6 blueberries, 12 hazelnuts! I had this every day for the month of January and I cut my breakfast down to just one weetabix. The evening meals was a small portion of chicken casserole, shepherd's pie, etc (normal food) with more carrot sticks
Ok got to walk the dogs. Will continue in the next post when I get back