3 month wait

Hi Sharonmac,
I felt in a similar position to which you find yourself now, when I was first diagnosed a few years ago.
You will find helpful advice, hints and tips in this active and informative forum, it helped me more than my medical practice!

I got different advice from my Diabetic nurse, Doctor, dietician, the Desmond course I attended and the pharmacist (who reviews my medication every 3 months) within the first 6 months of diagnosis.
I was very confused, ended up being very depressed.

I was taking 3 x 500mg metformin a day not long after being diagnosed. It has been now been reduced to 1 x 500mg a day, and my doctor is happy for me to carry on with low carb meals.

I like eggs, boiled, poached, scrambled, in an omelette with veg or for a treat pepperoni
I like ryebread with cream cheese, Marmite, strong mature cheese, sliced meat from roasts I have cooked.
Celery or a small apple with a nice peice of cheese, Natural yoghurts to which I add my own fruit, usually a few berries (strawberries help to lower cholesterol). A nice fresh salad, with some home made mayonaise.
I tend to use olive based butter/margarine in my cooking, and one of my favorite veggies is spinach cooked with a small amount of olive based margarine.
A handful of unsalted nuts are great as a snack, my favorites are brasil nuts.
A small amount of dark chocolate of over 75% cocoa beans every other day, fresh meats fish and vegatables, I do eat carrots
Look for foods with slow release (Complicated Carbohydrates)

I often have cooked myself a small rainbow trout with leeks and butter beans, and taken it to work the next day and warmed it in the microwave for my dinner.
I do not buy ready meals now because most are processed and these meals make my blood sugar's go quite high.

I hope I have given you some idea, there is no hard and fast rules about what to eat. It is all tial and error at first, some people with type 2 diabetes can tolerate foods that other type 2's cannot.

As for not having a blood sugar meter, see if you can win one from this site. :thumbup:

Marion :crazy:

Hi. Mazbee has given you some good food advice. As you may have spotted on the forum do keep bread, pasta, rice and so on small in quantity and go for low-GI (complex) versions when you do have them such as those based on mulit-grain flour. Almost all vegetables are OK including carrots although some have more carbs than others; they are all better than the white-flour based foods. Proteins are good and some fruit particularly berry-based types. I have fried egg and bacon for breakfast or home made muesli in small quantities and with lots of nuts and seeds added. Do read food packaging labels as it's horrifying how many packs and tins come loaded with sugar, honey, modified starch and so on.

Raw carrots are fine. They may have a high Glycemic Index (GI) figure, but you have to eat an awful lot of them to consume the 50grams of equivalent carbs used for the GI test. As a result, they have a low Glycemic Load (GL).

Cooking them increases their GI (and the GL goes up as well) as it makes those carbs more easily released when they get inside you. Best to steam them and aim for al dente (means "with a bite") or else lightly coat them in olive oil and oven roast them if you have to cook them. You do NOT need to add sugar to carrots when cooking them as they become naturally sweet as part of the cooking process.

http://carbs-information.com/glycemic-load.htm

"Glycemic Index" Based on 50 Grams of Useable Carbs

Glycemic Load is the application of the glycemic index to a standard serving of food. Remember, the glycemic index (GI) of a food is not based on commonly consumed portion-sizes of foods. Instead, GI is measured by giving volunteers a portion size sufficient to contain 50g of useable carbs. Therefore the portion size of each GI-tested food will vary according to how much carbohydrate it contains. For example, carrots contain only about 7 percent carbs, so the test-portion of carrots eaten by the test-volunteer will be huge - about 1.5 pounds. Serving sizes of foods (like bread) which contain a higher percentage of carbs, will be smaller.

Click to expand...

Channel 4 are looking for women with type 2 diabetes who would be interested in participating in a group study for the hit series The Food Hospital.

I’m currently working with award-winning, independent television production company betty on a Specialist Factual series for Channel 4 called “The Food Hospital” (working title).

This pioneering, prime-time series will explore the practice of dietetics and the possible health benefits of everyday foods in targeting a wide range of medical conditions and symptoms.

I’m sure you would agree that awareness of Diabetes type 2 and diet could be improved and hopefully this series could help that situation. We had nearly 2 million viewers on average last year and the series as a whole reached over 11 million people.

Patients attending ‘The Food Hospital’ will be advised by our team of medical professionals including a leading registered Dietitian, a GP and a Consultant. Using evidence-based, cutting-edge scientific research, the team will prescribe specific diets that could help the patients’ conditions or symptoms. The advice and treatment that the Food Hospital will offer is complementary and intended to be followed in conjunction with the patient’s existing medical regime. The Food Hospital medical team will endeavour to work collaboratively with the patient’s current medical advisors.

Within the science and medical community, The Food Hospital was received particularly well. The production team worked closely with a number of academics and institutions and as a result, many more academic institutions are keen to link with the series this year. This rigorous approach to the treatment and careful consideration of ethics will be followed again in series 2.

We are currently looking for 6 women with type-2 diabetes to undertake a specialist diet which may help to put their type-2 diabetes into remission. The diet has been trialled successfully.

Filming will start very soon at a special residential location between 17th- 20th August. We will film the first 4 days of their new diet with help from our medical team and Dietician. We will then follow their diet’s progress over the following 7 weeks.

Do get in touch if you have any more questions about this project. You can email me at Nausheen.Saiyed@betty.co.uk

hi Sharon,

You may have a BG meter now, however test strips are a costly problem. This could be of interest to you.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_nos ... s+codefree

Hope this helps, as the BG test meter is necessary for you to have and the strips are very expensive.

Good Luck.

Roy.