Another newbie

I am currently waiting for an appointment to see my GP but everything points to Type 2 diabetes. For quite some time I've needed to get up during the night to go to the loo once or twice, but in the last 2 weeks it's escalated to every hour so I started to do a bit of research.
My diet has never been the best - I have a sweet tooth, quite a few food allergies, and my mother was an anorexic so I've been terrified of dieting. Normally I exercise fairly regularly - I have a dog so walk a few miles most days, but recently had an injury which meant 2 months of doing nothing. Oh and my cholesterol is very high but I was given the chance to reduce it with diet, but not given any help about how so just tried to eat low fat stuff which is probably why my sugars escalated.
Ideally I'd like to address this with diet and exercise - I've been reading the forum and would really like to try the low carb diet but just wondered if I should go for it cold turkey or change gradually as my body is currently used to the bad stuff.

I think the gradual approach will probably work best for me. I've not slept because of the constant loo visits so feel a bit tired / light-headed and I'm worried that a sudden change might make things worse.

Well I started with the gradual approach yesterday, mainly because we have quite a lot of carb-y stuff in the house (breakfast cereals, etc.) that I don't want to throw out, but I've drastically reduced the portions and I'm focusing on low carb.
Even after such a short period I noticed two things - I went to the loo less during the night (although kept waking out of habit ) and I had a couple of small cramps in my feet / legs so think I need to up the salt intake a bit.