Dairy

Normal two hour post prandial reading is less than 8.5, so don't worry.

How many carbs in your portion of yogurt, and how many raspberries? What were you before you ate?

coleyd said:

About half a cup frozen raspberries mashed and carbs in yogurt was about 6 or something it's a 120g pot per 100g it's 5.3g Carb

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It is looking to me like you aren't counting your carbs and including this is a food diary. If you don't count your carbs when you are starting this journey, you are working blind I'm afraid.

How much is half a cup? How many raspberries were in the cup? How many carbs?

Mashed fruit is not a good idea - it releases all the sugars. This is why fruit juices, smoothies and such are not good choices. (similar to mashed potato being a lot worse than a new boiled one) I also find frozen raspberries worse than fresh ones. I never have more than 6 of them at one go. Cherry toms also have carbs, albeit not many, but they do need counting in your total carb count. Every little thing mounts up. Perhaps you could look for a yogurt that has less carbs and more fat, and count your raspberries.

Yoghurt and packages foods will have nutritional info on packet. You'lYou'll have to work out portion size.
Get the Carbs and Cals app or book which has a lot of info.
Use my fitness pal or similar sites to work out carbs.
Add them up.

Maybe too many raspberries and food overall. Maybe your fasting was7.0. Did you test it?

The book Carbs & Cals available from Amazon is brilliant. Many of us use it. I still do, even after 3 years. It has hundreds of colour photos of individual foods served up on a plate, with the weight, numbers of carbs, calories, fat, protein and fibre.

If you can't find a food in there (unlikely) you can look on the manufacturers/growers website and also on major supermarket websites as they list the nutritional values of all the products they sell. Tesco is a good one.

It is really important you learn the carb content of everything you put in your mouth, work out the portion you are eating, record it and count everything. Then record your before and after BS levels alongside and look out for patterns. Spikes don't necessarily mean you have to eliminate that food - it may only be necessary to reduce the portion size. If that doesn't work, then yes, eliminate it.

Was this yogurt meal your breakfast? If so, try it again later in the day. Many of us cannot tolerate any carbs in the mornings. I'm one of them. All I have is either a soft boiled egg or a coffee with double cream. This is because our insulin resistance does improve as the day progresses, so what isn't good for breakfast may well be OK for tea.

Have you a medical issue that stops you having eggs every day?

Don't worry. It is early days for you. This will all become second nature.

I don't keep strict food diaries, never have. The main reason is that i have always found that stress, sleep, exercise and tiredness all have just as much impact as actual carb intake, and if i had been recording all that, i would be writing all day!

But, i would encourage you to keep the fullest diary you can. It will help tremendously. Memory is sooooo fallible.

As for carb counting, it is really simple.
Take a food, any food, and look at the Nutritional Info (on packet or online). That will give you a carb content, in grams, for 100g of the food. Don't include fibre in your calculation.

For example, if the food has 6g carb in 100g of food:
Then you just have to work out how much you ate. So if the packet was 150g of food and you ate half of it, then you ate 6+3g of carbs divided by 2 which means you ate 4.5 g of carbs.

coleyd said:

My fasting was 7.2

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So just within range which is 4-7. 7.2 at the start count so you reading of 8.0 is only a 0.8 point rise. That's fine. I think if you cut down to just the organic Greek yoghurt and a few raspberries you will get an even better reading. No need to cut out dairy! Early days! Good luck!

You need to be aware

• everyone - including non diabetics - will have some sort of spike after eating (and would see if they ever tested!). It's "how food works"!
  
• no meter will be 100% accurate all the time, but they do have to work within a specified range of accuracy, so your rise from 7.5 to 8 is within this error range, and is pretty minimal and nothing to worry about anyway. When you get a large spike is the time to have a rethink about what you've eaten. But even then it would be worth testing with the same meal again.
• And I'd definitely agree: depending on how many you ate, the raspberries and little tomatoes could well have included more carbs and so have had impact on your levels than a little pot of (I hope full fat no added sugar?) yoghurt.

But in general with the figures you're quoting you should be doing OK.

Robbity

I think that the Lidl yoghurt I got was fewer carbs - I thought I'd try some, but prefer cream.
It can be difficult at first, but it won't be long before you become familiar with carb counts and how many portions there are in a pack.
One thing I used to do was have alternating shopping lists, so I'd not become bored with the same thing - one week I might have onions and mushrooms on the list, the next celery and tomatoes. It might seem odd when we are restricting ourselves anyway, but it really did work when I was doing Atkins for years on end. I even went up to three variations at one time.

I find its just too easy to be led astray by these Greek yogurts - they can be the 'low fat' or 'light' variety without you noticing when you pick them from the shelves dueing the weekly shop. When you read the information it seems they contain the same amount of carbs as the full fat variety - but they must be different because the ability to 'spike' seems higher with the low fat variety. Dunno why!

ExD said:

I find its just too easy to be led astray by these Greek yogurts - they can be the 'low fat' or 'light' variety without you noticing when you pick them from the shelves dueing the weekly shop. When you read the information it seems they contain the same amount of carbs as the full fat variety - but they must be different because the ability to 'spike' seems higher with the low fat variety. Dunno why!

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That's because fat slows down glucose absorption and flattens out the spike. You will still rise, but not as high, and your rise will take longer to reach a peak and longer to come down, a nice gentle curve rather than a big spike.

I mix a spoonful of double cream in with my Lidl full fat yoghurt. Tastes great and helps lower any spikes.