• Guest - w'd love to know what you think about the forum! Take the 2025 Survey »

Type 2 Diet advice

cinders4819

Member
Messages
10
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Insulin
I would like some help with the diet side of things,

What are the best foods to eat, and what is best to avoid please
 
Hi cinders, the best way to find what are the best foods to eat is to test before and two hours after your first bite.
I aim for raising my BG no more than 2 points per meal and never to go above 7.8.
I found carbs were what raised my BG too high, even the low GI carbs such as wholemeal bread.
So test and record to see what foods are good for you.

But a day of low carb for me would be an omelette for breakfast, salad for lunch, and then a chicken curry for dinner, with green vegetables instead of rice. For snacks I have nuts, unsweetened soya yoghurt, 90% chocolate.

I was lucky enough to be spotted at a prediabetic level, but I was very, very strict with my diet.
But although my BG's and hba1c is 'normal' now, I am not cured my fastings can still be in the prediabetic range if I have say half a garlic naan as a treat!
 
Hello

There is no real hard and fast answer to this as what may agree with your body and BG management may differ greatly from the next person.

However, most will agree on the following guidelines:

-Limit refined carbs, if eating them at all
-Avoid foodstuffs which contain lots of simple sugars (fizzy drinks, fruit juice, sweets, etc)
-Try to eat carbohydrates with a low GI
-Choose brown/wholemeal over white where possible
-Avoid ALL "diabetic" labeled produce (it's a marketing gimmick in most cases)

A sensible diet combined with exercise will really help you on your way to good BG control.

If you haven't already, it's advisable to purchase a BG meter to test glucose levels before and after meals. This can give you an indication as to how your body reacts to different foods and help you understand which ones have the least impact and which ones are best to avoid.

If she hasn't already, @daisy1 can provide you with some introductory advise that you will find of benefit.

Good luck
Grant
 
The funny thing about the word "Best" is that it's entirely subjective. One person's "Best" foods to eat may be on another person's list of foods to avoid. Now, there are certainly foods that don't offer much nutritional value and are probably best to avoid or consume in moderation, but that list is pretty obvious: candy/sweets, sodas, etc.

The good thing about diets is that there are plenty to choose from. The bad thing about diets is that there are plenty to choose from. That creates a situation where it's impossible to know what may or may not work for you, specifically. It generally works best to start by sharing what your current diet looks like, what you like about it, what you don't, and then tell us a bit about your health goals. No one wants to waste their time recommending a diet plan for you that's rich in meat only to find out that you're a vegetarian.

To make it easy, here are a few questions:
What prompted you to ask this question?
Do you have specific health goals you are looking to accomplish? If so when?
Can you tell us about your current diet? What do you like/dislike about it?
Do you have certain health/religious/lifestyle restrictions that might limit the foods you eat?
Have you tried certain diets/approaches in the past? Did they work? If not, what do you think happened?
 
Reactions: JTL
@cinders4819

Hello and welcome to the forum Here is the information we give to new members and I hope this will help you with your diet choices. Ask more questions when you need to and someone will be able to give you some help.


BASIC INFORMATION FOR NEW MEMBERS

Diabetes is the general term to describe people who have blood that is sweeter than normal. A number of different types of diabetes exist.

A diagnosis of diabetes tends to be a big shock for most of us. It’s far from the end of the world though and on this forum you'll find well over 210,000 people who are demonstrating this.

On the forum we have found that with the number of new people being diagnosed with diabetes each day, sometimes the NHS is not being able to give all the advice it would perhaps like to deliver - particularly with regards to people with type 2 diabetes.

The role of carbohydrate

Carbohydrates are a factor in diabetes because they ultimately break down into sugar (glucose) within our blood. We then need enough insulin to either convert the blood sugar into energy for our body, or to store the blood sugar as body fat.

If the amount of carbohydrate we take in is more than our body’s own (or injected) insulin can cope with, then our blood sugar will rise.

The bad news

Research indicates that raised blood sugar levels over a period of years can lead to organ damage, commonly referred to as diabetic complications.

The good news

People on the forum here have shown that there is plenty of opportunity to keep blood sugar levels from going too high. It’s a daily task but it’s within our reach and it’s well worth the effort.

Controlling your carbs

The info below is primarily aimed at people with type 2 diabetes, however, it may also be of benefit for other types of diabetes as well.

There are two approaches to controlling your carbs:

  • Reduce your carbohydrate intake
  • Choose ‘better’ carbohydrates
Reduce your carbohydrates

A large number of people on this forum have chosen to reduce the amount of carbohydrates they eat as they have found this to be an effective way of improving (lowering) their blood sugar levels.

The carbohydrates which tend to have the most pronounced effect on blood sugar levels tend to be starchy carbohydrates such as rice, pasta, bread, potatoes and similar root vegetables, flour based products (pastry, cakes, biscuits, battered food etc) and certain fruits.

Choosing better carbohydrates

The low glycaemic index diet is often favoured by healthcare professionals but some people with diabetes find that low GI does not help their blood sugar enough and may wish to cut out these foods altogether.

Read more on carbohydrates and diabetes.

Over 145,000 people have taken part in the Low Carb Program - a free 10 week structured education course that is helping people lose weight and reduce medication dependency by explaining the science behind carbs, insulin and GI.

Eating what works for you

Different people respond differently to different types of food. What works for one person may not work so well for another. The best way to see which foods are working for you is to test your blood sugar with a glucose meter.

To be able to see what effect a particular type of food or meal has on your blood sugar is to do a test before the meal and then test after the meal. A test 2 hours after the meal gives a good idea of how your body has reacted to the meal.

The blood sugar ranges recommended by NICE are as follows:

Blood glucose ranges for type 2 diabetes
  • Before meals: 4 to 7 mmol/l
  • 2 hours after meals: under 8.5 mmol/l
Blood glucose ranges for type 1 diabetes (adults)
  • Before meals: 4 to 7 mmol/l
  • 2 hours after meals: under 9 mmol/l
Blood glucose ranges for type 1 diabetes (children)
  • Before meals: 4 to 8 mmol/l
  • 2 hours after meals: under 10 mmol/l
However, those that are able to, may wish to keep blood sugar levels below the NICE after meal targets.

Access to blood glucose test strips

The NICE guidelines suggest that people newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes should be offered:

  • structured education to every person and/or their carer at and around the time of diagnosis, with annual reinforcement and review
  • self-monitoring of plasma glucose to a person newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes only as an integral part of his or her self-management education

Therefore both structured education and self-monitoring of blood glucose should be offered to people with type 2 diabetes. Read more on getting access to blood glucose testing supplies.

You may also be interested to read questions to ask at a diabetic clinic.

Note: This post has been edited from Sue/Ken's post to include up to date information.
 
Hi there,
I have been told that rice and pasta is better but reading here it is not. Some of the foods that are lower in carbs i was told to avoid so im getting mixed feedback regarding this question.

Basically i want to loose some weight, im not big eater but cant seem to shift it. i have yoyo'd for years around the same weight. having big health issues im trying to get healthy food into me. Which is hard because if i dont feel hungry i tend not to eat. have a stoma bag so nuts and seeds dont agree with me. i dont eat much bread, maybe once or twice a month, but i do eat a lot of pasta and rice. I avoid potatoes like the plague but that is because of my stoma.

My partner is worried that im going to cut out the carbs all together and make myself worse, so just looking for advice really. i
 
To lose weight, you'll need to reduce calories. This may also improve your blood glucose numbers in the long run - but I wouldn't hold your breath on that. I'm down more than 70 lbs, and have only a modest increase in my tolerance for carbs (about 25% increase - to 25 carbs in a 2 hour period).

To make a quick dent in your blood glucose numbers, many of us find severely restricting carbs the most effective. That means cutting out nearly all starchy (potatoes, bread, rice, cake, cookies) or sweet (sweet fruits, sugar, candy, cake, cookies) carbs.

As suggested earlier, everyone is different. You'll need to find out for yourself what works. I tested every new food item for a while - before the first bite, at 1 hours, at 2 hours, and occasionally (if hour 2 was higher than hour 1) at 3 hours. Anything that elevated my blood glucose above 7.7 got the boot (or got the serving size slashed). I eventually built up foods and meals I could count on being safe. I started with the assumption (based on a few initial readings) that around 20 carbs was ok. That turned out to be pretty close for me - as long as I waited until the blood glucose returned to normal to eat my next meal.

After two (incomplete) stints on the blood sugar diet, my carb tolerance has increased so I can now eat 25 carbs of all but very quickly digestible carbs (melon, being the most recent offender) and stay within my limits.
 
cinders4819 said:
I would like some help with the diet side of things,

What are the best foods to eat, and what is best to avoid please
Click to expand...
Hi

What works for me is following a low carb high fat diet. A good site to try is www.diet doctor.com You will find lots of good information on what to eat with lots of recipes. I also use www.thebloodsugardiet.com site which also has loads of recipes.

I hope this helps.

Cheers mallins
 
Reactions: JTL
cinders4819 said:
I would like some help with the diet side of things,

What are the best foods to eat, and what is best to avoid please
Click to expand...
Hi cinders..i been on low carb for 6 months and have lost one and half stone..slowly in order to keep it off..blood sugars have come down and feel much better in myself
 
It's very confusing at first and seems impossible!
I like spuds rice and pasta but they spike me. Discovered though that if I cook these things then leave them in the fridge for twenty four hours and recook them it's a different story. It changes the carb value but I can't remember the name of it just now. Worth a try though. I'm enjoying fried mashed potatoes a couple of times a week with eggs veg bacon cheese fish whatever takes my fancy. I recook rice and pasta too and it doesn't spike me.
Through all the confusion and outright bad advice from the NHS I reluctantly decided to listen to what I suspected were lunatics on this site and go for the high far low carb lifestyle. I lost weight felt better got my bad cholesterol down good cholesterol up blood pressure down and glucose levels much more manageable. I'm now at the point where I've as good as reversed my diabetes. Not cured it. If I stray to far from the low carb high fat I get bad readings and feel pretty grim. But I can now tolerate more carbs. Been reintroducing them bit by bit. The high fat I have is mostly dairy and vegetable. Full fat products only in yoghurt's etc. No semi skimmed no fat low fart stuff. Plain full yoghurt which I flavour myself. I manage to have a table spoonful of virgin coconut oil a day at least. Has to have virgin on the label. Pure coconut oil isn't healthy unless it has virgin on it. I don't eat much bread but when I do I put it on butter. You heard that right. Full cream as often as possible. Full cream milk in cuppas. Sometimes I have for breakfast what is called a bullet proof coffee and nothing else. The mental energy boost almost puts it in the illegal drug bracket and if that's my breakfast I'm buzzing for at least six hours without any thought or desire of food. I'm a tea junkie so don't drink much coffee but when I do it's good old fashioned Nescaffe original instant. A spoon full of butter dropped in and a spoon full of coconut oil and then reheated in the microwave cos the butter drops the temp to much for me. Whizzed to make it frothy.
Sounds crazy .... I know but the proofs in the pudding. I didn't say pudding really no I didn't say pudding.
Here's where I was directed to from the resident lunatics on here who may well have saved my life. https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb
 
thanks, i love my pasta so will give that a try. will try your other suggestions too. will keep you updated x
 
Read the post from daisy1, it is the best place to start. There is a link at the bottom of it for the low carb program.
 
cinders4819 said:
thanks, i love my pasta so will give that a try. will try your other suggestions too. will keep you updated x
Click to expand...
Get a meter and start testing your blood sugars too if you aren't already that's the only way you can see the effect that different foods have on your blood sugar levels. Most important piece of kit we have,
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Menu
Log in
Register
Cookies are required to use this site. You must accept them to continue using the site. Learn More.…