Food

@bigbear1979 It is all confusing at first and takes a bit of time to get your head around it all. For the first couple of weeks after my diagnosis all I ate was tinned salmon and mayo wholemeal bread sandwiches. Then I learnt on this forum that wholemeal bread also isn't that good for diabetics, dohh!
A lot of the things we have been told was 'healthy' aren't for diabetics. You say you eat fruit and veg, but fruit contains sugars too, especially tropical fruits. And some veg like carrots and parsnips have higher sugar content.
Have a look through the threads and you will get an idea of what you should and shouldn't eat.

A lot of people on this forum find that a Low Carbohydrate High Fat approach to eating has worked in lowering our Blood Sugar levels. This is not the NHS advice. NHS doctors and nurses will generally give you the official NHS advice to eat carbohydrates with every meal, though in small amounts.

@bigbear1979 Wholemeal bread is carbs too, but more slow release than white bread. A lot of the people on here eat Burgen Soya & Linseed bread which has the lowest carbs of mass produced commercial bread. You can buy it in most supermarkets for £1.50. Also LIDL do a High Protein roll which has about 10g of carbs per 120g roll. They cost 29p and are nice toasted. I do eat a couple of wholemeal slices in a sandwich, but not more than a couple in a day.
I'm not a big fruit eater. I do eat apples which don't seem to affect me much. Berries are apparently ok, but bananas will have more carbs.
I don't think Weetabix would be good. Most cereals are mainly carbs.

bigbear1979 said:

Bloody hell I shocked wholemeal bread isn't good for me either I've knocked all sugary drinks and chocolate and bad stuff on the head I've been eating more berries bananas nuts weetbix I've lost 7lbs in around two weeks. I like most thing's so Need get my head round all this . thanks for the advice p.s I hope weetbix are ok ...

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@bigbear1979
Congratulations on the weight loss.
The concept of "good for you" gets totally twisted up when your ability to deal with one of the three macronutrients gets impaired.
My way of dealing with this is to analyse my food ito how much net carbohydrates it provides and test using a BG meter how much a given amount "spikes" my BG.
I find that berries & tree nuts are OK for me but wheatabix & bananas are a disaster! WRT bread I find that I can cope with Lidl hi protein rolls and Burgen soya & linseed bread. i can cope with a little medium oatmeal, but "Readybrek" or such, spike me.
I find that hunger falls away by avoiding "low fat" and going onto "full fat" "healthy fat" foods

What I found was that careful monitoring of the effects of foods on your BG builds up an essential framework on which you can build a good "way of eating". some enlightened HCPs will accept this as a reason for initial provision of strips, but if they don't then it can be benificial to self-fund them. ("Code Free" are cheap! )

Hi. Yes, current food labelling which hardly mentions Carbs but shows Sugar is rubbish (and the food lobby always hangs around to keep up the nonsense). So ignore labelling on the front of food packaging and look for the ingredients and % list on the back. Yes, sugar is just another carb and beware that some 'sugars' are not included as sugars or carbs e.g. fructose (aka HFCS) due to the way the industry plays games with words.

As a T2D, if you really want to gain control of your BG levels, you have to treat all Carbohydrates as the enemy.

The more you can remove from your diet, and quicker you do so, the more easily you can gain that control.

Once you have gained control (usually getting non-diabetic readings) you can maybe start to look at which carbs and how much you can eat, depending on the BG reactions.

It's tough to start with, but doing the "hard yards" first will make it easier in the longer term.

Now that I have good control over my BG I have been able to add back some Carbs into my diet.

bigbear1979 said:

I'm really good at eating healthy I like most thing's fruit/veg and I'm normally really good at diets this time its harder because I'm confused on what is good and what is not !! I know sweets cakes and junk food I didn't realise about carbs turning to sugar

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There's a good little book available on Amazon called Carbs & Cals the pocket size is £9.99 it lists the carb & calorie content of most foods it's brilliant, I would have been lost without this little gem

Hi Bigbear,
In a VERY simplistic view sugar as in the sweet stuff added to cakes, biscuits etc can be thought of as a simple carbohydrate. Complex carbohydrates are generally (on food packets) just listed as carbohydrate - but our bodies treat these as an energy source in the same way as simple carbohydrates, it raises our BG levels and excess is stored as fat in our bodies very easily.

So anything that contains carbohydrates can raise our BG levels, every individual has a level of carbs that they can eat with no raise in BG levels, using a meter and testing will allow you to find out your level.

IF you wanted to go down the low-carb healthy fats route then cutting back/out high carbohydrate foods will lower your BG levels.

High carb foods are bread, pasta, potatoes, crisp, breakfast cereals, rice, pastry, sauces, wraps, biscuits, …………..

You will get used to reading labels on packets and looking at the total carbs.

BUT there are some alternatives, some sound so ridiculous but they do actually work

mashed potatoes >> mashed cauliflower or mashed celeriac
chips >> celeriac (not quite same but OK)
rice >> cauliflower rice (blitz up raw florets and then fry)
noodles >> courgettes (use a julienne peeler or a spiraliser if you have one, or a sharp knife if you're good enough)
lasagne sheets >> aubergine or leeks (open up the leek leaves)
quiche >> make without crust or use bacon as the base or use almond flour 'pastry'
pizza >> low carb base with almond flour or make oopsie bread
bread >> oopsie bread, or almond or coconut flour breads lots of recipes for bread on low carb forum
breakfast cereal >> mmm limited - recipes for breakfast options on low carb forum

Its important to have full fat products (many low fat ones add extra sugar) the fat will keep you fuller for longer and many people find it levels out the BG rise.
Its all about the testing for a while, try a single weetabix and test how much it spikes you, you might be able to eat them. we are all different.

I've recently been making cauliflower mash ('fauxtato') - cooked frozen cauli whizzed with a stick blender - and cauliflower rice - cooked frozen cauli whizzed in a mini food processor - and seriously I don't notice the difference! And frozen cauli is inexpensive and easy to deal with, with no waste. Win win!

Since I got my Freestyle Libre and have got so trigger happy with it I have been noticing - for the first time in nearly 30 years - how did I not knoooooow?! - that my glucose spikes so dramatically after meals (perhaps that's why I was always told not to test within 2 hours of a meal) I've been using veggies in this way, and I've also been eating Zero Noodles and their close cousins Slim Noodles.

Am type 1 so can bolus insulin for carbs, but even so, I'm noticing huge differences with the lower carb approach. Have learned so much from everyone on this forum!

Spikes are now much less dramatic now I'm not eating so much carbohydrate. Previously I would be comfortable knowing that I was 5.7 before a meal and 6.4 a few hours later - but I had had no clue that I went up to double figures in between.

Gotta love that cauliflower!