DavidGriffiths said:
Wow! Thank you, thank you, thank you.
D.
Not just me I learnt from the masters and mistresses of the forum so you should be thanking them. I just have a big mouth.
So here's the advanced class.
The UK healthy diet recommends we eat around 250g of carbs a day which for the average person means they are recommended to eat roughly 50% of their diet as carbs. A sub clause of this "rule" is we should try and make around a third of our intake "starchy carbs" (rice, bread, pasta, cereals, potatoes). Now what actually happens is most people end up eating more than that 50% guideline anyway.
Now as we've all been telling you it's carbs that cause high blood levels. So it would seem an obvious thing to do to recommend a diabetic reduce their carbs as otherwise its rather like telling an alcoholic to drink vodka. Unfortunately in the UK it turns out they decide the best way to deal with the issue is not to recommend less carbs but to recommend more drugs. So the normal T2D experience is get diagnosed, get put on Metformin and told to eat the 50% healthy diet. 3 months later a new HbA1c is shown to be doing sweet fa so onto stronger drugs for you my laddie. A while later those drugs which work by turbo charging your already overworked pancreas are either seen to be failing to cope with the 50% diet or they hasten the demise of your pancreas. You then need more drugs to REALLY turbo charge your pancreas and in the end the poor thing just gives up the ghost and its all YOUR fault you now need insulin.
Now insulin should work really well as you should be able to "cover" the 50% carbs. Trouble is as any T1will tell you insulin will make you fat if you haven't learn't to control your diet. So a lot of T2's end up through no fault of their own putting more and more weight on by following the 50% rule but on insulin instead and yes I would guess some of them use insulin as an excuse not to adopt a healthier diet. So what happens next? Well if you believe the Danes then if they were 5 year since diagnosis 55 year old T2's half of them will be dead within by the time they are 68 and of the survivors a load are blind and others have had various bits chopped off.
There has to be a better way!
The better way is of course CUT YOUR CARBS.
If you reread mine or Grazers welcoming stuff we both end up saying roughly the same thing. He says reduce to around 130g / day and I say "halve" so half of 250 is 125g / day or much the same. That 130g / day figure amounts to a 26% carb diet and is what the Americans now recommend. The honest truth is a bit harsher. Many of us (but not all) find that 130g / day figure is still too high
IF you don't want to take stronger drugs than good safe Metfomin. Most diet only T2's find their "sweetspot" as borofergie puts it somewhere between 50 and 100g per day. My max is around 80g / day but I average about 60g / day. If you are worried if that is safe then again the answer is most forum members think its fine and will give you very detailed responses why that is the case if you ask that question.
Anyway its at this safe grams per day figure where your meter and other techniques such as GI / GL come in handy. Your meter should be your final judge and jury. Once you have got to a point where you've stabilised your levels then eat a meal, test two hours later, over 8 its a bad meal, under 8 its a good one simple as that. You will find if you read up about GI and GL you can manipulate what you eat using the GI / GL principles to maximise your chance of getting under 8 or you can just reduce the grams of carbs some more the next time you try. Its the 8 that's important.
Now put that into context of those values I gave earlier.
100g of ice is 75g of carbs so just 100g or 4oz of rice exceeds my normal TOTAL daily carb allowance. Just 25g the most I can tolerate in anyone meal (when I test two hours later) is a whole quarter of my total daily allowance.
What is really interesting is in the early weeks I clung onto that 25g of rice and pasta like an addiction. Then one day the addiction just went and I realised if I don't waste a quarter of my daily allowance on a pittance of rice I can eat some other really nice things instead!
