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Moved from Pre-diabetic to type 2

P

Peck1234

Newbie
Messages
2
Type of diabetes
Prediabetes
Treatment type
Other
Hello all,
I’m a male of 67 years.
I was diagnosed as pre diabetic 10 years ago and went on a NHS 10 week course to understand diabetes. I made changes to my diet and felt I had a good balance. I also exercise most weeks at the gym and play golf. I maybe very slightly over my bmi. I have just been told that I’m now in type2 range of blood sugar level, which surprised me as I felt I was doing all the right things. I haven’t spoken to the doctor yet (trouble getting an appointment). So has anyone got any advice regarding diet, I do eat carbs most day but not in every meal. For drinks, I mainly drink coffee, water I struggle with, so does anyone have any advice on an alternative to drink during the day.
Any other advice to help me with this transition.
 
Do you have a meter? Most of us doing low carb find it helps to measure our blood sugar before then 2 hours after meals. Using this I worked out how many carbs my body can cope with.
As for drinks maybe try fruit or herb teas, or citron presse with a little sweetener.
 
https://josekalsbeek.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-nutritional-thingy.html might help a little.... The information you got was quite likely massively out-dated, unless you were particularly lucky with the educators you encountered. As for drinks, I'm missing tea in there, is that correct? Maybe water is more tolerable with lemon juice in? Works for me, anyway. Sometimes I have watered down hot tomato juice or coconut milk (which is turned into chocolate milk with a teaspoon of cocoa whenever the mood strikes me), but those drinks do contain carbs, so need to be careful with those.

Take time to go over your grocerylist at home and check carbs in what you'd usually have, and whether there are low carb alternatives. otherwise you'll spend half a day at the shop and come home with nothing more than a head of lettuce.

Good luck!
Jo
 
If you had and followed the standard advice to "base all your meals around starchy carbs" this is not surprising. It's exactly what I did - and ended up diabetic. My first piece of advice to anyone is to forget what you think you know about "healthy eating".

By definition, anyone with a diabetic diagnosis has a problem dealing with carbohydrate: carbs are digested to glucose, and the body has a problem using it properly, so it winds up being stored as fat or just hangs around in the bloodstream. Unfortunately, high blood glucose levels over time do physical damage to nerves and capillaries, and this really should be avoided.

What worked (and works) for me was an extremely low carb way of eating. I aim for around 20g/day (the official line is still to eat in the region of 300g/day). Results in my signature block below. I'm in my fourth year of low carb and my third of remission, so I am finding it a sustainable option long-term.

I get by on coffee and zero-carb caffeinated drinks (beware - "zero sugar" does not always mean zero carb). Tea is fine, iced tea is good when it's warmer. My other half will drink Ribena "no added sugar" (I don't, because I don't like it) at about 1g carb per 250ml.

Best of luck. There is no one single method and there is (in my opinion) very few "must do's". You need to find what works for you.
 
In addition to my comment above, you might find this worth a read:

Substantial and Sustained Improvements in Blood Pressure, Weight and Lipid Profiles from a Carbohydrate Restricted Diet: An Observational Study of Insulin Resistant Patients in Primary Care - PMC

Hypertension is the second biggest known global risk factor for disease after poor diet; perhaps lifestyle interventions are underutilized? In a previous small pilot study, it was found that a low carbohydrate diet was associated with significant ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

and I'd recommend getting hold of a glucose meter and testing before and two hours after eating. This shows you how well your system handled (or didn't) the carbs in whatever you ate. You can use that information to limit or eliminate the things that give you most of the problem.
 
Thank you KennyA for providing that stunning piece of research! Made my day - some medical people are getting it at last.
 
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