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

New diagnosis

M

Michelle135

Newbie
Messages
3
Hi everyone, hope you are all doing ok. So
I was basically told I had mild diabetes and then an appt would be made with the nurse but over a week on I haven’t heard anything. This is all very new to me and I am reading so much on google due to my lack of knowledge and some of it contradictory. My main query is around what I should be eating - today for breakfast I had 2 x wholemeal toast, didn’t eat lunch then for dinner had a small baked potato with tuna and salad, then a satsuma. I was hungry around 8pm so had 1 weetabix. I check my levels as I ordered a kit of Amazon 2 hours after the weetabix and and another satsuma and it was reading 10.1 - this seems very high ? I am just a little at loss I don’t know what I should be eating and i didn’t think what I had was particularly unhealthy ? Perhaps I have a lot to learn. Any advice would be appreciated thank you.
 
I'm type 1 so it's a bit different as t2 don't need insulin, the idea is to be aware of how many carbs are you eating and how do they affect your blood glucose, also consider physical activities into the equation. You can read about glycemic index on the internet.
Eat, test and be aware of how much carbs did you eat. In some time you'll know how much you can take and when... I use a kitchen scale to weigh carb rich food before meals.
 
Welcome to the forum. This link has some good basic information for you to start with: https://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/threads/basic-information-for-newly-diagnosed-diabetics.26870/
 
If you are a type two diabetic then the carbohydrate in the food will end up as glucose in your blood.
Bread, breakfast cereals potatoes and fruit are all high in starch or sugar, so many type twos would see the same reading or even higher if they ate those foods.
 
Hello and welome,

Ordering the meter was a great first step. Yes when first diagnosed there seems to be a lot of contradictory advice. @lucylocket61 has given you a great link to start off with.

Your level at 10.1 is higher than recommended, however, the food you are describing has a lot of carbs so it looks like a lot of room to lower your carb levels. Basically people with type 2 diabetes have an intolerance to carbs. The level of carbs that anyone can eat is very much individual. I'm not sure whether your doctor has ruled out type 1 diabetes but if you have difficulty with high blood sugar levels after reducing your carb intake that may be worth exploring.

So my suggestion (after you read the link) is to spend some time calculating your carb intake. The strategy I used- which is more dramatic than you might want was to basically cut all carbs- now I suspect most people don't cut down carbs as much as I did. So you don't need to worry. A lot of people can control their levels with more carbs than I eat. I am just an all or nothing person and find it mentally easier not to have to worry about weighing foods or calculating the amount of carbs in my food.

There is a lot of food that contains little to no carbs and there is even more that you can eat if you aim for say less than 100 grams of carbs a day.

This forum is a great site and a wonderful resource particularly when fist diagnosed. You have already taken the first step- getting a meter.

Please ask questions, post if you can support or just want to vent- it is all okay.

Welcome.
 
Hi and welcome to the forum. That's a lot of carbs. I would expect to have similar readings if I ate what you've just described. As you've got a meter I would strongly recommend using it to establish what your pattern is. This approach helped me:

1. You need to unlearn all the standard NHS healthy eating advice, all the assumptions made by the media, your family and friends about what's healthy and what's not. I do mean all.


2. As Type 2 diabetics we are not, by definition, good at handling carbohydrates. Some of us are better than others at it but we all have the same problem. Eating carbohydrates causes our blood glucose to rise out of control and that causes us physical damage.


3. Eating carbohydrates, of any kind, is therefore potentially going to cause us a problem as Type 2s.


4. Just how big of a problem depends on the individual.


5. Test your blood glucose and record your results to find out what your pattern and tolerances are. Then cut the things that cause the rises.


6. Nobody will do this for you. Only you can do this.
 
KennyA said:
3. Eating carbohydrates, of any kind, is therefore potentially going to cause us a problem as Type 2s.
Click to expand...

Quick question on this - I was diagnosed in Jan and am on Insulin and Metformin.

Remember hearing that "type ones can generally eat what they like but type two's can't".

Is this because a majority of type two's don't use insulin or is there something else in it?

Thanks
 
Carl40 said:
Is this because a majority of type two's don't use insulin
Click to expand...

T2's already produce too much insulin so jamming more into their bodies to bring down blood glucose after eating too many carbs can be seen as rather counterproductive although many doctors still see this as a reasonable thing to do.

T1's don't produce their own insulin (or, if they still have residual endogenous production, very little) so have to inject it.

Some T1's manage their insulin requirements by eating low carb in order to have smaller swings in blood glucose (the law of small numbers) others eat what they like and calculate their insulin requirements based on that.

The two conditions can (in my view) be split into" too much" endogenous insulin T2 and too little (or none) T1.
 


Thanks for this. I find it interesting as a t2 with insulin i was never aware that I'm producing too much insulin.. is this insulin resistance we're talking about?

Still very much on a learning curve now I'm getting the condition under control but now have the capacity to start thinking about this kind of thing whereas before it was all just about getting level and managing it properly.
 
Carl40 said:
Thanks for this. I find it interesting as a t2 with insulin i was never aware that I'm producing too much insulin.. is this insulin resistance we're talking about?
Click to expand...

Has anyone officially diagnosed you as T2?
If so what tests did they carry out?

Giving T2's yet more insulin can be very counterproductive and can lead to excess weight gain and over time may lead to more problems than it helps and eventually the insulin doses will have to increase.
 

Hi @KennyA

Just to say yours is the post I've been referring to recently.

That is just SO spot on.

I went the so called "Healthy" options after DX back in aug '18.

Got worse.

Came on here, saw the advice was completely topsy turvy, wondered how on earth the advice for T2D could be so messed up.

Began ignoring the 'Professionals' and listening to real life people, treading the pathway in front of me.

By the time I was fully immersed in the life & diet, I was back to normal BG levels, non diabetic actually and 3 stone lighter.

And all it took WAS to unlearn all the so called "Knowledge" I'd grown up with about what 'Healthy' foods are.

For O/P...Welcome to the forum no one wants to join.

Great advice freely given by those who have been in your shoes.

For me it got simple.
Basically it became,
Real food, cooked by me.

Meat that looks like meat.
Veg that looks like veg
Herbs & spices for flavour
Olive oil
Butter.

Cheese &
Nuts.

No Saint, but that's it, in a nutshell, so to speak

Good luck on your journey.
 
Last edited:

Depends what you mean by officially! I was originally diagnosed with diabetes in January with a hba1c of 128 after the usual symptoms - thirst, frequent urination etc. Was immediately given insulin, testing strips etc...

A few weeks in I had a peptide test and when the results came back the GP told me I was type two but I've never spoken with a specialist so not sure if that counts!

Thanks
 

Do you happen to know what the c-peptide test result was?
 
bulkbiker said:
Do you happen to know what the c-peptide test result was?
Click to expand...

Afraid not but can certainly find out. Will make a call tomorrow for that info. Is there anything I can look at to help make sense of the results?
 
Carl40 said:
Afraid not but can certainly find out. Will make a call tomorrow for that info. Is there anything I can look at to help make sense of the results?
Click to expand...

Depends on what the result was (don't forget to find out the units too) but if the results were very high (i.e. you are over producing your own insulin) then it would be worth looking at alternative ways of dealing with it than simply shoving yet more insulin in.

Whist that will bring your blood sugars down it won't address the underlying problem.

https://www.diabetes.co.uk/c-peptide-test.html
 
 
Carl40 said:
Afraid not but can certainly find out. Will make a call tomorrow for that info. Is there anything I can look at to help make sense of the results?
Click to expand...
I have read reports of people stopping not just insulin, but all medication by eating low carb - it was not as fast as for more boring type twos, and some lost a lot of weight as well - though not everyone managed the full monty, some did still need medication, but far less than when diagnosed.
 
My experience was exactly the same as yours. 125 hba1c and straight on insulin. If I had been T1 or LADA that would have been absolutely the right treatment, but as a T2 I found that eating low carb worked much better for me than eating carbs and injecting insulin and I was able to completely come off insulin and improve my health.

Like @Resurgam - I have also read reports of other people who have come off insulin and meds - so I am definitely not unique.

As @bulkbiker mentions - giving T2's yet more insulin can be very counterproductive and over time may lead to more problems than it helps - this was definitely my experience over the 4 years I injected insulin while following the standard NHS healthy eating advice.

If you are diagnosed as T2 you are definitely in the right place to get advice that really works - as you have probably realised from reading the very informative replies on this thread.

My one regret is that I did not find this site when first diagnosed. As @KennyA says 'You need to unlearn all the standard NHS healthy eating advice' and this forum is definitely the best place to get good and up to date advice.
 
It's a bit more complicated than that. I have no experience with insulin (or any diabetic medication, for that matter) so I come at it from a different angle. Firstly, I don't think "eat what you like" means the same thing to everyone. As I understand it T1s and insulin using T2s need to take enough insulin to deal with the carbs eaten. More carbs, more insulin. Less carbs, less insulin. There may well be exceptions to this and I am really happy to be corrected.

As a T2 I have almost completely eliminated carbohydrate from my diet so that my insulin resistance isn't a factor. That has meant that my BG is back at a low normal level, my diabetic symptoms have decreased, and I am steadily, slowly, losing body fat. I find I can cope with c.20g carbs/day. In addition, I do know that sugar in any quantity now makes me ill. I could eat more carbs, and I would get away with it - in the sense that it probably wouldn't do me much harm, if this was a one-off and a rare occurrence. By this I mean maybe once every 3 or 4 months. The problem is that I can't guarantee to myself that this wouldn't be the start of having more and more carbs regularly. So far, it hasn't happened. Willpower engaged.
 
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.…