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New to diabetes

Welcome to the forum, Dave. No need to totally give up chocolate, just go for the 80-90% dark stuff, less carbs in that ! :D

Have a good look round the forum and ask us questions, generally someone has an answer.
 
Hi Dave and welcome. :D

I expect your head is spinning but you will find lots of valuable information and help on here and there is usually someone who can answer your questions – so ask away! :)
 
hya dave and a warm welcome,
have a good look around the forum and ask anything :D
 
Today is the first day of my new diet. Based on the leaflets I ahve read I have decided to go with low sugar and lowish fat to see how that goes. I am also keeping a food diary.

Feeling hungry already :D
 
Dave Knight said:
Today is the first day of my new diet. Based on the leaflets I ahve read I have decided to go with low sugar and lowish fat to see how that goes. I am also keeping a food diary.

Feeling hungry already :D
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Hi Dave,

Good luck with whatever you decide to do!

However, I think that it will be very important that you watch the starchy carbohydrates too - i.e. cereals, bread, and potatoes mainly - but also be careful with pasta and rice too.

Keeping a detailed food diary is a great idea.

Testing is well worth doing too to see what effects different foods have on your blood glucose levels.

Best wishes - John
 
Dave Knight said:
Hi

I have been diagnosed today as having Type 2 diabetes so decided to join the forum.

Bye bye chocolate!

Dave
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Hi Dave.
Welcome to the Forum. Glad to see you are hitting the low fat trail. Reduce those carbs too. Here is the advice we give out to Newbies here. Pick the bones out of it and see what suits you best. I use low fat and can eat many things that others couldn't, I use a low GI/GL diet. works great for me.

Here is the advice we usually give to newly diagnosed type 2 diabetics.This forum doesn't always follow the recommended dietary advice, you have to work out what works for you as we are all different .

It's not just 'sugars' you need to avoid, diabetes is an inability to process glucose properly. Carbohydrate converts, in the body, to glucose. So it makes sense to reduce the amount of carbohydrate that you eat which includes sugars.

The main carbs to avoid or reduce are the complex or starchy carbohydrates such a bread, potatoes, pasta and rice also any flour based products. The starchy carbs all convert 100% to glucose in the body and raise the blood sugar levels significantly.

The way to find out how different foods affect you is to do regular daily testing and keep a food diary for a couple of weeks. If you test just before eating then two hours after eating you will see the effect of certain foods on your blood glucose levels.

Buy yourself a carb counter book (you can get these on-line) and you will be able to work out how much carbs you are eating, when you test, the reading two hours after should be roughly the same as the before eating reading, if it is then that meal was fine, if it isn’t then you need to check what you have eaten and think about reducing the portion size of carbs.

When you are buying products check the total carbohydrate content, this includes the sugar content. Do not just go by the amount of sugar on the packaging as this is misleading to a diabetic.

As for a tester, try asking the nurse/doctor and explain that you want to be proactive in managing your own diabetes and therefore need to test so that you can see just how foods affect your blood sugar levels. Hopefully this will work ! Sometimes they are not keen to give Type 2’s the strips on prescription, (in the UK) but you can but try !!

As a Type 2 the latest 2010 NICE guidelines for Bg levels are as follows:
Fasting (waking).......between 4 - 7 mmol/l.
2 hrs after meals......no more than 8.5 mmol/l.
If you are able to keep the post meal numbers lower, so much the better.

It also helps if you can do 30 minutes moderate exercise a day. It doesn't have to be strenuous.
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Morning Dave,

Yes - but still a bit high and you need to work on getting that lower.

In my opinion, at this stage, the most important tests for you are the one and two hours after finishing eating results because that teaches you how different foods affect your blood glucose levels. In the first instance, work at trying to keep those results under double figures and then try to get them lower and lower still by gradually adjusting what you eat.

You'll get there if you stick with it!

Best wishes - John
 
Dave Knight said:
First self test this morning

Before breakfast

7.8.

Did not seem too bad after one day on the diet
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Hi Dave.

As someone who has only just been diagnosed the other day that number is fine, not perfect, but a good start. You will need time to get those numbers under control and get used to a new regime, a lifestyle. It is the post prandial numbers, post meal which are more important.

Concentrate on recording all the numbers and keep that food diary so you can see what effect certain foods have on your Bg levels. Test frequently and with some foods you might have to also test at 3 and even 4 hr intervals, Pasta being one. That can 'spike' your Bg levels much later than other foods. Anything that is a slow acting carb means you need to be more careful.
 
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