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Newly diagnosed with type2

L

Lynntay

Newbie
Messages
4
Type of diabetes
Prediabetes
Treatment type
Diet only
Hi, I'm looking for advise about type 2 diabetes. I'm nearly diagnosed but don't have any symptoms to indicate diabetes, will i be offered medicine or is there an alternative as I don't like taking tablets.
Any information will be gratefully received thank you
 
Hi @Lynntay and welcome to the forum. A T2 diagnosis always seems to come from nowhere, usually when you are having general lab work done for something completely unrelated. In many cases people are totally unaware they have raised blood sugar levels, no symptoms at all. Some people however, do have symptoms.

Many people here on the forum start cutting down on their carbohydrate intake. The body will turn all Carbohydrates into sugar, no matter what form they come in, whole wheat products, pastas, cakes, rice, virtually anything that contain carbohydrates. Starches too. If you take a look around the sub forums you will see many threads dedicated to food topics for T2s. You might also have a look at https://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/threads/jos-nutritional-thingy.210026/

One of our members @JoKalsbeek wrote this as an information piece about carb reduction.

Some members here have great success with very low carb diets . I'll tag @ianf0ster for you.

If you don't mind me asking, what would be a typical daily diet for you. Also what were your HbA1c results?
 
Hi, my HbA1 levels is 50. My daily diet consists of porridge with strawberries for breakfast, lunch is usually a wrap/ sandwich of salad with a slice of processed meat and evening meal is either chicken with veg or pasta. As well as eating more fruit and drinking over 200 ltrs of water of low sugar juice. I have green tea for a breakfast drink. I don't have any cravings for food and don't snack so as a lost to see how to cut my food down any further. Advise always welcome xx
 
Personally - Swap the porridge for Greek yoghurt with your berries, go down the North European cold meats & cheese route or eggs in any form. Lunch loose the bread/wrap and increase the salad, add some dressing. Dinner more green leafy veg and less pasta. It's not about eating less, it's about eating differently. Just one of these tweeks might be enough to drop you back down into pre/non diabetic levels. It's also about what works for you, you need to be able to sustain your changes in the long term
 
lessci said:
Personally - Swap the porridge for Greek yoghurt with your berries, go down the North European cold meats & cheese route or eggs in any form. Lunch loose the bread/wrap and increase the salad, add some dressing. Dinner more green leafy veg and less pasta. It's not about eating less, it's about eating differently. Just one of these tweeks might be enough to drop you back down into pre/non diabetic levels. It's also about what works for you, you need to be able to sustain your changes in the long term
Click to expand...
Thanks for info xx
 
Hi @Lynntay and welcome to the forum. For years while my GP knew that I was prediabetic (though they didn't tell me) I was advised to eat porridge for breakfast and eat lots of fruit, veg, whole grains and to eat low fat.
I now understand how that pushed me into Type 2 Diabetes and also to slowly but surely gain an extra 1/5th of bodyweight, having been slim for all my life until then.

We have nearly all been misled: For those of us who are susceptible, eating lots of fruit and grains (even whole 'brown grains') push us into having higher blood glucose than is good for us. Also, it isn't the quantity of the food which is the problem, it's the type of food, so there is little point in counting calories or trying to cut down of food/ That just tends to make you hungry and miserable and is why most popular weight loss diets don't work for more than a few weeks - then the dieter runs out of 'will power'; understandably so, because they are trying to starve themselves!

I learned from my Blood Glucose meter that in my case and for the vast majority of others, eating fatty meat and fish, even cheese and cream (unless you are allergic to dairy) helps you keep slim, because body weight and blood glucose is ultimately determined by hormones - satiety hormones and insulin. So isn't it best to eat things which both increase satiety and don't raise your insulin by much?

Proteins and fats fill that bill almost perfectly while fruit have lotas of sugars, and the carbohydrates in veg like potatoes digest from starch into glucose very quicky indeed. Note the Glycaemic Index of mashed potato is higher than that of table sugar!

It took only a few weeks before my blood glucose response for my meals was 'normal', about 4 moths for me to lose that excess weight, and in less than a year I'd had 2 consecutive HbA1C results in the normal range - meaning I was technically in full remission form Type 2 Diabetes. Remission - not cure, since if I started eating all the low fat, high carbohydrate food my GP advised I'm sure I would be back with diabetes quite quicky, since that is what caused it in the first place!
 
ianf0ster said:
Hi @Lynntay and welcome to the forum. For years while my GP knew that I was prediabetic (though they didn't tell me) I was advised to eat porridge for breakfast and eat lots of fruit, veg, whole grains and to eat low fat.
I now understand how that pushed me into Type 2 Diabetes and also to slowly but surely gain an extra 1/5th of bodyweight, having been slim for all my life until then.

We have nearly all been misled: For those of us who are susceptible, eating lots of fruit and grains (even whole 'brown grains') push us into having higher blood glucose than is good for us. Also, it isn't the quantity of the food which is the problem, it's the type of food, so there is little point in counting calories or trying to cut down of food/ That just tends to make you hungry and miserable and is why most popular weight loss diets don't work for more than a few weeks - then the dieter runs out of 'will power'; understandably so, because they are trying to starve themselves!

I learned from my Blood Glucose meter that in my case and for the vast majority of others, eating fatty meat and fish, even cheese and cream (unless you are allergic to dairy) helps you keep slim, because body weight and blood glucose is ultimately determined by hormones - satiety hormones and insulin. So isn't it best to eat things which both increase satiety and don't raise your insulin by much?

Proteins and fats fill that bill almost perfectly while fruit have lotas of sugars, and the carbohydrates in veg like potatoes digest from starch into glucose very quicky indeed. Note the Glycaemic Index of mashed potato is higher than that of table sugar!

It took only a few weeks before my blood glucose response for my meals was 'normal', about 4 moths for me to lose that excess weight, and in less than a year I'd had 2 consecutive HbA1C results in the normal range - meaning I was technically in full remission form Type 2 Diabetes. Remission - not cure, since if I started eating all the low fat, high carbohydrate food my GP advised I'm sure I would be back with diabetes quite quicky, since that is what caused it in the first place!
Click to expand...
Thank you for info, which was most helpful. I too was advised to eat porridge wholemeal bread/rice and lots of fresh fruit, so now I can see why my sugar levels are high. So I will go back to my eating plan as before to see if that has any effect on my levels. Onwards and upwards xx
 
ianf0ster said:
Hi @Lynntay and welcome to the forum. For years while my GP knew that I was prediabetic (though they didn't tell me) I was advised to eat porridge for breakfast and eat lots of fruit, veg, whole grains and to eat low fat.
I now understand how that pushed me into Type 2 Diabetes and also to slowly but surely gain an extra 1/5th of bodyweight, having been slim for all my life until then.

We have nearly all been misled: For those of us who are susceptible, eating lots of fruit and grains (even whole 'brown grains') push us into having higher blood glucose than is good for us. Also, it isn't the quantity of the food which is the problem, it's the type of food, so there is little point in counting calories or trying to cut down of food/ That just tends to make you hungry and miserable and is why most popular weight loss diets don't work for more than a few weeks - then the dieter runs out of 'will power'; understandably so, because they are trying to starve themselves!

I learned from my Blood Glucose meter that in my case and for the vast majority of others, eating fatty meat and fish, even cheese and cream (unless you are allergic to dairy) helps you keep slim, because body weight and blood glucose is ultimately determined by hormones - satiety hormones and insulin. So isn't it best to eat things which both increase satiety and don't raise your insulin by much?

Proteins and fats fill that bill almost perfectly while fruit have lotas of sugars, and the carbohydrates in veg like potatoes digest from starch into glucose very quicky indeed. Note the Glycaemic Index of mashed potato is higher than that of table sugar!

It took only a few weeks before my blood glucose response for my meals was 'normal', about 4 moths for me to lose that excess weight, and in less than a year I'd had 2 consecutive HbA1C results in the normal range - meaning I was technically in full remission form Type 2 Diabetes. Remission - not cure, since if I started eating all the low fat, high carbohydrate food my GP advised I'm sure I would be back with diabetes quite quicky, since that is what caused it in the first place!
Click to expand...
I was prediabetic and told to do exactly what they told you. So I did within 3 months I was full type 2 diabetic and loads of medication. I've been thinking about trying white bread instead of the wholemeal Ive got a monitor so can keep checking to see what's happening. I've also noticed if I eat fats and creams my mmol hardly moves.
 
Hi. I posted this a few weeks back, but it was auto-deleted as had been marked as suspected spam. Hopefully it makes it this time...

I'm 58, and was diagnosed almost two years ago. HbA1C went to 120 from 39 eighteen months previously. This was a massive shock, and caused me considerable stress and anxiety. But switching from a fairly active job to a sedentary one, with a Greggs next door to my office, probably caused it. I had no symptoms. Well, I thought I had no symptoms. I had an eye test, and started wearing glasses. Was diagnosed soon after this, and within about two months found that I didn't need them any more. I think that was the first symptom (outside being super tired most of the time, which I just thought was a normal part of getting older).

Anyway, the NHS advice I was given matches the above - porridge, fruit (lots of apples, for some reason!), veg, wholemeal bread, toast for breakfast, etc. I told my daughter this, and she implored me to ignore all of it. She said that the NHS advice is very out of date, but because keto/low carb (and high fat!) hasn't had enough research, the NHS can't advocate it.

She had been doing a keto diet for a few months. Not for weight control, but just to see what the hype was about - She is an NHS doctor and told me that there was a huge amount of interest in the medical community around keto/low carb for not just weight control, but also general health benefits, and especially diabetes.

She helped me massively with going keto (after the diagnosis I viewed sugar and carbs as nuclear waste). I was a bit 'extra', weighing everything I ate, and working out the carb content. I didn't look at anything except carbs, and fibre. I didn't care about fat, salt, etc. for this phase. MyFitnessPal was very handy for tracking. I'm not that extra any more. After a few months I had a feel for what I was eating, and just eyeball everything now.

Anyway, by following this my HbA1C dropped to 37 in three months, and after six months was 34. I also lost 22kg, and felt infinitely better, with more energy. Literally everything improved. My HbA1C has been 34 for over a year now.

I've stuck to keto, with a few breaks (when on holiday this summer, and last Christmas). It's a bit hard for a few months, but the carb cravings do go. And my appetite is much reduced, so I don't even feel hungry. And when I do, I eat my health foods - cheese, bacon, full fat yogurt, etc!

The only downsides for me from keto are cost, slight complications when eating out (generally I swerve potato/chips/pasta/rice, and don't eat the buns with burgers - I stopped explaining my diet to people, because they invariably think it's bonkers, as 'everybody knows that fat is really, really unhealthy'. Hmmm...), and the lack of convenient/reasonably priced keto foods in supermarkets. But online is your friend. Srsly, Heylo, and similar are excellent (if insanely expensive!) The supermarket 'low fat', 'healthy options' and/or green packaging is largely a massive con. Low fat almost always means 'high sugar'.

Broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, kale, are my staple vegetables. And as they can all be fried in butter, it's ok! Mrs. Elswood Haimisha Cucumbers are excellent gherkins (you'd be stunned at the amount of sugar in many other gherkins). Full fat Greek yogurt with vanilla ice cream flavour protein powder is yummy. Avocado, eggs, full fat mayonnaise - All healthy options.

tl;dr; I ignored the NHS dietary advice, went into remission from an HbA1C of 120, within about three months, lost 22kg (about 3.5st) and feel great. BP is normal. Liver and kidney function also normal. Two years in and I can (fairly) confidently say that keto is my new lifestyle. My BMI remains in the 'normal' range (just!) I also feel that the food industry should be investigated, and most of them should go to prison. They are killing the whole planet.

Do check out the Michael Mosley (RIP - what a great, great man), and Jason Fung books (the Audible versions are so good, and very reassuring).

Good luck with your journey.
 
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