Poor sleep and waking sugar of 8.4

You could have cheesy cauliflower and sausage though- that would be a fairly close alternative, or maybe sausage, mushroom and cheesy scrambled egg. Salad is good too of course, but you don't need to miss out on the heartier stuff!

HfxBaz said:

About 4 hours sleep before needing to get up and needing the loo, sugar 8.4 when tested. Last meal eaten was tea (dinner) , self caused due to stuff had,
Cheesy bean and sausage with potato chunks (something the kids love) so lots of carbs.
Won't be eating that again even though it made me full.
Lunch and tea plans for today - salad.

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I do hope your salad includes something filling, like salmon, tuna, goat's cheese or something else fatty, otherwise you'll go hungry. Beans, spuds.... Not the best choice. You know this, but hey, you're seeing it on your meter too, and it is a learning curve. Making adjustments sometimes takes time.

As for "but the kids love it", yeah... The excuse doesn't fly, which I think you are aware of. They love it, that doesn't mean you have to eat it for them. My husband loves his potatoes. I make them for him, and don't partake. I just add in a chunk of 125 grams of salmon which he detests, besides my meat. Bit of surf'n'turf! (Before going carnivore, I used to have cheesy cauliflower rice with bacon, and whatever spices and herbs I fancied, and my husband ate that too). I don't cook two completely separate meals, I just have different proportions more often than not. I have meat and fish, he'll have the meat and beans, potatoes, whatever. We have some overlap, and it's not a whole lot of extra cooking. I just have a bunch of no carb stuff, and he eats the carby ones, aside from the main ingredient, which is usually meat or poultry. No prob.

The kids like the taste of something. You want to stay healthy and you know, alive, for them. Priorities. They can have their stuff. You can have yours. Just make sure you eat until you feel full, because if you haven't been and a carby meal makes you go "I felt full", then you haven't been doing low carb right. Up the fats! Don't be afraid of them, you need something to run on or you'll wind down!

HfxBaz said:

Lunch or is this a no no?? I'm removing the white pasta as I know that will spike meView attachment 46666

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Take care with the dressing, if there's one included. Mayo or olive oil'd be better, usually, but if you don't overdo it and indeed pick the pasta out, it should be okay. Might leave you a bit hungry though, maybe add some bifi sausage for dessert.

HfxBaz said:

Dressing is already added to it, I keep looking at the pack and already feel guilty for wanting to eat it but my brain is saying don't eat it due to the pasta in there that could be too small to see that's mixed in the mayo

before being told I'm preD I'd of eaten 2 of those packs so I'm gonna give it a miss, my youngest will enjoy it though

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The bit you pictured wasn't the nutritional information you need, to know whether something's okay to eat or no. You want the bit where it tells you exactly how many carbs are in there, probably on the rear. I'm used to supermarket salads where the components aren't mixed yet (dressing in a separate baggy, pasta on the bottom so easily avoided), but if yours is different, then it's different. I ended up making my own salads with pre-packaged bags of salad mix, a can of tuna, OR warmed goat's cheese, OR some salmon, OR chicken, you get the idea... And I threw in whatever I felt like having with it. Maybe a TINY bit of sun dried tomatoes, but whatever amount I wanted in olive oil, apple cider vinegar, capers, olives, bacon, boiled egg, whatever. Pepper, salt, done. Easily prepared at home in the morning, if need be. Would keep me full until dinner. The pre-packaged salads have as a drawback that the things that are there to bulk it up and fill you, are usually the carby things: they fill the customer and they're cheap for the manufacturer to put in there. The croutons, the pasta or couscous for instance... If you avoid those you're usually stuck with hand full of leafy greens and a tiny bit of protein, but next to nothing in fats, so basically you're living off air. Fine if you're okay with air, but not so fine if you're hungry all the time.

It's a brave new world, you'll get there. I keep discovering new things. Lately I've been having cheese crackers (nuked grated cheese with ground pepper and garlic powder) with egg salad, or with liver paté. Surprisingly awesome. I'm well into 4 years of low carb eating, and still discovering new things. Take it slow, you don't have to get everything right overnight. And if there's something you want to try, just take measurements around it to see whether it agrees with you. Some things might not be off the menu at all.

HfxBaz said:

As clear as I can get the picView attachment 46667

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44 grams of carbs (15grams per 100, in a 290 gram container)... Yeah, that's quite a bit, but I don't know what your targets are. Are you going really, really low carb? Then it's absolutely out. If you're moderate, it could still be in. Just one though, certainly not two.

How many carbs are you having per day, and how do you want to spread them out? Stuff to ask yourself.

HfxBaz said:

I really have no idea as I was just told change of lifestyle and avoid all sugars and sweeteners as I'm only pre D. My gp wants me back for a re test on hba1c in july

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Okay, then... With prediabetes you might not have to go as far as a keto diet, and moderately low carb could be alright. To be sure, just get yourself a glucose meter, that'll tell you how your body's responding. (Alas, you won't get one funded from the NHS). For the moment you might want to try going for a random figure. Say, a maximum of 80 grams of carbs a day in total. Or if you feel better hitting it harder, to also kick the extra weight quicker and maybe improve your sleeping pattern and fatigue in one go, maybe 50 grams a day? Whatever's convenient for you to start with. https://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/blog-entry/the-nutritional-thingy.2330/ <-- you've probably already seen this, but I can't for the life of me remember right now. But all in all... Ditch the obvious and not so obvious carbs, up the fats, keep protein moderate. All carbs up blood sugars, so not just the sweet stuff, but starches too. You can go all out on meat, fish, poultry, eggs, hard cheeses etc. Lots of them! Cut out cereals, pasta's, spuds, bread, rice, corn and other starchy products. Leafy greens are fine, pulses may or may not be, some respond differently to them than others (I can't have them, you might be able to. Your meter'd tell you). Just start slow in re-learning what food means for you. I remember right at the beginning I was afraid to eat anything, everything seemed like poison and I didn't know what was safe and what wasn't. Also because my various dieticians, specialists etc were all giving conflicting information that absolutely clashed with the numbers my meter was giving me. What they said was right, would make me see double digits. (That's not good). Everything they said I should avoid, gave me beautiful blood sugars, fixed my non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, got me to drop weight (I'm slightly overweight now, used to be morbidly obese, as wide as I was tall), helped my rheumatism, migraines, sneep apnea, fatigue, blurry vision, panic attacks, depression... So I followed my meter. It never steered me wrong.

So it can get better. Honest. Just pick a number, figure out what works for you, and go from there.
Jo

@HfxBaz
I think you'll find this site useful and interesting. Its run by a Dad with teenagers so a lot of the food and recipes are easy and simple. Its a keto site, rather than diabetes so tends to focus on that but they don't judge or be as strict as some of the other keto sites do. They've also got handy tips on shopping and how to build simple low carb meals
https://t4s.site/view/
YOu don't have to pay to join, I havent but I did buy some of their books. Id love to hear how you get on with it.