Pre diabetic - any advice please, thank you

[SarahHammond]

Hi there,
I have been having blood sugar crashes over the ladt 6 months (I didn't know what it was at the time).
I bought a cgm and it all came to light.
For the last 2 months I have followed low carb but my average blood sugars are 8 to 9 throughout the day.
11s when I wake up and after exercise, 6 to 7 for an hour in the afternoons.
I had a HbA1c which came back at 42.
If I eat say a chocolate bar or sandwich (I experimented) blood sugars can go up to 13 to 15 for many hours.
My gp says I'm prediabetic but can't offer me much assistance other then saying we will test you in 6 months.
I concerned that 95 percent of the time my sugars are over 7.5.
Also, I just can't seem to lose any weight. I am now obese and it's depressing
Does anyone have any advice please?

 

[KennyA]

Hi there,
I have been having blood sugar crashes over the ladt 6 months (I didn't know what it was at the time).
I bought a cgm and it all came to light.
For the last 2 months I have followed low carb but my average blood sugars are 8 to 9 throughout the day.
11s when I wake up and after exercise, 6 to 7 for an hour in the afternoons.
I had a HbA1c which came back at 42.
If I eat say a chocolate bar or sandwich (I experimented) blood sugars can go up to 13 to 15 for many hours.
My gp says I'm prediabetic but can't offer me much assistance other then saying we will test you in 6 months.
I concerned that 95 percent of the time my sugars are over 7.5.
Also, I just can't seem to lose any weight. I am now obese and it's depressing
Does anyone have any advice please?

Hello and welcome.

I'd advise having a good read-around on these fporums - lots of good advice and different approaches. have a look at the success stories section - you'll see that there are a number of paths.

Whren I was (eventually) diagnosed I went straight on to a very low carb way of eating, and I've stuck to it since late 2019. I've limited myself to around 20g carb/day as a matter of course. This works for me - I find it's easier eating no (or nearly no) carbs rather than trying to count. Most of my carb comes from green veg. In the last four and a half years my A1c hasn't ever been out of normal range: and I've lost a lot of weight - I'm not sure how heavy I was when I started (my scales didn't cope) but I'd guess about 20 stone. About 13 and a half now, and heading for losing about a third of my starting weight.

You need to find what works for you, both in the short and the long term. Some willpower needed.

 

[JoKalsbeek]

Hi there,
I have been having blood sugar crashes over the ladt 6 months (I didn't know what it was at the time).
I bought a cgm and it all came to light.
For the last 2 months I have followed low carb but my average blood sugars are 8 to 9 throughout the day.
11s when I wake up and after exercise, 6 to 7 for an hour in the afternoons.
I had a HbA1c which came back at 42.
If I eat say a chocolate bar or sandwich (I experimented) blood sugars can go up to 13 to 15 for many hours.
My gp says I'm prediabetic but can't offer me much assistance other then saying we will test you in 6 months.
I concerned that 95 percent of the time my sugars are over 7.5.
Also, I just can't seem to lose any weight. I am now obese and it's depressing
Does anyone have any advice please?

Yeah, they don't really do much until prediabetes escalates into full blown diabetes, then it's onto metformin... Which, granted, does a little, but isn't a magic bullet. You can just start low carbing and get back into the normal range, and avoid medication. The weight gain is likely connected to your blood sugars being high often: what your body can't use for fuel, it'll store as fats. Hence the common misconception that being big makes the diabetic... It's rather the other way around. Get the blood sugars sorted, and you are likely to drop some weight as well.

https://josekalsbeek.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-nutritional-thingy.html <-- have a read, it might help.

Good luck!
Jo

 

[mouseee]

Another thing is how low carb you really are.
Can you give an example of what you eat in a day?
Things often creep in or amounts you eat creep up. If you are insulin resistant and prediabetic it's actually quite comforting that you haven't brought on weight gain by yourself. It's what the body does when it can't deal with glucose of any kind. Jo's nutritional thingy is a great place to start.