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Pre diabetic but underweight & a vegetarian

Fairybell

Newbie
Messages
1
Type of diabetes
Prediabetes
Treatment type
Diet only
Hi everyone,
Thanks for having me.
A bit of a shock came last week when I was rung by my doctor & told I had to go in to discuss problems with my blood test results.
Firstly she said I'm anaemic (normocoytic) and I'm pre diabetic.
I got the tests due to about 8 months of severe dizzy spells all day every day & uncontrollable tiredness.
I've been doing some research on how to best help myself, and have stumbled across a large problem-
This is my entire day diet:
Pasta, bread, potatoes, cheese, rice, fruit, vegetables and sugar. I can cut out the sweets (huff) but I'm a strict life long vegetarian, what the heck am I going to do about all the foods I eat?
I know my diet leans towards what diabetics should not eat but tbh I'm a bit stunned as I thought I ate fairly well. I love carbs, vegetarians have to!
But I'm also slightly underweight so firstly can't lose weight to help but also if I start eating just veg & lentils my weight is going to plummet & everyone's going to start freaking out as they do when my weight drops.
Isn't it strange that I'm borderline diabetic?
Or is it not strange as I eat a few sweets (candy) not every day at all but sometimes.
Or is it the carbs? I hope not cos I genuinely will be at a loss.
Thank you so much for any help. I laughed it off last week assuming there had been a mistake in the tests but I don't find it funny at all now. I don't think I ever did I was just so surprised, no one in my family has it. I'm 32, exhausted all the time, pee all the time, have a 2 year old, british and watch what I eat calorie wise, if any of that helps xx
 
Welcome to the forum. There are some vegetarian members who hopefully will be able to advise you on what to eat. However, the carbs are definitely a huge issue for anyone with insulin resistance - it's the carbs that raise our blood glucose while protein and fat are far more benign.
 
I'm not sure how helpful this will be to you, but there's a vegetarian-friendly guide to the ketogenic diet (very, very low carb) that you might find useful. It's all down to you how much carbohydrate intake you're aiming for, but here's the link to the guide:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GOgxLJy3Txl5hdzBYfUEJlpTggNcoNnPv7pqLGya1h0/edit

Keep in mind that the ketogenic diet is a bit more strict than the general low carb diet, but the info is helpful nonetheless
 
Hi Fairybell and welcome

Do you eat dairy? Cheese and cream are low carb and have enough calories to ensure you don't disappear. If you follow a low carb/high, healthy fat diet, you will have a better chance of controlling your blood glucose and preventing future complications.

Nuts and seeds are also excellent. And eggs and quorn if you eat them.

I am veggie and have started introducing more pulses into my diet recently. They are a little high in carbs so I test my bg after eating them. So far so good.

There are still so many delicious things we can eat so try not to freak out
 
Also, there are lots of new things to try such as cauliflower mash/couscous/rice, celeriac chips, low carb cheese sauce, muffins, low carb shop bought breads.

(I am skiving at work just now so can't post much, but will help any way I can later x)
 
This is just speculation, but maybe if you cut the excessive carbs out of your diet, you may cease to be pre-diabetic.

The reason I say this, is because of what happened to the husband of a woman I work with.

He's 64, underweight (all his life, apparently), and an active dog walker. A standard checkup identified blood sugar issues which were then confirmed at diabetic levels.

When they looked at his diet it was... well... how can I put this... bl**dy awful. He ate chocolate bars for breakfast, put 3 sugars in every tea and coffee and ate 2 packets of custard creams every day, as snacks. No veg, no fruit. Nothing but bread, potato, pasta, rice, meat, cheese and sugar. That kind of thing would probably kill me in 3 months, but he had been doing it for decades.

Anyway, he stopped with the sugary drinks and snacks (replaced with fruit, apparently), and started eating a 'proper' breakfast (no idea what was in it), and 3 months later his blood sugar levels were perfectly normal.

It always amazes me how different we all are!
 
I'm underweight also, and have a reading of 7.3 fasting, I am 5ft 10 and 10st in weight, I been gaining weight because I am eating nuts that's on top of my non-vegetarian diet, Could anybody tell me if the nuts affect my BG? Kind Regards
 
Welcome to the forums, I am a strict veggie of over 25 years, if you eat eggs and dairy its easy to do a LCHF diet (well it is for me) Carbs = sugar when they are eaten.. my best advice for the moment is to get yourself a meter to test your blood sugars and then see what your diet is doing to your blood sugars. Then it a case of fine tweaking so your sugar stays stable (code free from home health are the cheapest for test strips)
If you want to post what your eating we can swap notes
 
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