Prediabetic as of Three weeks ago. Hi!

[Mrs_Carter]

Aloha.

I was informed by my GP about three weeks ago that I was 99% pre-diabetic (HbA1c was at like, 45/46, so as far as I know, that's pretty bad).

Had a rough five years, lost both my parents and my little dog back in March, so have been struggling with comfort eating (lost three stone when I lost my dad, but when my mum died back in September along with COVID...I can see that all the stress and comfort eating finally caught up with me, I'm not as young as I used to be!).

Throughout my researching of the condition, I found this forum, have been lurking for a while trying to find a bit more information about it all; even though my dad was type 2 diabetic, we never really spoke about it and it seemed the Metformin he was taking kept it under control. This forum is the absolute font of knowledge and I really appreciate everyone sharing their experiences.

I am currently signed up to the Diabetic Prevention Programme with my GP, but it does seem a little bit patronising and condescending. I'm 33 and can use the internet, I know exactly how to eat healthily and properly, I just lost the will to live and filled up on pizzas, chickie nuggies and all of the carbs you could possibly think of. I used to be very into my exercise, so I'm back on the wagon with that with walking and jogging most (if not all) days.

In the past three weeks, I've lost 1st 2lbs according to my scales, and have stuck with my dusted off Weight Watchers plan absolutely down to the last dot. I walk my husband's dog two or three times a day (he loves me more than him now!) so I am hopefully going in the right direction, and all this hard work isn't for nought.

I have my next blood test in about a month's time, so I hope to Vishnu (or any other god/deity that wants to listen to my ramble) that my changes are definitely a positive thing, and it's something I can reverse. This news has been the kick up the bum that I needed to get my life back in control.

Anyway, wall of text over. Nice to meet you all, back to lurking in the shadows

 

[KK123]

[QUOTE="Mrs_Carter, post: 2409545, member: 544339"I'm 33 and can use the internet, I know exactly how to eat healthily and properly[/QUOTE]

Hi there and welcome! You will get loads of advice on here based on people's actual experiences. All I would say to begin with is that eating 'healthily' generally speaking may not mean eating in a manner that helps us manage diabetes. For example, I have always (mostly) eaten healthily, textbook style, lots of fruit & veg, wholegrains, low fat and so on but now (for me), it's about the foods that don't raise my glucose levels to the extent that I end up taking extra insulin to cover them, resulting in ups & downs. Would you mind sharing a typical days food, that really helps people to help you on your way to getting your life back in control and are you testing at all?. x

 

[HSSS]

Hi. It’s great that you are tackling this head on and improving your health. Weight loss (assuming it’s needed) can only be a good thing as can increased activity. But as kk123 says “healthy” according to general accepted wisdom and “healthy for type 2 and it’s avoidance” are quite different. Have a read of the links in my signature to see what I mean.

 

[Mrs_Carter]

[QUOTE="Mrs_Carter, post: 2409545, member: 544339"I'm 33 and can use the internet, I know exactly how to eat healthily and properly

Hi there and welcome! You will get loads of advice on here based on people's actual experiences. All I would say to begin with is that eating 'healthily' generally speaking may not mean eating in a manner that helps us manage diabetes. For example, I have always (mostly) eaten healthily, textbook style, lots of fruit & veg, wholegrains, low fat and so on but now (for me), it's about the foods that don't raise my glucose levels to the extent that I end up taking extra insulin to cover them, resulting in ups & downs. Would you mind sharing a typical days food, that really helps people to help you on your way to getting your life back in control and are you testing at all?. x[/QUOTE]

Yeah, I've read that eating healthily is different for diabetic than your average Joe, which is something I've been having a hard time trying to figure out. My typical food day would be:

Breakfast
Apple/banana
Poached/scrambled egg on toast with hot sauce (sriracha!)
Wholemeal toast and marmite

Lunch
Soup of some variety
Omelette with cheese
0% fat greek yoghurt with fresh fruit (berries mostly, but sometimes an easy peel satsuma. Usually raspberries)

Dinner
Turkey meatballs (homemade) with a sauce (teriyaki, tomato and chilli) with roasted broccoli and cauliflower.

Chicken chasseur with baby potatoes, carrots and broccoli (I am a broc fiend)

Turkey chilli (I skip the rice as it doesn't agree with my stomach anymore)

GP seems to push that weight loss is the main factor for my condition. I do need to lose about 6 or 7 stone, so like I said it's the kick up the butt I needed. The diabetes programme is pushing it without saying so (they ask for weight at the beginning of every meeting.)

I think ww primarily promotes a low carb diet. High carbs = high points, so I focus mainly on that. I'm aware a lot of fruit and veg do have carbs so I try to keep them more of a daytime thing, and have low carb in the evening as best I can.

I'm not testing, as I'm not sure a) what a good level of anything should be and b) I don't know what I'm testing for! It's not really been advised. I have done one session of the Diabetics prevention, but like I said was very patronising and didn't actually provide any useful information (more than I had already researched, which wasn't too difficult to find).

I also have an extreme vitamin D deficiency (cheers COVID) along with this, as I've also read vit D and type 2 go hand in hand, so I'm on an industrial strength dose of Vit D for the next 6 weeks or so.

I originally had the blood test to check for hypothyroidism as I was always tired and unable to focus, along with a few other symptoms in line with it, but instead I got this.

The amount of stress I had been under for the past year didn't help much either with my mum and dog dying, and my job is very stressful (I've read that stress can be another factor for it; these things are out of my control so I just deal with the aftermath as best as I can.

 

[HSSS]

Hi there and welcome! You will get loads of advice on here based on people's actual experiences. All I would say to begin with is that eating 'healthily' generally speaking may not mean eating in a manner that helps us manage diabetes. For example, I have always (mostly) eaten healthily, textbook style, lots of fruit & veg, wholegrains, low fat and so on but now (for me), it's about the foods that don't raise my glucose levels to the extent that I end up taking extra insulin to cover them, resulting in ups & downs. Would you mind sharing a typical days food, that really helps people to help you on your way to getting your life back in control and are you testing at all?. x

Yeah, I've read that eating healthily is different for diabetic than your average Joe, which is something I've been having a hard time trying to figure out. My typical food day would be:

Breakfast
Apple/banana
Poached/scrambled egg on toast with hot sauce (sriracha!)
Wholemeal toast and marmite

Lunch
Soup of some variety
Omelette with cheese
Yoghurt with fresh fruit (raspberries at the mo)

Dinner
Turkey meatballs (homemade) with a sauce (teriyaki, tomato and chilli) with roasted broccoli and cauliflower.

Chicken chasseur with baby potatoes, carrots and broccoli (I am a broc fiend)

Turkey chilli (I skip the rice as it doesn't agree with my stomach anymore)

GP seems to push that weight loss is the main factor for my condition. I do need to lose about 6 or 7 stone, so like I said it's the kick up the butt I needed. The diabetes programme is pushing it without saying so (they ask for weight at the beginning of every meeting.)

I think ww primarily promotes a low carb diet. High carbs = high points, so I focus mainly on that. I'm aware a lot of fruit and veg do have carbs so I try to keep them more of a daytime thing, and have low carb in the evening as best I can.[/QUOTE]
Ok lots to work with there

Fruit tends to be a problem. Although it has lots of nice micronutrients it also has lots of glucose and fructose. Glucose is an a obvious issue but fructose adds to non alcoholic fatty liver which is part of the problem often in type 2. The worst fruit for type 2 is tropical and the best berries.

I don’t eat any bread. Any colour or type still has too many carbs for me. Others find an odd slice here and there is manageable.

Soups may or may not be a good idea depending on what’s in them. Beware of thickeners and root veg, especially potato

yogurt is ok if it’s not choc full of sugar to replace the fat. Plain Greek is often the best bet

unless it’s changed ww used to promote low fat not low carb and it matters little what time of day. In fact many people cope slightly better with carbs later in the day.

prediabetes means you may not have to be as extreme as someone well into the diabetic range. A meter as discussed in the link I gave above will guide you best. This works well not only for blood glucose but also weight loss, high cholesterol and high bp

 

[Mrs_Carter]

Yeah, I've read that eating healthily is different for diabetic than your average Joe, which is something I've been having a hard time trying to figure out. My typical food day would be:

Breakfast
Apple/banana
Poached/scrambled egg on toast with hot sauce (sriracha!)
Wholemeal toast and marmite

Lunch
Soup of some variety
Omelette with cheese
Yoghurt with fresh fruit (raspberries at the mo)

Dinner
Turkey meatballs (homemade) with a sauce (teriyaki, tomato and chilli) with roasted broccoli and cauliflower.

Chicken chasseur with baby potatoes, carrots and broccoli (I am a broc fiend)

Turkey chilli (I skip the rice as it doesn't agree with my stomach anymore)

GP seems to push that weight loss is the main factor for my condition. I do need to lose about 6 or 7 stone, so like I said it's the kick up the butt I needed. The diabetes programme is pushing it without saying so (they ask for weight at the beginning of every meeting.)

I think ww primarily promotes a low carb diet. High carbs = high points, so I focus mainly on that. I'm aware a lot of fruit and veg do have carbs so I try to keep them more of a daytime thing, and have low carb in the evening as best I can.

Ok lots to work with there

Fruit tends to be a problem. Although it has lots of nice micronutrients it also has lots of glucose and fructose. Glucose is an a obvious issue but fructose adds to non alcoholic fatty liver which is part of the problem often in type 2. The worst fruit for type 2 is tropical and the best berries.

I don’t eat any bread. Any colour or type still has too many carbs for me. Others find an odd slice here and there is manageable.

Soups may or may not be a good idea depending on what’s in them. Beware of thickeners and root veg, especially potato

yogurt is ok if it’s not choc full of sugar to replace the fat. Plain Greek is often the best bet

unless it’s changed ww used to promote low fat not low carb and it matters little what time of day. In fact many people cope slightly better with carbs later in the day.

prediabetes means you may not have to be as extreme as someone well into the diabetic range. A meter as discussed in the link I gave above will guide you best. This works well not only for blood glucose but also weight loss, high cholesterol and high bp[/QUOTE]

To be fair, in the past week I haven't touched bread AT ALL. And even then it's been the weight watchers malted stuff. There's so little of it, considering the effort of toasting it I'm better off without it. (and it's bloody expensive).

Yoghurt is the 0% fat greek plain yoghurt. I treat myself to an activia peach yoghurt every now and again for a mid morning snack.

I'm not a huge fan of tropical fruit, I only really eat apples, bananas, grapes and raspberries, maybe a slice of melon once in a blue moon. I'm not a big fruit eater, I prefer my veg.

Soups are usually homemade in my soup maker, and I avoid potatoes/thickeners in them, usually leftover veg from a meal (carrot/cauliflower/butternut squash)

There's 3 different plans now; one more like slimming world where you can eat as much pasta and such as you like, one where carbs and high fat food seem to be the big pointers, and one where literally everything has points that you just count every day. I'm on the middle one, so I focus on as much fruit and veg as possible and leave potatoes/bread/pasta etc to a minimum.

I'm trying to get myself into the habit of healthy eating. A month ago that average food day would have been very very different, porridge/toast for lunch, pot noodles/maggi noodles for lunch and a huge bowl of pasta covered in cheese for tea. Not forgetting the 3 - 4 litres of squash I'd drink on a daily basis. I've done nothing but drink water for the past month!

I have a lot more information to digest from your links, they have been bookmarked and have added them to my google reading list. Thank you for your help

 

[HSSS]

Just a quick admin pointer. To quote a section of a post highlight it and click the reply box that should pop up. Your replies seem to be missing the initial ]quote] text for some reason. Brackets the correct way in real use obviously but to demonstrate I had to mistype them.

For the whole post to be quoted just hit reply at the end of the relevant post.[/quote]

 

[HSSS]

To be fair, in the past week I haven't touched bread AT ALL. And even then it's been the weight watchers malted stuff. There's so little of it, considering the effort of toasting it I'm better off without it. (and it's bloody expensive).

Yoghurt is the 0% fat greek plain yoghurt. I treat myself to an activia peach yoghurt every now and again for a mid morning snack.

I'm not a huge fan of tropical fruit, I only really eat apples, bananas, grapes and raspberries, maybe a slice of melon once in a blue moon. I'm not a big fruit eater, I prefer my veg.

Soups are usually homemade in my soup maker, and I avoid potatoes/thickeners in them, usually leftover veg from a meal (carrot/cauliflower/butternut squash)

There's 3 different plans now; one more like slimming world where you can eat as much pasta and such as you like, one where carbs and high fat food seem to be the big pointers, and one where literally everything has points that you just count every day. I'm on the middle one, so I focus on as much fruit and veg as possible and leave potatoes/bread/pasta etc to a minimum.

I'm trying to get myself into the habit of healthy eating. A month ago that average food day would have been very very different, porridge/toast for lunch, pot noodles/maggi noodles for lunch and a huge bowl of pasta covered in cheese for tea. Not forgetting the 3 - 4 litres of squash I'd drink on a daily basis. I've done nothing but drink water for the past month!

I have a lot more information to digest from your links, they have been bookmarked and have added them to my google reading list. Thank you for your help

I’d stick to the berries and definitely ditch the banana and grapes. Apples fall in the middle. Fruit yoghurt is best checked for the carb content and compared to the Greek.

low carb tends to mean increase one of the other two macros to avoid hunger and give energy. Fats or proteins. Real natural fat is NOT the issue it’s been made out to be the last 50yrs and based on some pretty poor science. Processed oils (vegetable oil, canola, margarine etc) are another story though and positively bad for health.

There is a lot to learn (and unlearn) but it sounds like you’ve made a fantastic start to a healthier you.