Hello from Glasgow!
As you're up here, note that whisky (like spirits in general) has zero carbs - so acquire a sipping habit. It also does fabulous things in your mouth with cheese. Better than red wine does, in my opinion.
I drove past Glasgow yesterday
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A lot of the diet mixers are zero carbs, too. The nutritional label on the back of Morrisons Diet Indian Tonic Water is zero for everything, apart from a tiny trace of salt. I've been buying a lot of 'no added sugar' fizzy drinks lately (at least in part to quench the diabetes thirst, pre-diagnosis) and reading the labels on those, they're a bit of a mixed bag, carbs wise.
Historically, I'm not good with wine. Possibly something psychological about leaving an open container partly full means it turns into a mission to finish the bottle. I used to be better when I did booze cruises over to France and brought back boxes. Maybe I'll get one last chance to do that before the customs barriers go up at the end if the year. The boxes are a royal rip-off in this country. Especially since they craftily downsized most of them to 3 bottles rather than 4, seemingly without lowering the prices.
I tend to share a bottle of wine with company. If I open one on my own, I'll drink the whole thing. Beer has always worked better for keeping my alcohol intake down, but clearly it isn't good from a diabetes perspective. Though I think the biggest change is going to be cutting out bread. I'd generally have 2 slices of toast in the morning and a sandwich at lunchtime. That's around 120g of carbs right there. And I dread to think of the number of times I've bought a whole French stick and consumed it within 24 hours (it goes stale pretty quickly, otherwise.)
As an aside, my weight's been stuck on around 15 stone 10 to 15 stone 12 since I started weighing myself again in March. I've just woken up to 15 stone 6. I think I've been at over 15 stone at least 95% of the time since my teens, and peaked at 18 stone 7 a few years ago. I've been this basic body shape since I was 5 years old. (The story is that my mum went into hospital and I went to live with my grandparents. She dropped off a thin kid and got a fat one back.)
Thanks to everyone who's been positive and supportive. Having pondered it for a while, I'm not sure the "You're only half trying. You should question your commitment" negativity really belongs here.