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Soooo many questions

Smiler69

Active Member
Messages
33
Location
Kent
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Tablets (oral)
Good Evening.

Really pleased I’ve found this forum. So much reading to do.

I’m trying my best to reduce my high sugar readings (T2) Been trying to follow a low carb, healthy eating change to my diet.

Just a few questions;

Is weetabix ok for breakfast? No sugar added.

Can I eat water melon, raspberries, strawberries, pears?

Sadly I do have a sweet tooth, I’ve completely cut out adding sugar to everything, chocolate, cakes etc etc. But is there anything I can eat to take away the craving?

Thank you. Many more questions to come.
 
Smiler69 said:
Is weetabix ok for breakfast? No sugar added.
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Not really cereals are all pretty high carb.
Try eggs, bacon, high fat plain yoghurt instead
Smiler69 said:
Can I eat water melon, raspberries, strawberries, pears?
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I'd avoid watermelon and pears but strawberries and raspberries are ok in moderation (maybe 50g per day max). you could put some in your plain yoghurt for breakfast.
Smiler69 said:
I’ve completely cut out adding sugar to everything, chocolate, cakes
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Time is a great healer in this regard ....sugar is a killer and all carbs turn to sugar when ingested.
 
Hi

Great forum isnt it. Well done on the positive changes you have made.

I avoid all cereals. Raise my BS too much. But we aren't all the same. You may be able to tolerate weetabix. Do you have a glucose meter? I find mine invaluable test before I eat then 2 hours after. The difference should be not more than 2mmol/l. I tend to avoid fruit apart from berries which dont impact my bs.

If I fancy something sweet I have a chocolate and nut bar from aldi (5.9 carbs). Or some 85% chocolate. Maybe a few strawberries and cream. I found my sweet tooth disappeared since going low carb.

Have a look at diet doctor website. Great resource. Check out the visuals
 

Weetabix is not a good option. It's wheat, which is carb-heavy. Better options: Full fat greek yoghurt with berries and maybe nuts (walnut, pecan), or eggs with bacon and cheese, maybe some high meat content sausages. You don't have to completely avoid chocolate, just go for the extra dark stuff, 85% or higher. If it's too bitter, have some cream or walnut to go with it. If you're craving things, try pork scratchings. Those'll fill you up and the craving'll go. (I take mine with mayo). Avoid practically all fruit, and stick with berries of just about any kind, starfruit, avocado, and tomatoes. Those are pretty okay. The rest, not so much...

In another thread, I posted a link to the Nutritional Thingy, which kinda covered the bases of every single question you asked... https://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/blog-entry/the-nutritional-thingy.2330/ Just in case you missed it the first time.
 

Hi. It will not open the link
 
Once I went down the road of nutritional ketosis I noticed that the cravings for sugary things went down immensely. At some point even things like plain almonds, plain heavy cream, carrots and tomatoes start tasting really sweet. There are a few videos from Dr. Phinney or Dr. Fung that may be helpful.
 
Agree with all the above. In the early days I made a few alternatives from ditchthecarbs.com to satisfy the sweet craving and wean me off sweet treats. Whipped double cream and cream cheese with a little safe sweetener makes a lovely treat. Increasing fat helps keep you full and seeking pleasure in different foods is a mind set as much as sugar addition both of which help.
 
I believe that most of us acquire a sweet tooth in our early years and that we can train ourselves to want less sugar pretty quickly. Sugar in tea is an excellent example. Leave the sugar out for a week or so and you will never want it in tea again. If you must eat something sweet then try stoned fruit such as peaches, plums and cherries. They don't have much effect on my BG and it may work for you too. BTW, there are some who claim that stoned fruits actually lower BG levels. Who knows, but it's great if they do.
 
Dexterdobe said:
Sugar in tea is an excellent example. Leave the sugar out for a week or so and you will never want it in tea again.
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Not my experience. I’ve tried many times over the years for weeks at a time and it simply isn’t tea.

I’ve tried cold turkey and withdrawing slowly, from only 1 teaspoon too. Now I’ve mostly replaced traditional tea with herbal ones so no milk or sugar required or expected. The first cuppa of the day is still a real one but now has xylitol as the only sweetener that tastes right to me but I do try to limit it. (No dogs in our house, sadly)
 
Smiler69 said:
Hi. It will not open the link
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That's strange... Here's the text, hope it'll help.

THE NUTRITIONAL THINGY

There’s a few things you should know.

1. Practically all carbs turn to glucose once ingested, so not just straight sugars, but starches too. Food doesn’t have to taste sweet to make your blood sugars skyrocket.

2. A meter helps you know what foods agree with you, and which don’t. Test before and 2 hours after the first bite. If you go up more than 2.0 mmol/l, the meal was carbier than you could handle. (It’s easy to remember, as you’re a T2: all 2’s, all over the place!)

3. In case you didn’t know already, this isn’t your fault. It’s genetics, medication, decades of bad dietary advice, and basically all manner of things, but nothing you can actually blame yourself for.

4. Diabetes T2 is a progressive condition, unless you (also) change your diet. So you have options. Diet-only, diet with medication, or medication only. But that last option will most likely mean more medication over the years. (And there is more than just metformin, so if it doesn’t agree with you, there’s lots of others to try). So even if going really low carb isn’t for you, you might consider moderately low carb an option, with meds to assist.

5. Are you overweight? 90% of T2’s are. Yeah, that means 10% are slim and always were. If you did gain weight, it was the precursor of this metabolic condition. We make loads of insulin, but become insensitive to it. So carbs we eat turn to glucose, and normally, insulin helps us burn that glucose for fuel. When it doesn’t, that glucose is stored in fat cells instead. When those fat stores are full, the glucose remains in our bloodstream, overflowing, into our eyes, tears, urine, saliva… And then we’re T2’s. So weight gain is a symptom, not a cause. This also means that “regular” dietary advice doesn’t work for us. The problem lies in our inability to process carbs. And most diets focus on lowering fats and upping carb intake. Which is the direct opposite of what a T2, or prediabetic, for that matter, needs.

6. There are 3 macro-nutrients. Fats, protein and carbohydrates. Those macro’s mean we get the micro-nutrients we need: that would be vitamins and minerals. So… If you ditch the carbs, you should up another macro-nutrient to compensate, to make sure you don’t get malnourished or vitamin deficient. Carbs make our blood sugars rise. Protein too, but nowhere near as bad as carbs do, so they’re alright in moderation. Fats however… Fats are as good as a glucose-flatline. Better yet, they’ll mitigate the effects of any carbs we do ingest, slowing down their uptake and thus the sugar-spike. Contrary to what we’ve been told for decades; fats are our friends.

7. Worried about cholesterol? On a low carb diet, your cholesterol may rise a little as you start to lose weight. That’s a good thing though. (Believe it or not). What was already there, stored in your body, is starting to head for the exit, and for that it’ll go into your bloodstream first. So when you have lost weight and it stabilises, so will your cholesterol. And it’ll probably be lower than what it was before you started out.

8. You’ll lose weight on a low carb diet. Weight loss will help with your insulin-resistance, and not only that… Going low carb might help with other issues as well, like non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and depression.

9. Always ask for your test results. You don’t know where you’re going, if you don’t know where you’ve been.

10. Last, but certainly not least: If you are on medication that has hypoglycemia listed as a side-effect, like Gliclazide for instance, do NOT attempt a LCHF diet without a meter nor your doctors’ knowledge/assistance. You can drop blood glucose levels too far, too fast, if your dosage isn’t adjusted accordingly. This could mean a lower dose in stages or even stopping medication completely. Never do this without discussing it with your doctor first!


So what raises blood sugars? Aside from the obvious (sugar), starches raise blood glucose too. So bread, and anything made with grain/oats flour, rice, potatoes, pasta, corn, cereals (including all the “healthy choices”, like Weetabix and muesli), most beans and most fruits. So you’ll want to limit your intake, or scratch them altogether.

Which food items remain on the shopping list? Well, meat, fish, poultry, above ground veggies/leafy greens, eggs, cheese, heavy cream, full fat Greek yoghurt, full fat milk, extra dark chocolate (85% Lindt’s is great!), avocado, (whole) tomatoes, berries, olives, nuts, that sort of thing… Meal ideas? Have a couple:

Scrambled eggs with bacon, cheese, mushrooms, tomato, maybe some high meat content sausages?
Eggs with ham, bacon and cheese
Omelet with spinach and/or smoked salmon
Omelet with cream, cinnamon, with some berries and coconut shavings
Full fat Greek yoghurt with nuts and berries
Leafy green salad with a can of tuna (oil, not brine!), mayonnaise, capers, olives and avocado
Leafy green salad with (warmed goat's) cheese and bacon, maybe a nice vinaigrette?
Meat, fish or poultry with veggies. I usually go for cauliflower rice or broccoli rice, with cheese and bacon to bulk it up. Never the same meal twice in a row because of various herbs/spices.

Snacks? Pork scratchings, cheese, olives, extra dark chocolate, nuts.

Of course, there’s loads more on the web, for people more adventurous than I. (Which is pretty much everyone). Just google whatever you want to make and add “keto” to it, and you’ll get a low carb version. There’s a lot of recipes on the diabetes.co.uk website, as well as on www.dietdoctor.com where you’ll also find visual (carb content) guides and videos. And I can wholeheartedly endorse Dr. Jason Fung’s book The Diabetes Code. It’ll help you understand what’s going on in your body and how to tackle it, whilst not being a dry read. Not only that, but you’ll know what to ask your doctor, and you’ll understand the answers, which is, I believe, quite convenient.
 
Stoned fruits? You mean Mango too?
 

My largest rise ever at 1 and 2 hours was after eating a single fresh plum. It was near the beginning of my T2 adventure but I haven't tried one since. I had bought a punnet. The birds got the rest of them. I personally cannot recommend them. I recommend never eating fruit on its own as a snack, always as part of a meal along with either full fat plain yogurt or double cream.
 
Yes you can eat strawberries and I do! And I will happily eat double @bulkbiker's 50g max. We are all different and they only have about 6g sugar per 100g. I tend to eat them at breakfast with either cheese, cream, or greek yoghurt.
 
Richard'63 said:
Yes you can eat strawberries and I do! And I will happily eat double @bulkbiker's 50g max. We are all different and they only have about 6g sugar per 100g. I tend to eat them at breakfast with either cheese, cream, or greek yoghurt.
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Yep you may be able to but that doesn't mean that everybody can or should though.
 
I have full fat yogurt and double cream with my stewed fruit.
 
Richard'63 said:
Yes you can eat strawberries and I do! And I will happily eat double @bulkbiker's 50g max. We are all different and they only have about 6g sugar per 100g. I tend to eat them at breakfast with either cheese, cream, or greek yoghurt.
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Agreed. I don’t nail down my carbs to zero for the sake of it.
 
Good Evening @Smiler69

I have or had a sweet tooth too. I had to stop eating carbs aswell as sweet foods to bring down my blood sugar levels down into acceptable figures. So I confine myself to a limit of just over 100 grams of carbs per day and totally stopped eating sweets, cakes, biscuits, breakfast cereal, pasta, potato, rice and a lot (not all) of fruit I used to eat has been stopped to. I do take a couple of slices of low carb bread.

It has worked for me and my diabetic symptoms have been reversed, blood pressure is down and blood sugar levels are down.

It will work for you too.
 
Regarding the berries, I have steadily reduced, as they like everything else, are being artificially made sweeter and sweeter - often the supermarkets boast on the packaging "extra sweet" and similar.

Which is why I can't wait for the locally grown seasonal options from small holdings, a perk of living in the countryside. Wild blackberries are plentiful and magnificent in my area, and are definitely not as sweet.
 
@Smiler69 If you go to the website of whichever supermarket you prefer and use the search for the food you are curious about, you will normally be shown a selection of products. Click on the specific one you want to know about. Scroll down and you will usually find a panel of nutritional information. The 100g column will tell you what percentage of the food is carbohydrate.

Edited to add an example. Selecting one of the Weetabix products from Sainsbury's I found that they are 69g carbs for 100g of product, which is high. However when I look at the 2 biscuit serving column I find that it is only 26g which surprised me. It's higher than I would plan to eat for breakfast but much lower than when I don't take food to work and end up buying sandwiches for lunch.
 
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Smiler69 said:
Sadly I do have a sweet tooth, I’ve completely cut out adding sugar to everything, chocolate, cakes etc etc. But is there anything I can eat to take away the craving?
Thank you. Many more questions to come.
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Welcome to the forum @Smiler69. I think a lot of us T2s had a liking for sweet stuff, which contributed to us becoming diabetic.
I found that 'sugar free' sweets like Ricola and Sula helped me to get a 'sweet fix' after my T2 diagnosis. They are available in most supermarkets and health stores. But be careful of how many you eat, the sweetener in them does have laxative effects.

I gave up milk chocolate and started eating dark chocolate instead, which I now prefer. The higher the cocoa content the lower sugar/carb content in this. Over 80% cocoa content is best. Before I could eat a 500 gm of milk chocolate in an evening, now a couple (or 4!) squares of dark chocolate is enough.
I couldn't drink tea or coffee without an alternative to sugar. I tried various sweeteners and found Sucralose suited me.
You can make sugar free cakes and cookies yourself using sweetener. There are lots of recipes on this forum, on dietdoctor.com and on http://www.diabeticgoodbaking.com/

Ask as many questions as you want, the people on here are friendly and supportive.
 
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