Spoke To nurse

MySugr is free. You can record your food and numbers amongst other things. I assume you have a glucose meter.

Alright @kevsta from another Kev.
Blimey, your nurse sounds like she needs to go back to Stalag 19 for a refresher course in PR or read Dale Carnegie's book, 'How to win friends and influence people'...

I can only speak for myself and what has worked for me - and it is all down to the lovely folk on this forum that I have had a big turn round.

15 years ago, at 173cm tall, I was 102Kg and HbA1c close to 100, I've been diagnosed for 18 years and it wasn't until 7 weeks ago I took control - only you can do this. I love my food, beer, choc, cake whatever but my control was slipping after years on Metformin, Trulicity injections and other meds. I was absolutely sick to the back teeth with running to the loo with a gippy stomach. I was eating all the wrong things being a wagon driver.

I'm now 85 Kilo and falling, I still eat well and have an odd day where I drink a beer or two, but I have cut carbs out, my HbA1c has dropped from 61 to 51 in six weeks.

Today's food - Breakfast, Bacon, good quality sausage (no rusk) tomato, mushroom, egg and some piccalilli on the side.
Lunch, can of tuna with a side salad. Dinner, Cauliflower rice based Pizza with tomato, mozzarella, onion, prosciutto and leek, bit of oregano on the toms to make them extra tasty.

I'll say it again - only you can do this. You need to look at your diet and find with regular testing what spikes you and what doesn't, everybody is different. You don't have to live like a monk/nun, but you do have to be careful with what you put in your body, do you want to measure food every day and inject insulin? Do you want to lose your sight and possibly limbs through diabetes?

It took me a couple of weeks and reading posts from @bulkbiker @Jim Lahey @LaoDan @Rachox @lucylocket61 and @KennyA to motivate myself. Lose the carbs, eat dairy and non-processed foods, meat, veg etc.. but be sensible. Once you lose carbs you then need fat to fuel yourself.

Good luck with it and by using this forum and the support of the brilliant folk on here, you WILL beat it...

Take care.

Kev

kevsta said:

What’s the best food logger ?

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MyFitnessPal is good. You can scan barcodes for details of foods etc.

When I can be bothered to log foods it's what I use.

If you like sausages (as I do) then the Black Farmer ones don't spike my sugar and if you cook them till crispy they are lovely

There's nothing wrong with cheese or dairy - your nurse needs a diet update. Carbs are the problem so focus on keeping those down.

kevsta said:

So…..

Spoke to nurse today and she is giving
Me 3 months to sort myself out….And then she wants to put me on metformin (slow release) I think it was

Adjusting to this life style is so hard however I know some times I don’t help myself so I’m really going to try

I love my food and I like to just eat I was 16st but now 14st which she was happy about

But my cholesterol and triglycerides (is that the same ? )

She wasn’t happy about and asked if eat alot of cheese and dairy…well i suppose I do but I don’t think I over indulge and as for milk I just drink
semi skinned

What’s the best food logger ?

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There’s plenty you can do to sort yourself out on your own but the very first thing you may want to consider is to ditch your nurse (just don’t tell her as you may want to keep her on your good side)

They give you standard advises which unfortunately do not apply to everyone as no two people are the same and that’s especially true if you have T2D.

How does she even know you should have no more than 120gr of carbs a day? Is she a clairvoyant?

My tolerance of carbs at diagnosis was 20gr per meal (it has increased now). Had I followed my nurse advise I am not sure where I would be today : eat normally just reduce portions - have 5 a day and eat apples and pears – don’t get a meter as you don’t need it – BG after 2 hours from eating should be no higher than 11mmol (?!?!) etc...

The only person who can establish your tolerance to carbs is...YOU!

Get a meter, take readings of your BG before and after eating and see what it says: that is the ONLY way you can know for sure how the food you eat is affecting you.

That can seem daunting at first yes, but with time you will learn what portions you can tolerate and being able to prepare food according to your needs will be second nature.

I measured food religiously for the first 6 months of diagnosis, now I can tell what my portions are without the need of a food scale.

Cereals are tricky; if you insist on having them (as I do) then you need to accept the fact that you can’t have a ‘normal’ portion anymore but just enough not to trigger a BG spike.

I have them with yogurt (Alpro no sugar), mixed seeds (to compensate the reduced portion of cereals), some vegan proteins and blueberries (and a sprinkle of cinnamon too).

Check labels as not all cereals are the same; as far as I am aware the ones with the lowest amount of added sugar are Weetabix and Kellogs prebiotic but your tolerance to the same food will change with time too (at first 10gr of weetabix would give me high readings now they don’t anymore).

The most important step to treat your condition you have already taken by joining this site: no nurse can give you the knowledge you will find on here because no one can advise you on something they do not know! Who better than someone who live with the condition is better qualified to give you advise?

I went from an Hba1c of 96 (October last year) to 32 (last August) and that was only possible to reading about people experiences on here NOT to my nurse! (WITHOUT medications).

Before diagnosis I considered myself a chocoholic, pizzaaholic, ice-creamholic..basically if it didn’t have carbs I wasn’t interested! Never in a million years I would have imagined I could change my diet so drastically.

I lost 3 stones within 3 months of diagnosis (not that I advise that as I looked ill) now put half of that back on (and look more ‘normal’); my tolerance to carbs has increased and can have the occasional chocolate, grapes and other forbidden food (if mixed with the right food i.e fat).

Bottom line: if I can do it (and I really thought I couldn’t!), so can you no doubt! Just stick around here long enough and you will take control of your life as a TD2

kevsta said:

Yea so I’ve started to try and weight some of my food in the mornings like my shredded wheat bite size and I’m quite surprised how much carbs vs amount of food eg a handful and wasn’t even a generous amount was over 15g of carbs and my nurse said I should be having about 120g of carbs a day


But I think trying to get into the habit of weighing some food is going to be good for me but being honest with myself I don’t think I’m able to do this every morning just cuz of getting up getting ready for work etc

But I guess it’s a start….right??

I was talking to my partner and she said she is going to make me some egg muffin (without the bread ) so got something to snack on after work


But I’ve not had any chocolate

for over 4 days now which makes me feel twitchy lol

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The bulk of us wouldn't touch wheat, shredded or otherwise. (Though I know there are some on here who can tolerate it just fine. I'm not one of them tho'.) You're better off tossing 4 eggs in a pan and putting some bacon, cheese and ham in there, or high meat content sausages. No measuring needed, fills you up for hours on end, and it's ready in no time at all. Practically zero carbs, that. Because @Z_e_u_s makes a good point.... Your nurse can't possibly know what amount of carbs you can tolerate. That's one of the things you'll get sorted with a meter, as it's different for everyone. Check your chosen meal and go from there: If you test before a meal and 2 hours after the first bite, you're aiming for a rise of no more than 2.0 mmol/l. If it's over that, the meal needs a bit of tweaking. Or tossing. And if you're one of the lucky ones who can actually tolerate shredded wheat, and measuring it out is a chore, why not measure it out ahead of time once a week or fortnight, and store it as exactly-right-for-you portions?

Yay for the breadless muffins.

My advice for what it's worth is to take the nuclear option and try to ditch the carbs completely. It's almost impossible I believe to achieve zero carb (and possibly not even advisable) but I work on the assumption that if I try to eat absolute zero carbs, the small amount that slip through the net (and they always do - the little buggers are everywhere) will represent a COLOSSAL improvement over the 'norm'.

I'd agree that nodding politely at the nurse and then doing your own thing is the best way forward, as long as doing your own thing involves going flat out to get the BG figures down.

Speaking as someone who loves food (especially good bread...mmmmmm) I've found it surprisingly easy to manage.

Pasta, rice, potatoes and bread are The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as far as I'm concerned, and I'm only really missing the bread when I have my weekend monster fry-up. Now that I've found Seriously Low Carb bread online I can deal with that issue as well.

Getting a meter and using it properly has been a revolution for me - I went for the Accu Chek mobile and sync it MySugr on the phone. Then I make massive spreadsheets and graphs and get all nerdy over the correlation between weight loss and blood sugar.

My approach definitely isn't based on any one 'diet' or methods and would not be right for everyone, but it's certainly working for me.

Just remember - CARBS ARE EVERYWHERE. CHEESE IS GOOD.

kevsta said:

Thanks guys really appreciate the advise so much to munch through I’m sure with help form this place and alot of will power I can do this

Thanks

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once you get used to what a portion looks like, it gets easier, and you dont have to weight and measure. You are doing really well.