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Sweet potato

xfieldok

Well-Known Member
Messages
4,182
Location
Lancashire
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Tablets (oral)
I have dropped a clanger. Dinner was roast lamb, green beans and sweet potato with gravy. I par boiled the sweet potato and then roasted them off with lard.

Before dinner 7.1
After 10

Was my mistake roasting them? I had boiled on holiday and got barely a blip.
 
What was in the gravy?

Did you have exercise just before or after the meal on holiday?

And yes roasting them would have increased GI, I cook them slowly in lots of butter. But I don't have them often.
 
Gravy was water, meat juices and stock cube, trace carb.

Not much exercise on holiday due to a sick dog, we came home early.

Can't walk after dinner, we are expecting thunderstorms any time.

Annoyed as it has pushed my estimated HbA1c up to 39 with 2 months to go before my blood test.
 
miahara said:
There's a clue. It's the "sweet" in potato.
View attachment 26224
Click to expand...

Exactly. As a rough guide, the 'best' potato to have is boiled new pots. The worst is baked sweet pots. As my DN recommended sweet pots at diagnosis instead of white ones I no longer have any trust in her judgement. I found all this out with a quick google, she is supposed to be university trained and holds some responsibilityfor the info she gives her patients. I am not impressed to say the least.
 
I went 'paleo' a few months after diagnosis, and ate sweet potato fairly regularly, and deliciously. (Sweet potato is/was part of the staple diet in Aotearoa/NZ. The pre-European contact ones were way starchier and way less sweet than the kind we have today.) It helped me deal with outright sugar/sweets/desserts withdrawal at the time I am sure. Probably helped with the gut biome issues - all those micro organisms crying out 'feed me with glucose!', got some food and were nicer to me and my gut while they started dying off....

Once I started carb counting I was horrified at how high the carb level was.

Have a very very small one every now and then as a winter treat now, as a keto/lchf eater for some years.
 
On holiday I made a mutton stew with carrots, onions, mushrooms and sweet potato. It was delicious and I got a ridiculously small rise afterwards, so I thought I was safe. This is the first reading in double figures this month.

Ah well, live and learn. Thank goodness for this forum
 

xfielddok - Don't be too harsh on yourself. It could be worth trying again to see what happens? I usually liked to try things at least twice to gauge how appropriate something was/is.

The mistakes are what we learn from. If we got everything right every time, what would we learn? At the outset the learning curve is steep. It smooths out a bit as you go along.
 
Thank you @DCUKMod, I tested 3 times to check my readings, I don't think I will be baking sweet potatoes any time soon!

My bedtime reading has gone down to 6.7, phew!

I am a rank amateur having been diagnosed in November and the main thing I have learned is that T2 is a sneaky beggar, as soon as you think you are getting a handle on things, it turns round and bites you on the bum!


Edited by a Mod for language.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Just to clarify, when I said test again, in these circumstances, that would mean having the meal again some time, rather than retest on he same day.

It's entirely up to you if you do the same. No approach is wrong, provided we're gathering data and knowledge from it.

Good luck with it all.
 
Thank you again @DCUKMod I did understand what you meant. My next HbA1c test is on 25 June and I am currently obsessed with coming in at non-diabetic!

Right or wrong it is my target! I am currently highly motivated and as I still have two months to go, it could all come crashing down. If it does, I will just have to pick myself up and there is always next time.

I could not have got this far without the support and advice from this forum.
 
My NZ sister-in-law sent me a wonderful kumara cookbook, with all sorts of tasty recipes including cakes, puds and breads - some of the recipes are off the chart carb-wise but I haven't the heart to throw the book away, so it's hidden. Too well as I can't find it to confirm who wrote it! (A green booklet I think). She also sent me Alison Holst's Bread Book - too cruel!
 

Yes! Too cruel indeed. Many non-diabetics just don't understand about treating T2D, or indeed any D, with diet. "There's a pill for that, isn't there?" just doesn't cut it entirely with anything metabolic, but there you are. We know, they don't. I hope that isn't the end of the story, and treating diseases that essentially come from food with food becomes more widely known and understood.

I have a special hiding place too, for recipe books given to me post diagnosis from folks who know I'm diabetic. That's also where my previously beloved cocktail books are too. . (I wasn't into cooking much before diagnosis either, so at least I don't have a pile of gorgeously illustrated high carb fare recipe books in the attic!)

But sweet potato, eaten sparingly, or at least in the cold season (on my doorstep presently!) - very portion controlled, is the way I go now with that gorgeously sweet starchy root vegetable.

Instead on my LC table - roasted beets, parsnips, swedes/rutabaga, turnips, onions, carrots in not too large amounts too, but nothing beats roast cauliflower and broccoli as replacements, or if going zero carbs - just the roast meat and fat and no veg at all.
 
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