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Type 2 diagnosis

T

teggers88

Newbie
Messages
4
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Tablets (oral)
Hi all I've just been told I'm type 2 diabetic but I have other health conditions which mean I'm struggling to find nutritional meals I can eat. I have to avoid wholemeal items, all nuts and peanuts. I'm bad with spicy food. I've always snacked throughout the day with my job being on the road and having sandwich meal deals from supermarkets. I'm lazy when it comes to cooking but will start scratch cooking if that's what will make me better in the long run. Please help me ☺️
 
Eggs, sliced cheese, cold meats, olives, cherry tomatoes etc. are what I eat when travelling. It's easier to control what you're eating if you cook it yourself but that's not always realistic - just make the best choices of pre-prepared food your budget will allow. Tinned or frozen fish and veg can make quick, easy dinners.

What dietary advice have you been given so far? NHS advice can be a bit hit-and-miss. Depending on your HbA1c, you may only need to make a few tweaks to your existing diet.

Others will no doubt add more advice tomorrow, the forum is very quiet overnight.
 
I've basically been told that I'm not allowed breakfast cereal anymore which is what I've lived on for past 30 years. To instead scramble eggs for breakfast but I'm a quick out the door sort of person in the mornings. I haven't got time to do the early morning eggs
 
Hi and welcome to the forum @teggers88 . Yes it's always a shock when you are told you have diabetes. It always seems to come out of the blue, usually when you are having unrelated tests. If you don't mind me asking what were your HbA1c results ? The HbA1c test is the standard test for diabetes. HbA1c test is used to measure your blood glucose. Simply put the test shows average blood levels over a 3 month period. As for dietary advice I'm going to tag a couple of members @KennyA and @ianf0ster. They both do very low carb diets and may have some dietary suggestions for you.
 
Just because it’s “breakfast” you don’t need to have breakfast associated foods. Try just thinking about it as another meal. I often have leftovers from the day before, either heated up in the microwave or cold. If your pushed for time in the mornings try making a pack up the night before. Hard boiled eggs, meats, cheese, cold veggies, I love my cold veggies the next day with some mayo to dip in. Good cooked cold veggies are broccoli, Brussel sprouts (I know you either love or hate these) asparagus, cauliflower, roasted celeriac.

You can cook bacon the day before and heat it in the microwave. I sometimes make a big frittata with eggs cheese, ham a few chopped peppers, mushrooms & onions and portion it up, will keep a good 4 or 5 days in the fridge - great hot or cold. If you like omelettes you can make a batch of those, roll them and they keep in the fridge too, again great hot or cold, and a great food to run around with in your hand if you’re pushed for time.

A bit more expensive but if you get it when it’s on offer salmon can be cooked the day before & eaten the next day cold. Anything you’ve had the day before can be heated up.
 
teggers88 said:
Hi all I've just been told I'm type 2 diabetic but I have other health conditions which mean I'm struggling to find nutritional meals I can eat. I have to avoid wholemeal items, all nuts and peanuts. I'm bad with spicy food. I've always snacked throughout the day with my job being on the road and having sandwich meal deals from supermarkets. I'm lazy when it comes to cooking but will start scratch cooking if that's what will make me better in the long run. Please help me ☺️
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I am impressed that you've been told to avoid cereals. They're all really carb-heavy to begin with and many have huge amounts of added sugar. I often think that the ones shouting loudest about how "healthy" they are are the ones that most need to be avoided.

One thing - if you can, try to forget everything you think you know about "healthy eating" and particularly the stuff that regularly appears in the media, daytime TV, Facebook, all that. The low-fat system introduced in the 1980s has resulted in a huge and continuing rise in obesity and T2 diabetes.

I'd strongly recommend eating substantial fresh-cooked meals and eating as much as you need, providing it ain't carby. That means eating proteins and fats instead. I've been doing that for getting on six years now. Results below.

For me snacks - especially snacks bought out - are a nightmare. Almost all are based heavily on carbs. Because they're cheap and bulky, and have a huge profit margin, they seem to be the only things available. So when I'm travelling I make up a couple of ration boxes (I use military surplus plastic food boxes) and they get filled with things like salamis and ham, bacon and gammon, hard boiled eggs, olives, tomatoes, chicken, that sort of thing. If I need to look for a meal, there's almost always somewhere doing bacon and eggs. I've found that when I say I don't want the toast/fried bread/ hash brown/ beans/ chips I'll often get extra eggs.

This DietDoctor website is great at giving you basic info on which foods are high in carb and which foods aren't.

www.dietdoctor.com

A Low Carb Diet Guide for Beginners – Diet Doctor

In this top low-carb guide, we show you what to eat, what to avoid and how to avoid side effects. Get delicious low-carb recipes and meal plans.
www.dietdoctor.com www.dietdoctor.com

This forum itself is also an excellent resource. We've all been through it and you can ask as many questions as you like.

best of luck
 
Hi @teggers88 You say that you don't have time to cook eggs. My solution to that was to batch cook hard boiled eggs and keep them in the fridge. Back before I got 'fat adapted' (hence no longer hungry for breakfast) I used to eat 2 or 3 large hard-boiled eggs for breakfast each day. I would boil 6 to 8 of them at a time and once cooled keep in the fridge ready for use. I found them quite palatable cold (like a Scotch Egg without the outside casing). I found that salt & Pepper, or ground chilli or soy sauce or balsamic vinegar would flavour them nicely so I never got bored with them.
 
fumanchu said:
When I said I didnt have time for breakfast, my gp said well GET UP EARLIER lol. So I did :p
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I had a similarly unhelpful GP tell me that I needed to eat an extra meal per day in order to take meds 12 hours apart. I have another chronic disabling condition which means I can no longer cook for myself, so the extra meal was not magically going to just happen! Sometimes I wonder whether doctors are living in the same world as their patients.

I second/ third the "no need for special breakfast foods" message. They're just overpriced marketing gimmicks usually lacking in protein and full of beige carbs. Anything you'd eat at another time of day is fine. I usually have cold meats or eggs, either freshly fried or cold hard-boiled. A cold cooked sausage or two is a treat!
 
debs248 said:
Anything you'd eat at another time of day is fine. I usually have cold meats or eggs, either freshly fried or cold hard-boiled. A cold cooked sausage or two is a treat!
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Oh god no, I couldn't even lookat cold sausages or cold meat in the mornings. I do better without breakfast now.Just coffee.
 
Thanks you for all your advice. I'm not fond of hard boiled eggs but what I've found I can have is Greek yogurt with some fruit which will hopefully keep me going.
 
Melgar said:
Hi and welcome to the forum @teggers88 . Yes it's always a shock when you are told you have diabetes. It always seems to come out of the blue, usually when you are having unrelated tests. If you don't mind me asking what were your HbA1c results ? The HbA1c test is the standard test for diabetes. HbA1c test is used to measure your blood glucose. Simply put the test shows average blood levels over a 3 month period. As for dietary advice I'm going to tag a couple of members @KennyA and @ianf0ster. They both do very low carb diets and may have some dietary suggestions for you.
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My hbac1 results were 71 on 25/6/25 compared to 35 4 years earlier. It doesn't help that I have ishemic colitis, esonophillic Esophagitis and Klinefelter syndrome on top of everything so finding foods that I can actually tolerate is now much harder
 
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