Hi Type2Guy, your anxious care for your diet in order to maintain control of your BG levels is absolutely understandable. Nevertheless, if you do a bit of research about Metformin, you'll see that it is one of the safest, best researched and well known medicines for many, many decades, with benefits clearly outweighing side effects. Further research is being carried out which seems to show that patients taking Metformin might get other protective health benefits from it. I've been taking it since March as Slow Release version, at maximum alowed dose because my levels didn't move down as expected, and together with another medicine, plus a strict diet, I manage to keep my levels at an average of 5/6 and a significant loss of weight which I couldn't even dream about before. I have my A1c test this Friday, hoping to reduce both Metformin and the other med.
I'm sure your consultant could offer you a care plan which would suit your desire to control your diabetes with a bit of help from meds like Metformin;-)
All the best