To Kimiwolf ... I have to disagree with you. Personally, I'm glad I can no longer eat what I WANT, in fact I wish I'd been diagnosed earlier and stopped eating what I WANTED many years ago. I might have been a lot fitter than I am now if I'd eaten a better diet.
There's no real nutritional value in ice cream, cakes, biscuits, sweets, Mr Kiplings etc. They're just sugar laden **** that rots your teeth and if you're an undiagnosed diabetic, cause you all sorts of ailments as a result of untreated high blood glucose.
I'm one of those nasty people who has no problem refusing to buy sweets for children, in fact I'd no more buy sweets for a child than I would buy a packet of cigarettes for an adult. I'm also one of those nasty people who makes loud comments in the supermarket about all the sweets on display at the checkout and how I think they should be removed and locked away in a cabinet just like the cigarettes are now.
I've had 50 years of being able to eat what I WANTED ... as a result I have dentures, and I had so many diabetic complications BEFORE I was diagnosed with diabetes that I was almost writing my will. I was never a huge sweet/cake eater but I did eat them. But sugar is just a poison as far as I'm concerned, but it's sweet, we generally like the taste of it, it's addictive and it SELLS - just like cigarettes and alcohol sell.
So no, I count my diabetes diagnosis as a PLUS in my life. It turned my life around from being a person who was dragging myself out of bed at 1pm every day to someone who's up at the crack of dawn and out to work at 7.45am every morning and loving every minute of it.
I LOVE my Metformin, I'm thankful I had no problems with it. I love that it's curbed my appetite by about 60%. I love my LCHF diet, it suits me, it suits my tummy, it suits my lungs, it suits my blood glucose just fine. I'm no longer sugar addicted. I can walk past chocolate, sweets, biscuits, cakes without a flinch or a longing, in fact sometimes just the smell and look of the stuff makes my stomach heave. I do occasionally try something sweet just to test my reactions to it, and my reaction is ALWAYS "How in God's name did I ever EAT that stuff and LIKE it? How did I ever EAT that stuff without throwing up afterwards?" Because that's what sugary food makes me feel like now.
I'm nearly 60 and I can remember as a child NOT LIKING SUGARY FOODS and refusing them. I can also remember MY MOTHER telling me that I NEEDED sugar for energy. She had a sweet tooth, liked her sweets and biscuits so I had to like them too. I remember her putting sugar in my tea because I NEEDED it. I remember tasting it and thinking "Eeeeeewwww yuk!" I remember LEARNING TO LIKE sugary foods and I remember becoming ADDICTED to them and later on CRAVING them if I stopped eating them.
I like to think my Mother didn't intentionally poison me with sugar, although I know for definite that I was an unwanted child, she gave birth to me but didn't want me for her own reasons and that never changed throughout the whole of our time together. But she was incapable of loving me and accepting me and she 'sugar coated' the truth all of her life until she couldn't pretend any longer and blurted it all out to me when I was about 37 years of age and it devastated me. My Mother couldn't love me so she 'sugared' me instead. She substituted sugar for love. Love would have refused me sugar because it's poison. Sugar doesn't care if it kills you or not.
I honestly believe as a nation we need to question our relationship with sugar and our desire to have what we WANT and we need to look at our kids and love them enough to say NO to some of the 'tasty' things that are actually responsible for killing us softly.
Personally, I'd vote for a Government that had the guts to own up to its own greed and lack of responsibility in past years and then BAN cigarettes, sweets and alcohol completely and stopped giving us what we have learned to CRAVE because it's been pushed on us by previous Governments who cared more about the tax benefits of having us addicted to cigarettes and alcohol, than they cared about the health of the nation. Only now is our Government realising that greed has got it absolutely nowhere, because illnesses created by sugar, tobacco and alcohol are costing the nation a fortune in medications, benefits, etc. So they've gained nothing by advertising cigarettes and alcohol at all. Now we have an obesity and diabetes epidemic and the Government is panicking again. What did it expect? Processed foods which have sugar added to make them 'taste better' and sell more - forget that we grow fatter because we eat too much hidden sugars. Forget that our bodies were not built to cope with so much hidden sugar in our food. So long as it sells and our money is circulated, don't worry about the effects. But there is no EFFECT without a CAUSE.
That would be a Government I could respect because it would be a Government that recognised that being an adult is NOT about having what we WANT, it's about exercising discipline sometimes and turning down what we WANT in favour of what we NEED. And I personally don't WANT a Government that happily poisons it's own people and then blames them when they get ill and need to rely on the NHS and Benefits. Time our Governments became more responsible and authentic about it's 'care' for the nation.
Rant over