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Type 2 Where to start??

N

Neilysqueely

Member
Messages
6
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Tablets (oral)
Hi, I think it’s a simple question but correct me if I’m wrong..

I’ve spend 2 days trawling through the huge amount of options etc around low carb diets. I’m not really one for following plans and recipes so what I want to know is what daily carb intake figure should I be looking at as a guide? Also should it be the total carb content of a food or just what sugars?
Thanks in anticipation of your replies
 
For me my rule of thumb is that it is more than 8% carbo I probably leave it on the shelf, unless it is a low weight high impact item, like passion fruit for my full fat yogurt.
Just concentrate on the total carbs, the sugars are included there and they all turn out to be sugars once in the body.
Good luck and welcome to the forum :)
 
How many carbs to aim for per day is personal - there is no right or wrong answer.
On this forum, there are some people who limit their carb intake to 20g per day. There are others on low carb who eat more like 80g and some 100g ... and some who don't limit their carbs at all.
A common approach is to find out what spikes your BG and cut that out first: test, eat, wait 2 hours, test. If your second test is more than 2mmol/l greater than your first, there was something you ate which your body can't cope well with.

And, it is all carbs: our bodies break down starchy carbs (like pasta, rice, bread, ...) into sugar so it doesn't matter whether it starts as sugar or other types of carbs, our bodies aren't great fans of it.
 
As Helen says it’s a personal thing what level you choose or need. I had the same dilemma when I was diagnosed. With suggestions from here, I started at 100g per day, initially just cutting out the obvious carbs like, bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, crisps and obvious sweet stuff like sweet drinks, cakes and biscuits. My sugars dropped gradually and after 6 weeks plateaued and weren’t as low as I wanted so I dropped my carbs to between 50-70g/day. This did the trick to get me non diabetic readings. As I got better at carb counting and learnt more about low carb alternatives I have naturally reduced to between 40-60g per day. By reducing slowly I avoided ‘carb flu, not real flu but a similar feeling you can get if you drop carbs suddenly. Remember you don’t have to learn it all at once.
Here’s a useful link about carb levels:
https://www.dietdoctor.com/how-low-carb-is-low-carb
 
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