I was diagnosed as Type 2 last year. I’m still working things out to a fine point, but what I’ve found, for the most part, is I let my glucose level dictate what I can or can’t eat at any given point in the day. If my test shows high, I stay away from the carbs, & stick to to proteins/fats. I’ve found good bread that is within my carb limits (I try to stay below 45g/serving, & limited added sugars) for meals, and 15-20g for snacks. Adding proteins slows down the absorption of carbs, making spikes much less severe. The other thing is portion control - I find I can still eat potatoes/bread/pasta as long as I don’t overdo the portion size. White rice is pretty much a non-starter for me, though I love it so, it’ll spike me quicly. After a lot of research when I was first diagnosed, I determined keto was not for me, too big a risk of ketoacidosis for my liking. I’ve found that with judicious moderation of what I like to eat, I can pretty easily keep my glucose levels between 70 & 180, & I brought my A1C down from 14 to under 6 in just 6 months by medication and applying a reasonable diet. 1500mg metformin a day, and 5mg glipizide a day. If glucose levels are on the low end, I know I can “cheat” a bit on the carbs, if they’re high, I know more protein/fat is in order. The bread I eat is 19g carbs per slice, so a good sandwich is within the range. If I feel like baked potato, and the glucose at the time allows it, I’ll have a baker for supper. YMMV, but it’s been working for me, My 90 day average today is 136, when I was first diagnosed I was over 300 on my blood glucose.
I’ll say again, as I’ve said here and elsewhere on SDMB over time, that you have to try a few strategies and find what works for you. Bodies have both standard and individual characteristics and you can’t really predict what will be a good match. A plan that has evidence that it’s at the least not dangerous, that you think you can try for a couple of months, that you could see doing long-term if it gets the results you want, is a good starting point.
Yes, by all means let’s listen to explanations why something cannot possibly work in theory, and ignore what works in reality, by people who have never tried it.
Intermittent fasting is not necessarily easy, but it is simple, and it works. I am unable to grok why people want to argue about this. Fasting has a long and noble track record in human history.
The “I’m really hungry” part is actually transient - your body is going to protest, vehemently, at any sort of effective calorie restriction, there’s no way around this. At first. I’ve found it to be a non-issue.
This is really key and bears repeating.
“Diets” fail because people think of them as temporary after which they can return to the crappy unconscious eating habits that sickened or obesified them.
A diabetic who wants to control their disease needs to understand that eating whatever / whenever for taste is a thing of the past. Your spoon can kill you or save you. But you need to control it consciously and conscientiously. Not with silly jokes about cheating only on days ending in “y” or that broken cookies contain no calories nor carbs. This is serious business and if you can’t / won’t take it seriously you’re going to fail.
That doesn’t have to mean every meal is pure utilitarian drudgery. But it does mean cultivating a conscious habit of mind that e.g. nuts are as desirable a dessert now as was chocolate cake was then. That pushing back from the table while still obviously hungry is winning, because that sensation will be gone in 5-10 minutes and you’ll have avoided overshoot eating. etc.
Ideas about which specific regimens work “best” are legion. Some of which are bunk that work mostly by power of suggestion.
What will work for you is the one you’ll willingly do for decades, not weeks. And from which you also have real concrete evidence about progress on A1C and other blood indicia.
One of the nice things about diabetes in the current era is that you can know for sure, within just a couple hours, whether your prior meal was safe or stupid. And adjust accordingly. Unlike eating for, say, cholesterol or weight control where it’s darn hard to say whether this omelet or that salad or the other greasy burger & fries changed anything. With a glucometer, you know. Then it’s time to put on your adult underoos and do the right thing the next meal too.
That’s the other thing that’s on my last nerve besides low-carb vs plant-based diet…the variation and accuracy in glucose monitors. Why is the difference so wide? I’ve been experimenting with the Pogo meter, which my endocrinologist really pushed me to try, even though I already have a One Touch. Well, the Pogo usually reads at least 20 points lower than the One Touch. Sometimes that makes no difference, like, if it’s high, it’s high and I need to change my ways, eliminate that food, whatever. But to me, a fasting glucose of 88 on the Pogo versus 115 on the One Touch makes a difference. One indicates that I’m doing well, the other indicates that maybe some tweaks are needed.
Clearly you did not read the link. The study was performed by someone who personally IFs and who was surprised by the findings. It is not a dismissal; it was a solid large scale meticulously performed test. It is what the “research shows.”
Thing is it should work in theory. I personally had expected that early small studies would be proved out by larger studies.
The reality is that the actual evidence did not support the theory: same calories restricted by time of day had no impact.
BUT if an individual ends up eating fewer calories as a result of IF in any of its variations then it can work for them.
More power to those who find it works for them. Or low carb. Or any other approach that gets any individual to the nutritional goals you well articulated.
But the research currently shows there is nothing physiologically magical about IF. Witnessing by some duly noted.
IANA Medical anything. But ISTM that a typical glucometer is very useful for post-meal testing. Not really so much for fasting testing.
I personally test at 90 minutes after start of meal because if I wait to 2 hours, my BG has fully recovered to baseline unless I grossly mis-ate. IMO the goal isn’t to figure out what’s the most cookies you can get away with. It’s to make each and every meal as low as is palatable. Each meal with zero simple carbs is a good meal. A meal with some simple carbs is by definition a marginal meal, and the point of the post-meal testing is to calibrate whether you can/should eat 1 bite of mashed potato, or a golf-ball’s worth or better stick with zero.
The other thing I’ve learned is that post meal exercise, even simple walking, is huge. A meal that would spike me to 175 at 90 minutes instead tops out at more like 120 if I get up from the table and directly walk a mile or mile and a half. Not fast, just leisurely stroll. But up and moving.
Said another way, if I’m willing to walk that mile and a half I can have some fries with that. If not, zero fries is the only safe answer.
It’s not like there are actual food police. You certainly could eat mostly vegetarian/vegan and still have your bit of chicken or burger every so often if that’s what works best for you.
Eating diabetic is hard enough without dropping an extra moral vegan/vegetarian restriction on yourself.
You can’t help needing to dive into the water rather than wade in if you hope to get your A1C down on a reasonable timeframe. But you don’t need to jump into the deepest coldest part with the sharpest rocks. Maybe try that later when you’re acclimated.
I know, I just kind of feel like a scumbag eating any meat, for animal welfare reasons. Also, the texture can be gross at times. But tofu is so taste-less and tempeh is out-and-out disgusting! In my emotional brain, that is. You can see the white fungus on it! Soy milk is tolerable but not great, while the other plant milks are gross tasting IMO. And, like I said, I’m not such a good cook, and by the time I get home from work, I like to cook even less.
And that’s so weird, because it seems like the current advice for type 2 is to test once in the morning if you’re not on insulin.
My DM2 habits are now over a decade old, and may well not reflect current thinking.
I look at it this way. A1C and overnight fasting BG tell me how dead my pancreas is and how insulin-resistant my overall body is. Post-meal tells me how fast I’m killing what’s left.
IME that latter number is need-to-know because that’s the “instrument panel” I’m looking at to make decisions about how to eat. I can’t restore what’s gone. Any improvement in fasting BG or A1C has to come from weight loss, exercise, medication, etc. Not directly from menu control. Maybe that’s too much driving looking at the hood ornament. But if you keep the hood ornament centered in the lane you’re maximizing your chances of staying in the lane.
YMMV.
There are options for non-cruel animal products.
For example, I am now getting my eggs from a co-worker who owns 14 chickens that lives extraordinarily pampered chicken lives, including a garden grown and maintained just for them, ample room, protected outdoor areas, and are more pets than anything else. Very happy chickens. Very tasty eggs.
Of course, there’s a premium price on such things, but I’d rather have a little of very good food than tons of crappy, tasteless stuff.
Well, can’t help with that. If you don’t like the texture you don’t like the texture.
These days I’m baking my tofu and using a dipping sauce. The only problem is that the ready-made stuff at the store is usually loaded with carbs and sugar. I have dipping sauce recipes, but that might not be appealing to non-chefs.
It really does sound like a Mediterranean Plan is great fit for you. It’s plant forward for protein but more bean dishes than tofu or tempeh. Fish, like sardines, salmon, tuna, are all fine but not the star. Some dairy. And a little meat is okay. Just not much or often. Pasta (whole grain) in modest amounts in dishes in which the vegetables do the center stage is also fine.
You don’t need to be much of a cook to open a tin of sardine and mix it into a salad, or cook a bunch of beans to vary with different greens pairings with a healthy oil such as olive.
FWIW purple (black or forbidden) and red rice both have a low glycemic index are higher protein and higher fiber and pair with those bean and vegetable mixes nicely.
Agree with others that there is no need to be rigid to some theoretical best.
It depends on what “works” means. I started intermittent fasting over 3 years ago after reading an article in the NE Journal. I also read that NYTimes article when it came out. It mentioned several benefits besides possible weight loss. The main one being that it is anti-inflammatory. I specifically did not start it to lose weight. I am slightly overweight and my doctor explicitly said I should not lose any more weight. As I said above, I came down from 280 to 200 and that was fine.
However, I do not skip breakfast. I have a substantial breakfast and then dinner around 1-2 usually and that is it. Incidentally, I am convinced I sleep better on an empty stomach.
I might also mention that metformin seems to be like a kind of minor league ozempic. Causing weight loss is a known side effect. Not major weight loss, but I lost 20 lb in the first two years after I started on it and then stopped. My next weight loss (from 240 down to 200) was an explicit campaign to stop noshing between meals. That started around 2010 and I lost 40 lb over two years. My doctor was concerned to send me for a colonoscopy. But there was nothing and my weight hasn’t changed by more than a few lbs (up and down) in over ten years.
They might both be wrong; at least for you.
Not everybody belongs on the same diet. This is likely to be true even for those who share a specific medical condition.
I was put on metformin and told to limit carbs in general, not just sugars, but not to anywhere near zero – I was told that I needed some carbs for health, and given an indication of a likely good range for me, and that it’s better to eat them in combination with protein and some fat. I get A1C every six months and check my blood glucose occasionally, not all that often, to make sure the A1C average isn’t hiding wild spikes in both directions.
When my heart medications raised the A1C some I wound up on Xigduo, which seems to be working; waiting on the next round of A1C to be surer.
No, it won’t. And when I finally give up and eat more, I’m likely to eat way too much, even if it’s way too much in the form of nuts instead of in the form of candy.
Again – people vary.
Yup.
And the meal that actually filled me up usually tests just fine.
The compromise on that, if your pocketbook can manage it, is to be careful how the meat you eat was raised. There are some drastic differences out there. Humanely raised meat is, legitimately, likely to cost more. – it’s also likely to taste better. And the texture may well be different; though whether it’ll be more to your taste I of course can’t say.
Not sure what you read but that study specifically found no significant difference in any marker looked at. There was nothing in that study demonstrating time restriction is anti-inflammatory.
Again, it may very well be that some individuals will end up eating less overall on a time restricted eating approach. It can be effective for them for that reason. That’s fantastic. A great choice for those people. The best current research does NOT however show that time restriction by itself results in more weight loss, less muscle mass loss, or better health markers than other approaches of energy intake reduction. What you eat in those windows also still matters to overall health.
I want empathize that I am not an expert on T2 DM either by personal history or profession and so want to run the following to those who are as reasonable approach for someone with the preferences expressed by the OP, not a lover of meat and not big on cooking:
Breakfast: unsweetened kefir or Greek yogurt with hemp, chia, and/or ground flax seeds (all low glycemic index, and together a good combination of fiber plant protein and healthy fats) with modest amount of fresh fruit added for flavor.
Lunch something like a tin of sardines on a small salad. Maybe a little kimchi for kick.
Snack if desired a handful or two of unsalted nuts.
Dinner often a beans greens purple or red rice combo, or a quick stir fry over same rice, or a small serving of whole grain pasta with some vegetables.
Thanks for the sample menu. Some of the things are still kind of weird to me because I’ve never eaten them before and have a childish palate.
I could totally do Greek yogurt with flaxseed and a bit of fruit. Totally fine and have eaten that before. Sardines - have never eaten and sound kinda gross. Never eaten kimchi but would be willing to try. I never heard of purple or red rice, so I would have to figure out a way to source and use that. Is it better or lower on the glycemic index than something like chickpea pasta or quinoa?
Oh canned salmon and tuna are fine too. But try sardines and you may be surprised. Very high in healthy fats, not the mercury risk of tuna, and a very environmentally sustainable choice of quick to use fish. To my mouth yummy.
Kimchi comes in lots of varieties from mild to a decent kick. Personally I use it with salads instead of dressings. Some evidence that fermented products have significant positive benefits on inflammatory markers. Easy to use.
Online sources like this one claim that Black (purple, Forbidden) rice beats out quinoa on glycemic index.
Red rice has the same profile. Numbers for chickpea pasta seem a bit spread out but these rices seem to come in lower. All however labeled “low”.
They are also environmentally more friendly than other rices.
Of course very different flavors and textures. For many of us a sustainable nutrition plan benefits from some variety. Fonio, an African millet now in many stores, rates well too and is a different texture yet. Foolproof to cook.
I find red and black rice, and fonio, widely available in grocery stores.
Thanks for the extra tips. I really do appreciate it. I’m not finding red or black rice listed at my usual grocery store. I found red rice on Amazon. Will look into fonio also, but I have a feeling I would have to go to a specialty store or Asian or Hispanic store to source these around here. Never mind that I live in a large city that should have “everything.”
What kind of sardines do you use? I see some in jars and some in tins, some packed in oil and some in water.