Hello. I was wondering if anybody could offer diet advice for better health, especially if they are planned diets. For context, I’m not yet in my 30s and I was diagnosed as a Type 2 Diabetic and am trying to look for diet plans that are not gimmicky. I have had some success losing 20 or so pounds over 5 months with just cutting back a lot of excess food and carbs. Made my A1c go down from 8.6 to 6.8. I think I might not yet be insulin dependent. However, I would just feel more secure with a routine to follow (same with exercise, but I will have to address that another day) It is hard to do that, given how commodified diet literature and fitness are. I greatly appreciate your input, especially from those who are in similar situations and might have experience with diet and remission.

  • Wakmrow [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    11 months ago

    I’ll have a response when I get home and can type on a computer. Short answer is find substitutions that allow you to live a lifestyle that is comfortable.

    • Wakmrow [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      11 months ago

      Okay, so as a person who had a similar experience to you, I’m going to give you a bit of a diabetic primer. I am type 2 with a relatively functioning pancreas. My bg is above 300 regularly when I behave badly but when I behave well, it is in normal ranges.

      Losing weight helps a great deal, obviously, but find an exercise routine you can stick to. A few times a week of solid heart rate is good enough to keep me within healthy-ish ranges. I like to work out before I get home and run. For me, the goal is 4x a week with at least 2x a week.

      Food, its all about finding the things that keep you happy and sane. If you’re used to eating a lot of high carb food as comfort food, you need to find things that keep you on track that are not going to kill you. For example, my brother was recently diagnosed. He used to drink a ton of soda. He still does, but now its all diet soda. I liked energy drinks a lot–now I drink a fair amount of this powdered beverage mix I found on Amazon that has almost no sugar in it but has caffeine and tastes sweet. And coffee and tea, obviously, dodge the sugar here or find an artificial sweetener that does it for you. Drinks, especially soda, are the worst thing you can do as a diabetic–liquid simple sugars hit your blood stream like a truck. If this is something you crave, find a substitute that does not have liquid simple carbs and live your best life. I wouldn’t worry too much about the affects of artificial sweeteners in the long term because diabetes will make you lose limbs and shit. That’s worse.

      Food, again, gotta find the things that you can substitute easily. Grocery shopping well and meal prepping is very helpful. Having snacks in your house that are low carb and meals that are relatively easy to replace ordering a pizza are very important. That being said, even then if you order a pizza, it is not the end of the world, learn to accept that you will have days where you want what you want. It can’t be a lifestyle, though, you cannot live off of pizza. So, that being said, I have lots of jerky, nuts, cheese, deli meat in my house. I’ll do pork rinds on occasion. The point here is if you crave chips, salty nuts are pretty solid. If the nuts are too much sometimes, dried seaweed or (personal favorite of mine) natural peanut butter with salt on celery. Look for what you crave and why and try to find a reasonable substitute for that craving to scratch the itch. The peanut butter and celery for me is salt+crunch+very filling. Most households have easy carbs on hand to snack on–avoid this, the temptation is pretty hard to resist (the whole point of this is to detail that you’re a human and humans LIKE simple carbs). For snacks, Trader Joes has a lot of really “exotic” great ones–things like dried broccoli.

      If cost is an issue, cheese blocks are relatively inexpensive for how much food you get. Things like sausage/chicken/bacon/ground beef/pork chops can be done cheaply and quickly. Slow cooked roasts can be found on sale, I get them for like $20 and they last me almost a week although to be fair I spend a lot more than 20$ on it. Yes, you can live off of hot dogs but I can realistically eat like 3 before the pack is never touched again lol. Groceries are expensive so I try to buy like bulk chicken and meal prep it because that means when its Wednesday night and I’m hungry I don’t say “it would be easy to order a pizza” I say god dammit there’s really good cajun spiced grilled chicken in the fridge.

      Harder part: You’re used to eating rice or bread with your meal. Rice plates are like the most common dish in the world. Lentils are your friend here, if you crave the rice. Much more protein dense, like 5% the carbs.

      Bread, I honestly can’t help you with, this is a weakness of mine, I like good bread. But its also really easy for me to avoid bad bread. Most burger places will make you a lettuce wrap (including in-n-out if you live near them). But there isn’t a substitute I’m willing to recommend. Just make it a treat instead of every day getting a foot long subway. You can lettuce wrap sandwiches but I find them pretty unsatisfying. I find burgers much better lettuce wrapped so that makes it easy.

      Alcohol. Alcohol will inflame your pancreas and can really fuck you up. However, if you are going to drink, stick to distilled liquors (whiskey, vodka, gin etc). NO MIXED DRINKS, that shit is worse than a 2 liter of soda. Beer is drinking a loaf of bread, on occasion, have a beer. Do not drink a 12 pack–hard seltzers are a good substitute here, no sugar in them. No liqueurs–things like cointreau or baileys have a lot of sugar.

      If you have more specific questions, happy to help. You can live like a normal human with diabetes. I also have to warn you that my doctors hate me and I go to the hospital every few years. I’m telling you what generally works for me until it doesn’t and doctors don’t like my approach because it doesn’t work long term–we all fall. But, frankly, I have had and not had health insurance quite a few times over the last decade and medicine is expensive so fuck America, I’m doing my best.

      • Red_Sunshine_Over_Florida [he/him]@hexbear.netOP
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        11 months ago

        Thank you so much for your response. It is good to speak with a comrade who has had similar experiences, as most of the people I speak to about this are elderly people who developed this disease later in life.

        I gotta do a consistent exercise routine like you said. Cardio, maybe aerobic too. I’m putting it off until I find the source of this tachycardia my new pcp was concerned about. Taking meds right now for it.

        You gave me an idea with the celery. For breakfast every day, I have a serving of fat-free light Greek yogurt, a kiwi, and a slice of wheat bread (60 cal, 11g carb, less than 1g added sugar), with two tablespoons of peanut butter on top. I could swap the bread for a stalk of celery, cutting out the carbs from there.

        I do eat nuts for snacks but, unsalted. Sodium and blood pressure really freaked me out because of the now-increased risk of heart disease down the line. I take it with some strawberries too.

        I cut out carbs like potatoes and rice entirely, and only might have at most 3-4 slices of the above-mentioned wheat bread in a day.

        I really gotta get into lentils like you said. My father made a great lentil last week.

        One of the first things I did was cut out soda completely. I don’t really have to worry about alcohol, since I never drank before diagnosis. Right now I just drink only water, no juice. I’m experimenting with sweetness right now, trying to narrow it between allulose and stevia. I really want to have that cup of tea (decaf this time) in the morning again. Haven’t really had any in four months. Really want to find a good creamer too.

        I’m Italian-American, with an immigrant father, so Italian food has always been special to me. He showed me how to make dishes he cooked in the restaurant. So far, I have replaced spaghetti with shirataki noodles, which I think has been successful. It’s really good if you let it soak in the sauce for a few days. I want to see if they make shirataki as macaroni too, then I could even experiment with pasta salads.

        But, pizza is especially special to me. And our pizza at home is typically very bread-like. Idk, maybe I’ll make it with some sort of protein flour. I really want to share a pic of it on this forum. And some funny pizza stories too.

        What are your thoughts on tofu? I wanted to get my family into eating soy pre diagnosis to have some meatless meals.

        • Wakmrow [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          11 months ago

          Man, you want my honest opinion on the pizza and pasta? When you have pizza/pasta, make it the way you normally do but eat half a slice and make a giant salad with everything you like or a really good filling soup or whatever. Give yourself that taste because nothing will replace it, honestly. Just limit your portion size. Don’t make it 4 slices of 3 inch thick bread for dinner :). This is kind of what I’m saying, you can’t, in my experience, dodge that craving for something you love. Let yourself have it but don’t eat a whole cake. All of the things I recommend are replacements on a daily basis. Don’t mindlessly eat chips unless you really want chips today. Denying yourself something long enough leads to binging and binging is what really gets you in trouble. If you eat a whole bag of candy because you haven’t had candy in months and you finally break, you may go to the hospital which is worse.

          There are days when I just straight up eat a cookie with lunch because god dammit I want a cookie. But on days when I don’t really crave a cookie, I just…don’t get a cookie from the cafeteria.

          As for the sodium, this runs in my family, many of us love the like lays chips and dip. Its not something that can be given up for the rest of your life. I’m not particularly into it. If its not a problem for you to not miss it, fuck it, no problem, easy wins. Like, in your example with the wheat bread? I don’t like that bread that much. The thing I miss is like…fancy, chewy sourdough or seeded long rolls as an Italian sub. So its not at all hard for me to never have bread in the house. But if I go to a sandwich shop with good bread I am eating that bread.

          I gotta do a consistent exercise routine like you said For me, I have to do it on the way home from work. I think the important part here is doing something in a way that you don’t hate it. If that means going on walks during your lunch hour or bike riding or lifting, shit, 30 minutes of walking 4x a week is depressingly better than like 60% of America.

          For the fruits you mentioned, there’s a few differences between naturally occurring sugars and processed sugars. The naturally occurring ones are more complex and won’t spike your BG as hard as they take a little longer to process through your system. I don’t tend to eat fruit that much as I don’t enjoy it for the carbs they bring. Stay away from fruit juice, that shit is concentrated fruits. I think like a cup of apple juice is like 3 apples or something lol. But, its good to mix fruit in if that’s what you like.

          Lentils are relatively easy–soak in water, cook for several hours and you can make a batch that’ll last you all week. They’re time consuming but not a lot of work.

          I don’t do sweeteners in my coffee or tea, that’ll be on you to figure out lol. Oh, milk can cause your sugar to spike too, so I would monitor it when you take it. I don’t do milk/yogurt so I don’t have this problem.

          Tofu is usually fine and good, I’d check the label. There are different types of tofu, I don’t eat it that often because I’d have to go to like HMart to get a decent selection. It is a great calorie dense, cheap food with not a ton of carbs. Its…basically processed lentils lol. I don’t know a lot of tofu dishes that don’t involve noodles, though, I think that’s why I stay away from it.

  • privatized_sun [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    11 months ago

    resistant starch isn’t digested in the small intestine and turned into glucose, instead its digested as a fatty acid in the large intestine (microbiome sicko face)

    For example eating raw fruits/veg (green bananas etc), soaking raw oatmeal in the fridge overnight, heating and then cooling carb foods like rice or potatoes, might make them less of a glycemic issue

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistant_starch