Good job George. I wished I could make the adjustment you did. You deserve a round of applause. I just found out I am prediabetic but I don't really know what that means. If I don't make adjustments, do I have three months, nine or more before I am diabetic? All I know is that I am suppose to make diet and exercise changes but don't really know where to start with that. I have been trying to reduce sodas and was doing good for a while but slipped and went right back to my old ways. I eat too many carbs and not enough of the green crap. Personally I am going to use this thread as a reminder of what I need to do to be around long enough to grow old with my wife. Thanks for posting. Btw, I could care less how you got your help. Just glad you got it.
Thanks.
Well, I'm not a medical expert. I suggest you google and check out places such as the American Diabetic Association and forums where people talk about diabetes and questions such as these.
Actually, since you do not know, your doctor should have explained it better, or perhaps best of all pointed you to a good source for information.
But FWIW, my take on pre-diabetes is pretty much you are on your way to diabetes if you keep going the way you have been.
You've been handed a GIFT of EARLY WARNING. It's up to you to make good use of that warning or not.
Medication may help, but if you eat the same way and make no other changes, it may still develop into full diabetes. I know of someone who is pre-diabetic, is on Metformin, apparently eating the same and not losing weight, so I think that unfortunately they are only slowing it down, not stopping the progression and certainly not moving back the other way.
So, you need to take it seriously and make changes though its not fun to do so (Well, I know you must be taking this seriously so I am not trying to be flippant). But better in the long run to do it now than to let it go and for it to develop into true Diabetes later. I wish I could have known a few years ago whenever I must have been pre-diabetic, but as I said.... no medical care. But it would have taken a lot to get me to make changes at the time..... without that "Fire is inspirational" shock when my toe got infected and I found out about the diabetes too late.
Anyway, you need to learn a lot about nutrition, foods that have a lot of carbs, foods that have a lot less, read labels, and begin to work up a "ration" allotment of how many carbs to eat. In the diabetic class, they taught a simplification of the carb intake as every 15 grams of carbs was "one choice".
https://www.healthline.com/health/type-2-diabetes/diet-restrictions#1
The recommendaiton is for about 130 carbs a day, at least that but not much over. So, that would be almost or about 9 "carb choices" a day. I usually do not eat breakfast, so 15 carbs or less from a piece of fruit or a piece of bread-toast after getting up, and usually about 35-40 for lunch, often soup, Chicken Pot Pie, or a couple of turkey sandwiches on single pieces of Lite bread. Which is partly why the dietician said recently to increase my carbs a bit, which was quite a nice "order" to get. And my doctor had said in November when I was between 185-190 I could stop losing weight, but I wanted to go lower if I could and see how things went. So now I'm thinking around 180 pounds is probably about right as long as the A1C does not go up too much.
The "Choices" thing works better for some people to keep in mind than adding up a total of 60-75 calories, since some things like a regular piece of bread is 14-15 grams (and a hamburger bun.. a regular bun is at least 30 grams for the top and bottom half together, even more for larger buns. But there are "Lite" versions of hamburger and hot dog buns.). A can of the soup type I like to have Campbell's Chunky, is 18 grams of carbs... .but that is "per serving". And there are almost two servings in the can, so one can has about 34-36 carbs. Which rounds to a bit over two "choices" if you eat the whole can like most people do. There's a lot more examples but that's the basic premise. And REALLY have to check and understand the labels for the "Per serving" thing.
And of course there are some things that you can't easily determine the carb count due to the various things used for making the food, if it is homemade and not out of a can or package. You can look up some typical values on the internet which could give you some idea but no accuracy for the actual food you'd eat. I have checked for some food and meal types. But sometimes it's too complex to try to look up. So I try to be reasonable with a new food, then when I check the blood sugar later, I see if that was about the right amount to eat or if the reading is a bit too high or a bit low and learn for the future. Lots of diabetics do that, the glucose meter is so helpful.
So, anyway, google searching should help you to find more about what kind of foods are high in carbs. Sweet ones are obvious. "Starchy" foods like potatoes, rice, and pasta are high in carbs, they break down into sugars when digested. "Round" beans are high in carbs (Green beans are not). Fruits can have a lot of sugar content, it varies due to type, so google a list that compares them. My go-to choice are Blueberries and Raspberries. Sometimes pineapple chunks though those are a bit higher in sugar, as a treat. Sometimes for breakfast, if I do not have a real meal, I have a banana or an orange. A banana is pretty high in carbs compared to other fruits, so it is not a good choice for a snack, there are better fruits to have like an apple or orange or such. But a banana works well for me at times for a quick "breakfast" by itself when I know it will be longer than usual before lunch.
As I learned from the classes, as you sleep, before you wake up the liver can start to produce glucose from within the body. When you wake up, you need to eat SOMETHING soon to stop the liver from producing that glucose. But it does not need to be much, so that is why an orange, banana, one piece of bread, or other small amount of simple quick to grab suitable food (or 8 ounce fruit juice like OJ) is enough for that, if you do not have a real breakfast. So to some extent, some of the carbs I have not had for breakfast are shifted to later meals, and then to another extent not used at all which helps keep the glucose readings a bit lower and helped with losing weight.
Sodas..... as I said I had to give up on real Cokes, and do not find the taste of diet be worth drinking. I used to drink regular Coke so much, that I know that must have been a very significant factor in my developing diabetes. So from my personal example I really do stress the need to change that (Switch to diet, one or zero calorie, or no sodas) and stick to it. I always liked Iced tea, so thanks to Splenda/Sucralose, I am enjoying that as my primary go-to drink i place of Coke. And I mentioned Mio, many flavors (Target sometimes has a good deal, buy 3 or 4 Mio's and get a $5 gift card, I stock up when they do and sometimes Target's receipt after I buy Mio has a coupon for $2 off on Mio the next time). You really need to find something that can replace the sodas, unless you can find a sugar-free soda that you can like. If you like Fanta, as I said, Orange Mio in carbonated water tastes to me a LOT like Fanta (close enough, though I was never big into Fanta or similar orange soft drinks).
Ironically, good old healthy orange juice is not a good choice unless you only have small amounts and account for it in your carb count. It has too much sugar content. IIRC a small 8 ounce glass of OJ is "one choice", so if you drank 24 ounces of orange juice you'd have used up your whole Carb allotment for a meal. And a lot of fruit juices like apple juice are the same way. Does not mean you can NOT have any, but you need to be aware and trade off the carb value of whatever amount of fruit juice (or any liquid) you drink with less amounts of carbs in the foods you eat at that meal. Definitely try to avoid juices that have any sugar added to them, go natural.
Milk, in moderation and 2% not whole milk as whole milk breaks down into sugar more than 2% does.
It's why you can eat almost anything, still, BUT, you have to be careful and trade off the amounts and portion sizes. And the glucose meter helps to show you by trial and error what foods and amounts of foods have which effect, so you can learn what works best, what works poorly, and what you can end up swapping around for variety.
Heck I COULD drink real cokes again.... if I wanted that badly to have a real coke and not have much of anything to eat with it. I'd rather have my Splenda-ed Ice Tea and eat some nice food.....
What might help you the most, is to see if your doctor can recommend you for some diabetes/nutrition classes, or at least some classes on nutrition which will help you learn more. If not, then try to find a good Diabetes forum, go on, and just plain ask where you can get the best info about this if you are unable to find good info by your own searching.
I did a lot of searching last July, but do not have the links. And I knew I'd be having the diabetes classes in September, so once I got some basic information I was able to get along OK for a few weeks till taking the classes. Indeed I got a pretty decent introduction to what I needed to know before I even left the hospital, then added to it from googling around.
I will also add that the glucose meter is a huge help. The blood sugar readings are important to seeing how you are responding to what you are eating, and I do it twice a day before eating. Otherwise you are "flying blind". But from what little I have heard of regarding pre-diabetes, it does not seem like checking blood sugar daily is done very much. If your insurance covers the cost of the meter and supplies, DO IT!!! Get your doctor to prescribe a meter and test strips ASAP.
Edit - I did a quick google search on Carb Choices, here is the link with many hits.
https://www.google.com/search?q=car...57.8682j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=91&ie=UTF-8
And one of the top hits,
https://www.diabeticlivingonline.com, is one of the sites that was VERY useful for my research last July. What to eat, Carb counting, lots of good stuff.
I HIGHLY recommend you go there and learn your tail off.
Carbohydrate guide from Lilly:
https://www.lillydiabetes.com/documents/pdf/LD90766_carbGuide.pdf
I will add though there are some fancy foods that are sometimes recommended on various sites that…… just seems to be too out there, at least for me. I stuck with more basic stuff that was listed, but then YMMV. Some foods that have small amounts of a beneficial supplement in them….. I'd rather take the supplements daily than only get them once in a great while in a particular food. I checked with my doctor (ah, yes, having a doctor is so nice...) and he verified the ones I am taking as being helpful (Beware medical quackery on the internetz).
One of the things I found recommended for a diabetic snack was popcorn. Now, corn is starchy. But the popped corn is somewhat less starchy, does not increase glucose levels as much as unpopped corn. But buttered is not good, and salt is not good either. So, I settled on Pop Secret "Homestyle" , plain popcorn in 100 calorie sized bags, and seems to be around 15 grams of carbs, or one "choice" per bag. Packaged in a box of 10 for about $4.00 at Wal-Mart (I have not found it in the grocery stores I go to). So that is in the mix as a snack food at times, along with various fruits and salad.
2016 update: I got a hot-air popper for popcorn for Christmas. A LOT cheaper way to eat popcorn, and healthier (The bags were 40 cents each, same volume of air-popped about 8 cents). Also, I realized there's some chemical crap in microwave bags of popcorn that I don't think is very good to eat. I found that out when I opened an unpopped microwave bag to measure out how much popcorn a 100 calorie bag had in it. There were some clumps of greasy "stuff" inside the bag, and that supposed to be normal popcorn, not butter.
- George Gassaway