Had my first diabetes class with a CDE (from NovoNordisk) at my doctor's office. Of the seven patients, I was the only T1D.
Overall, it was very basic. She did attempt to speak to my specific needs on several occasions. Sometimes just as an educational contrast for the T2D people. One lady was taking 200u of Levemir at night and was recommended to split into two parts. Wow!
I just had to drop my Levemir to 16u before bed due to the drops in BG overnight. Probable honeymoon for me.
She (the CDE) did stick around for about another 15min for me to go over what I'd printed out. Her recommendation was 2000cal diet and about 220g carbs. When I told her I was trying to stay under 150g carbs, she was OK with that even though she mentioned wanting to have about 60% of cals from carbs. I think they are still afraid of high fatty diet effects.
Have one month check-up with doctor tomorrow. Let's see what he has to say about my progress. Maybe we'll get some bloodwork done too?
Personally, I think your CDE is a little wacko. You were just diagnosed with a very high A1c, you probably lost some weight and she is asking you to eat 2000 cal/day. A 5' 0" 30 year old male that weighs 120 lbs and is moderately active needs 2000 cal/day. Are you this size? Do you need to lose weight? And why do you have to eat 60% of calories from carbs? I don't even want to go there.
It was good to go to the class, hopefully some of the other aspects of the class were more helpful.
I'm 6'3", 190# and only moderately active. My pre-diabetic weight had slowly gotten up to 220 over a decade or so. Looks like I should be at about 2500 cal/day for maintenance.
A 6'3" 190lb male at 30 years old has a BMR of 2000 cal/day. If you are moderately active, you multiply that by 1.55 to get the calories needed to keep you at that weight. That works out to 3100 cal/day in my book. At a BMI of 23.7, you are hardly overweight.
I would recommend to split the Levemir too. In steady state experiments they have seen that insulins like Lantus and Levemir do act for 24 hours. However this activity is not evenly distributed. If you experience a dawn phenomenon this uneven distribution might be helpful to fight the DP. But most people are very sensitive to insulin at night - especially at 3am. Thus you better split the 16u in two shots of 8u every 12 hours. This will make the I:C ratios more even, your reaction to physical activity will be more predictable and there will be no gap in coverage with basal insulin.
I also attended a class after dx and was the only T1 (of about 20 people) and this fact ruined it for me. 'Course I was newly traumatized and not in my right mind regardless. Re your diet and carbs, I encourage you to think for yourself.
Sometimes life seems to be just one endless series of ironies. I regularly attend the local support group's monthly meetings, where I am usually the only T2 in the room. LOL
i attended a diabetes class too, i was the only type 1, they kept asking me, 'how can you have diabetes, you're so skinny.' the educator kept saying, 'she's a type 1." and yes, one type 2 in the class took 600 (six hundred) units of levemir. the difference between type 1 and type 2 are huge. as my endo said, they're not even remotely alike. one type 2 couldn't understand why her blood sugars went up cause all she had was 2 glasses of milk, she'd been type 2 for 12 years. i'm thinking, doesn't she know milk has carbs - glucose in it? i agree with don, think for yourself, eat what works for you and your blood sugars, experiment, try different foods. if you don't want to eat that many carbs, then don't, ya know.
