Eat to your meter is excellent advice either for T2 or T1. Frequent testing is critical as your trying to find out what carbs and diet work for you and how moderate exercise affects your blood sugar. It’s hard trying to do exercise if you’re injured. My recumbent bike on the lowest resistance became my best friend when I broke my metatarsal. And exercise improves your insulin sensitivity, whether it’s your own insulin or injected.
There’s plenty of challenges along the way but stay strong. You can do this!
I did control my diabetes type 2 for 16 years, maintaining an Hba1c well below six, through diet and exercise alone. It is doable but it is tough.
I had a two pronged approach:
exercise: a 40 minute brisk walk immediately following each of my three major meals
diet: limiting my carbs to low GI ones (never could do those for me nauseating no carb diets). Examples would be a breakfast with whole rye bread with smoked salmon and boiled eggs, lunch with a whole wheat pita bread stuffed with greens and a can of sardines, dinner with boiled barley, fried sausages and tomatoes. All of the above carbs are considered low GI and were a cornerstone of my control.
At some point I found that my walking was not doing enough to keep BG levels down and I substituted my after dinner walk with an hour of walking up and down stairs, which did the trick.
Oh and I always walked immediately after each meal, no long breaks.
Worked for me for 16 years.
I’d love to have your barley, sausage, and tomatoes recipe! That sounds good, but also well-outside my culinary experience Is that a regional dish?
I think this is the part that is the key to answering the question! For some diabetics (even LADA), diet and exercise alone can control diabetes for a while. For most of us, if we live long enough, that routine we’ve gotten into ceases working effectively after a period of time elapses, and adjustments are needed. Sometimes that adjustment is more exercise or different food, and sometimes it’s using medications.
Often, when I hear this question, I tend to clarify and ask if it needs another clause on the end. Are we really being asked:
"can diet and exercise alone control diabetes, for the rest of my life?
And the sensible answer to that question is: “Maybe, but probably not.” Another way it is phrased online is “can diabetes be reversed or cured with diet and exercise?” Lot’s of scammers would have us believe so, but most of us at this point have figured it out.
I think I am about to find the answer to the last part of your question, at least as it applies to me.
At the end of those 16 years I had some unfortunate experiences which in short order included the death of my wife, loss of my job, a cardiac arrest that left me in the ICU for months, a breakin in my home while I was in hospital that cleaned out everything I owned, and then a couple of years of recovery time.
However, it really is quite amazing how resilient we humans are. I am now fully recovered, 65 tears old and ready to make a new start on my diet and exercise routine. The official start day will be June 1.
As for the dinner dish I mentioned, it is fairly simple to prepare:
Barley: there are two types, pearl and pot. The basic difference is that one (pearl) is polished so the husk has been remover, the other has not been polished. Both are good but I favour the pot variety.
Figure one cup of barley to 2.5 cups of water and boil for approximately 35 minutes or until all the water has been absorbed. For extra flavour I usually add a cube of chicken or vegetable stock at the start of cooking.
As for the rest use whatever type of sausage you prefer, chop them into pieces, and also chop one or two tomatoes into pieces. Heat a frying pan with about half a cup of olive or canola oil and add the sausage and tomato mixture to the frying pan when the barley has about 10 minutes left to cook.
When done create a bed of barley on a plate, add the fried tomatoes and sausages on top of barley. Flavour with your choice of spices, hot sauces or whatever you fancy, and enjoy your dinner! Guaranteed your BGs that evening are going to look better than if you had made the dinner with rice, potatoes or pasta.
GI: For the record, the glycemic index is a measurement of how a particular carbohydrate compares to plain white table sugar. Sugar has a value of 100. The recommendation of diabetics is to choose carbs with a value below 50. Boiled potatoes are up the 80 to 90 range, rice and pasta are usually in the 50 to 70 range though there are exceptions. Fettucini is below 50 as is Uncle Bens parboiled rice, while sticky white rice as in what you will be served in an oriental restaurant is at around 90. Barley has a score of only 22, meaning it could take hours to slowly convert to blood sugars, giving you lots of time to walk or work it off.
Sounds great! I"ll give it a shot. I’m aware of the GI index, although I’ve had limited success with it as a treatment tool. I believe I was pretty insulin resistant about the time I was diagnosed, but I’ve since found that I’m also insulin deficient. Even low-GI foods will cause very high spikes for me, it’ll just be two-three hours after I eat So, in general, I’ve found that limiting the amount of carbs I eat in any given meal is more effective for me. However, the carbs I do eat tend to be low on the GI scale (and full of fiber).
I’ve been experimenting with eating more carbs recently, and I’ll give barley a shot. I probably won’t eat a full cup of dry, but I’ll see how it works!
Update: I saw my doctor this morning and she prescribed metformin 500 x 2 each day (1 with breakfast and the 2nd with dinner). I also began my new regime last week. (Monday, Wednesday, Friday mornings 1.5 hours of supervised exercise, primarily cardiovascular but with some functional weight workouts included ; Thursday evening same program, Tuesday morning I’ve started walking with a friend outside and I also swim on Tuesday afternoons). There is a significant drop in blood sugars from pre exercise (works out to 2 hours after breakfast) and post exercise. On Monday I will also see the diabetes educator. Dr. Wants me to continue to record my before bed and fasting results daily and I am to follow 3 different patterns for measuring four days each week. Thanks for the encouragement to accept that medication is needed. Newest A1C was 9.2 and fasting was 14.5 both taken on May 1.
Updating my post and a bit of a new question. I’m now taking 1250 per day (500 each at breakfast and dinner and 250 at bedtime). My before bed number is almost always below 8 often close to 7 but my fasting number still is higher rarely lower than 8.5. My question is regarding the diarrhea that continues to be a bonus to taking Metformin. I realize that I’m in the early stage and that adjustments may occur but… do carbohydrates cause the diarrhea that I’m experiencing? I have some digestive issues with leafy greens, broccoli (raw or cooked) so can only have a small salad every other day. I spoke with the pharmacist about taking probiotics, Metamucil, Imodium (all of which I had read about possibly helping) she recommended just giving this more time and eating more protein, further cutting back on processed carbs until I see my Doctor in about 3 weeks. The one good thing about the diarrhea is that it should help with weight loss. A positive side effect of the Metformin is that it has helped me to cut back on snacking.
I’ve used metformin for more than a decade. At least for me the gastric has never totally gone away, I still deal with it. But I did discover that carbs amplify the distress. And I have a theory. First, metformin has three actions
Improve insulin sensitivity
Reduce production of glucose by your liver
Reduce the absorption of carbs
My theory is that last one causes us to use the term “metfartin.” When you eat carbs and they are not absorbed in your small intestines they end up in your large intestines and your gut bacteria ferment them. Usually only “fiber” makes it to the gut bacteria, but when digestible carbs make it you can have an overgrowth and hence “gastric distress”
It is at least worth trying a reduced carb diet and seeing if it helps.
hi judith. i have a question. because of the ways numbers are thrown around i am confused about ‘normal’ levels.
diagnosed, well more like pointed out that i had BGL above norms, i was prescribed metfornim. i did’nt like the sounds of committing to a lifetime of meds, and i had no reason to think i has DB i decided not to take metfronim or anything else.
so my initial results from a lab was FBGL @134. i dieted for a month and it came down to 126. then i have monitored for a year and FBGL ususally came in around 120. lately without any change in diet it is averaging FBGL 125+. if i do a test after meals it is generally less than 180.
not sure you needed to know any of this for my question.
when you speak about your 'levels or ‘numbers’ being ok, does that mean your levels line up with non-diabetics or are in keeping in guidelines for diabtetics AND do those levels reflect levels WITHOUT metfornim or insulin?
From my experience the answer is a simple yes and no.
Yes, for a limited period of time you can control diabetes with diabetes with diet and exercise, I did that for many years and then got to the stage where bgs were creeping up and I had to add stair walking to my regime. Then cardio workouts and evt,. you get tired and say screw that doc give me a pill so I don’t have to go up those stairs again.
for one year i did diet and exercise only. i would consistently get FBGL of less than 126 mg. I concluded that I was pre-diabetic and committed to control diabetes with D&E only.
i exercised vigorously, 1 hour on elliptic, +500 cals and -50 carbs(see NETCARBS.com), 3-4 times a week. drunk once a week at binge levels, 3-6 cocktails(net carbs 0).
on an exercise day i would take in 150-250 gross carbs, subtracting 50 for exercise. on non exericse day i would average 150 carbs. I usually had some carbs in the evening nearing bedtime. i was hungry and ate throughout the day.
maintained FBGL ,on average below, 125.
4 weeks ago i stopped exercising. this AM i was FBGL of 136 with only 40 carbs day before. yesterday from 6:00 am to 11;30 , I ranged around 135 after previous day carb of 80 and not eating until 11:300 AM. That meant a fast duration of 12 hours. In that time FBGL did not go down 1 point. finally at 11:30 AM it went down to 120. let me repear, from 6:30 and every hour on the hour i got readings of around 135 until 11:30.
since I stopped exercising my FBGL started to average higher. the reason i can tell u all this detail about last couple of days is because I recognized that , with higher FBGL averages, i was INDEED diabetic. and i needed to get real serious.
CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSALITY and i could easily infer a direct correlation between exercise and BGL.
i will pursue some strategies to find out if, and how, exercise influences my BGL downward. one thing i didn’t do the last year was regularly check PM(post meal). I will do that now. After a further week of no exercise i will start up again and chek results.
As with any nontrivial health question, the answer is, “it depends”.
For some people, yes. For others, no. The reasons are many and varied and I’m not going to spend a master’s thesis listing them here. Physiology is unimaginably complex; every person’s is individual and responds in (potentially) different ways. Also, just to put the cherry on top, the answer can change over time.
The bottom line is what it always is: what works for someone else may be interesting but not necessarily useful. You have to find out what works for you.
I noticed when I was recently working part time in a labor intensive job, my BG was easier to regulate. I can’t imagine going up and down the stairs as one of my leg suffers from chronic blood clots (blocked veins) and I have to almost use a cane to get up the stairs. My bad leg can’t climb anymore. I do all the climbing with my left leg and drag the right leg behind it. Makes it hard for me to use exercise as even walking too much causes swelling and days of pain. But I have no doubt that exercise reduces insulin resistance. I kind of wonder now if it has been the 6 years of physical inactivity is what caused my sugars to go up as I had normal sugars prior to accident.
When there is a will there is usually a way. With physical limitations you obviously are limited in the kind of workouts you can do in order to lower BG levels. But there are options like resistance exercises where someone lies on a bed with their feet on a wall beside the bed and repeatedly pushes as hard as they can. You could also lean against a wall with both hands while standing up and sort of do a standing version of pushups. There is also weight lifting, not the 200 lb kind but sitting in a chair with a five lb bar in each hand and lifting your hands up and down. Those are just a few examples that I have heard of but using your imagination the sky is usually the limit.
Is that a regional dish?
So, in general, I’ve found that limiting the amount of carbs I eat in any given meal is more effective for me. However, the carbs I do eat tend to be low on the GI scale (and full of fiber).