T2D, a1c 11, scared out of my mind

Type 2 New to Type 2 diabetes
1

Hello, I know there is a topic similar to this one that’s pretty recent, but I had some other questions to ask that weren’t covered in that topic and would greatly appreciate anyone who could give some input.

I was diagnosed with T2D about a week ago and put on 500mg of metformin and lisinopril for my high blood pressure, I’ve been eating a VERY strict diet and keeping glucose tablets in my pocket at all times. I’m wearing a Freestyle Libre 14 day, but the first sensor seemed to be giving inaccurate readings so I was recommended to remove it and put on a new one that I just activated today after wearing for over 24 hours (still waiting for the 60 min countdown).

My diet is thus:
Breakfast:
plain instant oatmeal 1/2 cup, fat-free milk 1/2 cup, mandarin orange, handful of unsalted almonds
Snack (2 hours later):
Handful of almonds, mandarin orange
Lunch:
1 slice turkey sandwich on whole wheat bread with lots of lettuce, 1 slice of cheese, 1 slice of tomato
Pre-workout snack:
1 slice of whole wheat bread with Adam’s Organic Peanut butter (no added sugar)

30 minutes of cardio every day and a full upper and lower body workout every other day

Dinner:
1/2 cup of wild quinoa, half plate of non-starchy veggies (broccoli, cauliflour, carrots, bell peppers), 1 avocado, 4oz patty of cod fish

My concern is that I’m being undertreated, and that I shouldn’t be eating the mandarins or the wheat bread and peanut butter at all. My appointment to the nutrition and education center for diabetes is tomorrow at 7:45am, but I’m pretty frightened every day and would greatly appreciate any input that can be provided on everything on I’m doing.

I am fully committed to getting my a1c down to normal levels (5.4 and below) and I will do anything necessary to achieve that result. If I have to eat the same food every single day at the exact same time, insulin therapy, workout 2 hours a day, then that is what I shall do.

My mental state is pretty bad after this diagnoses, I am constantly afraid I’m going to have some sort of heart attack at any moment or at any moment I’m going to become hypoglycemic and fall into a coma, I have trouble sleeping, I am in a constant state of fear. I’ve been doing almost nothing but reading and studying about this condition and statistics and how badly out of control mine is for a week now, I am very afraid all the time.

If anyone can please help, tell me what else I can do to get this under control so I can have peace of mind, please. Thank you so much for reading.

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My best advice is to breathe, this is a marathon not a sprint. Sustainable lifestyle and diet changes are whats important.

You strike me as someone with the fortitude to achieve your goal, I think you are off to a good start.

Welcome to our community

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Dear J:

Welcome aboard and happy holidays. This is not the club you wanted to join, but we all got here out of necessity and are willing to help.

Step 1 - Relax, Step 2 - Relax, Step 3 Relax. I am sure you have heard of people worrying themselves to death. The mind and the body work in tandem so don’t let this get to you. There is an answer to where you want to be in your results but it will take a few months and several baby steps to learn what works and what does not work.

Start by reducing carbohydrates to the to your lowest level possible. Think keto although you may find to start with dirty keto (modified keto) will get your results the fastest.

Just know that with your sense of determination, you will find the answer and the more information you give us, the better we can help you out. You did not mention your approximate weight. That will play a major role. Stay away from all white foods to start - Bread, pasta, rice and other wheat products. Stay away from fruits for a few days as they will most likely spike your blood sugar.

Just remember you have taken the first huge step toward controlling your blood sugar. You are looking to tackle the problem head on rather than be in denial.

Don’t let this ruin your holiday. It will keep nagging at you but as long as you start taking the proper steps, your blood sugar will come back to normal. Getting back to normal is a multitude of baby steps, with frequent successes along the way and a few setbacks as well.

90% + of your control will come from food management and less than 10% from exercise. Don’t try to tackle too many elements at once. Straighten out your food plan and then work the exercise back in.

Just remember, we are here for you and we really do care and have all dramatically improved our lives by trading advice on this board.

I would say good luck, but I believe in your case you will make your own good luck happen.

Once again, welcome aboard.

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Welcome to TUD @jwhitty. Love a good orange but they’re pretty carb-intensive.

I’m a little surprised you’re that concerned about hypoglycemia. 500MG of Metformin will help you start bringing your A1C down but I don’t think there’s any real risk of it causing a hypo, which is much more strongly associated with insulin therapy. Metformin is pretty benign stuff. Likewise I don’t get “imminent heart attack risk!” from what I’m seeing here. Sounds like you’re getting plenty of exercise, which is a good start. An 11 A1C is bad, but now that you know about the problem you should be able to get it down into reasonable range. Hopefully your appointment at the diabetes center will help alleviate your anxiety level. Nothing better than information and a plan for easing your fears.

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One of the first things to do is learn and log how YOUR diabetes is.

Libre will help with logging bg, but having corresponding log with time, food (and portion, #carbs) eaten will help for a few weeks. You will atart to see patterns, and then experiment with replacing food choices, increasing exercise, etc. Drink lots of water if BG is remaining above 160, and let your doctor know if numbers don’t start coming down.

I have T1 for over 50 years, and early years had constant high BGs on older insulins. But doing well now.

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I’ve been very interested in the keto diet since learning about my condition, and I bought some keto cookbooks…however, I’m having a difficult time with it. From what I’ve been told I can’t have ‘bad fats’ but I am not sure what those are, and what I can eat for sure. If I just had some examples I could go off of that, but the information has so far been unclear.

I’m on a 60 day program that’s physician referred for the exercise in which I work with a nurse, but like some people here have said it feels like they really don’t specialize in diabetes enough and won’t be as aggressive as I need to be to get this under control.

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Thank you, a lot of it comes from a faulty freestyle libre 14 day sensor I was wearing that was all over the place. In the morning it’d be 126 and after eating oatmeal 222, then 3 hours later it’d say I was down to 77 and dropping. At one point while cooking dinner it was reading 45, and at night said my glucose dropped to 50, it was really an emotional rollercoaster. This new sensor stated that I was at around 270 while getting out of the shower a little over an hour after eating, and seems more accurate.

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Thank you, is it possible to fast for a day and drink lots of water to try to get it to come down initially? I have my meal plan for the day but it seems to be keeping me far to high. Is it safe to just chow down on protein and non-starchy veggies as long as I meet my calorie needs? This is the thing I am struggling with.

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No reason to be scared out of your mind once you relax and settle down. Diabetes isn’t fun, but it can be managed well. It sounds like you are serious about controlling the illness, so you should do well.

Two good ways for achieving the kind of A1c you are striving for is the very low carb diet and the low fat plant based diet. In my 60 yrs of having diabetes I have done it all, but had my best control when eating 30 carbs daily or 300 carbs day when eating low fat plant based. See Mastering Diabetes if you still want to eat fruit, potatoes, legumes, rice, lentils and vegetables. This is the diet I follow now and my A1c is 5.2 on 22 total units of insulin.

I enjoyed both ways of eating but I am more comfortable not eating meat. Both diets are very doable.

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It will take some time for you to learn YOUR diabetes. There are variations of type 2 that may be more or less insulin resistant, and how much insulin you may still be producing. Some T2s require or do better with insulin.

If your bg spikes after meals, but eventually comes down, vs does it come down some, but then still high and stable. Glad you have Libre, as this will provide feedback on the effect of your changes.

Drinking lots of water helps the kidneys to “dump” excess blood glucose, but eventually you want to accomplish that through other means.

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Bad fats are saturated fats (Animal Fats) It is not that you can’t eat them but need to concentrate more on good fats that come from Avocados, Olive Oil, Avocado Oil, Almonds. Walnuts, and other nuts and nut butters but on the nut (peanut) butters look for those with low saturated fats. Chia seeds and Flaxseed also good along with fatty fish and eggs. Stay away from too much Cheese, Heavy Cream, Butter, Coconut Oil. Choose lean meat, low in saturated fats. Just check the labels at the grocery store and compare. I buy Almonds and Chopped Walnuts in the large 2-3 lb bags at a big box store.

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Don’t get deep into the Keto weeds for now. I only mentioned that because if you search low carb recipes and meals you can find tons of them on Keto websites. Don’t worry about macro balance, just concentrate on lowering the number of carbs you eat each meal and each day. I also very highly recommend you go to https://www.ditchthecarbs.com/ and look at all the low carb delicious foods you can make. There are several of these websites. Look at the vegetable dishes such as:

and

Just kick as many of your carbs out as possible for now. In a few months, you may well find that you can modify your diet back to higher carbs once you have met your initial goals.

Let me know if you want additional food websites to go to.

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Just something to keep in mind. if you end up doing everything right and still have high BG’s you could be a misdiagnosed type 1. 40% of type 1/LADA’s are misdiagnosed as type 2’s at first, I was for over 8 years. I was told by my GP and endo at the time I wasn’t a type 1 and they never bothered to test me. It wasn’t until I switched doctors I got tested and was diagnosed right.

I’m not saying you are, I’m just saying keep it in mind, just in case.

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Thank you, I will keep this in mind and bring it up the next time I speak with them.

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Thank you for the recommendation, my doctor has said right off the bat “no bad fats” and I’m assuming they mean saturated fats, but I’ve also seen through my research the past few days that polyunsaturated fats are also bad, and that monounsaturated fats are the only one I can safely eat.

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I was initially diagnosed as a T2 at age 57 with an A1c around 11. Within a week I was re-diagnosed as a T1 and using basal and bolus insulin. Even if you are correctly diagnosed you might do better on insulin at least until your blood sugars get somewhat better. Using insulin takes a burden off your pancreas and gives it a chance to rest and recover. If you are willing to insulin, I would make that clear to your diabetes specialist - and you should see a specialist, primary care docs are often clueless about diabetes. Physicians sometimes avoid prescribing insulin because they don’t want to upset their patient.

As others have said, you’ve started a marathon but it’s possible to make substantial improvements in as little as 6 months.

Stick around and ask questions. People here have tons of experience and are anxious to help.

Maurie

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Thank you, and you everyone for all of the information and kind words. I am running into a lot of conflicting information in some regards, but for the time being I’m just trying to find a single meal that I could pair with my strict exercise habits in order to turn things around as fast as possible.

I’m still very much convinced keto is the way to go, and have been working tirelessly to design even just one meal that will be a ‘go-to’ so that I can create a routine. Once I have a routine, then I can expand out to new recipes and create more meals…but for now, this is what I feel I have to do.

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I make 14 ramekin dishes of chocolate avocado mousse at a time with 5 avocados in the recipe I gave you and bulk it up with 1 tablespoon per dish of chia seeds otherwise only makes 10 dishes. Then put them in freezer and move 1 to the fridge every other day. Next day, when soft I add some nuts and a little whip cream on top and can make a meal out of that. Comes to about 500 calories. I cook for one so am always making a multi day supply that I can freeze and then eat as needed. Chicken cutlets is another good one for you as well as eggs. The large 4 inch mushroom caps also freeze well and can be dolled up into great meals. Zucchini is great but to create zoodles takes a little more time and buying them pre-made are horrible. Cauliflower can be made into cauliflower rice and other great dishes. This should at least give you a starting point to pick and stay low carb and low saturated and no trans fats.

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I was diagnosed as T2 almost 11 years ago with an A1c of 12. (Still. T2 today)
I went straight to a low carb WOE (Keto was not around then ). With a lot of effort and experimentation My A1c has been under 6.0 for 10 years. Not always possible, but It takes time . For me all your carbs stuff, oranges , bread etc and even some nuts. I just have to eliminate. You don’t need to be scared just proactive.

I forgot to add that I increased my exercise. Very important

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I agree about not eating oranges. But don’t despair, you can eat berries, mmm strawberries and cream!
If you find you are still high after a meal you can go for a walk, put an exercise or dance dvd on and drink lots of water. Works well to bring your blood sugars down.