As a newly diagnosed type 2 diabetic, I am still trying to learn how to adjust my diet. I have attended diabetes education classes and I also have several diabetic cookbooks. I am about to go into “information overload”!!! I seem to be doing a good job of keeping my blood sugar readings within range. I take Metformin BID. I have lost 8 pounds in 5 weeks. The hardest part is trying to exercise because I fractured my knee and ankle in Dec. and I am still in Rehab. I see that there are a lot of people here on this site that are in the same predicament that I am and I would love to know what has worked for all of you. I have really tried to make portion control a priority as well as limiting my carbs and fats. I also have high cholesterol and I am hypothyroid. Finally, I would just like to say that it is nice to find a group of people who truly understand what a life altering change that a diagnosis of diabetes really entails!
Hi Pamela,
From what I read you are going the right path… it is an overwhelming load of info at the beginning, you are doing great! 
Congrats on the weight loss…it isn’t easy.
When I first joined TU, I felt the same way…too much information. I spent an entire weekend looking at the site with another tab opened to Google so I could easily look up things that I didn’t know about or that didn’t make sense to me. I also found http://www.phlaunt.com/diabetes/index.php really helpful and it is a philosophy that I follow. I am so grateful that I spent that time learning because there were so many questions that I didn’t know I should be asking.
I was diagnosed in April 09 and have discarded 40 pounds with exercise (every day), a low carb diet (approx 50 to 60g per day) and Metformin (I’ve read that it helps with weight loss). My A1C was 11 and it is now 6.3 (it should be lower at my next testing). With regards to eating habits…since my dx, I eat no sweets (cake, cookies, etc), strictly limit bread and no longer eat pasta, I count carbs as opposed to food exchanges, make sure I get enough fiber so I feel fuller longer and because of this I don’t usually snack except occasionally while watching TV in the evening with the family. I avoid most sugar-free preprocessed foods, except for sugar-free jello and Popsicles.
When I was first diagnosed, I immediately regarded sweets and things like chips as poison. Then unexpectedly, I found my emotional connection to food was cut. I don’t know the exact reason why this happened and I wasn’t aware that it had happened until several weeks had gone by…I believe it was the poison thing. For me…this was huge.
At first, I checked by BS only once a day because my insurance will only pay for one strip per day. After learning more, I began to experiment and for several weeks checked my BS multiple times per day to see the results of specific foods. Since everyone is different, I believe it is important to find out how you react to certain foods. After this experiment was over, I went back to testing once/day (mostly) and I was able to stop spending so much time worrying about my diet because I took the unknown out of the picture (well not entirely, but enough so that I am not obsessive).
Be careful of the diabetic cookbooks, I bought several also. There are many recipes in the books that I would never make due to the high carb content.
The following is a website that is great for calculating the nutritional content of a recipe http://recipematic.com/index.php
Good luck and if I can help, I am more than happy to do whatever I can.
I checked the website that you mentioned and it was really helpful so thanks a lot for the info! I keep getting such conflicting info…like my HgA1c was 6.3 so I do I have diabetes or am I a pre- diabetic or merely insulin- resistant. Since I have been on Metformin my post meal readings have been pretty good except one day when I had a couple of slices of watermelon after dinner and I got a 144 post meal reading! The R.T. that I see set up a diet of 45 gms of carbs for 3 meals a day but from what I have been reading, it seems like this is excessive…Comments anyone?