Diabetes and Diets

Soon after I was diagnosed with diabetes, my doctor at Kaiser sent me to some free diabetes education classes, if you have Kaiser and diabetes or pre-diabetes it’s a great resource. They teach you all the basics, like how to use your blood sugar meter, what exactly diabetes is, how to eat properly and so on. The main focus of the classes is eating properly.

Today I am going to talk about what I have learned about my diet. The two most important parts to controlling type 2 diabetes are diet and exercise, which seam to be the two most important parts to living a healthy life style whether or not you have diabetes. Just be eating regular well balanced and proportioned meals throughout the day my blood sugar has dramatically decreased. The secret to a diabetes lifestyle change, not diet, is low fat, counting your carbs, and low sugar. The most important part of that is counting your carbs, for each big meal you want to have between 45 and 60 grams of carbohydrates, and each snack about 15 to 30 grams of carbohydrates. I eat about 45 grams of carbs for breakfast (two cups of regular cheerios and a cup of milk), then about 9:30 I eat a granola bar, about 30 grams of carbs, for lunch I eat a sandwich, yogurt and apple, total about 60 grams of carbs, then a mid afternoon snack, such as a piece of fruit, about 15 grams of carbs, then dinner, no more then 60 grams of carbs. So with just watching my carbs, and getting some regular exercise, I was able to lower my blood sugar by fifty, it’s not below the diabetic range yet, but it will be.

The Start of It All

After months of pressure from my girlfriend I went to the doctor about six weeks ago. I go about once a year, but I don’t really see my problems, like other people do, so my girlfriend went with me, with a list of things she thought was wrong. So they ran all these blood tests and after twelve hours of fasting my blood sugar was 156, thirty points past the diabetic range. So this prompted a flood of e-mails to my doctor, trying to find out what was wrong with me, so I went back in to see him, and he told me that I had type two diabetes. The main causes of type 2 diabetes are excessive weight, obesity, lack of physical activity, age, and genetic factors. I am not excessively over weight or obese, I try to exercise at least 5 days a week, and I am only 29, so this lead me to believe that my type two was caused by genetic factors. After speaking with both my parents, it turns out that my father has high blood sugar too.

So with the help of my wonderful girlfriend, now I am on the road to being healthy, and managing my type 2 diabetes. I have begun to loose weight, about ten pounds so far, and I am constantly checking my blood sugar and watching what I eat. The weight is coming off easily, with watching what and when I eat, and at least an hours walk every night. With just that my blood sugar has decreased to 117, pre-diabetic levels.