Hello everyone. Happy Tuesday. I’m so nervous. I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and I’m looking

LorraineNar

Hello everyone. Happy Tuesday. I’m so nervous. I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and I’m looking for the right app to help me. I k ow nothing about macros much less diabetes. I’ve been researching. I’m on metformin and trulicity. How do I calculate all this. I started walking and working out. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you 🫶🏻🫶🏻

mtaratoot

Welcome @LorraineNa

I am not qualified to offer any advice about diabetes, but I can suggest that you can use the tools on MyFitnessPal to lose weight. I know some people have found improvements from diabetes from losing weight if they are overweight.

A great place to start is the Most Helpful Posts. Then ask questions. Check out:

• Most Helpful Posts - Getting Started (Must Reads)
• Most Helpful Posts - Health and Weight Loss (Must Reads)
  
• Most Helpful Posts - Success Stories (Must Reads)
  

frhaberl

Part of my wake up call was repeatedly getting A1C values in the pre-diabetic range. The encouraging news I can share is that I was back into the healthy range for A1C with just a 10% drop in body weight (still considered obese at that point, with a BMI of 33). Since you are diabetic, please go with your doctor's guidance if anything they are saying conflicts with my advice.

I did not do anything drastic with macros. My overall philosophy is that nutrition is not a one size fits all thing and it's worth figuring out what works for you from the standpoint of feeling satisfied, having plenty of energy, being financially and time investment feasible, and sustainable for the rest of your life. My starting point would be the macro ratio default that MFP provides with a focus on portion control of your "normal" foods to stay within a 250-500 calories/day deficit. If you're finding that you're hungry on that number of calories, I would suggest increasing your protein and fiber.

Another near term modification to consider is reducing sources of refined sugar. For me that was giving up full sugar sodas. I'm not personally a fan of sugar substitutes, so I still have sugar in baked goods and other recipes, but I very rarely put any sugar in drinks now. I've found that it's the carbonation of "summer" drinks, and the warmth of "winter" drinks that really satisfies me, so I don't actually miss the sugar. Focusing on increasing my fiber intake has also automatically reduced my refined sugar intake.

Best wishes as you start this journey. The thing I have found more and more important to keep in mind is that this journey does not end when the A1C drops, or when I reach my target weight, so I want to make changes that are lifetime changes. That means that some "faster" approaches are not the best approaches. It's great to leverage the motivation that a health issue can provide and make some relatively big changes (for me it was cutting out sugary drinks and committing to an exercise routine) but I've found that the "magic" happens when I find a nutrition and lifestyle that I would be happy to maintain even if I didn't have high A1C or have a weight loss target. If something feels too restrictive or time consuming or I find myself counting the days until I can stop doing it (after giving it a few days or couple weeks of giving it a try) then I'm asking myself why I am doing that and if there are other ways to achieve the same goal. For example, I found I really hate Egglife wraps. I didn't make myself finish the package. I just started looking up for alternative wraps that had higher protein and/or fiber than the plain tortilla I was previously using.

The community post links @mtaratoot provided are great places to start and searching the community posts for keywords related to follow up questions you have can get you a long way.