Prediabetic - My second day Low sugar, Low Carb. Help?

You might get more responses from the diabetes and pre-diabetes forums here. Do a search to find them.

I've managed to reverse my T2 diagnosis by losing weight. I believe a lot of the standard wisdom is to test BG often and eat to meter and to avoid high glycemic index foods unless combined with fat and protein. There are some useful websites about managing diabetes through diet, but I don't have the URL's at hand.

I don't really watch carbs carefully anymore, myself.

I too do low carb - I'm on a max of 30g per day - but I still include as many fruit and veg as possible and always have my 5 a day, just ones with a lower carb and sugar, higher fibre content. Strawberries are a good one to add to your day as you only need a few to get some form of vitamins from them without all the other stuff. Broccoli if you like it is a really good veg to go for and mixed salad leaves also work well. I find I've never gone over my carb allowance. I have cut out all wheat and potato products though so that helps keep everything else low.
Good luck.

I was just diagnosed wth T2 earlier this month. I am using this website to count my carbs which she told me nees tobe between 45-65/meal. And I got a fitbit to help as well. My Dr. and others have told me that working out (walking) 30 minutes a day is a huge help as this makes your body convert the blood sugar into energy expelling it from us. YAY!! I've lost over 4 pounds since I started this and I was on weight watchers before without as much success.
Fruit? I cut most of what I was eating (WW has limitless fruits) and replaced it with veggies. My Triglicerieds were super high and I hope this helps lower them.

Best of luck!! Maybe we should stay in touch and encourage each other.

Thank God! For me coming across this message board. The hardest part is finding out that you are pre-diabetic at a young age and need to go on a low carb diet. I am new to this also and willing to find a partner to help me and as I help them. If anyone is willing to help me loose weight and keep me on track as I will do the same.

I'm pre-diabetic as well. My mom was diabetic also. Our doctors told us the same thing. Stick to 3-4 servings of carbs a meal. One serving equals 15 grams of carbs (so, stick to 45-60 carbs a meal). The amount of sugar in something plays no role in your blood sugar. The only relationship is that more sugar in something tends to mean there will probably be more carbs, but that isn't always the case. Any snacks should be 1 serving of carbs or less. I suggest seeing a dietician who will be able to explain a diabetic diet the best. They should also have tons of handouts and papers that will help you with your diet.

I was just diagnosed as a pre diabetic you may want to take a look a this website www.defineyoury.com take a look at the transformation that's what I'm doing!

I've been a full blown type 1 diabetic since I was 12. I do eat healthy fats, "smart" carbs, etc. I can't recommend enough for you to look into the glycemic index and choosing foods from that list. There are some good recipes out there too that follow the low glycemic index.

Sugars from fruits are something to keep in mind, but not be afraid of. Glycemic index of food (how much it will spike your blood sugar) combined with glycemic load (overall carb count) is what you need to watch more carefully. Both are based on a scale of 100 (1 being lowest and 100 being the worst).

I'm in similar boat with you, but I'm not diagnosed pre-diabetic, just predisposed to it. Blueberries were great for their GI and GL numbers as are peaches, nectarines, and apples. There are a few more, but strawberries are higher for both GI and GL. Optimally, you would like the GI and GL indexes as low as possible, but fruit is hard. Staying below 50 on both is what you should strive for. I was surprised at how "high" vegetable numbers were as well so be aware of that too.

This is very true. I'm a Type 1 diabetic (so insulin-dependent for life) and what you have to discern is how particular foods affect YOU. There are good guidelines, such as the glycemic index, but most of us who monitor our blood sugar very closely will tell you that those guidelines can vary I agree that you should look to fruits like berries and apples and perhaps avoid things like watermelon, mango, bananas for the short term.

Glycemic load is not exactly the overall carb count as the above poster stated. Glycemic load is the estimation of how much a food or a combination of foods will raise blood sugar, and is based on glycemic index and total number of carbs. It CAN be deceiving for diabetics, because often what happens with low GL foods or food combos is a delayed blood sugar spike. So measuring your blood sugar two hours after a meal might give you a great reading, but check again in another hour or two and it might be sky high.

Fruit juices, however, can spike you fast. I'd try to avoid these unless you are drinking fresh fruit juice from a juicer.

It's tricky business.

I would suggest for the time being to avoid "white" starches - white bread, white rice, white pasta, etc. Eating more whole grain foods will help keep your blood sugars more stable. And when eating something that is high GI (which might spike you fast) pair it with a protein, like peanut butter as one other poster suggested. That will help to slow down the spike.

As for dairy with carbs (such as yogurt, etc) what I would pay attention to is the label and the ingredients. For instance if a serving of blueberry yogurt has 33g of carbs and it lists 26g of sugar, then you know it will affect your blood sugar. If you are eating a serving of cottage cheese and it has 8g of carbs, it probably won't affect your blood sugar too much if at all.

I would say the Greek yogurt you are eating is probably ok.

Are you testing your blood sugar? This is VERY important and not stressed enough with Type 2s. If you are curious about how a meal or certain food will affect your sugar, you test before you eat, and then two hours after. Then you'll see how it affects your sugar. I do this for EVERY meal and snack I eat. But Type 1 is a different beast ;-)
Do you know what your target ranges are? Do you know what your fasting sugar is in the morning? This is a very important number. Do you know what your A1C is?

Also important to note is that exercise increases your body's ability to use insulin, so if you have a meal with a lot of carbs and you want to make sure you don't see a spike, do some exercise! I know for me, when I go for a run, I usually unplug my insulin pump altogether or I have a hypo (go too low).

If you have any questions don't hesitate to PM me!

I honestly believe you have to find what foods affect you. Each person is different. Being a type 1, I know that I can eat a particular food and it doesn't affect my sugar, but another person it can. You'll find out thru trial and error what works and what doesn't. I'm sure weight loss and exercise will ward this all off for you. Good luck to you.

Hi all. I'm new to MFP, and how awesome and user friendly it is! Not to mention all the support and tools.

So, down to business.

I was diagnosed as being pre-diabetic by my family doctor 2 days ago, who suggested eating low-carb, low-sugar, and not overboard on the fats. The first goal of mine is to lose 10% of my body weight (18 lbs,) which she said could possibly reverse it! I am aware that I will always need to eat this way, which makes more sense than the average American diet to me anyway.
I am having a hard time figuring out the role of natural sugars (like fruit) in this. My goal is to keep under 50 carbs daily, just until I lose the 10%, then maybe I'll add some more occasionally. Should I just stay away from fruit for now?
And also, a 100 calorie Greek yogurt has 12 gr of carbs, I always eat one in the morning with my pills, but is it still a good choice or not so much?
And also, Here is a rundown of my totals from yesterday. Am I eating too much?
Sorry for all the questions, thanks for any feedback!

Totals 1,475 70 98 101 3,192 26
Your Daily Goal 1,200 45 40 165 2,300 45
Remaining -275 -25 -58 64 -892 19
Calories Carbs Fat Protein Sodium Sugar

Lots of great responses overall, though I'm a bit concerned with your ratios.

Low carb is certainly a great way to eat, but low carb, low fat is a recipe for disaster. Your body needs fat for hormone function, nutrient absorption, and cell creation. I suspect your doctor is still working on the long-defunct and debunked lipid hypothesis, which claims that dietary fat causes heart disease (and since Diabetics and anyone at high risk of developing Diabetes are also at higher risk of cardiovascular disease...). This assertion, however, is not true and has been thoroughly debunked even before Ancel Keyes tried to prove it true.

For an interesting history on the history behind it, I recommend checking out this video by Dr. Peter Attia -- https://player.vimeo.com/video/45485034

So what's the problem with low carb, low fat? Simply put -- protein poisoning, aka rabbit starvation. The name stems from explorers and other people who get stranded out in the wilderness and had to survive off only lean animals, such as rabbit. The overwhelming majority of their calories came from protein. The problem with this is that protein is not intended to be fuel. It's for tissue repair. When the body has to use it for fuel, it has to first turn it into glucose, which taxes the kidneys. The body doesn't really like to do this, and will start triggering cravings for carbs and/or fats, and these cravings can only be sated through the consumption of carbs or fats. In extreme situations (namely, the actual long term survival situations), this even results in death. This fact was so well-known among indigenous populations that they believed that living on lean meat alone would actually result in faster death than plain starvation, and they went to great lengths to ensure sufficient fat intake.

Now, that's not to say that the above will happen to you (and even if it did, it's not like you don't have the means to fix it quickly). However, it does illustrate the importance of fats and/or carbohydrates to the body. You can live on minimal fat, or you can live on minimal carbs, but you cannot live on minimal of both. And trying to keep both low does put you at risk of putting yourself in such a circumstance, and will most likely cause you to binge on carbs and/or fat, and since low-carb really is a great tool when used properly, I don't want to see that happen to you and you give up the idea of low-carb.

Now, as I said before dietary fat does not increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. In fact, a meta-analysis of a large number of studies has shown that there was zero relationship between fat intake and cardiovascular disease over a total of 375,000 people. If that's not enough people studied to come to an authoritative conclusion, I don't know what is. ( http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2010/01/13/ajcn.2009.27725.abstract )

In fact, low-carb, high-fat diets have been showing to improve cardiovascular risk by increasing HDL, lowering triglycerides, and increasing the size of LDL particles without increasing their number (this is a very good thing, but it does give the illusion of being bad, because the LDL measurement in standard cholesterol tests goes up, because of course increased size means increase in weight, but weight isn't the problem here, particle count and size are; increasing the size of LDL particles renders them inert).

So, what numbers should you have?

Keep your carbs where they are, though I agree with others. At that level, do it as net carbs. Vegetables are your friend, especially since most people aren't keen on eating the parts of animals necessary to get the nutrients most people associate with plants.

Reduce your protein to no more than 1g/lb of lean body weight. This should end up around 100g, give or take about 10-20g depending on how tall you are.

Fill the rest in with fat, but make sure it's at least .35g/lb of total body weight. If it's not, then increase your calories, because you probably have MFP set to too ambitious of a goal (as most people do when their calories are set to 1200, which is highly recommended against unless your under 5' tall). Besides, one of the nice things about low carb is that you don't have to starve yourself to see results (and before the CICO people jump on me -- yes, calories do still matter, but for those with insulin/glucose issues, there are profound hormonal and fuel burning differences between a low carb and a high carb diet, and these differences are huge in such people; I'm not saying you can eat unlimited everything, just that you don't have to rival an Auschwitz prisoner in calorie intake).

As for foods -- yes, fruit sugar still matters. In fact, fructose is one of the big factors in triglyceride levels, because the body can't burn it directly like it can with glucose. Instead, fructose goes to the liver to be turned into fat.

That said, you don't have to always and forever avoid fruit. You might want to for a while, until you get your weight down a little bit and are out of the red zone. Then, as others have said, favor berries over just about any other fruit. They're low GI/GL and packed with nutrients, antioxidants, and other goodies.

Instead, favor non-starchy vegetables overall, particularly greens. Be mindful of things like carrots and peppers, which have a higher sugar content.

Also, don't be afraid of things like real butter and coconut oil (or anything coconut, though watch added sugar). Coconut oil, especially, has shown promise in helping Diabetes and obesity. Butter, particularly high-quality (ideally from pastured cows), is packed with Vitamin A (not beta carotine, actual Vitamin A), K2 (integral to a number of bodily functions and dental health, rare to find elsewhere), and other vitamins, as well as conjugated linoleic acid and butyrate, compounds known to be great for health.

There are some great answers on here.
I am not pre-diabetic or diabetic, but I have switched to a lower carb/grain-free approach because I do have PCOS (which many times comes with an insulin resistance and affects the way my body processes carbs).
I know that your doctor said to go easy on the fats, but adding some healthy fats (avocado, real butter, heavy cream, coconut oil, nuts) in moderation to your daily routine will help immensely with carb cravings and will help keep you from feeling deprived and hungry all the time.
I get most of my carbs from veggies and fruits and tend to eat more fruit on days that I run so that I am fueled for those workouts.
I agree with the other posters who have mentioned that you will have to play around with different levels and find what works for you. Every person's body works differently and what works for one person may not necessarily do it for the next. It's about trial and error and finding what works for you.
Good luck!

I tested about an hour after, then took the insulin to lower it to 80.

Well I am just a random person on the internet but I feel it should be said that someone should not be taking insulin that is not prescribed to you for obvious reason. You should ask to meet with an actual Endo dr. and establish that you need to be on anything more than diet and exercise before taking anything... but that is your call, I just no it would be a red flag for me and as I am diabetic with a wife that is prediabetic I would never allow her to take anything that was prescribe to me... Best of Luck though.....

For the short term, limit fruit, eliminate everything white except cauliflower and garlic. Get your allowable carbohydrate from leafy green vegetables.

Try eggs and bacon or sausage for breakfast, no toast or potatoes or juice. Yogurt is probably not the best choice unless it is plain yogurt. If you plan your carbohydrate choices ahead for the entire day you may be able to have limited quantities of fruit, so long as it is within your daily carbohydrate budget.

Instead of potatoes, cook cauliflower and food process it with cream, butter, and garlic to make something that visually resembles mashed potatoes but has it's own delicious taste.

Animal-sourced foods are your friends. Leaves and buds are your friends (spinach, broccoli...) Unsweetened tea or coffee is your friend.

Grains and root vegetables are your enemies, with the exception of chia for fiber.

Fruits are your guilty pleasures.