Need advise on exercise

Thanks - I'm hoping the Nurse Practitioner will advise me when I see her next month, with my 4 week food diary.  In the meantime I've started doing the static exercises.  Much as I hate swimming, I asked a friend to come with me to the once a week over 50's session, but she declined, and I don't want to go alone.  It's not an organised class, which some pools offer (none close enough to me), just lane swimming.  Today for more exercise I did an hour's gardening, with plenty of bending and stretching.

My fridge is groaning under the weigh of fresh veggies and salads, and I've got 2 large batches of homemade veggie soup in the freezer, which should last me for lunch for 3 weeks.  I also stocked up with fresh oily fish (salmon, trout, mackerel) which I've portioned up and frozen. 

So hopefully I've started the right way.  I'll post again after my next HbA1c test with the result.

Felinia, food sounds great, but in my case, I would not be eating the fresh fish because I'm subject to gout.  Nothing wrong with chicken, pork, and beef, in smaller, lean portions.  Lamb if you can get it, at a respectable price.  Walnuts and almonds are good sources of protein, too.

Thanks - glad I'm in the right direction.  I can't take red meat, nuts and seeds because of my Diverticular Disease, and acidic foods because of the hiatus hernia and gastritis.  It's such a balancing act eating foods that fit in with all the conditions.  Until the diabetes diagnosis, I used to eat lots of potato, rice, gluten free pasta and GF bread.  I've just made out a weekly food plan for the next 7 days and it's quite restrictive and boring, but I'm planning to try new vegetables and make different soups, without the potato and pasta added.  I'm also going to have a go at cauliflower rice and courgetti or spaghetti squash with my turkey mince.  I have osteoarthritis in some of my joints which I think must be comparable to the pain of gout - poor you.

Hi @Felinia, as long as I'm good on the diet, no gout!

I've found potatoes are just hard on the BG but pasta doesn't have to be so bad, especially if you can find some whole wheat pasta - which tastes just about the same once the sauce is on it, LOL.  And here's an obscure fact - if you make the pasta, then let it cool and put it in the fridge, when you take it out cold it has been changed and is now "resistant" and much less bad.

I even eat some whole wheat bread and brown rice, for the lower glycemic index.  Maybe it helps.  It hasn't killed me anyway.  Actually any kind of bread but the most basic white bread has a better glycemic index and seem OK (for me!) as long as I count the carbs, which usually means just half a sandwich or open-faced on one piece of bread.

Your numbers aren't horrible, so your dietary restrictions only have to be moderate too.  Just get away from using carbs as the base for everything else, don't eat a huge bowl of spaghetti, drink sugary lemonade, and have a big bowl of ice cream for dessert!  That might be 200 or 300 carbs, and a normal person can get away with it, but now we can't.  Depending on your weight and activity and such, probably want to average no more than about 50 carbs per meal and do NOT go above about 75 or 80.  That's probably all you need.  The extreme "keto" diets people can go on are fine for some and needed by others, but there's no reason to think you have to go there now.  Nor me!

Hi, My problem with the carbs thing is I can't eat any form of gluten as it is a trigger food for my Diverticular Disease, along with fat.  I end up rolling in agony and running to the loo all day!!  I did find a couple of gluten free breads, which were barely edible toasted - the rest were not.  GF pasta is OK but comes in white only.  You can get squash sheets in my supermarket, to make lasagne with, so I'll try that with my turkey mince.  What do you know about Quark - it's fat free but dairy?  I use that with a beaten egg to top my lasagne.  But thanks for the tip about brown rice - I hadn't thought of that.

I'm wondering if I misunderstood the carb limit.  I thought it was 45-60 carbs per day, which is why I just have 35gm with my breakfast porridge, and hope the veggies I have the rest of the day don't exceed that.  For example I had a slice of grilled gammon with cabbage, leeks, carrots and runner beans.  I know carrots and beans have some carbs, but cabbage, leek and gammon were minimal so I thought that was an OK meal.  My other meal that day was a large salad with a crustless quiche (egg, fat free cottage cheese, chopped peppers, mushrooms and onions) and 1 tablespoon fat free lemon and black pepper dressing.

Thanks for all your advice - this is trickier than I naively assumed it would be.  I'm 68 and have dealt with dietary issues due to my DD and hiatus hernia for almost 20 years, so thought this would be just one more thing to add to the lists!  I did some exercises lying on my bed this morning before getting up, and it actually helped my mobility - so an upside!   Having been an adviser on DD on this forum for 2 years I've seen people come with loads of questions, learn and move on.  Now I'm that side of the fence and am sure I'll learn too!

Felinia, there are no fixed guidelines on the carbs.  In my case my endocrinologist started me on 60-75 per *meal*.  I thought then, in my ignorance, that that was pretty high, I've discussed it on diabetes forums and it seemed high to everyone, and with six more months of Internet knowledge it *still* seems high to me - but it worked OK for me! 

Though I've reduced that on my own already, my target is more like 50-65 per meal, and some meals are well below that.  But I'm sure I average well over 100 carbs per *day*, and my BG is … not too much higher than yours, LOL.  Even with my metformin medication.  But this is not bad, under the circumstances!  I even continue to lose weight on this, maybe a pound a month.

So my own conclusions (think the old Monty Python skit with "Ann Elke" and her theory about the dinosaurs) are that a large part of this is not especially the exact numbers per meal, but avoiding huge excursions, avoiding the 100, 200, and 300 carb meals.  These seem to throw your control system out of wack and it takes a couple of days to recover your BG back to normal levels.

So avoiding the big numbers, - and also avoiding snacks, which can keep the BG high even in little increments, although many with diabetes like their snacks, and SHOULD be able to have them by "borrowing" carbs from the next meal.  For me, no snacks other than a few nuts or a small piece of cheese, seems the best policy.

So 35 per *day* is low, much lower than someone in your situation really needs to target.  OTOH it's bound to help you lose weight, if you stick to it.  35 per *meal* is even in the low range.

Hope that helps.

Thanks again.  I'm 100kg (220 pounds) and told to lose 90 pounds.  That's 41% of my body weight.  To quote Tom Cruise - Mission Impossible!!  But more realistically I'm told to aim for 30 pounds at first.  I have a holiday in September and looked up the hotel on the website.  They do set meals with 3 choices per course.  All the desserts are out and most of the starters.  Trouble is you don't know what goes in hotel meals and I'd already told them I can't eat gluten or fat.  I suspect I have the joys of a week of plain omelette and plain salad to look forward to - nothing like coleslaw, potato salad, no fancy dressing.  Breakfast is OK - they do porridge lol!!  My trip in February is better - it's all Buffet meals and I can manage that no problem.  I'm very hopeful of fitting into my cropped trousers by then! 

Thanks for your advice.  I'm 68 but have a lot of living to do still!!