Moving to insulin, any apps for food

[2strappinglads]

I have been type 2 diabetic for 3 years, tried Metformin, ozempic, and the one where the sugar comes out through the kidneys

I've lost 4.5 stone but cannot get my sugar under control, so looks like I am going to be going to background insulin

I'm struggling with food, does anyone have an app where I can scan stuff before I buy it to see what fat, sugar and carbohydrates are in it?

For reference, I test my blood when I 1st get up, and despite not having anything with sugar after dinner, it's not been lower than 12.1

I'm not sure what you mean when you say you're struggling with food.

What is a typical day's food (and drink) for you?

I mean that I need to be more aware of what I am eating to try and control the sugar levels and my cholesterol

OK - so what are you eating/drinking during the day?

Has anyone given you any advice about what foods/drinks to avoid/restrict?

Are you cooking for yourself or relying on ready-meals/pre-prepared foods?

I don't think it's important to list my diet

I simply want an app I can use when shopping for stuff like yoghurts, porridge, drinks

We cook from scratch.

Today so far I have had 2 teas, 1 coffee, a low fat Greek yoghurt, peanut butter sandwich and some grapes. That is fairly typical
Tonight we are having home cooked chicken tikka masala and rice, I'll have an apple for dessert and I have a can of zero sugar Fanta

When you say cook from scratch

Does that include the bread, the peanut butter , the curry sauce?
By porridge do you mean you buy oats or is it sone kind of preprocessed food ?

Something like MyFitnessPal let's you input the weight of something and gives you calories and other nutritional information

Not everyone can reverse their type 2 with diet

The reason I asked about your diet is to see how much carbohydrate you're eating - as this will not be helping with your blood sugars.

It's pretty important! (I wasn't trying to have a go, or trip you up in any way, but trying to find out how to help you.)

I was wondering how much you knew about nutrition and the composition of the foods you were choosing.

If you're diabetic, and having trouble keeping your blood sugar under control, then you should be cutting out/down on things like bread, rice, porridge/cereal and (most) fruit - for a start. Along with pasta, flour, potatoes and fruit juice.

It seems pretty extreme to go to insulin before dealing with your diet, TBH.

I don't know of any specific apps you could use to scan foodstuffs, although I'm sure there will be some, but the key thing you need to look for on food labelling is the proportion of carbohydrate per 100g/100ml. And keep that as low as possible.

If you are diabetic, your body can't handle starch and sugar. Have you considered a keto diet? There's plenty of info online.

"Low fat" and "diet" products can be as bad as sugar.

You do not need to go to keto, its not healthy and not sustainable.

Myfitnesspal lets you scan food and record fats,sugars and carbs etc.

I currently have gestational diabetes so I’ve had to get up to speed very quickly!

You don’t really need an app - just keep carbs low, and any carbs you have make sure it’s paired with protein or fat. As a rule, I keep carbs at each meal the size of my fist or less.

Today I’ve had:

• Greek yoghurt with almond butter, seeds, raspberries
• half a jacket potato with chicken mayo and green vegetables.
• dinner will be chicken ramen with loads of cabbage / mushrooms and not many noodles

In the shops just look at carbs per 100g and keep that as low as possible.

Have a go at filling half your plate with veg, and moving away from carb being the main event.
Do you have a diabetic medical team who can help?

Sorry, I mean main meals from scratch

Just doing Myfitnesspal and having a weight target is eye opening on how much carbs and sugar you have in the day. And they aren't even suggesting keto!

Have a look at this https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/carbs-cals-diet-diabetes/id388459613
it has photos of different portion sizes plus the macro breakdown and calories. I use this when I haven’t cooked from scratch though or when I’m out or if not on MyFitness Pal.

We've been trying to control it through diet and medication for 3 years

As I say I have lost 4.5 stone since last October
I don't have many take aways, fatty drinks and have cut out crisps and chocolate Al together

I can't cut out bread altogether, or fruit as I'll literally have nothing left to eat

I am type 2 and use nutracheck to record foods. You can scan bar codes or input the foods to get carb, sugar and calories count. It is free for 7 days and after that you can only record limited items but can still scan items. You can pay around £27 for a full years access

Have a look at the Yuka app... you can scan items in the supermarket and it gives it a rating. If I were you, I'd also read Tim Spector's new book called "Food for life" and follow @glucosegoddess on insta

Thank you will have a look

Nutracheck is a good uk based site for this sort of thing. The app is a reasonable price. As it’s uk based it has most uk products in it (ones from different supermarkets etc). I’ve been using it a few years and find it helpful.

Not an app, but the freshwell gp website is a really good resource.
https://lowcarbfreshwell.com/

My Fitness Pal will tell you the macros in most foods. You can scan something or just type it in with the brand name.

You can cut out bread and fruit - there will still be lots to eat

Eggs, cheese, vegetables , pulses , fish

With small amounts of meat and whole grain carbs

So instead of peanut butter sandwiches, for lunch try grate carrots onion cabbage and cheese and a small spoon of mayo as a giant but filling and low carb salad

For mean meals - vegetable soups like carrot with lentils , mushroom with milk

For snacks - a few nuts rather than fruit

If you can afford it, a continuous glucose monitor might be interesting for you. You could keep a diary of what you eat and when, and see what you eat that really spikes your sugars - it's not the same for everyone.

Also, exercise can help.

Not gonna lie this sounds absolutely horrendous

You might find if you give a diet overhaul a chance you start to feel better - you must feel pretty awful with such high sugars

Maybe this is too simple an answer but do you shop online? All the major supermarkets list nutritional information for each product; so if you just took a bit of time meal planning and checking stuff online the first week or two you could then repeat orders pretty quickly knowing everything in your basket is fine.

Bread makes my sugars spike quicker than chocolate btw!

My husband was fed up of taking insulin. It made him starving all the time and thus impossible to lose weight. He did a low carb diet, checked his blood all the time and was quite soon able to come off of insulin and most of the diabetes drugs. He lost loads of weight and he was never hungry. We sort of followed the Tom Kerridge Dopamine diet. He was very strict about carbs because of his diabetes, i joined him in the diet, as I wasn't going to cook individual meals for us. I wasn't so strict about the carbs, but even so I lost over a stone. Basically keep away from starchy food (bread, potatoes etc) and the cakes/biscuits/sweets you know you shouldn't be eating anyway. So, something like egg and bacon / omelette with cheese and/or ham and mushrooms for breakfast, lunch and dinner is meat, fish, chicken etc with above ground vegetables. As much as you want to eat. If you must have pudding, you can have something like creme brûlée (recipe in Tom's book) or berries.
After following this diet for around 6 months, my husband had shed his excess weight and had his diabetes completely under control. He's managed to keep the weight off, even though he's not so strict about being carb free. He can't go mad on carbs without it spiking his blood sugar, but he does eat pretty normally now, even bread and potatoes. So it worked for him.