ABOUT ME

This is my journey with prediabetes on which this site is built, along with help from others on the Facebook forum of the same name.

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So there I was thinking the world had suddenly exploded.  The practice nurse sat there reeling off a long list of foods I shouldn't eat.  Here goes....

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Pork, bacon, beef, mince, chicken with skin on pasta, potatoes, rice, biscuits, sweets, desserts.   Nearly everything in our cupboard to be honest.

I was completely shocked and muttered something about eating toast without butter if I had jam, and other such things I did.  The mention of butter then created another whole long list of things I shouldn't eat and was told butter was another story altogether health wise and that I'd learn.

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The GP also put me down for an NHS prediabetic course.  More on that at the end.

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I went home completely deflated and told my other half.  He just turned round and said "that's all our staple foods in our cupboard, apart from biscuits and sweets".

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So, the first thing I did was next food order bought a load of salad and had the family eating chicken and salad, sausages and salad, brown bread, brown pasta and brown rice. 

Brown rice ewww a learning curve.

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I didn't know it took longer to cook that white rice and threw it into the microwave and cooked it the same as the white rice.  Talk about eating pebbles, that was us.  My daughter hated it and never wanted brown rice again.

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We survived!

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Now we have brown rice, brown pasta, brown bread and all the rest of it, but have discovered along the way I can eat some desserts I like now and again, I can eat treats now and again so long as I then go back to the prediabetic ideals.

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As for the NHS course, I never got started.  I wanted to do the online course and it was over a month before they made contact.  In that time I'd already set myself my own goals and done my own research and was well on my way without their 9 month course.  It can be done.

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As I felt so in the dark about things, I proceeded to do research  which has now ultimately resulted in this website as I found it was a mass of some good information and some terrible information and a lot related to the US market which has different ways of doing things to the UK.

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I set myself a spreadsheet up and wrote all my daily meals in on it and the date and what snacks I had.  I colour coded the meals green for good, yellow for moderate, and red for danger and used it in conjunction with a glucose meter bought from Boots the Chemist. 

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Mmmmm finger prick tests wasn't my thing, but surprisingly they don't really hurt.  It has enabled me to see what different foods are doing to my blood glucose and those that spike a lot I marked red on my chart. 

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Success has beckoned as I started out with a reading of 42 mmol/mol and now down to approximately 38 mmol/mol. 

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Yay, it can be done!​​

​Don't lose heart and don't be scared.

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