Gabby Mag

 

Pre-diabetes first day

After being diagnosed with pre-diabetes, I came home and started googling. I like to joke that I’m a world class googler. Since writing on many topics is part of what I do for a living and research is needed on almost every assignment, my first port of call is, you guessed it…

 

But it didn't help much. That first day or so spent getting accustomed to watching what I was eating to try to control diabetes through diet, exercise, and lifestyle—confusion reigned. I already made a habit of lower fat or lower calorie choices and tried to eat healthily and avoid sweets for the usual reasons. This hadn't worked—I now had a new goal that went way beyond eating healthy—to try to reverse pre-diabetes.

 

But even from reputable health organizations and associations, the guidance seemed confusing.  All agree that lifestyle changes may help you avoid Type 2 diabetes and other scary related health issues that go with. But nobody seems to agree on exactly how to do it… or the information was so scattered, it was hard to find and reference.

 

It took over an hour to do my normal 15-minute shop because I was reading labels and making up daily menus in my head and trying to get to grips with what to eat and when to maintain the proper glucose levels—or even what they are—and how to avoid the dreaded spikes—and still feed family members what they needed.

 

My health practitioners did give some useful information as a starting point—but they don’t always. My mother, who was very underweight and so it came as a shock to all when she had her diagnosis of pre-diabetes— lived alone. She probably relied on packaged food more than she should instead of cooking from scratch, as people do—plus the occasional bag of potato chips or treat. A few years later, she passed away from heart problems—at too young an age. I realize now, as I wade through all the information that is and isn’t accessible on the subject, that her health advisers didn’t give her the same good factual platform to work from that I had. Somehow, the seriousness of the diagnosis and how to avoid developing full-blown Type 2 Diabetes was underplayed.

 

Her diet changed a littlle. Mom switched from sugar to sweetener… she made choices for dinner—pre-battered fish, for example, or breaded chicken, and mashed potatoes with gravy—that should have been on the rarely-if-ever list or ingredients switched out—sweet potatoes for white, for example. It's only now, as I unravel the mysteries of what's good and what's not that I realize that this very smart woman didn't have the right information to make the right decisions or that somehow the extreme importance of making these choices wasn't received.

 

What should you do when you receive a pre-diabetes diagnosis? When should you eat and what? Should you exercise before breakfast or after lunch—or two hours after lunch? Do you have to eat carbs every three hours or is it four? 

 

This pre-diabetes diary is to help sift through the information that presents itself along the way, to make it easier to make the choices we need to and not the mistakes that cost us our health or worse.