Back when I was diagnosed, I knew I had to make some lifestyle changes. Broadly speaking, my plans worked – my blood glucose is under control – but the improvements began to stall. I also started having breakfast every morning, despite not really being a breakfast person.
Fruit is an important part of a balanced diet, and I knew I had to eat more fruit, but it also made me nervous. Fruit is something that I perceived as being high in carbs, so it would increase my blood glucose.
About a month ago, I decided to do something about this. I decided to have an apple every morning with my breakfast, and test my blood glucose two hours later. I thought I’d give it about a week to see how things went.
And I am pleased to report it went well. Over the eight days of the test, my blood glucose was between 4.1 mmol/L and 6.8 mmol/L about two hours after eating. This is comfortably in range for me.
Glycemic index is a measure of how quickly a food raises your blood glucose, and for people with type 2 diabetes, it can be good to eat low glycemic index foods. Apples are a low-glycemic-index food, and my experiments seem to show that they work well with my diabetes management.
There is a bigger lesson here. When I was first diagnosed, I wanted to make big lifestyle changes. Some of those—being more diligent with exercise—stuck. Others—eating a more balanced diet—didn’t. However, by (relatively) healthy breakfast has grown somewhat organically out of a series of small changes. First I started just having breakfast—any breakfast. Then the breakfast became more stable. And then I added fresh fruit to my regular breakfast. Now, my breakfast is pretty good, and it doesn’t have a negative impact on my blood glucose.
Sometimes we need big changes, sometimes we need small.
Further reading
- Eat to Your Meter from Diabetes UK. “Eat to your meter is a phrase used to describe the use of systematic blood glucose testing to inform the dietary choice of appropriate foods and quantities of foods for good diabetes control.”
- Blood Sugar Level Ranges from Diabetes UK.
- Glycemic Index and Diabetes from Diabetes UK.