How does Spring affect your control in Spring?

When you are given a clinical diagnosis of diabetes it can feel like a scary place to be, especially if you're the first person you know who's been given this news. Subjects like a healthy diet i.e. what foods are right and how to tackle diet changes can feel like a bit of a minefield. Here how our Healthshare Diabetes community of people living with diabetes feel about their diagnosis and what adjustments they make for diet during spring. The owning my own health is the point that I would highlight because I take charge of my own body, my own health and I try to understand everything that's related to my diabetes and related to my body in terms of medication, in terms of physical activity, diet and so on and so forth. Um, so when I was diagnosed as diabetes, I was working as an intensive care doctor and, um, and what, what I just fell apart about was the thought that when I was old, I would be on dialysis and having had both legs chopped off. Um, because that's kind of what I saw in my job. And I didn't know or realize that there were totally people out there with diabetes who'd had diabetes for their whole life, who had awful limbs and working kidneys and all these other things. So I think the things that, so the thing that I worry about all the time is not right now, now but in 20 years or 30 years time what my feet will be like and how well my kidneys will work and whether I can still see and will I have had a heart attack and all that stuff and that kind of I guess motivates me to be quite obsessive about my diabetes control. Through the winter I've not exercised or put on weight and everything and that's my main concern by going out and about and by having going to the gym and increasing my exercise and stuff and at the same time eating the right food so I'm not because I've been nibbling on everything and everything in the winter I don't want to nibble on small small bits so go on the healthier diet not that I wasn't but still going more on maybe a handful of nuts or avocado and stuff like that eating my breakfast with with avocado and stuff instead of having toast and eggs and stuff like that. I think you can change your blood sugar control very dramatically by changing your diet. There's lots of things that I never realized that it's taken me a really long time to learn. So things like, if you have a really high fat meal, your carbohydrate that you eat in it will be absorbed really, really, really slowly and you're probably best not injecting your insulin before you eat. And you learn that by bitter experience, but stuff like that, that you don't necessarily learn when you go to your hospital appointments or your GP appointments, but it's actually quite useful and to talk about with other people. And depends on the quantity as well. Before I used to go for larger plates, like a proper dinner plate, but now I go for dessert plates. So whatever is in that plate, I would eat instead of going for the larger plate. So that's another way of going into a healthier diet. You have everything on that plate, but in small, small quantities. So I think my consultant who looks after my diabetes was really, really good at making me, kind of demonstrating to me that it is less of a big deal than I thought it would be. And that actually injecting yourself number of times a day with insulin really isn't a problem and that it interferes with your life much less than you think it might. You learn to live with it really quickly. It's not that big a deal and it shouldn't stop you from doing anything that you want to do. There is so much information out there about diabetes and it can feel lonely and daunting But you have heard how the joys of our lives, including food, do not have to be sacrificed because of diabetes. Understanding your diagnosis and knowing there are others who have walked the same path you walk can help. Join our conversation with friends and have the opportunity to gather and share information from healthcare professionals, but more importantly, people living with diabetes at healthshare.com You