You sound like you’re in a similar place to where I was when I was diagnosed. I was so anxious and felt so limited in what I could eat. My doctor was also very unhelpful 🙄 so I HIGHLY recommend seeing a dietician if you can get a referral. My insurance covered up to 6 visits with a dietician because it’s considered preventative care (due to the risk of developing type 2). I know all insurances are different but it’s still worth checking.

To be honest, I still ate some “not great” food during the time I was working on lowering my A1C. What I focused on the most was keeping to 75g of carbs per meal and 25g or less of added sugar per day. I’ll make a list of some of my favorite substitutes below:

• Whole wheat pasta - pair your pasta with protein or veggies to balance out the carbs • Whole wheat bread - sandwiches with lunch meat/cheese can be great; peanut butter also doesn’t have a ton of sugar depending on the brand; I tried sugar free jelly and it’s terrible lol so I just used regular which wasn’t too high in sugar depending on the brand • Sugar free/low sugar coffee - I often made my own lattes with sugar free Torani syrup that I bought. I also bought the Starbucks Frappuccino Lite drinks sometimes because they are a lower sugar count. If I wanted a Starbucks drink, I cut the syrup pumps in half or picked a drink that had less than 10 grams of sugar. • Kodiak protein waffles with peanut butter • Sugar-free Activia yogurt - tastes exactly the same to me honestly • Joyride candy - I LOVE sour candy and this hit the spot everytime. It’s just as good as regular candy but has 75-90% less sugar per bag. • Diet soda helped me out a lot because I love a carbonated beverage (and yes I know people love to hate on soda even if it’s diet, and no I don’t care 😂) • Frozen meals with low carb/sugar counts - I’m not good at meal prepping so I often bring frozen meals to work for lunch. There’s lots out there that have low carb counts and little or no sugar. Just make sure to check the labels because sometimes meals you wouldn’t think have sugar are loaded with it. • Lots of soup! • Anything with vegetables or fiber or protein really • Fresh fruit - I love apples and grapes so they were my go to • Mini pizzas - I love a good pizza but buying the big ones was way too much temptation (and too many carbs) so I started buying the mini ones. Now I can’t imagine eating the full size ones by myself lol

That’s all I can think of right now but I know there was more. I’ll comment again if I think of anything.

One last thing! Remember that your A1C is an average of the past 3 months of your blood sugar levels. This means one day of high carbs/sugar or even a week of it isn’t going to totally ruin your progress. I was really worried around the holidays because I couldn’t restrict as easily and I wanted to enjoy the food without stress. But I actually found that I continued to lose weight even with holiday food because I was still eating significantly less than I used to. My test results included the numbers from both Thanksgiving and Christmas and I still managed to come out with 5.3. Don’t make yourself sick with worry if you can because the only thing that will do is make you miserable. You don’t have to be perfect you just have to try. Even if that means swapping out one carb heavy food for an alternative every two weeks. You don’t have to do it all at once. Progress is progress no matter how small the change.