"Dietician support is improving my diet, mental health and diabetes"

Having suffered from severe depression for years, my diet had got out of control. From being healthy prior to depression to being awful through it!

Having been introduced to the dietician service through my GP, I worked with a dietician for approximately 6 months with appointments being frequent to begin with, and getting further apart over time. I was provided with fantastic support and input into decision making which helped so much.

Small steps were required and initially the changes to my diet weren't about cutting out the poor food choices I had been making, but to add in positive choices.

Initially I committed to eating one piece of fruit per day - a food group which hadn't even registered in the previous few years. Such a small step was really tough, but made easier by discussing what fruit would be easy. Apple, pears and bananas needed no preparation so started on those. I didn't eat fruit everyday to begin with but after a while started to go for fruit as a snack over prepared foods such as crisps or chocolate.

Encouraged by this, other goals included reducing intake of certain food groups & drinks. Initially I reduced my intake of (sugar free) pop before removing it from my diet, replacing it with water or water with sugar free cordial. My bread intake had been nearing a loaf of bread daily. Working together we reduced that over time to 6 slices per day and have since reduced that to 4 slices per day.

We looked at what a plate of food was to me and how it was composed, increasing the vegetable portion and slightly reducing the carbohydrate portion, although stressing to reduce this as it is key to a balanced diet, and not remove it! Then we reviewed portion size and I realised I was easily eating around 2 people's portions of a meal.

I struggled to reduce this until it was suggested that after cooking but before eating I refrigerate half of the meal making it more difficult to go back for seconds. This easy solution had such an immediate impact. The strange thing was, I didn't feel more hungry even though I was eating around half what I previously had been.

I hadn't eaten breakfast for years and that was the next thing we worked on. I now eat breakfast most days, not every day but I'm working on that still. I'm using pre-packaged porridge so I only have one serving - I found that my portion control was extremely poor when using normal porridge so conceded that using pre-packaged was necessary so I don't increase the portion size over time. 

Through this, I've found that my mental health is inextricably linked to my eating and although I have a way to go, not only have my blood sugar readings improved, but my mood has improved. I will have some improvements to make, but feel on the way to reversing my type 2 diabetes!