Hi, Charlie--welcome! First, regarding the difference between vegetarianism and veganism: you will sometimes see vegans refer to themselves as vegetarians, but typically, "vegetarian" means lacto-ovo vegetarian--that is, someone who does not eat meat but who may still eat dairy and eggs and may or may not use and wear other animal products (e.g., leather). Vegans, on the other hand, strive not to eat or use any animal products and to live without exploiting animals as much as is possible.

Now--for the food! For starters, I recommend checking out the links at the January post "Is Your Diet Gluten-Free and Soy-Free? Veganism with Restrictions": http://animalrights.change.org/blog/view/is_your_diet_gluten-free_and_soy-free_veganism_with_restrictions

Unfortunately, I don't know enough about diabetes and celiac disease to advise you on specifics, but I recommend posting questions you may have to forums such as Vegan Represent and PostPunk Kitchen, to see if anyone there has suggestions. There are definitely vegans out there dealing with the same issues as you.

If you can, I would also seek out the advice of a vegan-friendly nutritionist.

If you have any other specific questions, please feel free to pose them, and readers and I will try to answer them (or direct you to where you may find the answers) as best as we can!

I too am a thin celiac (not officially diagnosed) with lactose intolerance. i'm not diabetic but i think i eat a pretty diabetic friendly diet. it's definetely more difficult to go vegan if you're gluten free but it's far from impossible. my suggestion is to eat a lot of beans & legumes and try an experiment with grains like amaranth and buckwheat. you won't like many of them but it will add needed variety into your diet.

another thing i'd suggest is learning how to cook decently. it really improves your options and there are a million recipes out there you can easily veganise or de-glutinify.  you can either make or find some kind of bread/tortilla substitute that youc an use for sandwiches or wraps and there are a million and one ways to use tofu to emulate so many foods or just taste fantastic on its own.

amy's bistro burgers are the best gluten free & vegan veggie burgers out there in my opinion. but there are a few other brands (sunshine is one i think).

my recipe tip would be for pastries look up gluten free recipes and make them vegan by swapping out applesauce for eggs and non-dairy milk for dairy milk. for other things just make reasonable switches. gluten free soy sauce for regular, tofu of tempeh for seitan, garbanzo bean flour for wheat flour.

if i remember correctly there's a whole cookbook for gluten free vegetarian food but it wasn't that vegan.

you really don't need to eat that processed gluten stuff to be vegan, you're much better of eating whole foods.

good luck.

make that: I tried to go without wheat for 3 weeks once ...