l this evening (and I even tested twice) I had
Wholemeal pasta (al dente) leftover chicken, bacon, red onion, passata and a bit of cheese on baked in the oven....
Before reading was 11.3 and 2hr after 11.0 I tested twice to make sure....
Last night meal chickpea curry with 4tbsp wholemeal rice 15.5 and after 15.8
So this morning 11.8 porridge and 17.2 (so that's a no, on my menu)
Lunch chip shop fish (did not eat batter) mushy peas and about 10 chips 9.6 to 13.3 (something was wrong with meal)
Then evening meal as above....
Is it normal for the 2hr after reading to be lower than before ..... confused!!
Hi again
Your last hba1c score of 102 indicated that your average glucose level over the last three months was 15,7 mmol.
From the few readings that you have listed I would expect your average to already be on the way down. So well done on that.
I am also pleased to see that you are beginning to achieve a level of control over your after meal counts, meeting the rule of thumb target ceiling of 2 mmol. What is more you are correctly using this to identify meals that you need to avoid or limit.
For instance porridge in the morning, or 10 chips with your fish and chips.
Long term you want to bring both your pre meal levels down to the 4-7 mmol range and your two hour after meal range to under 7,8 mmol.
You can not lower your blood sugar from an average of almost 16 to within the above range overnight.
When you first wrote in, you were feeling overwhelmed with all the info and I wanted to give you something fairly simple that you could use as a rule to get your levels down, so I advised you to concentrate on getting control of your post meal readings by keeping them within 2 mmol of your pre meal readings.
I still stand by my advice.
At the moment you are still learning and only achieving this target some times. The problem seems to be that when you get things wrong you arrive at the next meal too high and so even though you then manage to achieve the 2 mmol ceiling, in absolute terms both your before and after readings for that meal are high.
Taking yesterday as an example.
Your waking up level of 11,8 is in absolute terms on the high side but probably a significant improvement on where you used to be judging by your average glucose of 15,7 suggested by your HbA1c score of 102.
You then had porridge for breakfast which spiked you to 17,2. Porridge and more so cereals are not the best breakfast choices for most diabetics. You could try something with less carbs in it instead such as , omelette, eggs and bacon, plain greek yoghurt with berries,
Before lunch you had dropped to 9,6. I would read this the same as your waking reading, still high in absolute terms but probably a good improvement on what your previous scores were.
The 10 chips in your lunch then spiked you to 13,3 at two hours after meal. You correctly identified that you need to adjust something in the meal. Either reduce the number of chips to say 2-3 or have the fish (without the butter) with some salad instead of chips. You do appear to have too little green vegetables and salads in your choice of meals. You need to make these a big part of every meal.
Worth noting that with chips your true spike could be higher and later past the two hour point.
Just before dinner your level was 11,3, again high in absolute terms but probably an improvement on previous , and your post meal count was actually lower at 11,0 mmol.
I know others have told you that you are still eating to many carbs and your levels are too high, which is probably confusing you.
I am not saying that they are wrong. Your levels are still high compared to the ideal.
What I am saying is that you are showing good progress, you are applying what you have been advised on this forum and your teaching yourself what works for your body and what does not.
The above was just one day.
You need to get what you have learned from it and use it in your meal selection for the next day and then the one after that.
The more you do this the more knowledge and data you will be gathering and hopefully you will see a significant decreasing trend in your pre meal counts all the way down to the desired 4-7 mmol level.
Like others on this forum, what I am trying to do is guide you in how to get your levels down to the target levels. Where we may differ is in how quickly we want to get you there. How much you restrict your carb intake will be the determining factor for that.
My preference is that, rather than cutting them down drastically and going cold turkey, you let your glucose meter guide you down in a more gradual way.
I think you are already well on your way there and just need to continue testing and adjusting your meals as you are doing now.
All the best
Pavlos