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Gorging on sweet things pre exercise

bluepotter81

bluepotter81

Member
Messages
13
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Pump
Hi

I've been Type 1 diabetic for over 15 years now. I've ran marathons, completed an Ironman and done various other sporting endeavours. You'd think therefore that I have the eating and nutrition element of exercise nailed - I don't!

I still cannot find a good way to have stable bloods pre exercise and consume good food to give me energy. Put another way, I did a spin class earlier and I had to gorge on two cookies, Lucozade and then eat an energy gel throughout. All my exercise seems to be getting compromised by the junk I am eating prior to and during exercise.

I am one year into using the Animas pump (having used Novorapid and Lantus prior to this).

Does everyone have to do this?

Thanks,
Richard
 
Use a TBR, ideally 2 hours before you exercise, during and 2 hours after, that was the advice I was given pre and post pump.
 
Hey ! I'm on the animas pump and I used to have the same problem. However when I do spin, if I'm between 4-5 I switch my pump off for 30-45 mins and eat about 60g of long acting carb (sandwich) and I'm absolutely fine. If your going to switch your pump of then you just need to test a little bit more to make sure your not too high. I am to be about 8-9 before a spin class otherwise I go low in the middle !
 
Also a really good tip (sorry forgot to put in my earlier post) is that it sounds to me as though your eating short acting food, which means like 25 mins into your session your bs are plunging hence the need for a gel. You need to have some long acting like a sandwich and something short acting carb as well like a cookie or orange juice/milk etc etc ! Then you'll manage to spike enough to get over the first bit but you won't run out of food or energy in the second half of the session (talking from much gym experience here) it's all about trial and error, and you will get there
 
Thanks everyone for advice. I suppose it's the usual story - trial and error; see what works!

I do Temp Basal already (-90%) but don't yet lower it prior to session. I'll try that.

As for longer acting carbs; I like this idea. It's just laziness on my part where it's easier to buy a cookie then make a sandwich.
 
bluepotter81 said:
I do Temp Basal already (-90%) but don't yet lower it prior to session. I'll try that.
Click to expand...
The key thing to remember is that lowering basal rate doesn't take effect until roughly two hours after it went into you (ydmv, so you would need to test to corroborate this), so lowering basal rate will need to take place a couple of hours ahead of when you want it to work.
 
Normally I can do about -90 for about 1/2 hours before and then reduce that to -50 whilst doing the exercise otherwise I'm really high afterwards. Don't worry I'm lazy sometimes and just cheat and buy a cookie or something ! :) x hope this helps feel free to message me if it isn't working. Also runsweet.com is a seriously good website to use !
 
I also do a temp of -90 but I also drink a 250 ml carton of orange juice topped up with water during the exercise, most of the time this works and I don't have to pop jelly babies as I go! Good luck.
 
I sympathise here. I have the same problem. I do a spin class at 8.15pm and if I have dinner at 5pm along with my injection of Humalog it's difficult to decide how much to inject as you need insulin and lots of it for the first hour but then you don't want insulin around after this. The trouble is with Humalog or Novorapid it is and for up to 5 hours necessitating the need to consume copious amounts of Lucozade especially if I push myself hard in spin! I have tried reducing my Humalog injection dose to about 2/3 of the dose so from 12iu to 8iu. This depends on your levels at the time of injection and of course you could always delay eating for 20 minutes to give the reduced dose some time to start working. Factor this in around work, traffic and other aspects of life and it gets difficult. I can honestly say that it's in the minority where I get everything spot on and manage to exercise hard and not either end up low or high!
That said you are using a pump so you should have more flexibility. The advice about using a TBR 2 hours before the class is really good too but do more tests to keep everything in check. There is nothing worse than trying to warm the body up for 10 minutes at the start of a spin class with a high blood sugar. It's sucks big time!!!

There is a new solution hopefully on its way soon, the inhalable insulin Afrezza. That will allow you to take your normal dose of insulin before your meal and most of it will be out of your system within an hour so there will be no tail effect forcing you to drink Lucozade to save your life. In fact when I was lucky enough to trial Afrezza, on my first day, September 1st 2015, I did a spin class(I know a little crazy!!!). I took a meal dose at 6pm, ate my dinner and went for a spin at 8.15pm and required no more than a mouthful of Lucozade to keep my levels in range and I then drank water for the rest of the class. It was amazing. Anyhow until Afrezza arrives and is more readily available in the UK, we will have to make do. My advice is to keep going with what you are doing and use the TBR. You will get a system that works for you and keeps you as close to normal range as possible.
 
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