For anyone who cares to know and would like to critique:
I've kind of been playing around with numbers and average blood sugars in the past few days, since I have a bodybuilding lifestyle and I've maintained my lowish carb diet to mainly lose weight (I've cut to about 9% bodyfat). I'm planning on bulking up and adding mass very soon and as most people know to lift heavy and add mass effectively one should consume a higher amount of carbs.
I'm planning on consuming st least 200-250g of carbs a day, now to mitigate the spike that these carbs will cause; whether they are fairly slow releasing or not(I haven't personally experimented with the difference in bs spikes of eating 30g vs eating 100g of the exact same carb in a sitting.) I want to try implementing an "
intermittent fasting" type of approach or at least play around with it.
Basically this entails eating all my carbs for the day either in one meal or within a 4(maybe 6) hour window and eat protein and fat only meals for the rest of the day as normal. What I hope this does is give me one spike and then flat bs levels during the entirety of the day. As opposed to having 3 or more carb filled meals resulting in multiple spikes and insulin shots during the day.
From a *very* rough mathematical standpoint where a bs spike is up to 14mmol/dL either from a less than desirable carb source or from the sheer volume of carbohydrate and average fasting bs are within 4-6 (so say an average of 5). And an average bs spike lasts about 2 hours. A 24 hour day of bs levels gives the averages:
1 carb meal with 2hr spike:
((2x14)+(22x5))/24 =
5.75mmol/dL average blood sugar; which gives an a1c of
5.3%(
http://professional.diabetes.org/GlucoseCalculator.aspx)
versus
3 carb meals with 2hr spikes:
((6x14)+(18x5))/24 =
7.25mmol/dL average blood sugar; which gives an a1c of
6.2%
and best case scenario keeping spikes below 9mmol/dl (very doubtful):
1 carb meal with 2hr spike:
((2x9)+(22x5))/24 =
5.33mmol/dL average blood sugar; which gives an a1c of
5.0%
worst case scenarios:
1 carb meal with 4hr spike:
((4x14)+(22x5))/24 =
6.9mmol/dL average blood sugar; which gives an a1c of
5.9%
3 carb meals with 4hr spikes:
((12x14)+(24x5))/24 =
9.5mmol/dL average blood sugar; which gives an a1c of
7.6%
Of course this bit of arithmetic is all very rough and doesn't account for differences between individuals, accidental over/underdosages of insulin and any other kind of mishaps and unforeseeable events which do often occur with bs management. I'd like if someone could give a critique of this or some of their own experiences with this kind of thing.