Testing Advice Please

[ExChocoholic]

Ok, so users have been really helpful regarding my retinopathy scare, I have determined to start testing and wonder where I can find a succinct easy to follow guide on how to start testing. I am assuming I need to check my blood sugars response to various meals and food, starting with my breakfast - and so at first testing would be more frequent than once I have established any potential triggers. I also believe that I need to test before and after breakfast. While I am on the subject, if I am to cut out nibbles and supplement with fruit etc, I know that fruit alone can be a trigger and I believe some fruits more than others, already all but given up my favourite bananas long ago - any advice on snacking would so appreciated as when I get a hunger attack and cannot find anything to snack on - used to eat a slice of toast and marmite, but bread needs cutting right back, next desire is chocolate - an overwhelming need to eat chocolate, trying to beat this - so snacking advice would be highly appreciated. I am not overweight, but I do not want to go hungry

 

[hanham97]

I eat cucumber and tomato

 

[Ruth B]

Test before meals and the normally 2 hours after you started eating. To start with I would also advise testing at the 1 and 3 hour marks as different foods spike different peoples at different intervals. Try and have the same meal more than one (doesn't have to be on consecutive days) to make sure that the reading isn't an anomaly. Once you know how a certain meal effect you, try varying parts of the meal to find out just what is causing the spikes. Its a long slow process, but the condition is for life so as long as you are moving forward it doesn't matter if it takes a few weeks or months to really get a handle on what you can and can't eat, the basics come quick enough.

With fruit, go for any type of berry, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries (just coming into season so perfect timing), keep of any tropical fruits, such as grapes, oranges and peaches. However even these you might want to try and test, I can manage a couple of small satsumas with out too much problem so I am fairly lucky there.

Dark chocolate is the best option, I was and still am a chocoholic, but now eat mainly 70% organic, I still find the 85% a bit too dark most of the time. break it into small pieces and enjoy each little bit, I use Green & Blacks, partly because each 100g bar is divided into 30 pieces not the more normal 10. The other way to get a chocolate fix is drinking chocolate, not the ready made stuff, but made with a teaspoon of cocoa powder, a couple of teaspoons of sweetener (depending on taste), boiling water and double cream. it comes out nice and rich and creamy but has hardly any carbs in it. One of my shocks when I started was I used to have Weight Watchers hot chocolate drink as I liked the taste and believing that as it was low callory and contained sweeteners it wouldn't be a problem, what a mistake my BS rocketed every time I had any.

 

[ExChocoholic]

All excellent advice - would say keep a diary to see what affects sugar levels - great app on Play.com for android users. Diabetes Sugar app.

 

[TooManyCrisps]

I have been following lchf since Christmas, and now I snack on nuts when hungry, or a small piece of cheese. However, as you can tell from my user name, I like savoury snacks more than sweet ones anyway.

One tip I have is that, if you feel peckish, drink half a pint of sparkling water. It fills you up temporarily. I am usually ravenous when I get home from work and have a tendency to snack whilst cooking dinner. I now try to pour a huge glass of mineral water and drink that instead. I buy value mineral water from Tesco, i think it's something like 20p for 2 litres.

I've lost 10 kilos since Christmas so it's worked for me. Good luck.