Hey.
I'm pretty new to this but thought I'd give it a shot as I read the forum as it is.
I'm 19, type 1 and have been diagnosed 3 years now. I am having trouble losing weight.
I currenfly go to the gym, and have been for around 8 months now, and eat very healthily. (I do weight training).
I haven't seen any changes in myself and have actually put on 25kgs!!
Could it be related to diabetes?
Hi BeckieMarie
I have had Type 1 for 48 years and also like sport and fitness. At various points in my life I have encountered this problem. It sort of crept up on me. I would be exercising regularly and getting fitter, but at some point I would also get fatter. In my case it was because I didn't know how to adapt my insulin regime to my activities.
When you exercise, you develop more muscle and your muscles simultaneously become more insulin sensitive. This means that for the same amount of insulin you need MORE carbohydrates. Or you can do it the other way round: for the same amount of carbohydrates you need LESS insulin.
But the classic advice from doctors, dieticians etc, is to take more carbohydrates when you exercise. This works because it prevents hypos. However, it doesn't work if you want to LOSE weight, which is your case. In your case, you need to reduce insulin.
(I found that I just used to snack without thinking when my blood sugars were getting low after exercise, and i never "counted" those snacks. So in fact I was eating much more than I realised because the snacks were "medicine" - hypo-stoppers, in my mind - not in my belly, though
. Even now, I can still do this, but I try to be much more aware as I am trying to lose some weight too. Today, for example, I ate my breakfast of 45g of carbs, which is recorded in my pump memory but then my blood sugar dropped a fair bit mid-morning and I ate a fig. Then I had lunch - again 45g. So my pump record shows 90g today. In fact I have eaten about 105- 110g. And that's before we get onto the calories).
According to Gary Scheiner's book, Think Like a Pancreas, if you are going to do aerobic exercise within 2 hours of a bolus you should reduce like this:
Low intensity:
short duration (15-30 mins): take only 90% of normal bolus
moderate duration (40-60 mins) 80%
long duration (>60 mins) 70%
Moderate intensity:
short duration: 75%
moderate duration: 67%
long duration: 50%
High intensity:
short duration: 67%
Moderate duration: 50%
long duration: 33
Intensity is not decided by heart rate measure, just by your perceived error.
If you do it like this, you can gradually learn to adjust so you don't need to carb load for exercise. You can burn fat instead. Of course, you should have emergency carbs to hand, in case you get it wrong. And you may find sometimes you go high because you cut too much. But you gradually learn how to adjust for yourself.
Anaerobic exercise is different, and a bit more complicated, but can also be worked out with a set of principles like this. I am guessing that you are doing aerobic/cardio because you want to lose weight.
The good news is that since you have been exercising so much, underneath the extra weight you have put on (and I doubt that as a woman you have put on 25kg muscle in that time. Academics would be performing biological tests on you!), at least SOME of it is muscle, and that will help you a great deal to lose fat, once you work out how to cut carbs at the same time.
