Carbs for exercise

[Topher]

What type of food is good to have just before 1 hours exercise to keep your bloods up, and also if you are exercising for 2-3 hours

 

[noblehead]

I always give a reduced bolus dose prior to exercise, but to keep bg levels up I prefer to eat bananas or oatbars.

 

[Topher]

I always give a reduced bolus dose prior to exercise, but to keep bg levels up I prefer to eat bananas or oatbars.

Thanks noble head, how much do you reduce your bolus by

 

[noblehead]

Thanks noble head, how much do you reduce your bolus by

Depends on the duration, for an hours walk I reduce my bolus dose by 30%, for a 2-3 hour walk or longer I can reduce it by 50-75%, I seem to quite insulin sensitive where exercise is involved.

 

[Grez67]

Hey!

I run my own blog and twitter page involving Diabetes and Fitness!

Twitter: @Diathlete1

Blog: www.thediabeticathlete.tumblr.com

Check It Out!

 

[Llinz04]

I play netball and football 3 times a week. Before a workout, or excersize, you need carbs, lean protein, heart-healthy fats, and fluids. Your muscles need carbohydrate foods like breads, cereals, pasta, rice, fruits, and vegetables for quick energy. And you need protein for your muscles and for your blood cells, which bring nutrients and oxygen to your muscles. There's no one meal that you need to eat before working out. Instead, you should focus on these 4 things: Low fat, Moderate in carbs and protein, Low fiber, fluids.

So i had a netball match on thursday night and i had my meal at 5:30 (2hours before the match), 2 slice of toast (brown bread), scrambled egg (3 eggs inc. a little milk obviously), and 3/4 of salmon from those little tins, and water with it. The reason i ate 2 hours before is because you give time for your food to be cut down so you don't feel like bloated when you play. I don't experience hypos because my diabetes is well treated but I always carry glucose tablets with me at all times because you never know if you put too much insulin or if you work harder than you think in a workout.

Hope it helps

 

[pshuttle]

I am reading a lot of information on LCHF, and it is entirely possible to fuel for exercise without loading your body up with a large amount of carbohydrates through pasta and rice etc. Obviously this goes against the accepted advice, but then we all know what the accepted advice from the NHS is regarding diets!

I have to say that I don't personally follow the LCHF lifestyle as yet, but the amount of fitness I am now doing, I am seriously considering it.

Pete

I play netball and football 3 times a week. Before a workout, or excersize, you need carbs, lean protein, heart-healthy fats, and fluids. Your muscles need carbohydrate foods like breads, cereals, pasta, rice, fruits, and vegetables for quick energy. And you need protein for your muscles and for your blood cells, which bring nutrients and oxygen to your muscles. There's no one meal that you need to eat before working out. Instead, you should focus on these 4 things: Low fat, Moderate in carbs and protein, Low fiber, fluids.

So i had a netball match on thursday night and i had my meal at 5:30 (2hours before the match), 2 slice of toast (brown bread), scrambled egg (3 eggs inc. a little milk obviously), and 3/4 of salmon from those little tins, and water with it. The reason i ate 2 hours before is because you give time for your food to be cut down so you don't feel like bloated when you play. I don't experience hypos because my diabetes is well treated but I always carry glucose tablets with me at all times because you never know if you put too much insulin or if you work harder than you think in a workout.

Hope it helps

 

[Nyadach]

It all depends on many things really. What you are doing, carbs on board, insulin on board, weather etc. Must admit I'm a total swine for collecting data on everything and heavily use a Garmin to gather my heart rate, weather data and power expenditure as well as terrain. Add that to BG reading and data off what I've learned about me. But that like many things with being D is all about gathering data on us, as each and everyone of us is different and do different things.

A rough example (don't try it yourself as you aren't me) is if I'm out for an hour I won't eat anything before, and just lower basal to about 50% normal, but depending on temperature outside maybe drop it to about 30%. Usually that's fine and everything will work out.

If I'm out for a 3-4+hr ride then it's usually something longer burning like porridge before going out on a 70% bolus, and dropping the basal to 33% normal running but consume 60g/hr while riding through drinks. By watching my BG and HR (heart rate) I can flat line the BG's pretty steadily on that kind of mix if I keep my heart at 145bpm (yes it's taken a lot of practice and working out to find that number out for me), over that and I'll lower BG, under that and I can raise my BG, or if a bit too high I can hold back the drink a little while.

Over 7-8+hr's is pretty much like the 3-4hr rides, just more monitoring and possibly throwing in a food stop and some gels or snack bars.

The big thing to remember though is we always need some insulin in our systems, no matter how small to keep things ticking. My personal lowest was 4.2u in a day due to burning 9200 cals over 158 miles (carrying 52Kg of kit as well), which needed over 1000g of carbs to complete and keep the bloods flat. I work very closely with two dietitians at the hospital and use the data on www.runsweet.com which is a great site. Tried LCHF and found it to cause far too many problems to keep to, and the power output and what it did to my range capability wasn't worth the grief.

Would more advise close scrutiny of everything you do. Gather as much information about you, and what you are doing as possible and use that to keep your levels flat as possible and learn how your body is coping with your exercise. Knowing yourself and how you work is by far the best tool you can get