Covering protein

[zjed]

I am getting a bit of variation in my bgls when I have a high protein meal and I haven't found a good reliable method of covering it.

My favorite protein meal is a nicely bbq'd salmon steak (crispy skin), the salmon is usually around 200g (50g protein).
This meal seems to peak my bgls at 6+ hours, so I tend to get a wave going, low at 2-3 hours (when I QA), high at 6-7.
There also seems to be a sliding scale of QA required to cover protein depending on the amount of carb consumed at the same time.
I have seen suggestions that you cover 50% of protein as carb (25g), this would definitely be too much and send me way low.
At this point I'm thinking about splitting my QA (I don't want to do this as I'll forget part 2) or possibly getting a slower acting insulin that peaks at 6ish hours.
I'm looking for better, easier options. How you would cover this meal (ratios, QA calc and timing)?

 

[catherinecherub]

Can anyone help @zjed?

 

[uart]

This is a "personal theory", so please take it as such, but I believe that the reason why protein coverage sometimes seems a bit unpredictable is that the protein may be metabolised in different ways depending upon whether it is utilised for cell/tissue repair or whether it is used for energy.

We all need a minimum amount of daily protein to provide the amino acids for cell/tissue/muscle repair, but protein intake in excess of this level is largely broken down to glucose by the liver to provide energy.

Protein is not ideal as an energy source, at least not in large qualities. It's hard on the liver to utilise too much protein for energy (and then in turn even harder on the kidneys due to the metabolic by products of this). Protein however is so vital for our bodies that we generally want to eat more than the bare minimum requirements for tissue repair, not least due to the fact that we generally don't even know what that minimum level is. So almost inevitably we eat enough protein so that at least some of it is not needed for tissue repair and is instead broken down to glucose for energy.

So protein generally does require some insulin to cover it, but just how much depends on how exactly your body is utilising that protein on any given day. In particular, on just what percentage of this protein is being used for tissue repair and what percentage is being metabolised to glucose by the liver.