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GI DIET

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hazey276

Well-Known Member
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Hi, forgive me if this question has been asked before but is the GI diet, (low one of course), good for diabetics, (low carb wise i mean). The reason i ask is that i was looking on the website and when i looked at some of the recipes and the nutritional values some of them were 15 and above with total carbs which i thought was high :? . Forgive me for being a numpty but i still struggle with the carb thing even though i've been diagnosed 12 months now, (happy birtday to me !!!) :) . I have always tried to keep the carb content in any meal as low as possible but what i read just confused me and contradicted everything i thought :? . So come on all you super knowledgeable people and help me sort my thick head out :lol:

Regards

Hazey !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
Happy birthday to you indeed :D

I've tried to explain the basic principles of a low GI diet in this post.

I hope that post helps, but please, feel free to ask any question you like.

Regards, Tubs.
 
Thanks tubs and baby. Tubs as i said i am a bit thick and i sort of get what you mean. I thought the part about what you eat in a typical day was great and i wish that more people would do this as it would be of great help to people like myself as i sometimes struggle to vary my diet due to a lack of knowledge and as you said if you approach the professional they scream at you to eat "CARBS, CARBS, CARBS.

Baby it's both that i struggle with really but mainly the amounts and how much carbs they contain and over the last couple of weeks i've started at a gym but i've had 2 rather nasty hypo's just through a lack of knowledge. It's balancing the right amount of carbs with the output of energy so any further help would be gratefully received.

Big thanks to you both for replying !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) :) :)
 
It's balancing the right amount of carbs with the output of energy so any further help would be gratefully received.
Click to expand...
Test, test and test! Write down and look for patterns , experiment with different types and amounts of carbs.
If you are going low fairly soon after starting exercise (but I think you were going high before?) Then you can eat something before starting, I tend to use about 1/2 a fairly fast acting cereal bar so thats about 12 carbs. I then drip feed dextrose (just 1 tab) about every 20-25 minutes.
The other method is to reduce insulin for meal before exercise, the disadvantage for me is that results in a higher BG than I like to be at any time and it still falls dramatically during exercise.(these hypos were the reason I was able to get a pump, now I use a pump I can just use a trickle of insulin for exercise)

If you are going low after exercise or before your next meal then again you need to eat something, I tend to use a cookie (8 carbs) bbut doctor being sensible suggests a piece of fruit.
If the lows are later,in the day then you need to reduce insulin with the meal after exercise. You need to take great care with a low gi/high fat meal or low carb meal as you will be particularly sensitive to insulin in the period after exercise. This can result in the insulin 'working' faster than the carbs and a hypo in the hour after eating. (You can get round this by injecting either after the meal or splitting the injection, some before, some an hour later)

If you are regularly exercising, then it maybe that you will need to reduce your basal insulin.
(I've written this hoping that you are using MDI, mixed insulin is a different thing entirely.)

Finally, this page on runsweet explains how many carbs are needed for various activities. It also has some good advice on things to consider when attempting to balance carbs/exercise.(Remember it is not written from a low carbing point of view, http://www.runsweet.com/CarbsAndExercise.html
 
To add to Phoenix's excellent post

http://www.alt-support-diabetes.org/NewlyDiagnosed.htm

Using this testing protocol also around exercise will give you useful data on how *you* work.

My system goes unstable in different ways at different times of day so that's also something to analyze. For example, for me overexertion in the morning is more likely to generate a liver-dump high and in the afternoon a low, but over time I've worked out that a high protein moderate fat low carb breakfast followed when necessary by further combinations of low carb high fat moderate protein snacks preferably before the exercise tends to even things out. Exercising immediately after eating can produce spectacular drops so I wait a while until insulin producation has reduced. Carbing up is not so necessary if your body has become attuned to running on ketones, as some endurance athletes are discovering.
 
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