Help with carbs and high blood

Hi @Emmz78 ,

What can I say...?! Your brief dalliance with an "old flame"?, chocolate milk hasn't done no favours..
The lactose can run riot too!

No words of wisdom from me.. Just encoragment. Leave that "bad boy" alone.

It will take a little while for your body to adjust to your meds and to the slightly lowered amount of carb intake. For the headaches I would suggest a little more hydration but if they persist then seek help from your GP/DN.

We have been where you are, these changes sometimes cause the body to rebel but you are doing well and learning what your future food choices should be. It is certainly an eyeopener and a learning curve. Keep up the good work.

@Emmz78 Good on you for testing to see the impact of what you’re eating - that meter is the best weapon in our armoury! Just keep at it and you’ll find the way of eating that suits you and your blood sugars.

If you get a yearning for chocolate again, try a square or two of 85% or higher chocolate

@Emmz78 agree with @Goonergal that it’s good you tested after trying the choc milk. I think it’s good to see impact of a favourite naughty as it takes time to adjust to the fact that what you eat will impact you medicated or not. In fact the way you eat will have as much - if not more - impact than medications like Metformin.
Equally you may be pleasantly surprised by some other things that you try and are able to keep in your diet or finding an alternative that works on your bgs. I make my own cocoa with watered down double cream heated up with a small amount of 100% cocoa chocolate and then when melted and warm if you like it sweeter you can add a bit of sweetner such as a drop of stevia liquid.
When I started lCHF and intermittent fasting I avoided sweetners for first couple of months to get rid of my sweet stuff longings and stuck to high percentage cocoa chocolate. I worked up from 70% and now love the 100% on its own.
However you go about managing your condition wishing you luck and reminding you there are always ways round and different ways of doing things

The metformin works by moderating glucose release from the liver. It can't help what you decide to put in your gut. Basically, the drugs don't mean you may eat with impunity. Still got to watch carb intake.

Yes Emma, you may find family unsupportive. They're usually not being mean. They just don't understand. Once I learned about the condition and the do and don'ts my lovely wife is totally supportive. Can't help with the ketosis as I don't follow that path. some swear by it. We're all different and I find I can keep my BG in check by being strict with the quantity of carbs with each meal and the GI of each carb laden food. For me, and this does not mean it will work for you, I restrict each meal to 20g of carbs and allow 30g if low GI. Sometimes as a rare treat ( like tonight ) I'll indulge in a pizza or ice cream but make sure I have lots of fat with it too.

Glenn

Sure the easiest way is to look on the back of a packet in the supermarket. If it has more than 5g of carbohydrate per 100g put it back on the shelf. That way you soon find that most aisles of the supermarket are no go areas apart from the fresh meat/fish/green veg and dairy sections (maybe baking but only for eggs). Makes shopping a hell of a lot quicker too. The information is all there you just need to get into the habit of looking for it.

Hi Emma, It is written on the packaging under nutritional information. For instance, my low GI rolled oats says for a serving size of 45g it has 17g of carbs. So if I have 45g I'll also have 17g of carbs plus whatever is in the milk. For unpackaged stuff like fresh vegies, fruit and meat I use this web site.
http://www.calorieking.com.au/foods/
There are others as this one is for my native Australia. It is a good start though.

Glenn

If you have a smart phone, there are lots of free apps you can use like cronometer, fatsecret?, my fitness pal.

I used my fitness pal when first diagnosed which is not always perfect but will give a rough idea and you can scan the barcode on packaging to get the data or use the name of the supermarket eg Asda mature cheddar.

I can now carb count from memory as I have been doing it for 6 years.

As well as packet labels and supermarket grocery websites I use an app called Nutracheck. It has a lot of supermarket brand products but also separate ingredients. You can even put in a weight of a product and it’ll work out the carbs for you!

Rachox said:

As well as packet labels and supermarket grocery websites I use an app called Nutracheck. It has a lot of supermarket brand products but also separate ingredients. You can even put in a weight of a product and it’ll work out the carbs for you!

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I use this app too. I started using it at the beginning to calorie count and record weight loss, this was before I understood the LCHF way of life was going to benefit me more. I now use it for monitoring my carb intake and like the fact that it allows me to add foods that aren’t already listed so that I can work out their nutritional values. It’s still nice to use the weigh in section too as that keeps me motivated with my weight loss which is also still part of my management plan to achieving the long term results I want.

Hi. For carbs set yourself a daily limit of perhaps 150gm max and see how you go. BTW if you are not overweight you may need to go onto insulin in the future as it's possible you are not T2 but late onset T1; see how you go and what the meter and your HBa1C tells you. The diagnosis itself isn't vital but the diet and meds you take are

I agree that it's all a giant shock to see what previously eaten foods do to blood glucose levels, and I sometimes wonder how I survived eating carbs at the level I did only last year.

I tried one (one!) shortbread finger recently and was shocked at how high the rise in levels - I was still above 12 - was 2 hours later. It's an arduous trial and error process to figure out what works/what doesn't work... but after a while you may have some pleasant surprises and you'll know from memory what works and doesn't work. I now know that I can cope with a small apple, and two spoons of mashed potatoes (not together, obviously!), while I'd initially panicked at the idea that apples were gone forever.

The low-carb ice cream is good too, there are bread alternatives, there are noodle alternatives (which even my children will eat!) and gradually my household has become used to adapting. For a while we had food as normal, with me just not eating the potatoes/noodles/bread/rice without replacing them with anything, which didn't make for happy mealtimes for me. Now we make sure there is an alternative like spinach (no one else will eat spinach!) or extra mushrooms or extra bacon and egg or extra roast beef for me. I can't add extra salad because I have yet to get used to salad making me happy

Emmz78 said:

Could you advise on a good way to count my carbs easily I'm so confused by that at the moment and need to simplify it. Thanks in advance.

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The first thing is to go for foods which are low in carbs anyway - maybe make a list from things recommended on the low carb section, or Daisy's information, and then make a menu of various meals or dishes and work out what amounts you can eat and stay below whatever threshold level you set yourself. At first it will help to weigh out what you eat so you can calculate the carbs exactly, but after a while you will know how much you can eat.

If u want to go keto.. limit yourself to 20g of carbs.. use NET carbs not total carbs.. so carbs-fiber= net carbs