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How do you know it's working? (prediabetic)

A

ab.er.rant

Active Member
Messages
26
Type of diabetes
Prediabetes
Since picking myself up from the floor after being diagnosed a prediabetic, I've cut out all white bread, rice, most grains (I still eat a slice of grain/seed bread maybe 2-3 times a week), noodles, and potatoes from my diet. I'm eating apples or berries only occasionally.

Mornings is mostly just oats (is this a grain? doesn't seem to affect my BS levels much) with a sprinkle of seeds. Lunches and dinners are mostly veggie affairs (2-3 types, cooked, or as salad) plus one kind of fish/meat, maybe an egg. Weekends, there's probably more meat in my meals. Veggies are less filling so I snack on nuts, sometimes with raisins mixed in. I don't really "measure" though... although I do look at nutrition labels of just about everything now...

How do I know if my dietary change is working? My fasting blood sugar levels still seems to be hovering around the same range as it did when I first bought the meter, although there were occasions where it dipped to normal levels.

It's been roughly three weeks now (way too early?) and I'm still not quite used to cutting out the stuff I've had as staple food all this time. I did lose about 3 kgs, but I was only slightly above the BMI upper bound to begin with.
 
Give it time. It isn't a sprint. Fasting levels can take a loooooong time to come down and stay down. Our fasting levels are notoriously unreliable due to lots of different reasons often beyond our control. It is the testing before and after meals, and also at bedtime, that will show you if you are improving. If you test at bedtime and first thing in the morning, you will see if your morning levels are due to a liver dump (dawn phenomenon). If you test before and after meals you will see if something in that meal is a good or a bad for you and give you chance to tweak it a bit next time.
 
My guess is that you are still eating too many carbs. Grain/seed bread, apples, and oats are all pretty high carb.

Fasting blood glucose is the last to fall, but are you checking the response at 1, 2, and potentially 3 hours after you eat to see how you are reacting to the specific food you are eating?
 
When I first started LCHF I made many mistakes, and it sounds as though you're doing the same. Fruit contains carbs, for example, in the form of fructose. Oats are grains, so is rice. Milk contains carbs which is why we are advised to use cream. I had to educate myself into a whole new way of thinking and was convinced I;d gain even more weight - but I lost a stone without trying.
Suddenly it gets easy!
 
I'm only testing in the morning, before meals, and 2 hours after meals. Why is the 1-hour mark important? If at 2 hours, and the reading is still a bit high, I could already assume that the 1-hour reading would be higher, and I would be avoiding whatever I ate.

If fasting levels are unreliable, does that mean before bed levels are more stable? (assuming I didn't eat too much carbs during dinner)
 
I can't take too much milk any way, so giving up milk was easy enough. But no fruits at all? That's gonna be difficult. All these cutting away of food I'm used to sometimes make me worry whether I'm missing out on a certain bit of nutrition.
 
Oh sorry - I didn't mean cut out fruit. I understand berries are best, grapes and bananas have most sugar (well they're sweeter aren't they?) I'm just a beginner too - I was also told to avoid dried fruit (again you can taste the sweetness) and to get my vits from above ground vegs, not those grown IN the soil like spuds, carrots, and parsnips - but celariac is OK, and that if I MUST have potatoes (oh how I love potatoes) to use sweet ones because they take longer to digest - which seems a contradiction to me.
For me, its the cheating that does it - I admit to being unable to resist a piece of cake if its offered.

The last 'sticky' post at the top of our title page was really helpful to me -
A New Low-Carb Guide for Beginners
The first part is for type 1s and the second part is for us Type 2s - I printed the lists and stuck them on the cupboard door in the kitchen - Great!
 
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Fasting levels are unreliable because of liver dumps (dawn phenomenon). Our livers like to make sure we have enough glucose in our blood stream to wake up and start the day, so if they think we have too little glucose they make some and dump it in our bloodstreams. Livers can also do this during exercise, in times of anguish or stress, after a restless night, and other such times. This is unlikely to happen before bed unless your evening has been stressful or you have been exercising close to bedtime. If you compare your bedtime reading with your fasting, you may see a big jump and this will be a liver dump in all probability. You may not see a big jump, in which case your liver was happy with the amount of glucose in your body. Some people get very large liver dumps, others don't get many at all. We are all different.
 
Hi
It would be useful if you told us what your readings are?
Regards
Mark
 
The test at 2 hours can give you a false sense of security. Sometimes the 2 hour mark looks fine, but between eating and the 2 hour mark, there may have been a huge spike. Personally, I care about avoiding BG levels that take me outside of the normal range (above 7.8). I can't tell whether a particular food does that by testing only at 2 hours (a time generally after the peak). Depending on what it was you ate, the 2 hour reading may be higher than the 3 hours reading - and the BG level may still be climbing at 2 hours. Seeing a 2 hours reading higher than the 1 hour reading tells me I need an additional test at 3 hours to make sure I've caught the peak.

I didn't say fasting BG levels were unreliable, just that they are the last to fall (i.e. you will see progress elsewhere first). I had everything but my fasting BG levels within normal within 3 days of diagnosis. My first morning fasting levels took about a month to consistently fall in the normal range (below 5.56). Even 6+ months into very tight control, if I test my BG while fasting, but several hours after I wake up, I fairly reliably test in the prediabetic range (up to 6.4 or so).
 
bulkbiker said:
Hi
It would be useful if you told us what your readings are?
Regards
Mark
Click to expand...
Well... I mentioned them in another thread and was told that they're actually very good readings. It felt like I was being overly paranoid and worried for nothing.

I had two fasting lab tests that said I was 6.2 and 6.3 (3 months apart, doctor said it appears to be climbing). But when I test on my meter, my meter mostly reports it in the upper 5s (5.6, 5.7, 5.8), I even got below 5.5 readings a few times. I think I convinced myself that my meter is under-reporting. I wanted to do another lab test in 2 more months now, and I'm hoping that a big diet change would have a positive effect.

Ok, so I'll switch to testing 3 times per meal (do you guys test every meal? Or just "new" meals?)
It seems like I don't really need to do a fasting test then...
 
Hi @ab.er.rant

Congratulations on self testing so that you know where you are at. They are good readings and nothing to be worried about.I noted raisins and they are 60-70% sugar so you probably need to exchange for something like blueberries or strawberries (but not too many). Dried fruits always spike my levels and contain a lot of sugar.
 
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