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How low should the carbs be?

M

meela83

Well-Known Member
Hello everybody and Happy New Year!
In an attempt to get my diabetes under control I am really keen to start a low carb diet. I have read the diabetes revolution and Charles Clark's advice is 60g of carbs a day. Is this a sensible amount or too high/low? Feeling a little clueless but determined to get things sorted. (T1)
 
Hi meela83
Follow the heading, "Links to low Carbing" on this forum for lots of advice.
 
BErnstein recommends 30carbs per day split 6;12;12 for breakfast, lunch and dinner. His work mai,ly applies to T1, but is sueful to T2s also, especially insulin users
 
Hi hannadr, is that the permanent level as Clark claims you can introduce more carbs after the initial phase but this does not make much sense to me!
 
Bernstein's 30g carbs appears to work for all his patients. It seems they are able to minimise their medications and have consistently stable non-diabetic BG levels. That's not to say others might not be able to achieve these things while eating more carbs. Charles Clark recommends 60g, Lutz & Allan 74g etc. I think the important thing is that most people can find a level around these ranges which works for them.
Me, I'm happy at 30g and don't feel I have to deny myself anything I actually want in order to stay there.

All the best,

fergus
 
I'm a bit of a nibbler and sometimes let my carbs sneak up. I try for Bernstein's 30g and I'm sure that if I never cheated :D , I could get rid of medication like my penfriend David Mendosa has done. I'm aiming to be better behaved this year, but haven't started off too well. I minded my daughter's 2 Jack Russells, while she's away for a day. Walked the 1 1/2 miles to her house, outed them, fed them played with them and gave in to temptation and helped myself to 2,yes 2! jelly babies. I did walk back too, so a jelly baby per 1 1/2 miles isn't too bad, but I should not have done that. I also had some tinned fruit after lunch (drained of syrup) with cream
 
I've been a little naughty over Christmas and actually eaten bread! And potatoes! But a little of what you fancy etc. Most days I make sure I stay under the 70gram mark. I don't test (no strips left :lol: ) so I don't know how my BG is reacting to this. My last a1c was good though so I am not stressing it. Back to work on Monday so back to the usual regime, which is usually under 30 grams. Most of my carbs come from apples. My usual tea (dinner?) is one apple, some good cheese and a handful of nuts. :oops: Apples are about 16 grams of carbs I think?? And breakfast is usually eggs and bacon. I don't do lunch; if I do it's an omelette. No wonder I'm losing weight, I'm eating hardly anything! :shock: Compared to what I used to eat anyway.
 
I've been a lot naughty over Christmas and eated bread, potatoes and WAY too many mince pies! Ah well, back to my normal routine of fruit and yoghurt for brekkie and my patented low-carb lunch of grilled portobello mushroom with cheese ontop (yum!), baked beans, scrambled egg and a couple of rashers of bacon - oh god, it's making my mouth water just typing it!! Oh well, it's a hard life!
 
Hi meela - there's a bit of trial and error involved to see what works for you and how it affects your blood sugar levels.

For what it's worth, I'm a T2 and I stick to approximately 30g carbs per meal four meals a day (inc supper) and that seems to work for me.

in the early days I used to focus on the 30g as an absolute number, now I'm a little bit more relaxed and not too worried if I have 34 or 36 grammes in a meal.
 
The best way is to work out your own personal carb levels, bearing in mind this will vary during the day

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

My experience in various forums and newsgroups is that the majority of successful people seem to cluster around the 50 - 150g bracket, probably most towards the lower end. Some need to go down to Bernstein/Atkins induction type levels and a few can do substantially more than that

Also it can change over time, for example I can do about 15g at breakfast which has never changed, but I can push from 30g up to 50g in the evening now without too many problems (I don't do it often) but my late night tolerance has actually come down again so the distribution over the day has changed but the total quantity remains about the same. Christmas dinner also showed that a late lunch has an improved tolerance similar to the evening levels.

I tend to aim for around 60 - 100g depending on activity levels, if I do too few carbs at the wrong time my liver has an annoying tendency to be helpful and shoot me high so paradoxically sometimes more carbs lead to a lower BG (this has also improved over time)

That's why I push testing a lot, especially at first, so you can discover your own system's flight envelope
 
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