Hungry despite high BG levels

That’s normal for T2 with high numbers, What makes you hungry is those high numbers, your body is throwing out insulin to try & deal with all the sugar racing round your body, in T2 insulin resistance means that the insulin doesn’t work as it should so the more glucose in your body, the more insulin you produce but it doesn’t work so your body thinks you need food to use up that insulin so it tells you you’re hungry.

Once you get your numbers down that hunger should go down too. Many people on low carb or keto diets eat a lot less because they’re not getting the hunger signals from over producing insulin with eating carbs. Carbs make anyone including those without diabetes hungry, which is why lots of people snack.fats and to a certain degree proteins don’t trigger an insulin response so that makes them more satiating which is why you can lose weight easier on a low carb diet


Edited to correct spelling

That looks a good meal that shouldn’t raise your numbers, what are your other meals like? Do you know how many carbs you’re eating in other meals? I did notice that you’d posted you’d had steak pie because your partner fancied it - that will probably be high in carbs, pastry & probably flour in the gravy, that would put my numbers in double figures too, and probably trigger hunger & cravings a couple of hours after eating it.

I’m not criticising or judging you, I know how hard it is, believe me, I struggle with an eating disorder on top of T2 and sometimes I have to be minute by minute trying not to step into the abyss, just trying to help & find you a way to reduce your numbers

debs248 said:

Unfortunately my numbers are going up, not down. Also I am confused about why, if there's still loads of glucose in my blood, my body would demand I eat *more* food? I really feel like my liver is not on my side, pumping out all this useless and harmful glucose!

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Hi - the issue is that the glucose is in your blood (which is only the transport system) rather than in your muscles or liver in accessible stores as glycogen. It's not useless but can't be used by the muscles until it gets into the muscle cells. This is a dynamic system and the glucose in the blood should be constantly in use replacing glucose (stored as glycogen) stored in muscle cells and being used as fuel for muscles. I've got a complex graphic (attached) which shows this, taken from Bilous and Donnelly.

So at the same time, you have loads of available glucose in your blood, but your muscles are experiencing a shortage. The shortage sends signals to the liver to try to add glucose, and to "eat more food" so you feel hungry, but if you eat, this will only add to the circulating glucose which still can't get into the muscle cells. That's one reason why T2 makes us gain weight - some of that additional glucose is eventually stored as bodyfat.

At the same time you will have had elevated insulin levels as your system tries to deal with the glucose that's piling up in the bloodstream, and that can have its own problems, including making insulin resistance worse.

Low carb breaks this vicious circle by in essence removing glucose from food intake: depending on the individual's insulin system, the level of circulating glucose will eventually fall as it gets moved into stores and the liver learns that we can get by with much lower levels of circulating glucose. The rate that happens at seems to vary from individual to individual, and how "broke" our systems are.

This works differently for those of us in ketosis and being fuelled to a greater or lesser degree by bodyfat.