I fell off the low-carb wagon...

markd

Well-Known Member
Messages
220
I've been low-carbing successfully (and daily exercise) for many months now, lost 80 pounds in weight, my BG readings between 4.4 and 4.9 ( either fasting, 1, 2, or 3 hours after a meal). My doc dropped me from two down to one Metformin per day, as I still had gut-rot, but now I take it mid-meal, that is much better.

I have another 20 pounds to lose to get down to my target BMI of 23, which I should do by the Spring. My aim, of course, is to get off Metformin completely, if I can.

Been on only one Met for a couple of weeks now, my average BG has crept up a fraction (0.1 or 0.2) but I twisted my ankle badly last week so very little exercise for 10 days.

Last night, I fell off the low-carb wagon for the first time; I had three large bacon baguettes for supper, followed by a M&S 400g melon and grape fruit salad, in total, somewhere between 180 and 200g of carbs! (one x 500g Metformin, mid-meal)

At one hour, I tested at 6.9 and at two hours, back down to 6.2 - didn't test at three hours as it was quite late, so went to bed. 11 hours fasting, and I was at 5.1 this morning.

I'm wondering just how high that would have spiked if I'd not taken the Metformin, any thoughts?

I also read somewhere (but can't remember where) that you get an artificially high spike the first time you have a high-carb meal after a proloned low-carb regime and that maybe you should knock off 0.5 from the reading to compensate.

I'd like to think that is the case, or my hopes of surviving on diet/exercise only may not be looking too good. Any guesses?
 

Dennis

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2,506
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Non-insulin injectable medication (incretin mimetics)
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People who join web forums to be agressive and cause trouble
Hi Mark,

You obviously had quite a high degree of insulin resistance initially, which is what metformin is designed to help reduce. But weight loss and exercise has an even bigger impact on lowering insulin resistance than metformin does. It is the weight loss and extra exercise that has allowed your GP to drop you to what is now a pretty low dose of metformin and, if you hadn't taken the metformin, it probably wouldn't have made a huge difference to the 1 hour reading, but would have slowed the rate at which you came back down to a normal level.
 

Trinkwasser

Well-Known Member
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2,468
Sounds like you're doing rather well, probably the met and exercise have kicked your insulin resistance into touch which means you can get away with the odd excess of carbs without too much harm coming to you. So long as you don't make a habit of it you'll probably be OK