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I'm Rosie and I'm a carboholic

Week 4 - Weds 4/6/14
  • carbs 16 - Not quite sure how that happened - I had veggie soup for tea - I think it's training myself to have smaller portion sizes.
  • cals - 1040 - Not quite a fasting day, but might go some way to address Monday's binge.
  • BG - 8.7 in the morning, which I think was due to too much chicken the previous evening. 5.9 two hours after my evening meal.
Feeling a lot better about myself today. Working from home my life tends to revolve around small things so am celebrating having a good dog walk, the fact that the laptop is still alive.

Minor niggles - have had to remove bird food until dedicated squirrel feeder arrives so that they don't destroy the bird feeders. Paid £60 for a bloke to speak to me in a condescending manner, look at my laptop and tell me it is indeed dying. Really, the guy did no more than I've already done myself and I feel a fool for paying him. I know none of this strictly fits in a diary of how I'm doing with carbs, cals and BS, but hey ho, I needed to get it out.

Today looks good for sawing up bits of the turf on my lawn, packing underneath with extra soil and filling in some of the big dips that I trip into as I hang the washing out. I live such a small life these days! Unlike the year I spent travelling round Europe in a small van, with my husband and previous dog.

Rambling now - I'll get my coat!
 
Love that post Rosie and glad you are feeling a bit better about yourself today. As you know, I mention minor niggles in my posts too, and it helps, it is relevant to how you are doing generally and therefore is relevant to your food diary. I can identify with most of your post today, because a computer died on me this morning and ...squirrels.....Aaaaarrrgghhh! They have caused hundreds of pounds of damage here - doing things like destroying telephone cables and gnawing away at the beams in the garage so that the roof was caving in!

Yep, I'd better get my coat too.
 
My plan is to fatten them up so much that they fall off the wires the bird feeders hang from and into the waiting jaws of the large dog in my profile pic... or is that just too cruel?
 
No, that's a perfect plan. Maybe I need to get a dog after all.
 
Week 4 - Thurs 5/6/14
  • carbs 31 - I would have been OK here but I went to the garden centre and they were giving out Roses choccies at the checkout (no idea why) and one seemed to find its way into my mouth.
  • cals - 1254 OKish
  • BG - 4.9 - about 3 hrs after the evil choccie, so not so bad.
 
Week 4 - Fri 6/6/14
  • carbs 13
  • cals - 1461
  • BG - 8.4 fasting - 5.8 later in the day.
Not too bad a day. Managed a long dog walk with husband , though my crumbling knee ached a lot after this. Also did an hour of gardening, mowing lawn etc.

Oh, and scales are still showing a small downward trend.
 
Week 4 -
Sat 7/6/14
  • carbs - 47 ouch - booze
  • cals - 1421
  • BG - 7.6
Sun 8/6/14
  • carbs 22
  • cals - 1193
  • BG - 9.1 fasting - 6.6 later in the day - that's from having a drink yesterday.

Ooo - and I found an average feature on my glucose monitor. For the past :
90 days my average was 10.6,
45 days my average was 9.4
30 days my average was 8.9
15 days my average was 7.6

That's not bad.
 
Wk 5 Mon 9/6/14
  • carbs 39 - I had a teaspoon of marmalade in the evening. I was just craving something sweet - silly!
  • cals - 1002
  • BG - 8.3 and that was 2 hrs after my normal low carb breakfast - in this case omelette, and before I had a teaspoon of marmalade.
I did take quite a few Ibuprofen for my knee pain last night and the night before, so I'm wondering if this can raise BS. Something to Google methinks. In any case, I can't do much about it because when m knee pain is bad I can't sleep without dulling it somewhat.

It's a bit of a vicious cycle for me at the moment. I can't have knee surgery due to high BS. Can't do enough cardio exercise due to knee problems. Can't shift weight quickly due to it piling on over a lifetime, taking meds that hinder loss and can't do cardio exercise. So this will be a long, slow haul won't it?

On a different note, I did something really stupid yesterday. I was using a jet wash machine on the garden path and accidentally sprayed my foot. OMG, the pain!!! It's still hurting this morning (Tuesday).

Oh, oh, oh... and I've had to come back with this edit - I weigh in on a Tuesday and I have lost 3lb. OK, it's taken 4 weeks for this to show, but it's a downward trend.

Another edit - If I only lose an average of 3/4lb a week in a year I will have lost 21/2 stone - too slow!
 
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I had a hypo last night when I was out but I had a massive urge to do follow up treatment (the meal, after the glucotabs) by going home and making a big stack of granary toast with lashings of butter and marmalade.

I didn't. Perhaps for the best. :-/
 
Toast, lashings of butter and my homemade marmalade... sounds very tempting, but you were right to resist. I'm glad I made my husband eat all the bread I had in the freezer, as the call of that could prove too much. I'm working on the basis of if it's not there I can't have it. I'll have to send that jar of marmalade off with him when he goes up to the Midlands next week.

I learnt something new about diabetes today. I was 8.1 fasting this morning. I then got a bit busy, grabbed a coffee and skipped brekkie. I tested again at midday and was 9. So then Googled this and it looks like maybe my liver was compensating for me having no food. 2 hrs after lunch I was 6.4.
 
Well, I'm writing off yesterday. Everything went out of the window when I had my first ever hypo. Thankfully folks were still online at 11pm and I got good advice on what to do and the whole thing has been a learning experience. I feel fine today BTW, and BS is a reasonable 5.2 (I will watch this though - this is why we need more test strips that 10 a month).

I now think I might have been having these during the night recently, and they would account for my crashing headache on waking and my higher morning readings as my body deals with them.

I think it came on as I had my evening dinner 2 hours earlier than normal, but didn't take my meds with that food, but with a small snack later in the evening. The meds must have been too much at that time, but the same effect would happen if my meal had been later, only I'd have been asleep when my BS went too low. I think I need to discuss with the DN taking the Gliclazide down in the evening. Not sure what she'll say as she only just upped it a month ago, but that was before I took control of my carbs. I'm seeing her tomorrow, so we'll see. She is very scary, so I will have to put on my deputy head persona to speak firmly to her - Ooooeerrr!
 
Hi Rosie. I hope you are feeling better.

Yes, increasing the gliclazide just before starting low carbing is the likely culprit and it is quite likely you have been having night hypos, given those symptoms. Have you ever noticed the bedsheets wet with sweat? That's another symptom.

The DN may claim any reduction in hba1c is due to the increased gliclazide rather than the low carbing. Focus her on what she is going to do about the hypos. I would say this is not the time to focus her on the low carbing.... ;-)
 
Oh yes, night sweats - thought it was my age!

I will not dwell on how low my carbs have been, but she suggested I bought the book Carbs & Cals, so she must be somewhat in favour. I know I've been having some very low carb days, but largely I've felt great on them. I certainly never had the palpitations before the extra Gliclazide, although I can't swear to night sweats or headaches - age, high blood pressure could account for those - and it has been over the last month I've woken with my heart racing.
 
Wk 5 Wed 11/6/14
  • carbs 43 - higher than I planned to have and they came from my impulse buys.
  • cals - 1860 see above
  • BG - 5.2 mid morning
My hypo of Tuesday evening scared me a bit and I didn't want the same thing to happen again, so on my way back from an early evening tutoring appointment I got come petrol and decided to get something low carb to have before bedtime. I bought BBQ chicken wings, some sliced chicken tikka (because it was reduced), some humous and some almonds. I had only gone in for the almonds!

I didn't check the packets - it was mostly meat - right! Oh dear - I polished off the lot. I did change my plans to have fish for dinner, but that did very little to save the day. I got on the scales this morning and it looks like that blow-out has made me retain water. At least, that's what I'm telling myself as I cannot believe one evening can have made me put back on the weight it's taken 4 weeks to lose - yes. 4 weeks undone!!!

Oh well, off to see the DN now.
 
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Yay! All praise for my diabetic nurse. Though she is a bit on the fierce side, her dragging me into the surgery on a regular basis over the past year has helped bring me to my senses about taking responsibility for my diabetes. She's not the total reason, that is much more to do with being refused surgery.

Anyway, I had a really positive session this morning. She like my last month's worth of BS tests. Agreed that I'd had a hypo and that what I'd experienced in my sleep a few times sounded like more hypos, and the raised morning BS supported this. She agreed I should come back down one Gliclazide tablet and see what my blood sugars do.

I asked about more test strips and she started on about not needing to test so often as type 2, over-relying on tested, then she sighed and said "it's just that the strips are so very expensive, but I can see that in your case testing is making such a difference that it has to be money well spent," and she prescribed a box of 50.

I don't envisage needing to test so often forever. One day i will be more confident about what I'm doing, but for now I'm very glad she agrees with me. She was also very for a low carb diet, so I'm feeling very pleased about it all. I'm to have a blood test at the end of the month, which will be the true test of how I'm doing.
 
Glad the appointment went well and that she has been supportive. Hopefully reducing the meds will help both with the hypos and weight loss. Keep up the good work, though maybe less meat ;-)
 

That's a really great appointment Rosie. I'm so pleased she understands and supports your strategy, and the great news is that reducing the Gliclazide could make it easier to drop some weight,......... I think.

On another note: that was a whole shed load of protein you had there! The coatings on the meat may have contained quite a bit of salt (and potentially the hummus too), which might be retaining a bit of water. Don't lose heart, until those have cleared your system......

It's all a game.
 
and I'd think that BBQ chicken wings and shop chicken tikka has a lot of hidden sugar!
 
Yep - it was a stupid impulse buy and eat. I should just avoid any of this pre-prepared stuff. It's much safer for me to cook my own and generally I do, but I am prone to doing this type of thing at the drop of a hat. It's something I have yet to learn to control.
 
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