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I've been very, very,, very stupid.

M

Margarettt

Well-Known Member
Messages
367
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Diet only
I am absolutely beating myself up (in between tears) with a discovery I made early this morning. I suck very low nicotine lozengers all day long. Waking till sleeping there is one in my mouth if I'm not eating. I've done it for twenty years and like my GP I think its not good but its better than smoking. Any diet I've ever been on the lozengers don't matter because they have zero calories (no weight watcher points and zero slimming world syns) Turns out they have 1.9 carbs in each of them. I feel really really stupid. I must have 50 or so a day. More on long days. I'm shaking my head here. All my posts about random high numbers when I'm less than ten carbs and all your help and support.
I haven't had one since 9am and I'm already seeing 5.3, 5.7 etc. So, I'm vaping and I'm pacing and I've ordered patches and low carb mints and a whole new dimension to the journey begins. It feels like the last nine weeks were wasted time. I know I'll get over it and worse things happen at sea but right now I just feel ridiculous.
 
Don't worry and don't beat yourself up about it. Learn and move on, and remember - they put sugar in everything.

Elsewhere you might find a post in which I confess to slugging back a series of "no sugar" high caffeine drinks....no sugar maybe, but lots of carb. Explains being knocked out of ketosis for a week. Or cooked roast chicken from M&S, a regular purchase for a while until I read the label....just chicken, but with sugar (to brown the skin).
 
Don't beat yourself up. After diagnosis we discover loads of these little pitfalls. The important thing is you now know, and can take remedial action, somewhere along the line something else will crop up it's almost inevitable, just make sure you learn from each one. It doesn't matter how long you've been diabetic, you still get the odd curve ball, until you've experienced it, it will not have crossed your mind.
 
Margarettt said:
. It feels like the last nine weeks were wasted time. I know I'll get over it and worse things happen at sea but right now I just feel ridiculous.
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You have learned a huge amount, and drastically changed old ways of eating. Skills that you can carry forward to truly kicking the nicotine habit too.

And "constantly sucking" would also have been affecting your bodies responses too. .its got used to constant feeding.Do expect it to give a bit of backlash, but what's a few days of withdrawal? You've done it for carbs, you can do it again.
You've got this nailed. You will succeed
 
If I listed the more stupid than that things I’ve done in my life you would likely be asleep before you got to the end of the list.

Dust yourself off, keep calm and carry on you are doing great!
 
You are not remotely stupid. Why should you suspect nicotine lozenges to have carbs?
 
This is good news (sort of). You now know a major carb component of your previous diet and can address the issue.
Margarettt said:
Any diet I've ever been on the lozengers don't matter because they have zero calories (no weight watcher points and zero slimming world syns) Turns out they have 1.9 carbs in each of them.
Click to expand...
Not zero calories then as they probably have 8 each? (4 calories per carb)

It's so so easy for anyone to overlook things like this. Please don't beat yourself up about it.
 
There's absolutely no need to beat yourself up, we've all made mistakes.

Look at it this way. Without all the support and advice from the wonderful people on this forum, would it have even occurred at any point to check those lozenges? Probably not. So it hasn't been a waste of time and if you hadn't also followed all the great advice to get your non-lozenge carbs down low, you wouldn't be hitting results in the 5s today without the lozenges!

So really, nothing has been wasted, be that time, effort or otherwise. You've made a discovery, a further improvement on many other improvements so far.

Go easy on yourself, it's just nice having you around this place, always enjoy your threads and posts.
 
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Every day is a school day.
One big lesson is not to beat yourself up from a mistake or misstep but treat it as an opportunity to improve.
You know something new, and you know that this will help you in future.
You will get used to it in a while.
Thinking "Well, I never realised that" and learning from it and moving on.
 
Echo what has been said already. Stop beating yourself up and be glad you’ve realised what’s happening so you can rectify it.

9 weeks haven’t been wasted, you’ve done great work regardless. And don’t forget Hba1c test is heavily weighted towards the last weeks against the earlier weeks. You’re still on target for a good result.
Empathise with the nicotine need, I’m a vaper too.
 
Sweetie, all is good, you've caught this really early in your journey. So actually, well done!
 
What a lovely post!
 
I normally like to respond individually to posts because people go to the effort of replying to me but I've ended up just liking everything on the thread because the overwhelming kindness is making me cry. I've also gone round the clock without a lozenge and I haven;t done that in a decade. I've even had special permission to use them when fasting for surgery so this is new and probably why I feel fragile and teary.
Weird statement but type 2 diabetes may end up being one of the best things that happened to me.
On a lighter note you have all taught me how to spell lozenges. I have been writing lozengers on shopping lists for 20 years.
Thank You
 
@Margarettt Watch out for low carb or sugar free mints as they often contain artificial sweeteners that give you wind and worse!!!!!

Good luck

Tony
 

Margaret, what do these lozenges actually contain? If they are listed as zero calories, I'm wondering if the carbs are actually polyols and thereby indigestible, thereby not really counted in the total?

If you have it to hand, could be worth just throwing an image of the ingredients onto here.

Bottom line is that smoking is incredibly harmful, and to be honest, whatever your lozenges contain, they are almost certainly a good deal less harmful than smoking tobacco would be.

Learn and move forward. Anyone on here saying they've never dropped a diabetes related brink is probably not being wholly truthful. We're all human.
 
We all make mistakes, believe me. ANn sometimes it takes a while to discover it, something you find out right quick. But every one of us has pretty much been there. You're not alone. And yay you for grabbing the bull by the horns. I just hope you'll be able to get through to the other end of this without vaping overmuch. Not the best thing for lungs, really, but you already know that, I guess.

When I quit smoking in '04, I had to do something else to keep my hands and brain occupied. I ended up picking up a camera. I'll shoot anything and everything. (Just shot a mushroom on the way to the shops. Would've been more if it wasn't raining. I can stand it, but my camera, alas, can't.). Find some replacement that's not in some way detrimental to your health. Might be a bit of a search, but there's bound to be something, somewhere!

Chin up, you've found the culprit, only way is up from here (and blood glucose, down!).
 
And just think - not only have you discovered this AND done something about it, you will have helped lots of other people who didn't know about it either! So it's another type of success, just one with a blip in it.
 
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