• Guest - w'd love to know what you think about the forum! Take the 2025 Survey »

Low calories - effect on sugar levels

C

char87

Active Member
Messages
39
Location
London
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Insulin
Hi

I have been trying to lose a bit of weight. I have been tracking my food on My Fitness pal and a few times recently I have noticed that when I have been eating low calorie (around 1000cals a day) but not that low carb (yesterday I had 180g carb) my sugar levels have been very good and my insulin requirements have dropped particularly with overnight basal. Is there any reason as to why eating less calories would reduce your sugar levels? i can understand why less carbs would have this impact but I seem to be eating quite a lot of those and my sugar levels haven't been spiking at all when I eat them while keeping the calorie level low. On the days when I eat the same level of carbs but just more food generally throughout the day with a higher calorie intake, my sugar levels spike more and rise a lot overnight.

Hope this makes sense! Interested to hear any thoughts.

Charlotte
 
It may well be that your consuming more carbs than you think when you have days where you eat more than usual, which would result in a higher insulin usage. Nearly all veggies and fruit contain carbs as do diary products, nut & seeds etc, I think sometimes people don't actually realise how many carbs they actually eat until they tally it up.
 
i used to have anorexia and when i ate less (even though i injected for the exact carbs i was eating) my bg would still go too low, so i had to reduce my basal so i've had this before x
 
some of the protein convert to glucose, so if your low cal, you can be missing these too..and may explain the BG variation
.but 180g / 720 cal carb of a total 1000 cal sounds really unbalanced to me..and I guess you may know this too.
myfitnesspal is a user data base, so it's all over the place for the same foods..it's best to double check it by google, but the programme its self is very good and handy
you can adjust the percent of macros in the settings
I would look at 40% carbs and 40% fat and 20% protein..
for low calorie..min RDA, fat and protein is about 50-60g each, total 650+ cal and then carbs added with LC veggies and such to make up total 1000 calories. about 80g carb...

if you want to be skinny, cut the carbs back, don't drop your needed protein and fats and with LCHF you can eat a lot more and lose or keep weight stable and some T1 also find it keeps the BG stable too

http://www.dietdoctor.com/lchf it’s a long page and a video

For me, the more carbs we eat the more carbs we want. they don’t give up easy.

http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/lowcarbliving/a/Food-Cravings.htm http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/lowcarb101/a/firstweek.htm

http://www.lowcarbdietitian.com/blog/carbohydrate-restriction-an-option-for-diabetes-management
 
char87 said:
Hi

I have been trying to lose a bit of weight. I have been tracking my food on My Fitness pal and a few times recently I have noticed that when I have been eating low calorie (around 1000cals a day) but not that low carb (yesterday I had 180g carb) my sugar levels have been very good and my insulin requirements have dropped particularly with overnight basal. Is there any reason as to why eating less calories would reduce your sugar levels? i can understand why less carbs would have this impact but I seem to be eating quite a lot of those and my sugar levels haven't been spiking at all when I eat them while keeping the calorie level low. On the days when I eat the same level of carbs but just more food generally throughout the day with a higher calorie intake, my sugar levels spike more and rise a lot overnight.

Hope this makes sense! Interested to hear any thoughts.

Charlotte
Click to expand...

I wouldn't like to comment as you're type 1, and I'm type 2, but I did also notice when I did the Newcastle diet, 800 calories a day, no fat, some protein, high carbs, I noticed the same effect.
In my case though I'm still producing insulin, so I would expect my body to be using the carbs I ate, either directly as fuel, or trying to store as much as possible of the 'excess' when I was being idle, and as the excess wasn't much, I would guess it didn't take long to get the glucose out of my bloodstream.
 
Hmm... This is interesting... I have some friends (well, acquaintances really) that go on and on about fat being the thing that makes blood sugars rise... And that if you take fat out, you can eat a lot more carbs - so long as your fat intake is really low. These people follow the 80:10:10 diet... Which I've honestly never really even read that much about as quite frankly my brain thinks it would be bonkers to have that many carbs as a diabetic... But -- I do know some type 1's swear by this way of eating too... So I don't know - maybe you've accidentally stumbled into that by accident...? Would you say you're still getting much fat / protein in your diet...?

Course there's the whole intermittent fasting thing, which some diabetics say works wonders too...

So who knows?! :D -- very interesting though...
 
the newcastle 800 is also a short term near starvation diet, and for convenience use optifast drinks and the newcastle diet say you should add fat daily to the 800 cal. to try and prevent kidney stones

the newcastle diet is near 90g carb =360 cal and it doesn't need a master mathematician to know the fat and protein are the greater % of macro nutrients in the 800 plus added fat diet

..powdered carbs and such in the optifast are cheap and have a long shelf life.


Newcastle diet aims in 8+ weeks to mimic the rate of ~70% remission, for surgery T2

“It is now clear that Type 2 diabetes is caused by abnormal fat storage. Research on how this may be reversed is available. “click that link on this page http://www.ncl.ac.uk/magres/research/diabetes/

Lectures

http://www.fend-lectures.org/index.php?menu=view&id=94

http://www.ncl.ac.uk/events/public-lectures/item.php?roy-taylor-diabetes

shows BG lowering to normal range

View attachment 8599
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Here's my theory.
It's a result of two things.
.1) You are taking in fewer calories than are needed, there is little left to store for fasting energy needs.
2) the fasting hyperglycemia in diabetes is caused by the over production and release of glucose from your liver.

You need bolus insulin to utilise the glucose from the carbs in your meals . If glucose is available then the body will use it first. The brain alone can use 120g of glucose a day . If your body uses the glucose it needs insulin to do this. It will also use any fat for energy.
With fewer calories than you require, there may not be much glucose left to store in your liver as glycogen for use during fasting. You will store some in the muscles but the biggest store is in the liver .Glycogen stores only contain sufficient for about 24 hours so you may not be topping them up fully.
Similarly with the protein which could be used to make glucose in the liver during fasting . You will be using protein for immediate daily needs like muscle repair, it will do this first.
The result is that during fasting,(ie longer periods between meals, overnight and at times when active) you may not actually be able to either make or release as much stored glucose as normal. You therefore don't don't need so much insulin to regulate this release ( one of the basal insulin roles ) . Your body may be using some muscle protein (this does happen during dieting) to help supply some glucose but you will also be breaking down and using stored fat to provide energy .(that's what you want to do during dieting)
 
Thanks for all the responses- this is really interesting and am going to read up more! xx
 
Back
Top