Low carb?

I enjoy lentils, beans and chickpeas but haven't touched any since I went low carb. I do intend to experiment with them again at some point in future to see if I can tolerate small quantities now that I've lost a big chunk of weight and am taking more exercise.

Carrots and peas are currently a bit of a vice of mine, and add a little of each to most evening meals (half a carrot and maybe 50g of peas).

I eat low carb, no bread/rice/pasta/potatoes etc, and am fortunate enough to see my BS levels return to around 4.5 within 2 hours of eating on most days. That's where I intend to keep it.

Glyko said:

How many units of raising on glucose meter is acceptable after 1 - 1,5 hour?
It should go back to original after 2 hours?

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The rule of thumb advice is to keep any post meal rise to 2mmol within 2hr. It's a good starting point for someone newly diagnosed or new to testing.
What's acceptable to me is that I am back to around the same as my pre meal levels within the 2hr. There are a few meals that will take me close to the 2mmol rise but it has to be something I really enjoy and have occasionally, not every day. You have to decide what you are trying to achieve and what you need to do to get there, then you can work out what's acceptable to you.

Glyko said:

How many of you who are in remission eat beans/lentils/legumes?
Oatmeal? Root vegetables?

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Again this is a question that you have to find your own answer to. If you want to include these fairly high carb foods In your diet. You need to test each one of them several times, cooked and uncooked, at different times of the day and portion sizes. Only then will you know if including them in your diet will allow you to reach your goals/acceptable levels. You could have replies from a hundred people and learn absolutely nothing because none of those people are you.

Glyko said:

Do you eat LCHF or low carb?

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Personally I think that if you are cutting out carbs you need to replace those carbs with an alternative energy source. If a diet leaves you feeling hungry I don't see how it can be something you stick to. And let's face it there is no cure so what ever you do to control it or get into remission or whatever you want to call it, you are going to need to do it long term.

Great question that keeps going around.

I have seen 1 anecdote of a person on this site who includes some of the items......but he / she exercises 2 or 3 times a day (intensely), he / she does not get involved in general discussion hence not tagging.

My theory is that once you are "broken" by the inclusion of processed foods for years, this ruins glycaemic control for cleaner high carb foods other societies that do not include the trifecta (sugar, grains and veg oil) cope with. It will be interesting to watch this thread. If you have takers hopefully they will detail amounts, frequency and glucose numbers.

I do eat a few peas, usually if I overestimate the amount for my husband, but legumes push up my levels higher than they should. I calculated that they have around 180 percent of the listed carb content when I eat them.
Testing 2 hours after starting to eat should show no more than 2 whole numbers higher. I don't bother testing before, so look for under 7mmol/l after eating.
My diet would probably be classed as high in fat by modern standards, but I simply buy foods with the natural fats. I do add a little olive oil and butter, but not much.

I can eat very small amounts of pulses, not enough to go vegan and survive. I avoid oatmeal as it spikes my blood sugar even now.
Since getting into remission I aim for around 100g of carbs a day.

Glyko said:

How many of you who are in remission eat beans/lentils/legumes?
Oatmeal? Root vegetables?

How many units of raising on glucose meter is acceptable after 1 - 1,5 hour?
It should go back to original after 2 hours?

Do you eat LCHF or low carb?

Thanks for helping!

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I achieved my "in remission" status by not eating any of those.
I'd suggest they are best avoided.

2 mmol/l after 2 hours is the suggested maximum rise.

I just try and remain below 6 mmol/l at all times.

^^^
What he said, although I do make an exception for small amounts of onion as I love onions!

Peas make my BG rise, but not much - or perhaps I take a modest amount. Carrots ditto, but raw carrots not at all and I love raw carrots. Can't do onions. Sometimes replace them in cooking with spring onions. No oatmeal, no beans, no bread. No spuds. You get the picture. I think we are all affected a bit differently by different foods, though of course the heavy carbs won't work at all for T2s.

Glyko said:

How many of you who are in remission eat beans/lentils/legumes?
Oatmeal? Root vegetables?

How many units of raising on glucose meter is acceptable after 1 - 1,5 hour?
It should go back to original after 2 hours?

Do you eat LCHF or low carb?

Thanks for helping!

Click to expand...

I occasionally eat a small amount of beans/lentils/legumes (e.g. as part of sausage and chicken casserole, adding a few cannellini or borlotti beans, having a few lentils with chicken in parma ham, or with a pheasant -once this year, and pheasant was as tough as old boots :-( ) . I do have hummus more frequently, but careful about the amount.
No oatmeal (forced myself to eat porridge for breakfast for years for supposed health benefits, while barely tolerating the taste, so was delighted to find it spiked my blood sugar ). No grains, pasta, rice.
Root vegetables: do have garlic, onions, ginger since part of so much of many dishes I / we cook, and also celeriac, and fennel. Some carrots & a few radishes. Occasional small amount of sweet potato.
(My amazing wife does at least 50% of the cooking, she is not T2D , so there is compromise involved).

I don't worry too much about the 1 to 1.5 hour reading, I aim to get back to within +2 mmol/L after 2 hours and getting back to "normal" after 3 hours. I also want to peak to be less than 9. I'm trying to be more relaxed about these targets given the Libre shows just how complicated my blood sugar response is.

Eating a moderate low carb diet. Necessarily that means I eat more fat than I used to, which I am still twitchy about.
When I accurately tracked food for a week, found was having around 70g carbs a day, sometimes as low as 30g
(when doing a rough estimate I thought it was around 50g per day, whereas accurately counting all the milk in tea, coffee, the odd handful of nuts & every single small ingredient such as garlic, herbs etc in recipes , realised it was more like 70 to 80).

Some caveats and personal stuff:
Everyone is different (e.g. I no longer have a gall bladder), but for me :
-I am most sensitive to carbs in the morning, so have to have a low carb breakfast (eg under 10g carbs). This also means if I skip breakfast /IF, eating a "normal" lunch (eg 20to 30g carbs) can cause issues
- The total carbs seems to be the determining factor for my bg levels, rather than whether they are composed of say carrots or cauliflower, but I haven't done any isolated testing of root vegetables
- Used Libres for 12 weeks , which showed how complicated things are, and has helped me with trends which I wouldn't have picked up with just finger-prick testing.

I am new to being in remission, so don't have the experience of some of the other posters here.
For a variety of reasons I have gone low carb rather than keto.
It was working for me, although for some reason my levels have started to increase in the New Year (I didn't go off script over Christmas and New Year, apart from more wine than usual!).