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Low GI - What Effect on BG?

Mr_Pot

Mr_Pot

Well-Known Member
Messages
4,573
Location
Berkshire
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Diet only
I have been following a Low Carb diet with great success since I was diagnosed over a year ago. As much as possible I like to have the same meals as the rest of the family with substitutes for, or leaving out, the high carb stuff. I have a meter and have tested the affects on my BG of lots of foods. The obvious suspects like bread, potatoes, pasta etc give consistent high readings and I avoid them but I am not sure about the low GI foods like chick peas, sweet potato, butternut squash, beans etc. which are the sort of thing I would substitute for potatoes, pasta etc. The readings I get are inconsistent, maybe I need to test at a range of intervals and probably there is variation depending of the accompanying food. Before carrying out a vast amount of tests with my self funded meter I would like to know what others have discovered.
 
My meter confirmed low GI worked well for me initially.
 
Hi @Mr_Pot (is that short for potato? hehe)

My experiences have been

chickpeas - ok
sweet potatoes - not tested
butternut squash - too high for my liking
beans - ok (not baked beans, but pinto, kidney, cannellini etc in a chilli for example)

If you are missing the potato/pasta element of your meal, have you tried cauliflower, celeriac, turnip, courgetti, cauli rice etc?

Edit to add: Of course, we all tolerate carbs differently so test yourself and good luck!
 
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Mr_Pot said:
I have been following a Low Carb diet with great success since I was diagnosed over a year ago. As much as possible I like to have the same meals as the rest of the family with substitutes for, or leaving out, the high carb stuff. I have a meter and have tested the affects on my BG of lots of foods. The obvious suspects like bread, potatoes, pasta etc give consistent high readings and I avoid them but I am not sure about the low GI foods like chick peas, sweet potato, butternut squash, beans etc. which are the sort of thing I would substitute for potatoes, pasta etc. The readings I get are inconsistent, maybe I need to test at a range of intervals and probably there is variation depending of the accompanying food. Before carrying out a vast amount of tests with my self funded meter I would like to know what others have discovered.
Click to expand...

The only way you will be sure is to experiment and test!
If you are findings inconsistency in your readings it could be the monitor.
Do not take the reading as true but a snapshot of that meal.
If you keep a food diary, you can see what is happening, when you eat that meal again or in a few weeks time, the more low carbing you do, the more adjustment your body goes through, so, make a note of what and how much you have ate and test!
If a part of that meal, say the sweet potato, is too high after two hours, then reduce the portion and see what happens.
Unfortunately it is about what you can eat and what you can't, until you get back to near normal levels and try again!
Once you get there, you can increase the portion size is you want!
 
Beware "low GI" foods....they still contain carbs, they just don't release it as quickly - but it gets there in the end!
 
Avocado Sevenfold said:
Hi @Mr_Pot (is that short for potato? hehe)

My experiences have been

chickpeas - ok
sweet potatoes - not tested
butternut squash - too high for my liking
beans - ok (not baked beans, but pinto, kidney, cannellini etc in a chilli for example)

If you are missing the potato/pasta element of your meal, have you tried cauliflower, celeriac, turnip, courgetti, cauli rice etc?
Click to expand...
This is just the sort of response I need, with some more replies I hope there will be some sort of consensus about which low GI foods are any good for low carbing. Courgetti and cauliflower are excellent. Cauilflower rice I think is a waste of a good cauliflower. Turnip is a good idea, I haven't tried that and celeriac is ok but the taste only goes with some meals. What about lentils? I thought they would be the answer to my needs but the results were disappointing, similarly brown rice and wholewheat pasta were failures.
 
I may be more carb-sensitive than you, but i found that low glycaemic index foods had almost as much impact on my blood glucose as high glycaemic index foods - so i gave up on them very quickly.

The simplest route is to eat exactly the same as the rest (usually just me and my husband). I just dont eat the carb foods. So i just leave the rice or pasta or potato off, and replace them with extra veg, often with butter or cheese on top, so I don't go hungry.

For foods like lasagna or pizza, where the carbs are integral, I make the whole thing low carb and, again, we all eat the same.

Some people seem fine with producing different dishes for different family members, or producing alternate choices of different things. I see that as too much phaff and FAR too much washing up! :D
 
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Mr_Pot said:
This is just the sort of response I need, with some more replies I hope there will be some sort of consensus about which low GI foods are any good for low carbing. Courgetti and cauliflower are excellent. Cauilflower rice I think is a waste of a good cauliflower. Turnip is a good idea, I haven't tried that and celeriac is ok but the taste only goes with some meals. What about lentils? I thought they would be the answer to my needs but the results were disappointing, similarly brown rice and wholewheat pasta were failures.
Click to expand...
I am ok with a few lentils. My daughter makes great soups and always throws in a handful. Her soups are great, but I sometimes have to dilute it to dilute the carbs.

I can only offer my own experience. You really need to test yourself. Remember that testing is not just about what you can't have, but is about what you can have, so don't discount anything you fancy without testing it (apart from Mars Bars etc obviously!)
 
You are of course correct @Lamont D, but to carry out the testing scientifically would take a great deal of time and effort. For example I am having roast beef tonight with carrots, peas, butternut squash mash with gravy, horseradish sauce and red wine. To know exactly the effect I would have to have a separate meal of each of the ingredients and then test at multiple intervals and then to be sure repeat the tests. I am trying to short circuit that and find out other peoples opinions first.
 
Mr_Pot said:
You are of course correct @Lamont D, but to carry out the testing scientifically would take a great deal of time and effort. For example I am having roast beef tonight with carrots, peas, butternut squash mash with gravy, horseradish sauce and red wine. To know exactly the effect I would have to have a separate meal of each of the ingredients and then test at multiple intervals and then to be sure repeat the tests. I am trying to short circuit that and find out other peoples opinions first.
Click to expand...
I'm not great with carrots. See, we're all different!
 
Mr_Pot said:
You are of course correct @Lamont D, but to carry out the testing scientifically would take a great deal of time and effort. For example I am having roast beef tonight with carrots, peas, butternut squash mash with gravy, horseradish sauce and red wine. To know exactly the effect I would have to have a separate meal of each of the ingredients and then test at multiple intervals and then to be sure repeat the tests. I am trying to short circuit that and find out other peoples opinions first.
Click to expand...
Are you sure? The "scientific" approach would be to test after the whole meal, rather than trying to test each of its components individually......for example, a lot of people find that eating carbs with a lot of fat gives much lower readings than just the same amount of carbs on its own. The effect of combining different foodstuffs is not additive or linear in terms of the ultimate effect on BS levels.

Considering the meal you have described above, I would say that the beef and red wine would be OK - I think that the rest of it might cause your BG to become elevated.....but only testing will show if this is true or not.

Your results are yours alone - true, the experience of others can afford valuable guidance, but to be sure of how things will affect you, you must measure your own responses - and act on them.
 
Mr_Pot said:
You are of course correct @Lamont D, but to carry out the testing scientifically would take a great deal of time and effort. For example I am having roast beef tonight with carrots, peas, butternut squash mash with gravy, horseradish sauce and red wine. To know exactly the effect I would have to have a separate meal of each of the ingredients and then test at multiple intervals and then to be sure repeat the tests. I am trying to short circuit that and find out other peoples opinions first.
Click to expand...

Love the beef!
Carrots, peas and the gravy would depend on portion size!
Butternut squash is something I have always swerved.
Horseradish sauce and red wine are big nos for me! Unfortunately!

I have always done meals, quite often as much different components than yours, you can do meals, sometimes some 'baddies' can be ok! But if you are higher than you should be, then a part of that is not recommended!

Enjoy your meal.

Gammon, eggs, mushrooms, onions and tomatoes', for me!
 
The point I was trying to make, using my roast beef dinner as an example, was that if I find that meal raised my BG too much I would not know if it was the butternut squash, or the carrots or the peas etc that I had to reduce or eliminate.
 
Mr_Pot said:
The point I was trying to make, using my roast beef dinner as an example, was that if I find that meal raised my BG too much I would not know if it was the butternut squash, or the carrots or the peas etc that I had to reduce or eliminate.
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I used to record the foods I ate, and test afterwards.
I studied the Taguchi methods of quality control, and from the matrix produced, patterns could be observed in various mixes of foods.

But basically, if you eat lentils in several meals, and you get a high figure all, the time, eat the meal without lentils next time.
And if meals with squash are always low, eat squash.

Then fine tune it by mixing it up later.
 
For me:

Butternut squash is fairly ok.
Sweet potato: I might as well be eating normal spuds
Chickpeas: ok with lots of oil ie hummus but no good otherwise
Creamed horseradish: ok in small quantities unless home made in which case fine
Horseradish sauce (not creamed): fine, no problem
Carrots: ok if I have a small amount sauteed in butter
Parsnip: same as carrots
Swede and turnip: better than carrots but stil need to be in limited quantities and cooked in fat
Peas: Nope unless they are mushy peas.
Gravy: a very small amount if made with flour or commercial
granules. Generally ok if thickened with cream.
Beef: I can eat until I'm completely full.
Red wine: no problem EXCEPT that too much of it makes me think I can eat foods that I can't tolerate
Lentils: I very recently found out that these affect my BG quite a lot

I found out that adding fat to carby foods does reduce the spike at 2 hours but extends the BG lower level spike over 3-4 hours.

In my house we tend to eat what I can eat but I will then add something a bit more carby to my husband's meal (roast parsnips or sweet potatoes or similar) only because he has lost 2st while I've been low carbing sort of accidentally, although he loves low carb food and feels very well on it. I also make him a couple of low carb cakes to last him the week.
 
First find out what you can eat - according to your meter, and then add in what you want to test, then compare the results. If you get one meal a day fairly standard - I have tuna salad for lunch and then chicken and whatever for dinner - change the whatever and you can get a good idea of how it affects you, but I found that things I could not eat and lose weight did not just spike my BG but raised it for about 16 hours. It might have improved now, after a few weeks of low carbing, but when just starting out it was rather alarming. Nothing like high numbers on the meter to cause rigid adherence to a way of eating.
 
The oddest thing I found was green and yellow lentils.
One I could eat, one spiked me.
I could never remember which though, so I avoided them both.

Even though I eventually reversed my T2, I still don't eat them by choice, oddly enough.
 
As I said in my original post. I am not new to a low carb diet and I am doing ok with HbA1c of 38. I am just looking to broaden my range of the "filling" part of my meals. @Chook 's response is exactly what I wanted.
 
Mr_Pot said:
As I said in my original post. I am not new to a low carb diet and I am doing ok with HbA1c of 38. I am just looking to broaden my range of the "filling" part of my meals. @Chook 's response is exactly what I wanted.
Click to expand...

I did low GI.
It worked for me.
That list worked for Chook.
They weren't the same.
I didn't eat any fat.
You need to test as you eat.
 
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