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New and trying to reduce carbs!

M

MadMat

Well-Known Member
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129
Hi all,

I've been experimenting over the last few days with reducing my carbs to the 100-120 grams a day sort of area.

I am starting to notice though that the majority of the carbs seem to be ending up in my evening meal!

Should I be trying to spread the carbs more evenly through the day? or as I've read insulin resistance tends to be highest in the mornings is this OK?

Today for example -

Breakfast - bacon, eggs, mushrooms, squirt of brown sauce and glass of milk - around 20 carbs
Lunch, Wasn't very hungry, so just had some strawberries - around 5 carbs
Dinner - pork chop, peas, carrots and 3 small new potatoes with some bisto gravy - around 80 carbs
Evening snack - 30gram pack of peanuts - around 3 carbs


TIA

Mat
 
Hi Mat. I was diagnosed about 4 weeks ago. I am trying not to get into counting anything really. I have this for the rest of my days and want to stay fairly relxed about it. My wife does the Rosemary Connelly thrash-about and the diet is low GI. So my regime is eating GOOD food....regularly...wholemeal stuff...oats, vegetable and tasty food...fish...spice. miso soup between meals...to be honest...I have never felt better... i've lost 10lbs (from 16-7) and yesterday my BS level was 7.3, 2hrs after eating. I'm eating well...and seeing what it does to me...rather than just screwing down. If I need to adjust...I will...but so far...it works
 
My DSN refused to give me a meter, So I'm kind of stumbling around in the dark :)

Ordered one from Ebay, waiting for it to arrive! maybe that will shed some light on what I need to do!

Mat
 
I think you can get a bit obsessive about it. I just wanted to find a consistent regime...(i don't call it a diet)...and to be on it for a while, monitor the effect....

also try and find out what things I REALLY like do to it. I like a drop of whiskey and people say it's ok to have it. I wanted to understand what it does. Because I was interested, my DSN said she would let me have one...Bless...!!

I think it's a good idea provided you're not stabbing yourself at every commercial break and between each Ferrero Rocher..
 
history4444 said:
Hi Mat. I was diagnosed about 4 weeks ago. I am trying not to get into counting anything really. I have this for the rest of my days and want to stay fairly relxed about it. My wife does the Rosemary Connelly thrash-about and the diet is low GI. So my regime is eating GOOD food....regularly...wholemeal stuff...oats, vegetable and tasty food...fish...spice. miso soup between meals...to be honest...I have never felt better... i've lost 10lbs (from 16-7) and yesterday my BS level was 7.3, 2hrs after eating. I'm eating well...and seeing what it does to me...rather than just screwing down. If I need to adjust...I will...but so far...it works
Click to expand...

Hey history4444 not having a go and I understand what you're saying but some of us who want to control our bloods sugars without taking powerful drugs that will shorten the lives our already knackered pancreas or go on insulin have little option than to drastically reduce carbohydrates.

It isn't a diet or screwing down it's a way of controlling blood sugars. Everyones tolerences to carbs are different so for example there is no way I can keep my sugars under the 7.8 safety limit if I eat more than 25g of rice or 25g of pasta or 1.5 potatoes or more than a slice of wholemeal bread. I tried a few days ago to eat 2 average sized potatoes and ended up at 9.9 after 1 hour and 8.9 after 2.

I've carefully worked out my tolerences to loads of different foods and regularly test to see if I can eat more. At the moment to keep by blood sugars in safety and my fasting average stable I can eat no more than around 75g / day.

At that 75g I maintain blood sugar control between 4 and 6.5 for 95% of the time (I let up at the weekend a bit). At that 4 to 6.5 range I am actually recording blood sugar levels the same as 19 out of 20 non diabetics which is where I want to be in terms of the risks I'm prepared to take.

There is actually no long term studies that say a low carb diet is any worse than a classic "healthy" diet. In fact the Swedish and German NHS equivelents would have told you to go on a low to moderate carb diet if you had been diagnosed in those countries. The Swedes who are seen as one of the worlds leading health care systems don't even discourage ultra low carb diets of less than 30g / day. They have based their recommendations on studies done this century. They do positively discourage the UK starchy carbohydrate diabetic diet drawn up 40 years ago in the last century. Mats 100 - 120g diet would fall within their guidelines.
 
MadMat said:
Hi all,

I've been experimenting over the last few days with reducing my carbs to the 100-120 grams a day sort of area.

I am starting to notice though that the majority of the carbs seem to be ending up in my evening meal!

Should I be trying to spread the carbs more evenly through the day? or as I've read insulin resistance tends to be highest in the mornings is this OK?

Today for example -

Breakfast - bacon, eggs, mushrooms, squirt of brown sauce and glass of milk - around 20 carbs
Lunch, Wasn't very hungry, so just had some strawberries - around 5 carbs
Dinner - pork chop, peas, carrots and 3 small new potatoes with some bisto gravy - around 80 carbs
Evening snack - 30gram pack of peanuts - around 3 carbs


TIA

Mat
Click to expand...

Have the same problem Mat

My carbs go Breakfast : 5g, Lunch : Zeroish g, Dinner : The Rest .... Evening snack : Zeroish

Honestly not sure if it makes a difference. All those carbs or fat or protien have to convert to glucose for energy at some point!

Perhaps someone will give us both an expert opinion.
 
I am certainly no expert but like to keep the carbs lowt in the evening so that my levels remain low at night and that i get off to a good low start the next day. I think Grazer does the same for the same reason.

Eatig more carbs at lunchtime and fewer at night works for me because I exercise in the afternoons . It may not fit in with your lifestyle, Because I dont have a large appeite I tend to have a very low carb and small breakfast so that I can eat most of my carbs at lunchime. Even if you increase your carbs a little at lunchtime it should help reduce the load for the night.

If you are very active in the evenings ignore the above. Following this plan I no longer suffer the dreaded Dawn Phenomenon.
 
Dawn Phenomenon is when you constantly wake up with BG's higher than when you went to bed. DP is caused by your "helpful" liver dumping glucose in your blood in the early hours (normally around 4 to 5.00am). It does that so you have an energy reserve to work with when you wake up. It is very irritating as for example I normally nowadays go to bed in the high 4's but wake up in the high 5's or low 6's. When I started out I found I would get DP induced readings in the 10's and 11's.

Breakfast is a good way of dealing with it. There are several ideas why but I like to think it kicks your metabolism into action. Normally 2 hours after breakfast my BG's have dropped back to my normal fasting level. If I don't eat breakfast then that high DP level can hang about until I eat lunch which means you hang around with a high fasting level for many hours.

If I wake up too high I will use my ultimate DP attack weapon which is a fast 10 minute walk around the block. I can normally guarantee that just this small amount of exercise combined with breakfast will knock my BG's down.
 
I have been getting into a routine more this last week or so and have been eating between 60 and 70 carbs a day, trying to spread them out and not eating fruit on its own but with a meal. I have a fair bit of weight to lose so am also trying to keep under 1400 calories which is what weightresources.co.uk recommend for my statistics! The only thing that worries me is that as a consequence of reducing the carbs my fat intake percentage is higher and that goes against everthing we were brought up to believe - hard to accept thats ok. I am going to start testing to see which meals are ok next week as I have not been a good girl the last few weeks and know it takes a little time for sugar levels to redcue. Is 60-70 carbs a day low carbing? I have read through lots of posts and everyone is doing something different?

Claire x
 
It's about what I'm doing, but I always start the day with porridge now which is 26g on its own. I think the GDA for us chaps is higher (300g) but I'm not sure if that makes any difference. I am eating a lot of fat (in Total Greek Yoghurt mainly) but the weight's still coming off.
 
clairy clutterbuck said:
Is 60-70 carbs a day low carbing?
Claire x
Click to expand...

Yes below 130 is low below 30 is ultra low (ULC). At a steady 60-70 and losing say 2 to 3 lbs a week in weight you're quite likely to be in ketosis where you are burning fat for energy regardless of if ketones are turning up in your pee.
 
good GRIEF...!!! there is so much to think about....to balance... At the moment I'm just trying to find out what a particular regime does to me. That was very helpful xzxxy.... But i don't know what to think really. Things thought were normal, I now realise are related to diabetes...so I have to find out what each of them mean, on their own, and in conjunction with each other. There's no quick way is there... Time....consistency...and patience... hey ho...
 
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