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Newly diagnosed and eating to blood glucose sugar monitor seems too easy?

Maradona

Active Member
Messages
34
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Tablets (oral)
Good morning – I wonder if anyone has any thoughts on this?

I have found that cutting out white bread and limiting potatoes and pasta works for me.

Oddly I can eat plenty of chocolate and Chocolate biscuits between meals without much impact. Also, most Indian and Chinese ready meals are very good, as long as I do not have much rice. I do not bother with much fruit and veg.

Eating out seems ok, a large Thai meal and 4 pints of larger last night gave a reading of 6.3 two hours later. Steak and chips or cannelloni give similar results. I do avoid puddings though.

So my diet seems quite easy and does not follow the guidelines. Am I missing something?

I take 1500mg of metformin.

My readings are fasting 5.0 and after meals between 6.0 and 8.0.

I am not overweight.
 
Hi. It sounds like you are only marginally diabetic and possibly have a high metabolism so can eat fairly freely. Long may it last but just keep using the meter preferably 2 hours after a meal to check you stay below 8.5mmol. You are avoiding the worst carbs which will be helping.
 
Thanks. I have lot quite a lot of weight on this diet. More than I'd like as im now only 10st 2Ib.
 
Actually it is quite “easy” to eat to your meter, and far less complicated than it can be made to appear.

You clearly have used your meter to find out what you can or cannot eat to achieve the levels you want.

As long as you continue testing and stay vigilant you will hopefully remain in control.
 
@Maradona

Sorry to be negitive, but "just" eating to your meter is not enough, as it only shows you have limited your carbs to what you body can cope with today without you BG being out of control. The carbs will still damamge your body and you have no way to measure that damage until it is too late.

Insulin Resistance will keep building up unless you get ahead of your diabetes, you are in danger of always paying “catch up”. The best way to stop Insulin Resistance getting worse is to allow the level of insulin in your blood to drop to a very low level between meals, hence avoiding snacks that contain carbs.

8.0 is not good after meals and you should hardly ever get levels that high. It better to aim for less than 6 two hours after most meals.

The larger has the risk of adding fat to your liver that in the long term will result in more Insulin Resistance, so should not be repeated often.

What you choose to eat now, will have a great effect on your life in 10 years time, maybe even 5 years time. You may be only marginally diabetic at present, but without radical action, type2 always gets worse with age.

Lots of people on this forum can never eat chips etc, the chooses you make today will effect what you can eat in a few years time. Is a biscuit between meals today worth the price of not being able to have chips when you go out of a meal in a few years time……………..
 

Its great that you have had such a good reaction so quickly. In practic though unless you do change eating habit quite a lot you may find you are storing up future problems.( as is most of the population!)

The way to think about it is that when you eat carbs, your body is producing more insulin to cope with them, over time this builds up and eventually you cannot cope any more. If you are recently diagnosed as diabetic its quite likely that your levels of insulin are quite high - 2-25 is the "normal" range but under 5 is optimal and if its over 8 then 80% of such people are either diagnosed or on the way to diabetes.

If you want to reassure yourself where you really are, see if you can get a fasting insulin test done. If that comes in under 5 then your body is clearly coping with the carb load, if its a lot higher than that,, then it means your body is having to work a lot harder than it should need to , to clear the glucose and that will then wear it out a lot quicker than if it didn't have to. As such sticking to low carb foods with gaps to allow insulin levels to recover, will still improve your general health no matter what your actual meter is telling you regarding the absolute level of glucose. .
 
thank you, I'll cut out the biscuits and see how low my readings go between meals. It is quite interesting that some microwave ready meals are fine. Small amounts of good quality Chocolate are ok too.
I tend to think a lot of the advice for type 2 diets makes control seem too daunting.
 
@Maradona: It is great that you are figuring out what works for you.

In the longer term you will want not just those good daily numbers but also good levels on your HbA1c when tested every few months. At least, you are keeping track of what you have been eating so if the improvement in HbA1c at the next test is not as good as you were planning for, you will know what to try cutting out next.

If I were you, I would be interested in going drug-free, which might also involve tightening up the food regime. Mind you Metformin is a safe drug and has a number of benefits. Personally, I felt strongly that I wanted to avoid drugs altogether but I was lucky that this was possible in my case; it does not work for everyone.
 
The best quality (at least 85%) dark chocolate is often very low in carbs, lot of us will have dark chocolate after a meal.

Biscuits between meals are much worce then biscuits as part of the meal.

I can cook a steak with some green veg (add butter to the veg) in less time then it used to take me to heat up most ready meals. The fastest meal I have is when I use the slow cooker and the food is setting there ready for when we wish to eat it.

Oddly sweet potato have less carbs then normal potatos, part if the issue with chips is the type of oil they are cooked in. Therefore sweet potato slices cooked in butter make a good replacment for chips (but not everyday!).
 
I agree with @CherryAA The more carbs one eats, the more insulin is produced, and high circulating insulin levels lead to insulin resistance, fatty livers, inflammation issues and weight gain.

I wish you well.
 
Thank you - yes I am due a HbA1c test which will be interesting.
I 'm not too worried about Metformin if I can have a more relaxed low carb diet.
 
you are seriously heading for trouble if you maintain that diet. you will end up on insulin and the complications are not nice. you have a life threatening condition. a decent controlled diet is your only tool that can help. your larger alone has 75 carbs plus at least 60 from your thai meal. you simply cant eat like that. assuming milk chocolate your looking at 59 carbs per 100g and another 65 for a couple of bixies. you need to be swapping your junk food for healthier stuff salads and leafy veg. im worried for you. you seem to be ignoring the evidence. relying on the drugs to suppress it only lasts so long.
 
You might try testing at one hour after dinner to see how high you might be then - as by then many easily digested carbs have reached the blood stream.
You seem to be not too bad at the minute - and you might even improve over time, seeing lowering BG results for similar meals - which I thought was a good thing when it happened to me, as it felt as though my metabolism was getting back in balance.
I would advise a change to lower carb snacks though - every time you eat carbs your pancreas releases insulin - giving it a bit of a rest might seem like a good idea.
 
Thanks - confusing though. surely if I eat to my meter its ok?
I only go out for a beer every other month and most days I have a Salad
Actually One biscuit is only 8g of carbs & one square of chocholate is only 2g
 
Maradona said:
Surely if I eat to my meter its ok?
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I am far from being an expert but on reflection, I agree with other posters that you are taking a risk, possibly a large one.

Some of us are comfortable taking risks with T2D but in my opinion it needs to be a carefully "calculated risk."

If I were in shoes, I would make sure your current experiments remain time-limited. At the very least I think you may be lowering your chances of a rapid and durable drop in your HbA1c.

In your place, I would be doing things the other way around. I would start with a pretty restrictive diet, see how it succeeds, and then if it succeeds brilliantly, I would re-introduce some carby stuff and see what happens.

In fact I am wondering whether I should not try that route myself (since I started out with an ultra-low-carb route and the HbA1c is now completely boring). Perhaps I can lighten up a bit?

The Devil Calls!

I will follow your experiment with interest....
 
Not sure why people are being so hard on OP here; if he's able to maintain good BG control then that's the most important thing. It affects everyone a little differently - there are plenty of people on here who can't eat more than 20g carbs a day and plenty who have 50-70g or even more, and still maintain good blood sugar control.

8.0 two hours after meals is too high for me personally, but it's also what the NHS recommends. If we're going to say "that's way too high and you should aim for lower", that should be sourced with some evidence - otherwise it's not helping anyone (and I'd argue that 6 two hours after eating a meal consistently is a v tough target for someone newly diagnosed to reach). Eating to your meter is the approach most people here advocate - OP is doing that and that's great. Any progress in the right direction should be celebrated.

What I will say is that your 6.3 after your Thai meal may well be due to the alcohol - I find that alcohol drops my blood sugar quite a lot, though for the next couple of days I will be more erratic and run higher than usual as a result. The true figure may well be higher.
 
"Eating to your meter" is like the speed limit, you should never go over it, but if you think of it as a target to hit often rather then a limit to never go over, bad things happen.....

AlexMagd said:
Not sure why people are being so hard on OP here;
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Maybe due to high GI carbs between meals......

AlexMagd said:
and I'd argue that 6 two hours after eating a meal consistently is a v tough target for someone newly diagnosed to reach
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Remember his fasting is 5.0, and without controlling meals he will not keep such a good fasting BG long term.
 
Thanks all for your advice - this may be of interest? I would very much like to see how this compares? I have the occasional red one which I have learnt from.


 
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