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On LCHF from yesterday but still high

khorlo said:
According to NHS healthy weight graph i am obese and i should lose a third of the weight i have now to be considered as healthy weight .That is 40 kg or over 6 stone.
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If you want to know what some peopl eat in a low carb way you can check out this thread, it will give you an idea, different people, different ways:

http://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/threads/what-have-you-eaten-today.75781/page-70


As per weight loss, in my experience weight loss goes hand in hand with BG numbers improvement.
 
GeoffersTaylor said:
testing one hour after a meal is always going to show a big spike.
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Not necessarily, it depends what you have eaten. Our rule is never over 7 at one hour, never over 6 at two hours. We do eat vegetables, including onions and an occasional carrot and beetroot, but have dropped milk and fruit and all the obvious things (pasta, bread, potatoes etc). We all have to find out what works for us and testing is the only way.
Sally
 
sally and james said:
Not necessarily, it depends what you have eaten. Our rule is never over 7 at one hour, never over 6 at two hours. We do eat vegetables, including onions and an occasional carrot and beetroot, but have dropped milk and fruit and all the obvious things (pasta, bread, potatoes etc). We all have to find out what works for us and testing is the only way.
Sally
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Always happy to be corrected.
 
khorlo said:
As from yesterday i started to follow the advice on LCHF given in this guide http://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/threads/a-new-low-carb-guide-for-beginners.68695/.
The best thing for you to do is obtain the Carbs & Calories book ( available from Amazon) it's become like a bible to me and lists practically everything.
The best advice is to dump potatoes, pasta, rice and bread, these are all high carbs. Test before eating and test again 2hrs after eating, if you can keep below 8.5 after eating you are doing ok, if it's lower then well done you. There is no such thing as a 'suit all' diet as every person handles different foods in different ways, for example, I can cope with 2 weetabix per day and an apple, occasionally a slice of toast and I only ever use butter. Others would not tolerate any fruit or cereal. Sweetcorn is an occasional food for me as it spikes me, I have chips once a week and a little mash with my roast spud on Sunday. Keeping a food diary is a big help, mine ended up as a meal book, I listed all the meals that don't spike, all the foods that raise a little and a 'no no ' page of stuff to avoid, it worked for me. It takes a while to sort out diet, acceptable foods etc. Because of another condition I do a low carb full fat diet rather than high fat and have lost over 2 stone and my bloods are now at pre diabetic level


My food yesterday only had around 55 grams of carbs in it (100 grams of brown rice, 80 grams of butter beans 50g of sweetcorn, 4 tomatoes) and the rest was dairy, greens and chicken and no fruit at all.
Based on this, my BS levels were in the 8's and 9's.

This morning at 9 i had a salad where the only carb was 40 g of sweetcorn a tomatoe and that is about around 6 carbs
An hour after, i checked the BS levels and it was 12.6 mmol
I have no idea what is going on.

How low do i have to go in carbs intake to be at 6 or bellow 6 mmol?
Or does it take weeks and months for the LCHF diet to work and reduce the sugar levels?
Click to expand...
 
khorlo said:
According to NHS healthy weight graph i am obese and i should lose a third of the weight i have now to be considered as healthy weight .That is 40 kg or over 6 stone.
Click to expand...
For me, that explains a lot of the problem. Things will get better as you lose weight. I lost 45kg and what a difference that made. Even losing 5kg will make a difference for you. Keep up the good work.
 
I tested yesterday evening at 9,30 and i was 7.3 and that was about 3 hours after dinner , almost non existent carbs in my dinner.(maybe 2 or 3 carbs)

But this morning i tested again it showed 11.3 and this was before i had anything to eat.

Why is this figure so high?
How can i prevent this from happening?
 
I think you should test and write down your readings 8 times day, along with what you are eating, and post the info here each day. After a while you will have some ideas from the experienced members here. So, that would mean telling us your fasting BG in the morning, then before breakfast and 2 hours after, before lunch and 2 hours after, before dinner and 2 hours after, and finally bedtime. Also noting the time of day for each test.

From what I understand, if you eat something just before you go to bed, it can reduce the fasting BG because of the dawn phenomenon. (Experienced members please correct me if I'm wrong).

You may need to be patient to get to the bottom of this. A few days or even a couple of weeks with these sort of numbers is not going to cause damage. It's annoying for you, but I think eventually the answers will become clearer.
 
NoCrbs4Me said:
I don't eat any carbs. To be more precise, I don't eat any plants or food made from plants, except some spices. Yes, people can survive like that. There are some communities of Inuit that survived for thousands of years without eating any plants. Not that I'm recommending it to anyone, but you can research it on-line by googling "zero carb" or "meat only diet".
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That's interesting that you don't eat any plant foods at all not heard that before is this because you don't like them. How do you eat if you don't have veggies with your meals and what do you have for fibre in your diet
 
khorlo said:
I tested yesterday evening at 9,30 and i was 7.3 and that was about 3 hours after dinner , almost non existent carbs in my dinner.(maybe 2 or 3 carbs)

But this morning i tested again it showed 11.3 and this was before i had anything to eat.

Why is this figure so high?
How can i prevent this from happening?
Click to expand...

Have you been moving around, I find mine is lowest first thing then it goes up, it doesn't go up if I eat.
It must be frustrating, keep testing, you might find if you get your after meal spikes down it gets your morning spikes down.
 
My BS right now is 9.7, 2 hours after breakfast.
SO there is an improvement from 11.3 as i tested at around 8.30 this morning
 
khorlo said:
My BS right now is 9.7, 2 hours after breakfast.
SO there is an improvement from 11.3 as i tested at around 8.30 this morning
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You might continue to experiment high BGs in the morning, a lot of people do. Some people call it liver dump. There is a lot written about it all over the forum.

Your BGs might fluctuate during the day and night, it is normal.

It was useful for me to look at the change in numbers initially as fluctuations rather than improvements, and then look at the patterns and see where the real improvements were. At the beginning I tracked my BGs through out the day: Fasting right after getting up, before eating, 2 hours after meals, before and after exercise, and before bed.

In general, from what I have learned from the experiences that people share in this forum morning BGs can fluctuate a lot and are very slow to come down and behave.

It helped me to think about it as a process, where general BG numbers will improve as your overall health improves. Weight loss is key in improving the numbers for a lot of people, and it all happens progressively.

Keeping a close eye on what I eat together with a record of the BG fluctuations throughout the day helped me see, for example, that certain carbs have delayed influence in the BG (6, 8, 12 hours after). In my case it helped me to see my own BG patterns and over time, how they improved with my weight loss and sustained low carb eating style.

I can't talk much about the Newcastle diet (which is a low calorie diet to help people lose weight and improve their diabetes), but I know Prof. Taylor studies seem to suggest that a significant weight loss can dramatically help in improving blood sugar levels. The means by which the weight loss is achieved is irrelevant (low carb or low calorie) but what makes a massive difference is the weight loss in itself.
 
Pinkorchid said:
That's interesting that you don't eat any plant foods at all not heard that before is this because you don't like them. How do you eat if you don't have veggies with your meals and what do you have for fibre in your diet
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Mostly I eat bacon and eggs for breakfast and steak for lunch and dinner. Fibre is not necessary or healthy.
 
CatLadyNZ said:
I think you should test and write down your readings 8 times day, along with what you are eating, and post the info here each day. After a while you will have some ideas from the experienced members here. So, that would mean telling us your fasting BG in the morning, then before breakfast and 2 hours after, before lunch and 2 hours after, before dinner and 2 hours after, and finally bedtime. Also noting the time of day for each test.

From what I understand, if you eat something just before you go to bed, it can reduce the fasting BG because of the dawn phenomenon. (Experienced members please correct me if I'm wrong).

You may need to be patient to get to the bottom of this. A few days or even a couple of weeks with these sort of numbers is not going to cause damage. It's annoying for you, but I think eventually the answers will become clearer.
Click to expand...

I am quite impatient that's right.
Somehow i thought that eating very low carb for 2 days will immediately bring the sugar level down within the normal limits.
The advice to test before and after B L D and record the results as well as the things i eat is a very good one.This way is possible to see some patterns emerging and see where i go wrong and how i can adjust.
I will also try eating something before bed to see if this will affect the BS in the morning.
 
khorlo said:
As from yesterday i started to follow the advice on LCHF given in this guide http://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/threads/a-new-low-carb-guide-for-beginners.68695/.

My food yesterday only had around 55 grams of carbs in it (100 grams of brown rice, 80 grams of butter beans 50g of sweetcorn, 4 tomatoes) and the rest was dairy, greens and chicken and no fruit at all.
Based on this, my BS levels were in the 8's and 9's.

This morning at 9 i had a salad where the only carb was 40 g of sweetcorn a tomatoe and that is about around 6 carbs
An hour after, i checked the BS levels and it was 12.6 mmol
I have no idea what is going on.

How low do i have to go in carbs intake to be at 6 or bellow 6 mmol?
Or does it take weeks and months for the LCHF diet to work and reduce the sugar levels?
Click to expand...

Hey there,

Arghhh! How frustrating!
The first thought I had was the evening carb calculation sounds a bit 'off'. Although your calculations will be right to 'official' guidelines, rice particularly can be a bit of a devil raising BGs more than it should.
Your morning rise could well just be a combination of the bit of carb along with a bit of 'dawn phenomenon' (BG's natural rise when you get up)
Don't feel disheartened. You are doing all the right things so keep it up and you will get results. Throw a little bit of exercise into the mix too and you'll be rocking!:)
 
I've just been looking at my husband's very detailed records from just over a couple of years ago. He began with a spot reading of 24. We dived straight into low carb (not so much of the high fat at that stage), but there were mistakes. At first it's just very hard to accept that certain things, for example pasta, is off the menu. The cupboard is full of the stuff and you are used to having it at least twice a week, so you have your normal Tuesday dinner (or whatever) and, despite portion control, levels shoot right up and are still high the next morning. However, by keeping records you learn and are less likely to forget.
It took nine days to get down to normal levels i.e., never over 7 and fasting no higher than low 5's, usually 4's. It was a bumpy ride on the way down. We now eat a fairly strict LCHF diet, absolutely no pasta, no bread, no fruit, no breakfast cereals or porridge and, obviously no cakes/biscuits sweets/sugary drinks. But we have the most wonderful tasty, nutritious, colourful and varied meals, so while it all seemed as if life had come to end, two years ago, in fact, it was a new and exciting beginning.
Sally
 
khorlo said:
I tested yesterday evening at 9,30 and i was 7.3 and that was about 3 hours after dinner , almost non existent carbs in my dinner.(maybe 2 or 3 carbs)

But this morning i tested again it showed 11.3 and this was before i had anything to eat.
...
My BS right now is 9.7, 2 hours after breakfast.
SO there is an improvement from 11.3 as i tested at around 8.30 this morning
Click to expand...
Yep khorlo, that was exactly how my BG levels also behaved. Weird isn't it.

Why is this figure so high?
How can i prevent this from happening?
Click to expand...
Well I have explained what worked for me above, though I'm not entirely certain that you believed it.
 
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NoCrbs4Me said:
Mostly I eat bacon and eggs for breakfast and steak for lunch and dinner. Fibre is not necessary or healthy.
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This is interesting as I have not heard of anyone else here doing zero carbs Is this just what you are doing for a while or is it going to be your forever diet I always understood that we need fibre for good intestinal transit. Do you eat dairy stuff
 
Pinkorchid said:
This is interesting as I have not heard of anyone else here doing zero carbs Is this just what you are doing for a while or is it going to be your forever diet I always understood that we need fibre for good intestinal transit. Do you eat dairy stuff
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So, where has he said he is doing zero carbs ? Surely if you want to quote something, make it relevant.
 
dannyw said:
So, where has he said he is doing zero carbs ? Surely if you want to quote something, make it relevant.
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see post #17 above
 
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