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Porridge

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Vince01

Well-Known Member
Messages
54
Hi all,
Best wishes for a better 2023.
I'm not exactly new ,about 18 months but still very confused.
I have porridge for breakfast and my levels go from around 6.7 ( at 1030 am to over 15mmol 2 hours later but I need the energy as I'm quite active.
Is this normal, I'm taking sukkarto 500mg twice a day.
Thanks for any reply.

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Vince01 said:
my levels go from around 6.7 ( at 1030 am to over 15mmol 2 hours later but I need the energy as I'm quite active.
Click to expand...
There's energy from carbs and energy from food that doesn;t spike your blood sugar like that though.

I'll second eggs and bacon although I rarely eat breakfast and go through the morning on coffees with double cream .

First meal usually at 3-4 pm followed by dinner at 7 pm.
 
Antje77 said:
Porridge has a lot of carbs, which make your blood glucose go up.

What about getting the energy from a good portion of bacon, eggs and tomatoes?
Click to expand...
Thanks for your help, I'm a quick breakfast type of person, down the hatch and out!!.
Plus not a very good cook, I have been living off grilled chicken since being diagnosed and I'm really really sick of it. T2 has panicked me so my meals are very boring and basic.
I thought porridge was slow in getting into the blood? If so why a spike so soon? Many thanks. Vince.

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bulkbiker said:
There's energy from carbs and energy from food that doesn;t spike your blood sugar like that though.

I'll second eggs and bacon although I rarely eat breakfast and go through the morning on coffees with double cream .

First meal usually at 3-4 pm followed by dinner at 7 pm.
Click to expand...
Thanks for your reply.
I seem to be always hungry so I need to eat breakfast, never before T2, also if I do my excerise without it I get the shakes and wobbly legs, it seems to me to be a hypo but my DN says T2s don't get them. I did a reading after x (whilst having the wobblies) and my mmol was 6.5 took 5 glucose tablets and 10 minutes later was fine???.

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If you want a quick breakfast just have cheese, any cold meat, or hard boil some eggs (add eggs to cold water, bring to boil, cook for 6-7 mins (depending on size) then run cold water over them until cool, store in fridge in their shells.

and 6.5 is not anywhere near the hypo range - sounds like you have false hypos? which are common in T2s as our high blood glucose starts to drop towards the normal range.
www.diabetes.co.uk

Normal and Diabetic Blood Sugar Level Ranges

Normal blood sugar ranges and blood sugar ranges for adults and children with type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes and blood sugar ranges to determine diabetes.
www.diabetes.co.uk www.diabetes.co.uk
 
Vince01 said:
Thanks for your reply.
I seem to be always hungry so I need to eat breakfast, never before T2, also if I do my excerise without it I get the shakes and wobbly legs, it seems to me to be a hypo but my DN says T2s don't get them. I did a reading after x (whilst having the wobblies) and my mmol was 6.5 took 5 glucose tablets and 10 minutes later was fine???.

Sent from my SM-A137F using Diabetes Forum mobile app
Click to expand...
No you don't! Why do you need to eat porridge?
There are many, many other foods that will help you that don't spike your blood glucose levels so quickly.
The dsn is wrong! T2s do get hypos, because of meds. Also, like me, I have a condition that is non diabetic and I will go hypo If I eat porridge. What I suspect you were getting the wobbles is called a false hypo.

I use intermittent fasting, like a lot of T2s, you need control over your blood glucose levels. Not continuous spikes from carbs.
I suspect the quick spike is from a combination of insulin resistance and first phase insulin response.
Have you ever tried exercise without a carby meal. I do it all the time!
My energy levels are great and I'm never hungry.
Why?
I avoid carbs!

Dieidoctor.com is a great source of dietary advice for T2s.

A change of lifestyle dietary changes are essential to your future health.
T2 can be controlled.
 
I found the whole finding the right breakfast the most challenging. I wear a Libre 2 so could see what different options were doing to my BG. In the end I settled on Plain Yoghurt with peanut butter swirled into it. I am same as you and need a quick breakfast and I also do t like/enjoy/came stomach a cooked breakfast at breakfast time (later in the day I’m fine with it). The yoghurt peanut butter option nearly touches my BG so it may be something to try and see how it works for you.
 
I can scramble eggs quicker than the kettle boils And definitely faster than porridge

eggs, as many as you need/like
handful of grated cheese
half teaspoon of mild mustard (you don’t taste the mustard but it does elevate the taste - trust me)
salt and pepper
Optional - any old prepped veg or cold meat or even tinned fish you have laying around or fancy as optional bulk out.
optional - Dash of cream for richness and to add more filling natural fats.

put the pan on the heat, add a knob of butter if your pan sticks, gather your ingredients
break eggs directly into the pan and stir robustly with a silicon/wooden spatula
add the rest and stir again til it’s cooked to your desired doneness (remember eggs continue cooking in their own heat after you take them out of the pan)

minimal carbs and keeps you full for ages.

I agree 6.5 is not a true hypo and all those glucose tabs overkill for a type 2 on metformin alone . The only way your body will get used to properly normal levels is to experience them.
 
Clearly for you (and for me, incidentally) the carbs in porridge get into your bloodstream quickly. The problem with elevating your BGs is that they do come down and that in itself will trigger both hunger and the wobblies. I do miss porridge in theory but I prefer to keep my BGs stable and in normal range. Porridge would wreck that for me.

When I have breakfast (which is not that often) it's eggs, sometimes with bacon, sometimes not. Two eggs will cook scrambled in 30 seconds, and I vary it with a bit of grated cheese or salami or herbs. Omelets take only a little bit longer.

I also find that I have no problems with energy since ditching almost all carbs. Played an hour of football today, drove 80 miles and had nothing but two coffees with cream up to 5pm. Ate properly at 7. Unfortunately a lot of the official advice (since 1980 or so) still endorses eating lots of carbs and is not very helpful to many of us. What you read in the media is often worse.
 
I have found porridge to be fine for myself, as it happens. I have it for breakfast three times a week, 40g of it. For good measure I add 5 prunes as well, so all this plus milk comes to about 39g of carbs in total. I have finger-pricked this several times and found an almost invariant bg profile. Before eating about 6.0, after 45 minutes about 8.1, at 60 minutes about 7.8 and at 2 hours back to 6.1 or maybe 5.9. So I think a tolerable response. I also found no change in this profile if I omitted the prunes. But all this is only what I would expect after reducing BMI from 26.4 on diagnosis to 20.1 in a few months, allowing liver and pancreas to pretty well normalise, as the science suggests. The only food that I’ve found to produce a spike of about 9.5, after testing out many scores of meal types, is squash, heaven knows why. So I keep away from that. My other 4 breakfasts in the week are much less carby but only by reason of liking some variety.
 
Vince01 said:
I seem to be always hungry
Click to expand...
So what are you usually eating the problem is likely to be found there. ?

Vince01 said:
my mmol was 6.5 took 5 glucose tablets and 10 minutes later was fine???.
Click to expand...
The 6.5 mmol/l would be too high for me so there's no way I'd be going anywhere near glucose tablets after that reading.. what was it when it was "fine"?
 
Massive overreaction to a normal if slightly high level, your body cannot get used to lowered levels if you don't let it experience them, and realise that it's not a problem. FORGET everything you think of as healthy to eat, IT'S wrong for a type 2 diabetic. Lack of energy is because your body is running on carbs and quickly runs out. if properly fat adapted if the tank runs low your body just burns some stored fat you don't even notice, and will probably suddenly realise that you haven't eaten lunch as you weren't hungry.
 
Nicki70 said:
I found the whole finding the right breakfast the most challenging. I wear a Libre 2 so could see what different options were doing to my BG. In the end I settled on Plain Yoghurt with peanut butter swirled into it. I am same as you and need a quick breakfast and I also do t like/enjoy/came stomach a cooked breakfast at breakfast time (later in the day I’m fine with it). The yoghurt peanut butter option nearly touches my BG so it may be something to try and see how it works for you.
Click to expand...
Thanks Nicki70,
I've been having yoghurt for a dessert but it gets expensive, Skype,arla etc good protein but also quite a lot of carbs, NOW, unflavoured yoghurt for breakfast (45p) and peanut butter, that I would never have thought of!!.
Thank you.

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HSSS said:
I can scramble eggs quicker than the kettle boils And definitely faster than porridge

eggs, as many as you need/like
handful of grated cheese
half teaspoon of mild mustard (you don’t taste the mustard but it does elevate the taste - trust me)
salt and pepper
Optional - any old prepped veg or cold meat or even tinned fish you have laying around or fancy as optional bulk out.
optional - Dash of cream for richness and to add more filling natural fats.

put the pan on the heat, add a knob of butter if your pan sticks, gather your ingredients
break eggs directly into the pan and stir robustly with a silicon/wooden spatula
add the rest and stir again til it’s cooked to your desired doneness (remember eggs continue cooking in their own heat after you take them out of the pan)

minimal carbs and keeps you full for ages.

I agree 6.5 is not a true hypo and all those glucose tabs overkill for a type 2 on metformin alone . The only way your body will get used to properly normal levels is to experience them.
Click to expand...
Hi HSSS,
Just need to go shopping, my cabinets are not used to different foods ,been eating the same for ages,definitely give that a go, sounds quite easy but me and cooking, well, I'm better tiling the floor!

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Hi all,
Further to recent info from posts I have been on a very low carb intake but my levels are still up, any idea how long they will take to down even a bit, at the moment I'm around 10mmol.
Thanks.

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Half the time I skip breakfast unless I am poorly or genuinely hungry for some reason. Eggs are my go too of some description either with something or eggs added to something , they are quick and fill me up a treat.
 
Vince01 said:
Hi all,
Further to recent info from posts I have been on a very low carb intake but my levels are still up, any idea how long they will take to down even a bit, at the moment I'm around 10mmol.
Thanks.

Sent from my SM-A137F using Diabetes Forum mobile app
Click to expand...
It may take some time to come down but that's okay. Our bodies are all individual. The first step is to measure before a meal and two hours afterwards to see what the change is. That will let you know what level of carbs your body can cope with. Keeping your intake under that will let the levels come down.

It needs to be a way of eating that you can maintain so having some easy go to meals is essential. I find that I eat a lot of the same meals or types of meals which reduces the need for testing quite as often.
 
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