Potential Low Carb Convert

[goji]

Hi

I'm new to the forum and am really keen on finding out more about the low-carb approach as I think I have been addicted to carbs for years. I have just ordered Bernstein's book.

I think I would find it hard to do 40g of carbs a day but I will aim for a reduction.

So far my questions are..........

1) I saw on one post that Sarah Q said to someone on a no-carb diet.......'You will find that you will need to bolus for the protein/fat anyway'. Does this mean that if I ate say fish and a salad, I would still need to cover it with NovoRapid? How do you calculate the dosage for just fat/protein?

2) I don't eat meat but I do eat fish. What would you eat for brekkie? (I currently eat one scrambled egg plus half a brown pitta toasted - I don't think I could stomach eating just an egg). Are there any good options for people who don't like sausages/bacon?

3) As I don't eat meat, it sounds like on low-carb I would need to eat a lot of eggs. I have high cholesterol (but don't want statins). Will more than one egg a day be a problem?

4) Can you eat the following: ice-cream, lentils, chick peas, beans and pulses etc? If not what kind of stuff can you eat? Is it just a lot of meat?

5) If you take your basal insulin (Levemir) don't you need to cover that with some carbohydrates? I have to say I am quite confused as I thought the whole point of taking insulin was that it allows you to transport glucose into your cells in order to give you energy. If you don't eat carbs, where do you get the glucose/energy from? (I've never studied diabetes so I don't have that complex an idea of how it all works - but I learn quickly .)

Thanks
Goji
Ps I am IDDM on NovoRapid and Levemir
PPS The only thing I know about dosing is that 10g of carbs = 1 unit of NR. I wasn't taught about dosing for fat/protein.

 

[crafteclaire]

Hi Gojo,

I am a 'low-carb' convert myself. Started on 2nd September, and have had amazing results. Before, on a complex-carb diet, I was running between 1.8 and 33.0. I'm now running between 2.5 and 13.3, and the lows and highs within that range are few and far between.

The levemir is the long acting insulin, isn't it? That is your background insulin, required for your body to run without considering food. (i'm on a pump myself, and the 'basal' rate is the equivalent of injecting a long acting insulin). The Novorapid is rapid acting insulin, the equivalent of me taking 'bolus' amounts of insulin. This is the bit you have to compensate for eating food.

I had the same worries as you re: how much insulin to take if eating no carbs.

When I started on the low-carb diet, I was extremely cautious. When you start it, do it when you have no need to do anything much - ie NOT on a work day. Test your BMs hourly to start with, until you get a feel for it all.

I was more worried about having hypos than my bm rocketing up, so if I had a meal with no carbs, I simply had a bolus of 2 units (for you, that would be Novorapid). If its an evening meal and there are no carbs on the plate, I still have quite a large quantity of food, and so take 4 units.

If you're really worried about hypos, just make sure you've got a packet of dextrose tablets to hand so you can treat any drops quickly and effectively.

I have to say that although i felt quite sceptical inside, I decided that nothing could make my control any worse than it was, despite having 31 years experience of diabetes under my belt, so I tried the diet 'for a couple of days'. 11 days later, I'm still here, and even my diabetes nurse is amazed that I have an average blood sugar, taken over 7 days, of 7.3 - I've never been in single figures for an average since I was in the paediatric diabetic clinic!!!! AND, I weighed myself today at the gym and found I've lost 5lb in weight since 1st September - without calorie counting or 'deiting'.

Keep a check on ketones, if you're low carbing. I personally have found that if I have something very high in fat - like a full fried breakfast - I can find I have ketones of ++ or more, if I've had no carbs. Needless to say, I now avoid doing this, as I'm not sure of the repercussions on my body.

I'm going to the hospital myself on 22nd Sept for blood tests, and will have the results on 25th when I see my specialist, so take a look on the 'delight of Hypos' forum if you want to see the thread leading up to my 'low carbing' regieme, and on the Success Stories thread (after 25th Sept) to see the results of my blood tests.

I'll finish here, just to say - TRY IT! Nothing ventured, nothing gained, and if you're struggling like I was with your control, this can't do any harm, even if you only give it a few days, eh? :lol:

Any questions, please feel free to PM me, or post on here and I'll check back when I have chance.

Good luck,

 

[crafteclaire]

Sorry, I didn't answer your questions.

Ice cream is quite low gi but high in sugar so be careful with your Novorapid. There's a lot of sugar there, but it will be released into your system slowly and over a long period of time.
Not sure about the other carbs you mentioned as I don't really eat any of them personally.

If you're doing pasta or rice, the recommendations I've read on here are to have just 1 desert spoon with your meal.

No, it's not all meat - | personally eat more vegetables than anything, but beware the root veggies, as they can be quite hight in carbs / or high GI.

The main reason for eating plenty of protein is that it will fill you up for longer, and so stop you from 'snacking' inbetween mealtimes.

40g of cho a day???? How much are you eating at the moment on average? I'd say halve it to begin with, then try to gradually work down to your goal. I'm on 50 - 60 a day. 100g if I'm doing a full workout at the gym.

Fish salad - I'd go for 2 units first time and see where it takes you.

For breakfast, I'll have egg and milk shake/bacon and egg/fry up with just the bits I like (no carbs). If I'm at the gym that day, I'll have a bowl of porridge - High carbs, I know, but low gi so it prevents the post-exercise hypos.

I don't know anyting about cholesterol levels, but there's more protein ruch foods than red meat, aren't there? What about poultry or fish?? Someone else on here will have to answer that one, but I'm trying to have a healthy balance of everything, personally. I'll wait and see what my cholesterol is on 22nd Sept, before I advise on this one!

Re your signature - 10g cho - 1u NR - I've always gone with 10g cho = 2u Rapid acting??? Maybe it's a different rule for each person? Whatever you do, I'd go with minimal insulin amounts for the carb free meals.

Hope this helps.

:mrgreen:

 

[Tigerhair]

Breakfast kippers?

 

[Katharine]

Hi and welcome.

The best insulin to cover meat and low starch vegetables is regular insulin. This is also known as soluble inslulin and some makes are:actrapid, humulin S or hypurin.

This starts working in about 30 mins after injection, peaks at 2.5 hour, is mainly over at 5 hours and has a tail till 8 hours. Meat takes longer to digest in the gut and longer to turn into glucose when it is being metabolised so is suited to a longer acting insulin. Many big meat meals will take about 8 hours to digest (pizza and lasagne also have this pattern) and you may even need to inject some of the regular insulin dose again after the meal to get perfect insulin coverage. The basic formula is 2 units actrapid or similar insulin for each 3oz size of lean meat or deck of cards size portion of eg beef or 3 eggs.

I love fish. Lidl's do very fair priced smoked trout and salmon. I wouldn't have the garlic one first thing though. There are also plain and pepper versions. Vegetable omlettes are good too eg mushrooms/ onion/peas/peppers.

You can eat as many eggs as you like. Dietary cholesterol intake has precious little to do with blood levels and you may be interested to hear that blood total cholesterol levels have nothing much to to with cardiovascular disease either. It is the lipid pattern that is important. I personally eat about 18 eggs a week and I'm not even a vegetarian!

You can eat ice cream in small amounts and low carb ice cream in big amounts. A typical chocolate covered vanilla ice cream lolly will have about 30g of carb in it. For an occasional treat after a meat and salad lunch this is acceptable to many diabetics. You have to see what it does to your blood sugars and decide for yourself.

Chick peas, beans and pulses can be higher in carbs than the meat and veg of course but have more nutrients and fibre and affect your blood sugars much less than bread and potatoes and sugars. Pasta tends to be released quite a bit slower than other flour products and you may get normal blood sugars with small amounts. You can also buy low carb versions of pasta.

I expect that you will want to base many meals on legumes and pulses given that you will not be eating meat. That is fair enough. The good thing about using insulin is that you can learn to adjust it to nearly any sort of meal and with tweaks here and there you can have very good blood sugar control.

The idea of the basal insulin like levemir is that it provides the background insulin to deal with the blood sugars that your liver makes all the time whether you eat or not. Ideally you should have this at a level that means it does not rise too much in the 24 hours and won't need carb to keep the sugar level high enough even if you don't eat.

The course at http://www.dsolve.com should help you.


Please let us know if this is making things a bit clearer for you.

 

[fergus]

Hi goji,

It's worth confirming Katherine's point about the types of bolus insulins best suited to low-carb meals. I'm type 1 and struggled at first to keep hypos at bay when eating a meal of, say, meat and vegetables. The Humalog I used worked too quickly for the slow release of glucose when eating a large meal, at dinner for example.
When I started using Humulin S, I found it worked much better.
At 18 eggs a week, Katherine, you need to get yourself some chickens! I get through 14 a week so perhaps we should join forces and become Scotland's answer to Bernard Mathews?

All the best,

fergus

 

[sugarless sue]

Have a few free range hens in the garden,Fergus,I'm sure the neighbours wouldn't mind!! :twisted: :twisted:

 

[goji]

Hi everyone

Thanks so much for your advice. What you suggest is so much more helpful than what I got from the Diabetes dietician. She didn't mention anything about covering protein with insulin or reducing carbs.

So far I've reduced carbs to about 90g a day (which is a lot less than I was on before :shock: ) and my sugars are improving so much already. My fasting bloods are down to 4.5 and they haven't gone above 8. This is all with less insulin than I was on before.

Only other question is.... last night I tested my urine. I had a blood glucose of 7.8 and a 1+ of ketones. At what blood glucose level do you consider it a problem to have ketones while following a low-carb diet?

Thanks

Goji

 

[Katharine]

A chicken from next doors chicken farm escaped into our garden. It made a terrible mess and scattered bedding plants everywhere. It laid an egg on the porch window sill. Rather messy!

Our cat Merly gave it a really wide berth. We had to get the chicken farm owners to come and get it.

 

[sugarless sue]

You didn't catch it then?

 

[IanD]

You didn't catch it then?

July 12th (my parents joint birthday) 1957 (the year I went to university) there was heavy rain, & the stream at the bottom of our garden overflowed, bringing a gosling with it. Dad adopted it & added it to his fowl collection.

Ozzy did not need to be caged like the chickens, became a pet & had free run of the flower area of a large garden near the house where (s)he acted as a watchdog. HONK! Poor cat wouldn't say "BOO" to the goose.

4 days before Christmas, Ozzy attacked my little sister.... Delicious, & low carb. 40 years later I developed diabetes.

 

[sugarless sue]

You didn't catch it then?

July 12th (my parents joint birthday) 1957 (the year I went to university) there was heavy rain, & the stream at the bottom of our garden overflowed, bringing a gosling with it. Dad adopted it & added it to his fowl collection.

Ozzy did not need to be caged like the chickens, became a pet & had free run of the flower area of a large garden near the house where (s)he acted as a watchdog. HONK! Poor cat wouldn't say "BOO" to the goose.

4 days before Christmas, Ozzy attacked my little sister.... Delicious, & low carb. 40 years later I developed diabetes.

I know this thread is derailed again but that brought back so many memories of a childhood being terrorised by a particularly vicious gander!!One day I summoned the courage to chase that blasted bird all the way around a field.He never bothered me again...just a typical bully!!!

 

[crafteclaire]

Apparently, ducks do not mess your garden up like chickens. Are duck eggs as nice as chicken eggs? Ducks also need a lot less looking after and are not as prone to infections!!! :!:

 

[sugarless sue]

Ducks eat any old thing and their eggs ,although nice,can be a bit dodgy!!Trust me,ducks **** as much as chickens!!

 

[Tigerhair]

Ducks are MUCH smellier than chickens...

 

[Katharine]

Last Spring we were at Castle Howard where Brideshead Revisited was filmed. I was amazed at the size of the duck turds. The same size as a dogs. I'm not kidding.

None of us were brave enough to catch the chicken. I don't think we would do too well as hunter gatherers. In fact we would make ourselves extinct.

 

[chocoholic]

Are you sure they weren't from the peacocks, Katherine? I spent a good hour there trying to get a decent photo of one of the peacocks and they are very messy.(A greaat place to visit though!)

 

[Katharine]

No. I'm certain. I had never seen a duck actually drop one and I was quite shocked !

 

[sugarless sue]

They say that if you drop a piece of fatty pork tied to a piece of string and a duck eats it,it will go through the duck and pass out then the next duck eats it till you have a line of ducks strung together.Not that I would ever advocate trying this you understand or indeed have tried it myself when younger..........[[Whistles under breath and creeps away]]] 8) 8) :twisted: