Rises / Peaks after certain foods

I'm new to this testing thing - diagnosed with Gestational Diabetes just over a week ago so I have been testing madly to see what each meal does to my levels. It was really my fasting level that got me diagnosed and it was 5.1 mmol, which I know is the new low end for getting a diagnosis. I'm curious how different foods affect our levels. I know everyone is different but in case anyone wants to compare, I'll list a few meals and post 1hr and 2 hour readings and you can tell me if they look good or look like I will be offered medication to control it. I won't find out till next week if they want me to take anything for it I guess and I might ask for a second week to tweak my diet. Morning fasting levels are hard to change though. Did you have to take insulin or Metformin for fasting levels that stayed over 5.1 mmol but mostly under 5.5 mmol? How many in this range do they allow before they push the medication?

Anyway, here's an example of one day and some foods I ate:

6:13am - Fasting overnight for 9 hours: 4.9 mmol /L
6:17am - Almonds, pine nuts, dried apple, mouthful of milk.
9am - 5.1 mmol (almost 3 hours later)
9:30am - Eggs, cheese, sourdough rye, butter
10am - Hot Cocoa on milk 1/2 tsp honey
10:30am - 7.8 mmol (60 mins post food / 30 mins post drink)
11:00am - 7.2 mmol (90 mins post food / 60 mins post drink)
11:30am - 5.7 mmol (120 mins post food / 90 mins post drink)
12:50pm - 5.4mmol (3.5 hours post food)

Later that day. After lunch.

4:15pm - 5.4 mmol (3 hours after food (steak & veges) and 2 hours after a pear) . Hungry!
4:20pm - 4 x Vita Brits, milk, teaspn honey
5:30pm - 9.0 mmol (60 mins post meal), then I ate some peptitas, sunflower and sesame seeds (just a handful)
6:30pm - 8.0 mmol (2 hours post Vita Brits)

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1 slice of bread with melted cheese, and a few strawberries - 5.0 (before); 7.8 (1hr); 6.7 (2hrs)

Cabbage salad w. chickpeas, walnuts, apple, cherry tomatoes, sunflower, sesame, pepita seeds - 4.9 (before); 6.7 (1hr); 6.3 (2 hrs)

Steak, mushroom, sweet potato, spinach 5.6 (before) 6.5 (2hrs)



One night before bed (around midnight): 5.7 mmol
Next morning fasting 7:30am (on waking) 5.0 mmol
Before eating 8:25am - 5.4 mmol (why the rise?)
Breakfast 8:50am - Scrambled eggs w cheese, avocado, cannellini beans, tomato, cucumber and a plum.
10am - 6.5 (1hr post)
11am - 5.3 (2 hrs post)

12:40pm - 5.6 (3.5hrs post breakfast and before eating lunch)
12:55pm Lunch - Corn cob, 1/4 avocado, 4 cherry tomatoes, cucumber salad w. cream, tinned tuna
3pm - 5.0 (2hrs post)

HSSS said:

I’m not a doctor and may be missing something but a fasting blood test is usually only classed as diabetic at 7mmol. Even if it was an hb1ac diagnostic level is 6.5% or 48mmol. So I’m at a loss over your diagnosis to start with

Your food and levels look pretty good. Waking it’s fine . A slight rise is common in most people due to dawn phenomenon. Food wise the vitabrits seem to be the only thing keeping you more than 2mmol above pre meal readings at 2 hrs.

If you want lower figures than your getting there are tweaks that would help before you try medications if you’d prefer that. Breads, cocoa, honey possibly the chick peas and beans for example.

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It's the new guidelines for pregnant women in Australia, (and I think Canada is the same) - they have lowered the fasting limit to under 5.1 mmol. It does seem strict compared to the 7.0 for a regular diabetes diagnosis, but it may be a prudent way of warning pregnant women to watch their levels postnatally to make sure they are not becoming pre-diabetic as they think around 50% of women diagnosed with Gestational Diabetes (possibly under the old 5.5 mmol fasting limit) end up with Type 2 diabetes within 15 years (less if you are already in your 40s I suspect). I hope they don't just lower these limits to sell more insulin . I'm reading the baby can suffer hypoglycemia whether you use insulin or not when you have GDM.

So far I am not on insulin because I am only 1 week post diagnosis and I hope this week they let me keep trying with diet alone. I did wake this morning with a 5.6 fasting at 7:44am (I finished eating around 9pm). I also measured at 3am when I got up to use the toilet and I was 5.6 mmol then too.

But then I ate breakfast cheesy scrambled eggs with 1/2 slice of my husband's heavy sourdough rye bread, butter, and a small banana, and a green tea. 2 hours later I was 5.5. Nice.

and since it's my birthday today, I had a coffee with cream and a small piece of dark chocolate with some Brazil nuts. 1 hour later I was 5.5 still - yay! and 2 hours later I was 4.7.. go figure...

So I got away with those carby things this morning, and last night's dinner was - one mince rissole, a small portion of pasta, cheese, steamed carrot and beans. 2 hours later I was 6.7 (probably higher because I'd had cocoa - and I tried Stevia & Agave syrup instead of honey but it didn't seem to help my levels much.) My peak 1 hour was 7.5 last night, which is probably not a big deal, but I've heard of people trying to keep even their spikes below 6.7 mmol. How strict that is, eh?

Anyway, my fasting levels are hard to change so far.

Diakat said:

@Cocosilk how many weeks along are you and did you have an oral glucose test?

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I'm 30 weeks now and was only diagnosed between 28 & 29 weeks under the new Australian guidelines because my fasting level was 5.1 mmol, and they want under 5.1 mmol as the new minimum, down from 5.5 mmol. My 1hr post GTT was 9.7 (they want under 10 mmol), and my 2 hour was 7.4 (they want under 8.5 mmol.)

Mbaker said:

In your scenario I would consider reducing the amount of insulin bodily requests in a day by eating a maximum of 3 times, but preferably 2 only; could the 06:17 and 09.30 meals be compressed into 1, maybe dropping the dried apple for a fresh one or half (dried = more sugar availability).

Hot cocoa usually has enough sugar so is the honey required also; if you just like the sweeter taste, how about a little stevia.

Vita Brits are 67% carbs per 100 g (like most breakfast stuff), I would swap this for something like meat or fish, or berries and yogurt with nuts. I would drop the corn on the cob and replace with say roasted butternut squash or a bigger portion of the tuna fish.

Your body does look like it is regulating sugar intake, but you can see the impact Vita Brits and Honey make (milk would not have done this), the aim is to be below 7.8 (I stay below 6 after eating) and less than a 2 mmol rise in total. It is normal to get a blood sugar rise on waking, as the body ramps up glucose once active.

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I see you are "in remission" with your diabetes. How much have your levels changed since you were diagnosed compared to now and what do you eat in a typical day? Do you do intermittent fasting?

I have to wait till after the baby is born, maybe even after I have finished breastfeeding before I can play around with fasting I think. There is a small risk of ketoacidosis in breastfeeding mothers who don't get enough nutrition, even a for a non-diabetic. Google " Ketoacidosis associated with low-carbohydrate diet in a non-diabetic lactating woman: a case report."
But reducing carbs makes sense. I only wonder about the claims I have read of Low Carb High Fat diets causing other problems - heightening insulin resistance, for example, and wonder how this plays out in the long term.

But it's clear that the current guidelines of continuing to eat carbs doesn't get anyone off the insulin, does it?

If you managed to reduce your medication, I'd love to hear more about how you did it!

Brunneria said:

@HSSS
As I understand it, diagnostic levels and acceptable blood ranges are different for gestational D.
https://www.diabetes.org.uk/profess...nitoring/new_diagnostic_criteria_for_diabetes
So are the thresholds for medication.

@Mbaker
You may have missed the fact that @Cocosilk has gestational diabetes, but I don’t think that advising fasting, even intermittent fasting, to a pregnant lady is a good idea.

Drastic dietary change is the kind of thing that may work, on an individual basis (I am never going to say never) but I really don’t think that any of us should be giving specific dietary advice in these circumstances. There are so many factors involved, including morning sickness, carb flu, stage of pregnancy, and likely future need for insulin. Any significant dietary changes in pregnancy are likely to impact a great deal. That can be good or bad, but i think this is a situation where moderation is a good idea.

Cocosilk, I am delighted your gestational diabetes has been identified so early.
You may find it useful to look at the different carb contents of fresh and dried fruit. I found it quite astonishing to discover just how concentrated the carbs get when the water is removed.

Can I make a suggestion? Can you go into your profile and change the setting to identify your type of diabetes to ‘gestational’.
That will mean that it will be written under your avatar picture beside your posts, and will help people to realise that their advice may not be appropriate. Many newbies are strongly advised to make drastic dietary changes, and your situation doesn’t necessarily make that good advice.

It would probably help if you keep mentioning that you have gestational D in your posts too. You are in a minority on the forum (but still very welcome), so much of the fasting/keto/weightloss advice won’t be appropriate.

Welcome to the forum!

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Thanks for your protectiveness of a newbie . It's important to distinguish between gestational and T1 or T2 for sure. I think I have added those things to my profile now. I also just wrote his blog this morning to introduce myself a bit in case anyone is interested. Google this and include inverted commas in the search or you won't find it: "Avoiding Diabetes and My Old Man's Surprising Eating Habits". It's completely anecdotal mind you but my father might have been on to something. Worth a read anyway I thought.

Contralto said:

You are sometimes eating stuff that creates high spikes like honey or bananas or bread or pasta. Skip a few of those and your results might be better.

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Believe it or not, I woke up with 5.6 mmol fasting level at 7:48am (it was 5.6 mmol at 3am too when I went to pee), then I ate cheesy scrambled eggs, 1/2 slice of heavy sourdough rye bread (which my husband makes), butter, a small banana and a green tea. 2 hours later my level was 5.5. But the bread I had which gave me a spike was from the supermarket, so it probably has sugar in it...
Today I even got away with a mid-morning coffee with cream and a piece of dark chocolate and a few Brazil nuts and one hour later 5.5, then 2 hours later 4.7 mmol... go figure!

Maybe there is more sugar in supermarket "sourdough rye" bread from Coles Supermarket than in Aldi's Moser Roth Orange Almond dark chocolate...ha ha Have to look into that one.

Contralto said:

bread itself is high carb, thus acting like sugar. chocolate spikes me, unless it's at least 90% and a tiny piece. unless you single tested bread at the before and two hours later mark in isolation, you cannot ascribe to a single ingredient. The butter (fat) would mitigate the carbs somewhat. Bananas will spike almost everyone even someone with mild prediabetes like yourself

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I believe you. The eggs and the butter probably help reduce the severity of the spike with bread and banana, right? I bet just bread and banana alone wouldn't be very good, would it?
The thing I was wondering about with the fats mitigating the carb spikes is whether the claims that the fats somehow block up your cells making you more insulin resistant are true or not. I mean, if you are trying one of those extreme diets, like the Keto diet, where people find their blood sugar levels become stable but if they try to eat carbs again, or have to do a GTT, they get really bad spikes again. Or are we just not supposed to be eating the amount of carbs that we have all become accustomed to anyway perhaps? Not just the amount of carbs, but the amount of food full stop (in my case at least - and I'm not even that overweight - I'm just having babies late in life and find it hard to drop the 2kg souvenir I get left after each baby - because eating to keep myself awake has become a bad habit

Mbaker said:

Hi @Cocosilk my numbers have changed a lot. Random / fasting blood glucose was circa 20 mmol, now between 3.8 and 4.5 (depends on weight training levels).

For either 4 or 3 days out of a week I do one meal a day. If 2 meals a day, a typical days meals would be:

Around midday - Strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, natural Greek yogurt, brazil nuts, almonds, pecans, hazelnuts, walnuts, macadamia nuts (Waitrose essentials peanuts (4.6 grams per 100)).

Dinner (15.00 - 17.00) - Always meat / fish, typically roasted butternut squash, courgette, cherry tomatoes, green beans, cauliflower, broccoli, red pepper.

Or

Chicken Curry with cauliflower rice

Or

Carnivore - 2 ribeyes, or a kilo of ribs or grilled Jamaican chicken

I tend to have a desert - always 4 to 8 segments of 100% Montezuma Dark Chocolate with Pancakes (1/4 cup cream cheese, 1/4 cup of coconut flour, 2 eggs, tsp of bicarbonate of soda, baobab (sometimes add vanilla or butter scotch extract, ginger, nutmeg and or cinnamon). I fry in MCT oil.

Or

I make flax mug bread (1/4 cup of flax meal, tsp of bicarbonate of soda, an egg), with cheese and or Marmite.

(some meals in the last 2 weeks)
View attachment 31788

Yes, I have fasted for up to 5 days, but would tend to maximise on 1.5 days after testing muscle loss (in my case at 1.5 days).

LCHF / Keto (exercise) reduces insulin resistance in most cases, some get IR when consuming diary, which is why self testing is all conquering. There is a lot of noise in the media, as LCHF / Keto has gained some traction and is ruffling feathers - what I have seen, is that persons who undertake LCHF / Keto tend to report medically backed (numbers) improvements (fbg, HbA1c, hypertension, liver functions, HDL, Trigs, fasting insulin (HOMA-IR), hs-crp, etc).

Please note that I am not advocating that you fast during this time, just perhaps tweak the types of carbs to minimal starch to be safe and eat to satiety (as often as you feel), nutrient density is clearly important.

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Hey thanks for such a detailed response! I want to reply properly but my charger on my laptop just died and typing on my mobile is tedious so I will cone back to you soon! I appreciate the advice and love the meal photos

Mbaker said:

Hi @Cocosilk my numbers have changed a lot. Random / fasting blood glucose was circa 20 mmol, now between 3.8 and 4.5 (depends on weight training levels).

For either 4 or 3 days out of a week I do one meal a day. If 2 meals a day, a typical days meals would be:

Around midday - Strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, natural Greek yogurt, brazil nuts, almonds, pecans, hazelnuts, walnuts, macadamia nuts (Waitrose essentials peanuts (4.6 grams per 100)).

Dinner (15.00 - 17.00) - Always meat / fish, typically roasted butternut squash, courgette, cherry tomatoes, green beans, cauliflower, broccoli, red pepper.

Or

Chicken Curry with cauliflower rice

Or

Carnivore - 2 ribeyes, or a kilo of ribs or grilled Jamaican chicken

I tend to have a desert - always 4 to 8 segments of 100% Montezuma Dark Chocolate with Pancakes (1/4 cup cream cheese, 1/4 cup of coconut flour, 2 eggs, tsp of bicarbonate of soda, baobab (sometimes add vanilla or butter scotch extract, ginger, nutmeg and or cinnamon). I fry in MCT oil.

Or

I make flax mug bread (1/4 cup of flax meal, tsp of bicarbonate of soda, an egg), with cheese and or Marmite.

(some meals in the last 2 weeks)
View attachment 31788

Yes, I have fasted for up to 5 days, but would tend to maximise on 1.5 days after testing muscle loss (in my case at 1.5 days).

LCHF / Keto (exercise) reduces insulin resistance in most cases, some get IR when consuming diary, which is why self testing is all conquering. There is a lot of noise in the media, as LCHF / Keto has gained some traction and is ruffling feathers - what I have seen, is that persons who undertake LCHF / Keto tend to report medically backed (numbers) improvements (fbg, HbA1c, hypertension, liver functions, HDL, Trigs, fasting insulin (HOMA-IR), hs-crp, etc).

Please note that I am not advocating that you fast during this time, just perhaps tweak the types of carbs to minimal starch to be safe and eat to satiety (as often as you feel), nutrient density is clearly important.

Click to expand...

Okay, my charger decided to work again.. so I'm just re-reading your post. Have you managed to stop using medication for diabetes by eating like this? Fasting level of 20 mmol must have been a shock! You would be getting symptoms at that rate, wouldn't you? It's pretty amazing that you get 3.8 - 4.5 now. You can't do that without medication, can you? Or have your eating habits made that happen?? How much time did such an adjustment in levels take??

I just had to look up the OMAD diet - now I see, one meal a day you have 3 -4 times a week, and otherwise you skip at least one meal and only eat 2 meals a day on the other days?

It's funny how we all focus on what to eat when maybe the key is to focus on when not to eat and to just stop overeating. I've been overeating this past few years. It's definitely taxing on the body.

Well, your story is inspiring for sure! Thanks again!