Type 2 Rising fasting blood sugars

[Sixpence]

Hi everyone,

Last Autumn my morning fasting blood sugar started to creep up from being in the normal levels (under 6.1) up into the pre-diabetic levels. I have been on LCHF (~ 50g CHO ) for almost a year since my diagnosis and have lost two stones in weight and had got my HbA1c down from 48 in February to 39 in November. While I've read about people feeling great on LCHF after they've adapted to it, I've never felt really good on it but I stuck with it because it offered me hope! And it did deliver lower HbA1c which has got to be good.

At the beginning of December I spoke with a dietician from the X-Pert diabetes course I attended in the Spring and she felt I was eating too little carbohydrate. Her explanation of my rising fasting blood sugar was that I now have no glycogen reserves in my muscles so my liver is pushing out more glucose to compensate. The way out of this was to eat more carbs. Just before Christmas, this came as great news!!

While I didn't go wild on carbs, I definitely ate more ~ 100g CHO which is still below the 130g the dietician wants me to eat. My difficulty now is that I am craving chocolate like never before and I feel tired and cold all the time. When I try to drop back to low carb I am constantly hungry. Eating more fat doesn't satisfy my hunger. I can eat 100g almonds in one go and still feel starving.

I am completely fed up with feeling tired and hungry all the time and seeing no improvement in my blood sugars. Can anyone show me the way out of this mess?

 

[daisyduck]

Eating too many carbs makes me crave them again.
Have you tried upping the fat in your diet ? Cheese usually satisfies hunger for me

 

[Bluetit1802]

Have you gone back down to under 50g carbs?
If not, it will be the carbs keeping you hungry, it's what they do. (in addition to raising BS levels)
Carbs also create cravings for more carbs.
I'm not at all sure your X-pert lady was right in what she said. You really have to be very low carb for that sort of thing to happen.

Can you give us some clues about what you are eating and drinking in a typical day?

 

[Pinkorchid]

Eating more carbs does not necessarily mean you have to binge on the starchy stuff like bread rice pasta and potatoes just eat more of the food you were having. Maybe the problem is that you are simply not eating enough I am someone who never has much of an appetite since T2. I have to make myself eat enough otherwise I just feel generally run down also if I don't eat enough I loose weight that I don't need to. I do have something naughty sometimes like some chips or a jacket potato with lashings of tuna and cheese because when I do crave for something it is not chocolate or sweet stuff it is ..potatoes.

 

[Sixpence]

No, Bluetit1802, I haven't managed to go back to under 50g carbs a day. I'm not sure I have a typical day when it comes to food but here's the breakdown of a couple of recent days:
2 oatcakes for breakfast - nothing on them; lunch =cooked breakfast at Morrisons: fired egg, potato scone, slice bacon, 2 slices Lorne sausage. Afternoon snack: small handful hazelnuts, medium apple, small chunk cheddar. Dinner: courgettes fried in olive oil, 1 poppadum, few cashew nuts, 4 squares 85% choc (10g carb). Blood sugar the next morning = 6.7
2 boiled eggs, 3 sesame ryvitas (15g carb), butter marmite, satsuma. Small can chick peas (20g carb), tuna, satsuma, 4 squares choc (20g carb). Tin of chicken, bacon and potato soup, 3 oatcakes, 2 squares choc (!), satsuma. 1.00 am 2 small bowls muesli with milk. Blood sugar the next morning: a surprisingly low 5.5.
Quite why my blood sugar should be lower when I've had muesli in the middle of the night is beyond me.

As you'll see I am giving in to the chocolate craving to some extent but I'm not eating huge amounts of carbs. I'm trying to eat less saturated fat so I'm eating more almonds, walnuts and hazelnuts and less cheese.

Raising my carb intake just seems to have made me hungry all the time. I have read that I need to be eating less saturated fat, be eating HCLF, or be on a low-fat vegan diet. I do try to eat low GI carbs.

 

[Bluetit1802]

Are you only testing in the mornings?

If I were you I would start testing before you eat and again 2 hours later and see how much you are rising. More than 2mmol/l (preferably less) and there are more carbs than you can tolerate. If the carbs are low GI you also need to test after the 2 hour mark as they sometimes take longer to digest. From what you say above you are eating a lot of carbs, and too much fruit.

Raising your carbs will definitely make you hungry. You need less carbs, more fats, more protein.

 

[Sixpence]

I suspect there's no easy answer to explain why my fasting BS started rising . Eating more carbs as the dietician suggested hasn't brought my fasting BS back into the normal range again. My eating is more erratic though and I guess that isn't helping. I think I need to cut back on the carbs again and see what happens with my energy levels and hunger as well as my BS.

Thanks for your replies and hugs!