Testing after meals question

[May Mic]

I know that 2 hours is a usual wait time but what I don't know is how long the meal should last. I mean I could nibble for two hours and call it a meal but is there a generally recognized time frame for meal completion after you start eating?

 

[LivingLightly]

Hello and welcome to the forum @May Mic.

Yes, you’ll learn most from blood glucose levels just before you start a meal and then two hours later. The post-meal reading should be no more than 2 mmol/l higher than the first and not higher than 8 mmol/l. If that's the case, your body dealt with the arrival of glucose in your bloodstream and cleared it relatively quickly.

 

[lovinglife]

I know that 2 hours is a usual wait time but what I don't know is how long the meal should last. I mean I could nibble for two hours and call it a meal but is there a generally recognized time frame for meal completion after you start eating?

It’s best not to nibble for 2hrs if you can help it as that’s not a meal it’s grazing. Also avoid snacking if you can. This will signal your body that you are eating and will throw out insulin constantly to deal with it, as T2s our responses are “broken” and our body can’t use the insulin efficiently.

The best way to test to see what your food is test just before 1st bite then 2hrs later as @LivingLightly has described. Sometimes our meals do last longer than expected such as when eating out etc. in the early days if this happened to me I would also test at 3hrs as well.

Now I’m keto on less than 20g carb a day with a battery full of tested meals I don’t test very often. I do test a new food or meal and sometimes do a week of tests e.g. fasting first thing in the morning then all my meals as described above just to make sure I’m not getting complacent or that things have changed for me.