Thanks for your reply … totally acknowledge figures are still too high but I’m taking solace in the fact they are lower than before.
So my breakfast today (and most days) is berries with nuts and Greek yoghurt… because of the dawn phenomenon am I better off going down the route of your suggestions above? Maybe keep my berries and yoghurt for later in the day ?
I didn’t have any major carbs last night in my evening meal …. I had a chicken salad
I’ve effectively cut out the obvious carbs like sugar bread potatoes grains rice etc.
I’m trying to lose some excess weight as well as trying to reduce BP and cholesterol so the thoughts of introducing more fat is daunting… but I have switched to full fat milk for my decaf coffee and full fat Greek yoghurt… I also eat nuts (unsalted) …. What else could I introduce without having a detrimental effect on weight, BP and cholesterol?
Hi, well done on the reduction so far. If you're aiming to reduce carbs, fats are your friend. They will fill you up and provide plenty of energy. Carbs are digested to glucose, which is stored as body fat. Fats (dietary fats) are converted to fatty acids, in the main, and don't become body fat. This isn't anything new - it's the standard "lose weight" advice that docs used to give people up to around 1980, since when we've had the rises in T2 and obesity.
If you're trying to lose body fat, reducing your dietary fat intake will have no direct impact. What reducing fat intake can do is cut off a supply of energy so that your system uses up what carb you eat, ensuring there's no excess so there is no surplus glucose to be stored as fat. However, this can be tricky to get right and involves running an energy deficit for an extended period, which usually results in hunger, and provokes the body into "energy-saving" which slows down your metabolism. That's my experience having failed repeatedly with calorie/fat reduction diets. On the other hand, I lost around six stone 2020-24 with very low carb, was never hungry, and put my BG into normal range within 4 months. My cholesterol (which I don't think is an indicator of anything much) is exactly what it has always been - again, not that surprising given that around 80% of cholesterol in the body is made by one's liver and is nothing to do with what's in food.
That's just my experience with having (comparatively) a lot of natural fats in my diet.
Nuts can be problematic. Some are fine, others (eg cashews and peanuts) are relatively high in carb. It's worth testing just to check what their impact is. For me three almonds in the morning is enough to persuade my liver that "I've got food" and to stip making glucose.
Lots of things affect BG - ambient temperature, stress, adrenaline, exercise, illness (my BG knows when I'm about to have a cold a day or two before me), time of day, sleep patterns - there's ahuge list of things people report affecting BG levels. Most, if not all, of these are nothing to do with food, but are the result of your liver deciding that the system needs a bit more glucose. Livers also get used to BG levels, and will then do their best to maintain it - so if you've been running high for a while, the liver thinks of that as normal, and it can take months for it to get used to the idea that a lower BG is OK too. I haven't really found any way via diet, exercise etc to make the liver get on with it, although what metformin does is to interfere to some extent with the liver making glucose itself.
The other thing about testing before and after meals is that (assuming some level of carb in the meal) the peak point of blood glucose will probably be around 45 minutes after eating, depending. The +2hr test is to measure how well your system
brings a glucose level down, not how far it goes up. After two hours, non-diabetic people will generally have dealt with glucose and stabilised. The issue for us is that we're not so good at getting rid of excees glucose, therefore it makes sense not to take so much in.
