Trying to understand BS results

Not completely. While 8.4 to 8.7 isn't bad, it isn't good either.

Many/most of us on here target no higher than 8.0 mmol at those measuring times, so not only is your waking Blood Glucose a little raised (which may be from Dawn Phenomenon), but your pre-meal BG is still raised (could be because the exercise encouraged your liver to put more glucose into your blood stream - perhaps because your body isn't used to running with a normal BG level); but also your breakfast didn't appear to persuade your liver to 'stop helping so much'.
Usually those of u with a strong Dawn Phenomenon find that a zero (or close to zero) carb Breakfast gets the message across to our liver that we have eaten and so don't need any extra help to go and hunt/gather our next meal like our distant ancestors used to.

Is it possible for you to have a zero carb breakfast? - like just Eggs, Meat, Fish, or Cheese?
Or to reduce the carbs a little in your evening meal? Or even speed up your body's adaption to ketone by eating a little more fat?

Exercise can be tricky for BG. When we are trying to become 'fat adapted' or 'dual fuel' as one member of the 'blue forum' calls it, vigorous exercise almost always raises BG and sometimes even more sedate exercise can also do so. But in the longer term moderate or even vigorous exercise will help muscle growth and so give a long term benefit in BG as well as overall health.

NewbieHelp said:

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?

Click to expand...

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.

Yes, although nuts with yogurt (Full Fat Greek or Greek style) is low in carbs, the suggestions I made above are in the rage of 0 gms to 1 gms of carbs- so a fair bit lower.
You also have several common misconceptions above:

1). Much of the carbs we eat are not obvious. For example many products contain sugars even when they claim no added sugar - there are about 100 names of ingredients which are literally sugar (plus all those carbs which readily digest into sugar, some even while still being chewed in the mouth).

2). It is eating (excess) carbs which makes people fat rather than eating fats. Eating more fat will (in most cases) speed up the time it takes the body to adapt to being fuelled by ketones rather than glucose (i.e. fat rather than carbs). So a combination of proteins and fats (such as eggs) has been shown in about half of Dr David Unwin's patients to be better for weight loss than those popular weight loss drugs (and without the side effects).

3). Cholesterol is essential for life 85% of your Cholesterol is produced by our bodies. It is so important that our brain has its own separate production of cholesterol. Two of its main functions are in Hormone production and in the immune system.
In normal Type2 diabetics, a Low Carb, High Protein (increased Fat) way of eating usually reduces Blood Glucose, reduced weight, normalises Blood Pressure, raises HDL, reduces Triglycerides and either reduces or has little effect on LDL. Note that this is not the case for Thin Type 2's (such as me - I was never overweight in my life until I had pre-diabetes and then only 3 pounds overweight). So my LDL rose (like that of Dave Feldman's 'lean mass hyper-responders' but my HDL almost doubled, my Triglycerides almost halved (so overall lipid profile improved) and I went into T2D remission (for nearly 5yrs now).

The common tree nuts (not cashews) are mostly low carb- though some are more moderate carb. Brazil, Macadamia and Walnut amongst others are lower carb higher fat - so really good. Peanuts are a legume so can be problematic for many Type 2's.

4. The best exercise for reducing BG is weights or Resistance exercise. programs on BBC TV have mentioned that it's a myth that aerobic exercise (i.e. running etc.) actually helps with weight loss - it tends to make people more hungry and so (eventually) they eat 'rewards' for the exercise they've done and so defeat the purpose. I don't have the details to hand, but several proper studies have been done on this and they all agree that for the majority of people aerobic exercise over several months has no statistical benefit on reducing weight. Though there is a correlation because people who lose weight tend to exercise more (having lost that weight) because they feel good and it's no longer a struggle to exercise.

I hope this helps.

The BBC TV programs I mentioned above featured Dr Zand Van Tulekan, and I have posted about them before.