Anyone any idea, 12 year type2, on insulin controlled until last month or two, Lantus used to be 25. 30/8 pre bed 6.7 31/8 pre breakfast 7.7 Nova Rapid 14, Lantus 44, Metformin 1000mg Corn Flakes/toast 4.2 mile walk 31/8 Pre lunch 9 Nova Rapid 14, Banana Sandwich, ginger nut 1.75hours exercise bike Pre Dinner 10.9 Nova Rapid 8, 2Melba toast cheese, yogurt 2 hours after Dinner 11.5
Greetings @eee123 All those foods listed above are severely high in carbs. Has anyone on your 12 year journey given you dietary advice ? Honestly think your number are not that bad given what you are eating. You could be an amazing responder to low carb
Hmm, as @Ronancastled said, those are a lot of carbs, but I assume your insulin use has been developed to deal with a high carb diet? So my questions would be, how do you calculate your insulin amounts? Do you adjust your bolus for the amount of carbs you have and do you add in correction doses if you start too high before a meal. I personally find I am more insulin resistant when my blood sugar is too high so could this be a factor for you? But you say your lantus has gone up dramatically in the last couple of months. Have you spoken to your clinic about this, as they might want to comment on such a big increase? Some possibilities that I can think of (but remember I am T1 so take my suggestions with some skepticism) 1) Increased insulin resistance because of weight gain? 2) Carb creep, are you eating more carbs than you used to? 3) beta cell decline. My understanding is that the insulin production of long term T2s declines if their blood sugar is too high, could this be a factor? 4) Illness pushes up blood sugars. Have you had covid and/or maybe you've got a current infection. 5) Injection sites : insulin absorption can be affected if you overuse a site and get lipohypertrophy (sp?). 6) check your insulin pens are working properly and consider changing your insulin vials. OK, I think that that is all I can think of.
Thanks but not sure that's the explanation - all the foods listed total 1477 Calories of which 51% are carbs, the calories represents only 62% of the recommended daily input and all that is before the 943 Calories I burnt during exercise.
Hello @eee123 I can understand what you are saying about burning calories through exercise but you are still taking in a lot of carbs which would cause your high blood sugar level. Have you tried eating more protein and fat instead of carbs? You would still have the calories to burn in your exercise but you may find an improvement in your blood sugar. It may be worth trying a low carb diet for a few days and testing the effect.
It's not to do with calories. Carbs are mainly the food group which affect our blood sugar levels. When it comes to controlling our type 2 diabetes, carbs are our main focus and issue. https://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/threads/basic-information-for-newly-diagnosed-diabetics.26870/ This link goes to an informative page on here about the subject. I know you have been here for a few years, and the link says for the newly diagnosed, but I think the information it contains may help you.
eee123, you are making the same mistake that I did which is to limit calories. I've only just learned what carbs are and what they do. I've taken that on board over this past couple of months and taken note of carbs in foods that I eat, and because of this have now lost almost all the weight I need to. It's honestly not about calories at all and you can totally disregard them. Please give it a try x
What are you bothering with calories for? It's the carbs we can't process, and if half of the calories you're eating are carbs, that's a massive load of them indeed...
You’ve received some sound advice, you are consuming way too many carbs. If you take a free moment to browse the forum, you’ll notice how a lot of people have attempted to get this disease under control (we’ll type 2’s) and are now in remission - low carbs low carbs low carbs.
Many doctors were trained in the days when the role of carbs was not fully understood by their trainers. General understanding was that for most of us this was a progressive disease and we would need more and more meds to keep blood sugar anywhere near normal. More recently there has been plenty of good quality research about the need for T2s to limit our carbs. One day the rest of our GPs and diabetes nurse will catch up. When I started low carb after diagnosis my nurses were very reluctant and tried to push me onto metformin instead - they were amazed how fast my numbers dropped and converted!
I would highly recommend trying to get onto a Diabetes X-pert course. They will provide you with a good education regarding what to eat to help your T2. They recommend a low carb, high fat diet to get your diabetes under control. Counting calories doesnt work well for us T2s you need to cut the carbs and you will find your numbers much improved.