Carb Levels

Wendydelmo

Hi, everyone, I need a little help.
So, i was "officially" diagnosed yesterday. I have an appointment with the Diabetes Educator on the 30th. I have a million questions and no one to ask them to! So I'm asking you a few:

How many carbs should I shoot for?
When you talk about LCHF diet, is there a specific one? I had done, and like the South Beach diet at one point in my life.
Do you eat whole grains? I was thinking of just making my own bread- carb type stuff so I could control it.
What are your favorite sites/cookbooks?
and most important--

D'ya wanna be friends? I'm kinda scared and lost- and could use a friend or more.

I really want to get a jump start on this.

cmabnx

hi i'm newly diagnosed too-- seeing educator tomorrow finally. can't really say much till then other than i sent a friend request.

Wendydelmo

Thanks! I'll take as many friends as I can get! Good luck tomorrow!

scubasuenc

There is no single answer on how many carbs you should eat. Everyone's diabetes is different and reacts differently to different foods. I have one from being insulin dependent to medicine free. I eat between 90g and 125g of carb per day. I try not to have more than 50 carbs at any single time and most meals are obviously less.

I've never tried a LCHF diet as I like carbs too much. I focus on a high protein (140g per day), moderate carb diet and that has worked for me. I doubt you will find a single diet plan that works as everyone reacts differently. For example I know many people here like oatmeal for breakfast, and I love steel cut oatmeal. But it spikes my blood sugar, so I don't eat it very often.

Your meter is going to become your friend in telling you what you can and cannot eat and how many carbs you can eat at a meal. By testing before a meal and 2 hours afterwards you will begin to see patterns that can help you learn what to eat.

Exercise has been key to controlling my diabetes. When I started I walked or rode a stationary bike for about 20 minutes. Now I exercise for at least 45 minutes most days and many days much more. While exercising increases my blood sugar in the short term, it improves my ability to process the carbs.

123_lac

Everyone is so different in what does or does not spike blood sugar. My suggestion to you is to test your blood sugar before and one and 2 hours after you eat for awhile and log everything on paper including what foods and how many Carbs you ate. You will see how certain foods affect your blood sugar. I can't eat very much protein at once, whole grains, artificial sweeteners, sugar alcohols, and many "low glycemic index" foods. They still raise my sugar quite a bit. I think I am more sensitive to Carbs and insulin resistant than many others. I could never eat 50 Carbs of anything at once. My sugar would be so sky high. I do follow a LCHF diet. I aim for less than 10% Carb, which is mainly from low carb veggies. I eat 70% fat and 20% protein. I can't tolerate a lot of protein since it spikes my sugar too.

Peloton73

Everyone is so different in what does or does not spike blood sugar. My suggestion to you is to test your blood sugar before and one and 2 hours after you eat for awhile and log everything on paper including what foods and how many Carbs you ate. You will see how certain foods affect your blood sugar.

This.

In the book I recommended in the other thread, he talks about meal plans and carb allowances. I follow a LCHF diet for lunch and dinner. I love my steel cut oats in the morning with fresh blueberries too much and it doesn't raise my blood sugars.

GlucernaBrand

You're getting some great ideas and suggestions on changes you can make to manage blood sugar levels. You mentioned whole grains, and perhaps even making your own bread. The American Diabetes Association has information on whole grains here: http://www.diabetes.org/food-and-fitness/food/what-can-i-eat/making-healthy-food-choices/grains-and-starchy-vegetables.html Knowing how much carbohydrate is in the food you eat is important to manage blood sugar levels, and that can be more difficult - but not impossible - when you make your own bread. Sometimes recipes have nutrition information, including carbohydrate and fiber content, but not always. ~Lynn /Glucerna

NK1112

Hi, everyone, I need a little help.
So, i was "officially" diagnosed yesterday. I have an appointment with the Diabetes Educator on the 30th. I have a million questions and no one to ask them to! So I'm asking you a few:

How many carbs should I shoot for?
When you talk about LCHF diet, is there a specific one? I had done, and like the South Beach diet at one point in my life.
Do you eat whole grains? I was thinking of just making my own bread- carb type stuff so I could control it.

It's great that you have an appointment already set up with an educator. I've had this disease for over 10 years and am just now taking a Diabetes Management class sponsored by the American Red Cross and using the American Diabetes Association information for it.

Yesterday, we covered meal plans. And, yes, everyone is different in how they respond to this disease and how it affects them ... but the guidelines were thus; (typing from my notes from the class)

Self Management Tasks .... 1) Take care of your diabeties by testing blood sugar, taking medications, adhering to nutrtional guidelines, getting exercise, regular checkups with your physician, etc. 2) Carry out normal activites and things that are meaningful to you. 3) Manage your emotional changes 4) Take part in planning and carrying out your management program 5) provide information between various doctors you see .

Healthy Eating .... Eat a variety of food. Eat regularly, Eat Breakfast, Eat the same amount of food day to day (meal to meal) ... and check our your meal plan with your doctor/nutritionist for fine tuning.

Eating gudelines ... Be careful of portion sizes, read the labels on your food carefully as the package may include more than 1 serving. Look at the nutritional panel on the back of the package and not the advertizing on the front.

Carbohydrates ... do not exclude them, choose the lower glycemic ones, bread and grains are important foods to have. Eat snacks ... a snack could be as little as a cup of milk or a handful of nuts. Carbohydrates are 15 grams per serving ... and a meal typically should include between 45-60 grams of carbohydrate. A snack is 20 - 25 grams. An example is a cup of milk or 6 ounces of yogurt is a serving. 1 Ounce of bread is a serving.

Protein ... choose lean, non fried whenever you can. A serving of protein is 21 grams. Strive for 15-35 grams per meal.

Fat ... choose healthy fats, you need fats in your diet, some come from the food you eat and others from added fats like olive oil and avodaco. A meal recommendation is between 10-15 grams of fat.

IF you don't want to count/weigh/measure ... you can use the plate method for your meals .... 1/2 of the plate should contain non-starchy vegetables, 1/4 of the plate a protein, and the final 1/4 plate a starchy carb. You can usually add a cup of milk and a small fruit as well.

If you are asked to, or want to, measure your blood glucose to see how different foods affect you ... measure before eating and then again 2 hours after starting your meal. If you want to see how exercise affects your glucose, measure before the exercise and 1 hour after.

Good luck. I'm hoping this information is beneficial and helpful to both of us.

Wendydelmo

Very helpful! Thanks!

radiii

When you talk about LCHF diet, is there a specific one?

I do keto, I think when most people talk LCHF that's what they're talking. If you want to learn more about it I think the best place to start is the FAQ over at Reddit's keto sub: http://www.reddit.com/r/keto/wiki/faq. I *love* keto, I feel like its saved my life and fixed my relationship with food. Many others eating this way make similar comments.

However, a lot of people do feel its extreme, a lot of people love their carbs too much, and its absolutely not the only way to manage diabetes. If you look at what keto/LCHF is and feel like its a punishment/restriction rather than a solution, its not something you have to do. Tons of people manage their diabetes with smaller changes to their eating habits and increased exercise, and just by learning more and using that knowledge. Tracking your food using MFP, tracking your blood sugars religiously while you learn how different foods/different amounts of carbs cause you to react, and working on improvements in your diet is the most important thing no matter what you decide to do.

If you do want to learn more specifically about LCHF/Keto, feel free to ask, and there's a keto forum here that has seen an increase in activity lately too

TelJanin

When you talk about LCHF diet, is there a specific one?

Take a look at Dr Bernstein's book, Dr. Bernstein's Diabetes Solution. He's a T1, but talks about both T1 and T2. He takes a... somewhat different approach than most, and is... somewhat critical of the ADA's recommendations. The first section of his book is also packed with information on the disease. I've been doing this, well, loosely (been ratcheting closer and closer, my macros are now 10c/30p/60f and my numbers are looking pretty decent - much improved over where they were when I was diagnosed... almost 3 months ago now. I'm due for my next A1C in two weeks, so we'll see how that is going.

Another strong recommendation for reading would be Type 2 Diabetes: The First Year by Gretchen Becker.

And, both books will harp on this, but: test. Test early, test often, until you get a good picture of what affects you. If your Dr hasn't prescribed a meter yet, have her do so. It's the way to get the one covered by insurance. Having said that... your prescription/coverage won't be enough to cover the strips, especially if you test often. I'm testing fasting, pre-meal, +1 and +2 (for comparison, will eventually drop to whichever makes more sense) hours, pre and post exercise, and recently, going to sleep. I don't always hit all of my tests - real life interferes (work, often), but I get a good majority in... and I was much more militant about it when I started. I go through... quite a few strips per day. Today was 11 strips so far (fasting/pre-breakfast, retest because readings were out of line), breakfast +1, breakfast+2/pre-lunch, lunch+1, lunch+2, pre-dinner, dinner+1, dinner+2, pre-exercise, post-exercise. I'll probably round it out to an even dozen with a bedtime test.

Yes, this gets expensive (well, depending). I'm actually a data nerd, and I can't trust any single piece of data, so I actually run 2-3 meters in parallel and do every test across all of them. Yes, they do vary. Today's testing cost me... about $9.50 in test strips. I do this every day, or until I'm 100% happy with a single data source. Yes, I'm apparently also a little crazy.

My point is: test. You won't know how you react to something unless you test. You can't know if you _know_ the reaction until you've tested on 3 separate occasions - flukes do happen, and meters only need to be accurate within 20%. Pre tests, especially in the beginning, are just as important as post-tests. If you don't test pre, you don't know what you were at when you started, so you don't know the effect of your meal on your blood sugar. This is especially important with meals that are close together (aren't 4-5 hours apart, from start to start) as your sugars are still coming down from the one meal, but haven't returned to normal yet. You need to know where you start, so you know where you finish.

Exercise. If you are anything like me, you groaned a bit when you heard that. I hate it, I still hate it, but needs must. At a minimum, 30 minutes in a shot of walking a day. If for some reason I can't walk a straight shot, I add an extra 5 minutes for every part past the first... so, one shot of 30+, or 15 + 20 later, or 15 + 15 + 10, or whatever. The other point is... this has to be over and above what you do already. Walking from the car to your desk doesn't count - you're already doing it. The point is, to do more of it. Get the body working, means the body needs more energy, means it'll help control your sugars by pulling more out.

Track everything - but this comes with overhead, so I make things easier to track. My meter tracks my readings, I have a sync cable, and can plot that. MFP, obviously, tracks food intake - I weigh everything. That's the biggest hassle. Track your statistics. I have a wifi scale so I just have to step on it. I wear an activity tracker (okay, data nerd again, can't trust a single source, I'm currently wearing two, and contemplating adding a third) that syncs over bluetooth. I'm actually invested pretty deeply into the Withings stack, and it works pretty well. May start a/b testing with the fitbit stack. When you are walking, use Strava. Link Strava to MFP - you have to do this inside the Strava app. Log your walks as walks, and don't trust the caloric information from Strava (it's a bug, been reported, walks are calculated as runs on a straight time function, not accounting for distance or speed, so it reads really high). But, the point is, it's easy. Hit record at the start of your walk, finish at the end. You've got a map of where you went, how long you went for, how fast you were moving, etc. It posts to your exercise journal on MFP, so you can make sure you are hitting your number and time goals.

Anyways, sorry about going sideways. Carbs - been doing LCHF, although more loosely than Bernstein recommends. Most of the same dietary restrictions - I'd mislaid my copy of his book prior to my diagnosis, and had to acquire a new one - finally came in last week. I'd done a good job of remembering the summary, but it'd been a few years and it wasn't applicable to me when I read it. woh-woh.

My average fasting is over the past 14 days has actually been running a little high, because I came off the glyburide which was keeping all the numbers down (but, about 16 days ago, I had a 5+ day streak of going hypo every day, so had to come off it). When on it, my fasting average was 98, 99 with my day average being around 85-87. Without it, it's been about 107, day peaking up to 115, 120 or so (lunch +1), and then dropping back into the 90's about 2-3 hours after dinner.

chuckm1937

Greetings all,
I was diagosed some years back, just got serious in the last few weeks.
I discovered a series of videos on you tube that really explained the relationships between carbs, fat , protein etc.
I've seen several Diabetes educators over the years but, DR Berg really explained how it all kinda worked together.
He does sell a book but, all the you tubes are free, and well worth a look.
It's done wonders for me. I'm down 7.5 pounds in 2 weeks. No hunger and feel better than I have in quite some time.
chuckm

NK1112

Greetings all,
I was diagosed some years back, just got serious in the last few weeks.
I discovered a series of videos on you tube that really explained the relationships between carbs, fat , protein etc.
I've seen several Diabetes educators over the years but, DR Berg really explained how it all kinda worked together.
He does sell a book but, all the you tubes are free, and well worth a look.
It's done wonders for me. I'm down 7.5 pounds in 2 weeks. No hunger and feel better than I have in quite some time.
chuckm

I looked him up and spent the morning viewing some of his videos and reading his blog. I was interested in his statement that we need 4700 mg of potassium ... which we can get from 7 cups a day of vegetables and kale ... to help level out the sugar in our blood. Is that what you have been doing that has helped you so much?

kikityme

I was diagnosed in April and between April and September I lowered my A1C from 10.2 to 6.5. I expect it to be lower in November. What worked for me was simply calorie and carb control. I still eat them, but I try not to go over 30 carbs in one meal. I stick to low-glycemic veggies. Losing 40ish pounds contributed a LOT to that lowered A1C.

I get flack for it, but Canadian insurance is a pain and I don't test. For me, my doctor and I decided that since I'm doing so well without it, I shouldn't worry about it. If I ever stall out, he's going to make me. (So no lectures about my lack of meter please )

Things I learned:
Always mix a protein with a carb. Even a tbsp of peanut butter will do the trick.
Full fat is often lower in carb (yay!)
Try to keep carbs even, if you do 30 for breakfast, do 30 for lunch and dinner.
I actually find I eat MORE now. I used to skip meals, breakfast especially, and I can't do that anymore.
The only exercise I do right now is walking, 10 000 steps a day. I love my fitbit.
Net carbs are carbs minus fibre. That's what you want to count, your body processes fibre differently.
Diabetes educators are awesome people!
Janumet (which I'm on) is the devil but it actually taught me how many carbs I can handle. If I go to high, let's just say the "intestinal distress" will do its own carb control.
I lost a lot of weight in the first 2 weeks with the carb cutting. Mine wasn't permanent and I jumped back up, don't get discouraged, it's a long haul kind of thing.

Good luck. My doctor, who I've had for 40ish years, praised me and said that 90% of his patients with TypeII are content to rely on medications. You don't sound like one of those people.