Challenges of hypoglycemia and weight loss

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marvanroon
marvanroon Posts: 1 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I'm having a hard time keeping my glucose levels in a safe range while I try to cut back on calories. If I eat every 2 hours I gain weight. If I don't eat before bed my glucose alarm goes off all night. Any suggestions?

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  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,414 Member
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    Have you ever checked which kind of food triggered your hypoglycemia most? If not then before trying anything else this might be the way to go. How do you react to starchy food, to protein, to vegetables with a low glycemic index (corn is not vegetable, btw)?
  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 33,977 Member
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    This sounds like a question for your diabetes medical team. It's way too nuanced for this forum, in my opinion.

    With that said, I have a friend who has an on-body glucose meter. She tends to eat really high glucose foods all the time, but especially when the alarm goes off. I feel like she would be better served to eat a whole orange rather than a glass of pure-sugar orange juice, but she feels like she has to eat something high-glucose every time her meter alarm goes off so it's always juice or cereal. To me, that seems like sugar over-kill but I'm not a diabetic.

    Talk to your medical team.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,414 Member
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    Oh wait, you're diabetic? I assumed you just suffer from really bad reactive hypoglycemia without diabetes. If you are diabetic then yeah, please discuss with your medical team and a registered dietician that specializes in diabetes.
  • Beautyofdreams
    Beautyofdreams Posts: 1,009 Member
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    Do you count carbs? Do you have a daily meal plan that evenly distributes carbs through out the day? 15g carbs is one serving. Net carbs are carbs minus fiber. My diabetes team preferred that we eat a ham sandwich when low because would raise blood sugar without it quickly dropping back down. Unlike candy, soda or orange juice.

    Really suggest that you speak with your care team and a registered dietician. If cost is an issue, some RDs here are based in grocery stores and can help you come up with a meal and shopping plan for your health concerns.
  • Bridgie3
    Bridgie3 Posts: 139 Member
    edited March 2022
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    marvanroon wrote: »
    I'm having a hard time keeping my glucose levels in a safe range while I try to cut back on calories. If I eat every 2 hours I gain weight. If I don't eat before bed my glucose alarm goes off all night. Any suggestions?

    Are you type 1 diabetic? I'm deducing because type 2 (myself) find it really hard to get down to normal levels, let alone go low. I am thinking you are insulin dependent and therefore can go low?

    Type 1 diabetics need way more clinical help than I can offer. My nephew is type 1, he has a monitor and it goes off at night... But you wouldn't bolus insulin if you weren't going to eat...

    As I say pretty ignorant on that. I would recommend high fat because fat follows an entirely different pathway into the cells that doesn't involve insulin.

    A mate of mine with type 1 eats a high proportion of his daily calories from fat and relies on ketones to fuel his muscles, so that he can avoid spending money on insulin (shocking thought, it's free in new zealand) I think it's a direction to look in and talk to with your specialist; old style diabetes type 1 care used to be a toss-up between death by starvation vs death by sugar overdose.

    This is definitely doctor stuff. xx
  • age_is_just_a_number
    age_is_just_a_number Posts: 630 Member
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    1) If you have a medical condition, speak with your doctor.

    2) I’ve never been diagnosed with hypoglycaemia, but for much of my adult life I will frequently get light headed, shakes and ‘hangry’, which for a long time I’ve concluded was related to low blood pressure and low blood sugar. In the past, I ‘treated’ this with eating or drinking something sweet. In the last 5 years, I’ve dialed in my nutrition and started exercising. Now, I don’t remember the last time I felt light headed, shaky or ‘hangry’.
    What works for me is consistency. I eat 4 ‘meals’ a day (10am breakfast; 1pm lunch; 4pm snack; 7pm dinner) and I exercise twice a day (7am cardio or strength workout; 5pm an hour walk).

    Note : all times are approximate.

    I find with this sort of schedule, my body feels charged all day long. I don’t have the highs and lows that I used to have.

    In terms of dial in nutrition : what’s worked for me is increase protein, increase vegetables, increase fibre, increase water.

    Good luck.
  • wilson10102018
    wilson10102018 Posts: 1,306 Member
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    You could eat every two hours or every 45 minutes. It wouldn't matter. The total daily calorie count is the only thing that can bring you to a deficit. Linkage of these two things keeps you from losing weight. Get with your endocrinologist and work the diabetes issue to the letter of his recommendations. He is not going to tell you to overeat.

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