Feeling discouraged

[swirlygirl]

I've been having a tough time with all this diabetes management over the past few days. I've done low carb off-and-on for the past 10+ years, but with my newly discovered blood sugar issues, it's no longer a choice and a weight loss tool. It's a necessity.

I'm hitting that 1 1/2 - 2 month wall that I normally reach with low carbing, except this time I can't take a break. The thought of eating more protein meals makes me not want to eat at all. Even while eating protein + healthy vegetable meals, my physical energy is not what it is while eating carbs. I'm always tired and constipated. And although my cravings for junk are gone, my body is screaming for fruit and grains.

Arrrrrgh. I feel like 1/2 my body needs fruits and grains to function well, and the other 1/2 of my body needs ultra low carbs. And the two halves are warring.

I'm trying to get in to see my doctor, but I'm not sure she really understands. She has made suggestions like, "why don't you try an apple for a healthy snack and energy." I had to explain that an apple by itself would send me spinning out of control for hours.

This morning, I tried an experiment. I had some flax seed/fiber cereal and low carb soy milk. I measured, and my carbs were under 30 grams. I was out of commission almost all day from that. After 30 minutes, my BS was 165, 60 minutes 180, then at two hours I was back to 104. And I felt spacey, and headachy, and sick to my stomach. What a roller coaster, and I don't ever want to feel that again.

Helllllp.

[Squid]

Why don't you try adding in fiber in the form of psyllium husks to help with the constipation. Also, add in low carb vegetables instead of grains. You can probably eat a ton of cabbage, broccoli, lettuce, squash, etc. and still keep your blood sugar from spiking.

Also, occasionally skipping a meal is not going to hurt you. I think there's a lot of benefit to cutting calories or intermittently fasting.

[awriter]

I've been having a tough time with all this diabetes management over the past few days. I'm always tired and constipated.
I had some flax seed/fiber cereal and low carb soy milk. I measured, and my carbs were under 30 grams. I was out of commission almost all day from that. I feel like 1/2 my body needs fruits and grains to function well, and the other 1/2 of my body needs ultra low carbs. And the two halves are warring. Helllllp.

I hear your frustration! I hope the following sentence will help: it doesn't have to be 'either/or.' That is, you can get your fruit and fiber, and still stay low carb. It is possible to have a truce that will get you, your body and your appetite, all of what you need.

But.

It won't be by eating ready-made food like cereal. It will have to be by your making/cooking/baking what you need to eat yourself. And if breakfast really was just cereal and soy milk - no wonder you're tired. Not enough protein and fat, which you need to incorporate into every single meal.

For instance, half a cup of raspberries or strawberries for breakfast is a reasonable low carb choice. But instead of having it with cereal, you might have it with yogurt cheese that you make yourself, which is also low carb, with perhaps a tablespoon or two of homemade granola consisting of seeds and nuts. A total of not 30 carbs - but more like 12.

I make homemade fiber-filled, low carb goodies: scones (yummy toasted, then slathered with cream cheese or butter), cupcakes, muffins, cookies, ice-cream and yes, even low carb fudge. What do I mean by low carb? A serving has to have less than 3 net carbs. I might choose to have two servings at that meal, or one, but either way I am controlling the carb content completely. And the fiber/protein count of each serving in everything I make - even the fudge - has to be greater than the net carb count. If a cupcake has 3 net carbs, the fiber/protein count (added together) needs to be at least 6. That's easier to control than it seems.

My scones, for instance, are made with some combo of flax meal, almond meal, whey or egg/milk protein, bran, wheat protein isolate, soy protein, etc. etc. as well as the usual cream, eggs and butter - but they are small, and less than 2 net carbs per. My Mayan Mystery chocolate cookies are 2.2 carbs each - and I usually eat two at a time. The peanut butter chocolate fudge? 1.6 net grams per delicious piece. The ONLY low carb store-bought food I buy is Joesph's flax pitas and tortillas. I slice the pitas horizontally to make two circles - and each circle (half a pita) is only 2 net carbs. Great for piling on sliced roast beef, or tuna, topping with tomato and then cheese, and melting under the broiler. Yum.

I have fruit - berries - in small amounts every single day. I have fiber-filled baked goods every day in addition to my greens and protein. I take physllium capsules every day with breakfast and lunch as well and am now (though I admit the first few weeks, before I truly learned to cook and bake low carb, was not) very regular.

I love good food and love to eat! But I too must eat low carb for the rest of my life, and life wouldn't be worth living if all I could eat were slabs of meat with a salad. So I learned to retool all my favorite recipes for low carb living - and you can too!

Hang in there - eat protein and fat of some kind with every meal - eat berries for your fruit - and learn to cook and bake up a storm of fiber-filled goodies that will make eating interesting again. If you need some recipes to get you started, please holler. :)

Lisa

[Korban]

Psyllium is a miracle cure !... Before I low carbed I didn't know there was a sugar free vs a "with sugar" one... I switched to the sugarless one which still have a few grams carb per tablespoon - but it is worth it to me. I put it in a bottle, cap it, and shake it vigorously for a few seconds - it goes down like water... stirring it with a spoon, it goes down like grit...
I hope you feel better soon.

/smile

[skeeweeaka]

I feel your pain Swirlygirl, I, too, have more energy with grains. Have you tried oatmeal to see if that spikes your blood sugars but eat it with protein as someone else suggested....a sizeabe amount of protein. You could have some eggs before the oatmeal to slow down the absortion in your body thus preventing the insulin spike. You're going to have to try several whole grain things. Also apple cider vinegar helps reduce insulin spikes as well. Try Bragg's ACV before your meal about 15 minutes before and then eat your meal. Measure before and afterwards as you normally do and see what the results are. ACV you can get at the Health Food Store.

Wishing you much luck...

TJ

[KiaKaha]

Swirlygirl - I noticed a recipe in the readers recipe section by Doreen for a kind of crunchy nut toasted muesli. It's low carb but has nuts and a couple of grains - I havent tried it but I have been meaning to. How about something like that with some stevia sweetened rhubarb (1/4 cup) maybe topped by a tablespoon of whipped cream. That would be pretty yum and the fat would help you feel less hungry and there is protein in the nuts. (I am making myself hungry!)

Might give you that psychological boost that you need sometimes and still all up, pretty low carb. Also a reasonable amount of fibre all up.

What level of carbs are you on? Do you need to lose weight? What are your bloods like after meals and in the morning?

You may be taking your carbs lower than you strictly need to (depending on your circumstances). I have to eat very low carb as I have a lot of weight to shift and my body really doesnt like giving it up. Maybe you just need to learn a wider repertoire of foods - I am bit by bit expanding my menus even at 22 - 24C a day. Just takes time and continued effort and monitoring.

I'm not finding this way of eating all that easy either but my blood sugar loves it so some days its just put one foot in front of the other and keep shuffling forward. We're diabetic so there arent really any other choices. My uncle had a leg amputated so I keep that image in mind and the fact that he didnt live much longer after that, is what I pull out and think on when I get disheartened.

[swirlygirl]

Thanks everyone, for your kind and thoughtful responses. I think a big part of me is just feeling resentful that I can't eat whatever I want. I know, that's not really the most mature of attitudes, but right now this situation (diabetes) seems so unfair.

KiaKaha, to answer your questions. I normally keep to around 15 carbs a meal. Including good vegetables, salads, berries, etc. And at this level my BS is good, but I'm exhausted all the time.

My blood sugar doesn't spike after breakfast if I eat eggs/cheese/veggies, it maybe goes up 10-20 points. I can usually even add in some berries. My biggest problem has been my morning fasting blood sugar, which started out tricky, and would be higher than my blood sugar for the rest of the day. When I started testing, it was in the 180s. It took 2 weeks of low carbing to come down, and now, it's usually in the 80s-90s.

I need to lose some weight, about 20-30 lbs. It's coming off slowly, at about 1lb a week. My lab tests showed a very high A1C when I first had it done, it was 9! But at the same time the tests showed I didn't have elevated insulin levels. I'm young. I'm pretty sure I've had this disease for a few years, and I'm in my mid 30s. Even in my early 20s, I often had strong symptoms of hypoglycemia.

I'm taking 500mg of metformin twice a day.

Thanks again for all the suggestions.

[Korban]

Re: oatmeal - my DCE said oatmeal was pretty good but to use the old-fashioned kind not the instant as the instant would cause greater spikes as it is more "refined" - smaller carbohydrate containing polymers = faster digesting. Haven't tried either so I don't really know if this is true or not.
/smile

[triplemom]

I've been having a tough time with all this diabetes management over the past few days. I've done low carb off-and-on for the past 10+ years, but with my newly discovered blood sugar issues, it's no longer a choice and a weight loss tool. It's a necessity.

Ohhhhh, you sound so much like me! I've done low carb also off-and-on for many, many years. I was diagnosed with diabetes last August, after feeling terrible all summer (and not on low carb). I had a major pity party, resented the whole thing, whined, complained, etc. I went through diabetic education, who convinced me that I HAD to have at least 100 grams of carbs per day. I went on the diet and followed it diligently, and my blood sugars were too high - DUH!!! I pulled out my old Bernstein book and started following the plan, kept my diary, and my sugars went down. I proudly brought my log in to my diabetic educator, who practically screamed at me "YOU'RE NOT GETTING ENOUGH CARBS!!!!" I finally decided, screw them, and came back to this site.

Weight loss has been like a snail for me, but that's okay. I figure I have the rest of my life to lose the weight - it's my health that I'm worried about now! I'm no longer committed to this as a "diet" - it's for life.

I get most of my carbs now from non-starchy vegetables - cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, squash, salad greens, bell peppers, mushrooms, etc. The only fruit I eat is berries - blueberries and strawberries. One of my favorite "desserts" is ricotta cheese mixed with a few blueberries and some SF DaVinci blueberry syrup - it's very purple, but very tasty! I also tamed my chocolate fix with ricotta mixed with SF powdered cocoa and a little splenda - also very tasty and filling!

Search the recipes. There are some wonderful ideas in the recipe section. I made the faux twice baked potatoes and have been eating it all week! In fact (this probably sounds gross), I had it for breakfast this morning with ham - kind of like a hash brown casserole (well, that may be stretching it).

You may want to play around with some of the grains - like Korban suggested with the oatmeal. I just choose not to have them right now.

I'm also experimenting with the Bragg's apple cider vinegar before meals (see the thread "A little experiment - apple cider vinegar").

There are some great books out there, too - Dr. Bernstein's book is very thorough and his story is amazing.

Good luck, Swirlygirl. Come back and visit this site often - the people are just wonderful and have been a great help to me!

[Wifezilla]

Are you getting enough fat? I have noticed that many people who can't seem to stick with a low carb diet are not getting enough fat and are getting too much protein.

Have you used a program like fitday.com or myplan to check your numbers?

[RobLL]

Are you getting enough fat? I have noticed that many people who can't seem to stick with a low carb diet are not getting enough fat and are getting too much protein.

Have you used a program like fitday.com or myplan to check your numbers?

I will second this. And also if you don't feel well at the lowest carb level, consider a little insulin and a little more carbs. If you over do it you will gain weight. But if 10-20 more carbs per meal improves your quality of life, that too is important.

[glennette]

I will second this. And also if you don't feel well at the lowest carb level, consider a little insulin and a little more carbs. If you over do it you will gain weight. But if 10-20 more carbs per meal improves your quality of life, that too is important.

:agree: I will 3rd that, additional fat works most of the time for me. However, there are 2 Flax cereals that I can eat on bad days when I can't be up long enough to cook. They are by Flax Z Snak's, they have 2 flavors that don't have any wheat. The Chocolate Decadance and the Devine Pecan Praline, they only raise my bg 3-5 points at the 1 hr. and down to normal on the 2hr. pp. They are fairly decent with butter and heavy cream.

glennette

[swirlygirl]

I think I'm getting enough fat. I certainly don't eat a low fat diet. I have cheese, full fat meats, I cook vegetables in olive oil. Even if I eat bacon, eggs and cheese each meal, I feel exhausted without carbs, especially when I exercise. I read somewhere in a diabetes forum about how there is a disorder that some of us have in getting the energy from mitochondria.... but I can't remember the details or where I read it. If anyone can point me towards more information about this, I'd appreciate it.

On another front, I have an appointment with my doctor next week, and I'll see if insulin or other options might help.

Thanks again, everyone.

[KiaKaha]

Swirlygirl - I dont know why but my sister says the same as you. That on lo-carb she feels like she cant get out of bed in the morning. I fortunately dont find this at all, quite the opposite. But I do empathise.

Are you taking supplements? Maybe by having a relatively narrow diet, you are excluding some things your body needs. Maybe read up about that and see if you can pinpoint something. Have you tried L Glutamine - I dont know if it would help but I find there are times when I feel as if I have low blood glucose (emotional and a bit shaky) and L Glutamine knocks this on the head.

If you havent tried Fitday, do - its a bit of an effort but if you plugged in the whole nutritional analysis of everything you eat for 2, pref. 3 weeks, I think you may learn a lot and would see the nutritional deficiencies (if any) pretty clearly as well as having a better understanding of how many carbs, proteins etc you are having. Its a bit of a chore but it helped me tremendously and I was quite shocked by how out I was in my reckoning on what I was eating. I thought I was eating loads but wasnt, my carbs were higher than I thought and my fats were lower. I also had some supplement deficiencies which I have since rectified (had assumed a daily multivitamin would do it).

If you need insulin, you need insulin. Diabetes is for life so finding a lo carb way of eating that is sustainable in the long term is pretty important.

Maybe a single dose first thing in the morning might improve your glucose tolerance for the bulk of the day. My BG's are fine generally but like you I try to eat next to no carbs for breakfast which gets a bit dreary.

[triplemom]

I feel exhausted without carbs, especially when I exercise.

Swirlygirl, I've felt that way on low-carb before. I feel great this time, even with my diabetes, and the difference for me was reducing the protein and increasing the fat. I was definitely overdoing the protein before, and it made me feel like a slug. I feel best on a "normal" protein portion, like one piece of chicken instead of two, or a small steak rather than a 20-ounce porterhouse! I also try to have a nonstarchy vegetable with each meal, even breakfast - such eggs with peppers, mushrooms, and a little cheese or an omlette with meat/veg. I even eat leftovers for breakfast. I think we all have to practice trial and error until we find the right balance.

[cappie]

I hear your frustration! I hope the following sentence will help: it doesn't have to be 'either/or.' That is, you can get your fruit and fiber, and still stay low carb. It is possible to have a truce that will get you, your body and your appetite, all of what you need.

But.

It won't be by eating ready-made food like cereal. It will have to be by your making/cooking/baking what you need to eat yourself. And if breakfast really was just cereal and soy milk - no wonder you're tired. Not enough protein and fat, which you need to incorporate into every single meal.

For instance, half a cup of raspberries or strawberries for breakfast is a reasonable low carb choice. But instead of having it with cereal, you might have it with yogurt cheese that you make yourself, which is also low carb, with perhaps a tablespoon or two of homemade granola consisting of seeds and nuts. A total of not 30 carbs - but more like 12.

I make homemade fiber-filled, low carb goodies: scones (yummy toasted, then slathered with cream cheese or butter), cupcakes, muffins, cookies, ice-cream and yes, even low carb fudge. What do I mean by low carb? A serving has to have less than 3 net carbs. I might choose to have two servings at that meal, or one, but either way I am controlling the carb content completely. And the fiber/protein count of each serving in everything I make - even the fudge - has to be greater than the net carb count. If a cupcake has 3 net carbs, the fiber/protein count (added together) needs to be at least 6. That's easier to control than it seems.

My scones, for instance, are made with some combo of flax meal, almond meal, whey or egg/milk protein, bran, wheat protein isolate, soy protein, etc. etc. as well as the usual cream, eggs and butter - but they are small, and less than 2 net carbs per. My Mayan Mystery chocolate cookies are 2.2 carbs each - and I usually eat two at a time. The peanut butter chocolate fudge? 1.6 net grams per delicious piece. The ONLY low carb store-bought food I buy is Joesph's flax pitas and tortillas. I slice the pitas horizontally to make two circles - and each circle (half a pita) is only 2 net carbs. Great for piling on sliced roast beef, or tuna, topping with tomato and then cheese, and melting under the broiler. Yum.

I have fruit - berries - in small amounts every single day. I have fiber-filled baked goods every day in addition to my greens and protein. I take physllium capsules every day with breakfast and lunch as well and am now (though I admit the first few weeks, before I truly learned to cook and bake low carb, was not) very regular.

I love good food and love to eat! But I too must eat low carb for the rest of my life, and life wouldn't be worth living if all I could eat were slabs of meat with a salad. So I learned to retool all my favorite recipes for low carb living - and you can too!

Hang in there - eat protein and fat of some kind with every meal - eat berries for your fruit - and learn to cook and bake up a storm of fiber-filled goodies that will make eating interesting again. If you need some recipes to get you started, please holler. :)

Lisa

Lisa if I ate like this I would gain so fast my head would spin! I have been low carbing for over 6 yrs & have given up lowcarbing regular recipes & confine myself to low starch veggies & normally fatty protein most of the time & I STILL gain without constant vigilance of calorie intake.

After reading Taubes' book I tried his theories for a month & gained 10 lbs & then have spent 5 months adding more weight as I tried to get my raging appetite under control again. The problem with his ideas is that they were not designed with diabetics in mind which alters the metabolism problems involved. Right now I am starting to lose again but because I have been & remain so low carb already it is going very slowly & I am constantly dealing with hunger. I mostly satisfy it by munching on green veggies but it is really discouraging.

cappie

[awriter]

Lisa if I ate like this I would gain so fast my head would spin! I have been low carbing for over 6 yrs & have given up lowcarbing regular recipes & confine myself to low starch veggies & normally fatty protein most of the time & I STILL gain without constant vigilance of calorie intake.

After reading Taubes' book I tried his theories for a month & gained 10 lbs & then have spent 5 months adding more weight as I tried to get my raging appetite under control again. The problem with his ideas is that they were not designed with diabetics in mind which alters the metabolism problems involved. Right now I am starting to lose again but because I have been & remain so low carb already it is going very slowly & I am constantly dealing with hunger. I mostly satisfy it by munching on green veggies but it is really discouraging.

Cappie,

I agree about Gary's book not being written for diabetics, but Bernstein's book was, and aside from a few tweaks, they give similar diet advice. I'm not sure what you mean by "if I ate like this I would gain so fast my head would spin!" since my breakfast today, for example, was half a Joesph's pita (2 carbs) topped with choriozo sausage (0 carbs) and cheese (0 carbs), 16 oz water (0 carbs), coffee w/1 tbls heavy cream and sweetfreez (.5 carb), and a mini-banana choco chip muffin I baked yesterday (2.2 carbs and filled with fiber; 67 calories). That's only 4.7 net carbs for breakfast, and probably just under 500 calories total.

Dinner last night was 1/2 pound scallops in butter (0 carbs), half an eggplant made with curry sauce of unsweetened coconut, garlic, curry & oil and served with 2 tbls full fat yogurt (10 carbs), 16 oz water (0 carb), homemade carb-free jello and 3 tbls whipped cream (1 carb).
Total carbs: 11

And I had a piece of my homemade chocolate fudge with my bacon and eggs lunch yesterday - 1 carb. Plus coffee and cream.

In other words, I do eat goodies, but as you can see, the portions per meal and per day are small. I guess I could eat 2 or 3 muffins at a time if I wanted, or a big hunk of that fudge, but if I did I'm sure I would gain too. :)

So I guess my question is, what calorie count per day do you eat per day generally? Before my low carb days, I easily gained on a 1200 calories a day diet (which of course shrunk my metabolism to, well, dead) - and now, by eating at least 1800 calories a day low carb, my metabolism has revived and I am continuing to lose inches if not weight (though I lost about 12 pounds since November). I'm certainly not gaining any.

No one should have to struggle with hunger on a daily basis - that's horrible! Maybe if you posted your calories/fat/protein/carb stats here folks would have suggestions to help. Just a thought.

Lisa

[JAnn]

Even while eating protein + healthy vegetable meals, my physical energy is not what it is while eating carbs. I'm always tired and constipated. And although my cravings for junk are gone, my body is screaming for fruit and grains.
Are you taking B Complex? The B vitamins are your energy vitamins and I find that when I don't take them I have very low energy levels.

[Nancy LC]

Thanks everyone, for your kind and thoughtful responses. I think a big part of me is just feeling resentful that I can't eat whatever I want. I know, that's not really the most mature of attitudes, but right now this situation (diabetes) seems so unfair.
No one really can. In the end, our diets are going to catch up with us one way or another. And you're not alone, there are lots of people with allergies and intolerances to many foods. Some of us are so sensitive to things that eating out is risky indeed.

I think the best way to get beyond the mourning is to focus on foods you CAN have that you love to eat. If you haven't discovered those yet then it is time to get busy. This is how you take a "diet" and turn it into just how you eat every day for the rest of your life.

There's a whole huge recipe section with 100's, perhaps 1000's of delicious low carb recipes. Once you delve into those, the other foods will fade from your memory.

Having good cooking skills is crucial. You don't need lots of time, there are loads of shortcuts you can take.

[Wifezilla]

For years I deprived myself of butter, cream, and meat. Going back to eating them has now made me lose weight and lowered the heck out of my blood pressure. It has been almost a year for me on low carb and I do not feel deprived AT ALL! In fact, I feel like I have been let in on a wonderful secret and I feel pity for the people who still eat bread and rice and other high carb crap.

As for fruit, I still eat it. Mostly berries, but every once in a while I will have kiwi or star fruit or melon. Sometimes I even have grapefruit or an orange. I just do it in moderation and AFTER I have had protein and fat. That way I don't get the munchies and overdo the fruit.