Questions

[maggie3456]

I am a type 2 diabetic who recently started on insulin ( a week before i started LC}
At first my bg went down and i lost weight...in the first 2 weeks 17 pounds.......now 7 weeks later i havent moved at all and my BG is rising lately.....was 173 this am..... I have been pretty good about stick with the program....only a couple of small cheats here and there.......this past week though i added some butter and cream cheese to my diet....I had stayed away from them before...
Could they cause my bg to rise? Have any of you experanced this?
This is what i ate yesterday....
B=Breakfast=6 small shrimp and a slice of pepper jack cheese
Lunch=spinach with butter , turkey ham and some mayo
Snacks= one cherry tomato.....and 1 oz cream cheese with 2 slices of turkey
Dinner=ground beef with 1 slice of pepper jack cheese melted on top, Brussels sprouts with butter
4 liters of water
I am thinking maybe the cream cheese at night is hurting me......
I did walk 30 min yesterday and have been trying to get a walk in daily.....but i have almost no energy again......for a while i felt fantastic....better then i had felt in years.....
and also i am always starving.......expeshly late after noon and evenings ....just the time i shouldnt eat........
any ideas....I did talk to my doctor and he has raised my insulin...so maybe that will help.........but i was hoping by sticking with this plan to lower it...not raise it :(
Thanks for any help or ideas.......
maggie :)

[iwantmore]

Hey maggie,

I'm absolutely no source of expert advice. I'm new too...so take everything I say with a grain of salt. :p

I have the opposite problem you do. When I eat carbs, starches, or sugars my body produces too much insulin. But from everything I've read (and I've read more books than I've listed) you are supposed to eat when you're hungry, regardless of when it is. It's more a matter a smart food choices than of timing. Hunger is the body's way of telling us that it needs something.

Looking over your menu for yesterday, I have to wonder if - even for someone with high blood sugar - it's too little. Personally, I would starve to death on that little food and I'd be fainting left and right. There are some very low impact foods that you are allowed to eat in greater quantities than what you've listed for the others. For instance, all the green leafy vegetables and mushrooms (I love, love, love mushrooms!).

Ask your doctor about adding more protein to your diet. It's not enough to go low carb unless you replace it with something else (on this I'm certain). Eating a whole can of tuna shouldn't affect you blood sugar at all. And what about having a chicken breast for lunch? How about a huge fillet of (low fat, low carb) broiled fish with lemon and pepper for lunch? Or for breakfast?

Though we're coming at our problems from different angles, you and I are both trying to eat foods that don't cause our blood sugars to rise. Mine go real high real fast before the insulin 'panics' and responds to drive it back down to the ground. For breakfast this morning, I'm going to have a two egg omelet with hot italian sausage and ricotta cheese. (I may be off on the ricotta...have to find out the carb count). But in any case, it's a hearty breakfast.

I hope you and your doctor work this out soon and you rush forward to feeling better. :thup:

iwantmore

[jbee]

Maggie:

You are not alone. The same thing was happening to me. Weeks went by with great bs readings, in fact my last hba1c went from 7.2 to 5.8 after two months on atkins.

I too haven't lost weight in about 4 weeks and watched my bs fluctuate up into the 160s after meals and 120-130 fasting. Starting today, I'm taking a more methodical approach and using my bs meter to find out what is doing it. I have taken out cheese, nuts, seeds and am starting back on induction and checking my bs 30, 1hr, 2hr and 3hr after eating and religiously writing down what I've eaten.

One wise woman, Lisa N, on the board suggested that I should not eat any carbs without a good quantity of fat as the fat will slow the absorption of the carbs resulting in a smaller bs rise.

I'll keep you posted.

Jill (JBee)

[Lisa N]

Goodness, Jbee...I'm blushing, now! :blush:

Maggie...

It's hard to say what exactly is going on with your blood sugars going up. Do you keep a daily food journal? For now, I'd suggest starting one and testing your blood sugars both at one and two hours after you eat as well as fasting and before meals until you get a better handle on what's going on. I know...it's not fun to have to poke yourself so much, but it's really the best way to get a good idea what's going on and what effect different foods have on you specifically. It's also a good way for your doctor and/or dietician to see what you've been doing and the results that you have gotten. Record what you ate, how much of it and then the results on your blood sugars. If you notice that a particular food causes your sugars to spike, eliminate it for now. If your blood sugar stays stable, keep those foods. Low carb, but also let your monitor be your guide as to what low carb foods your body can and can't handle.
Fats are inert and cannot be converted to glucose by your body, so those are probably not the problem here. Also, one major cheat can mess up your blood sugars for a bit (make them yo-yo up and down), so really try to avoid any binging on carby foods. Watch out for tomatoes, too...they are really a fruit and can cause blood sugar spikes if you eat more than a little.
If you haven't read it already, you might want to check out Dr. Bernstein's Diabetes Solution; it's low carbing for diabetics and gives some very good advice and explanation on how this works for us. Keep posting and let us know how you're doing!

[maggie3456]

Thanks you all for the info.....guess i should mainly hang in there and test test test!!!!! I love this board already......so many people willing to help out :thup:
iwantmore......i did the whole can of tuna thing for breakfast today
and i am going to try to always do the fat with my carbs from now on :)
I have started a journal on here ....and i will start a writen one as well to keep track of the food i eat to show my doctor and get his opinion when i go back in.......for right now i talked to him on the phone and he said to slowly raise the amt of insulin i get to 40 units max...if this doenst work i need to talk to him again....
thanks again
maggie :D
Hope to hear more from all of you!!!!!!!!

[GinaDee]

Don't do radical diet changes on the basis of one day of blood sugar readings. Stress can even impact the blood sugars so see what it does for a few days before deciding something is affecting your sugars. How active you were that day will change the blood sugar too.

gina

[freydis]

I had these things happen when I was on glipizide. As soon as I went off of the glip, my blood sugars went to a (too-high) norm and stayed there. Now, I'm on glucophage because I do, currently, need something, but the glip was fighting against the lo-carb dieting and causing problems. Do you have ANY options aside from insulin?

[Elaine25]

:( Hi Maggie,

I am sorry to hear that your blood sugar has gone back on even while on a LC diet. And sad to hear you are having to go on more insulin. About two months ago or so, I was put on insulin. It seemed every time I went to see the doctor...he added more units, pretty soon I was up to 48 units a day. I did not feel good on it, plus I gained about 15 pounds in two months. That is why I decided to try Low Carb eating and see if I can get off insulin. It has been really hard for me to do this, because of all the bad rap low carb eating has taken. I still have to read the good it does to keep me motivated. I hope you are able to get your sugar under control...and finally get off insulin.

God bless,
Elaine25

[maggie3456]

Hi Elane and all
I am now doing somewhat better.......
After being low carb since June...i had blood work a few weeks ago and have seen lots of improvement. My closeterol has dropped a lot to 148. I think it was almost 300 before and my bs
have gone down to 6.5 but this is with the insulin and other meds.
It just took a while for it all to click in i guess and i am hoping that my blood sugars will go down even more as i lose more weight. They have also seemed to stablize....I dont get the dizzy fainty feeling anymore of them dropping and rising and thats probably the best part right now for me.
As far as weight loss...I started over on a strict induction level of carbs on the 28th of OCT and have lost 10 pounds so far......I have found that many things seem to stall my weight loss...such as artificial sugars and nuts and without them im losing again :)
So good Luck to you Elaine and hang in there....I am still hoping it will all work for me :)
I dont know if you have started a journal yet......but i would like to look in if you do and feel free to come visit mine if you like :)
take care
maggie