How did coffee seem to affect your readings? Better or worse?

Hoping the 230 reading right after a big LC lunch was an aberration. But I will be testing right after meals another time or two to see if I really am getting that big a spike. But hard to believe, since low carb foods have to digest at least a bit.

I'm thinking 30/60/120 testing schedule (and fasting levels) is the way to go for a guy like me who's new to this testing thing. Eventually I may settle on just morning fasting readings and 2 hours post-meals. And also on the rare occasions I have more than a very modest amount of carbs in one sitting.

I'm curious....you mentioned that your morning BG's in fasted state can vary a lot depending upon if the reading was taken as soon as you arise, vs. a few hours later. I'm wondering if perhaps morning coffee is part of your morning ritual, and if that might be the culprit? Not just due to any maltodextrin you might get from artificial sweetener packets (I assume you do NOT add sugar to coffee, if you drink it) but due to caffeine causing release of stress hormones, and subsequent dumping of stored liver glycogen/glucose into bloodstream.

I've long been aware that too much coffee gives me hypo attacks, and suspect it gives me transient spikes in glucose levels (followed by eventual crash). So that's another dietary variable I'm eager to track data on.

Ok...just ate a fairly LC lunch of 8 ounces chicken breast, green beans, 1 oz peanuts, and a small apple.

Will test BG's in two hours...burning through those test strips today.

Was your BG high again after lunch?

I feel your pain - even the cheap strips are pricey when checking often.

Yes, those strips are expensive, but they give you a wealth of information.

The trouble with only testing fasting or only testing post-prandial is that you don't see the arc of your glucose levels. You want a baseline level and then you want to see how high you go above that. By 2 hours if you are *normal*, you should be back to baseline.

According to Jenny Ruhl, it's what happens between baseline readings that really counts. Anything above 140 may be causing damage to your body. So you want to know if you are exceeding 140 and if you are, for how long, and what you ate to drive your levels so high.

Have you read Bernstein? Between him and Jenny Ruhl you can get a really good education in diabetes.

2 hours after the lunch of 8 ounce chix-breast with salsa, green beans with Parmesan, small apple, and ounce of peanuts I tested my BG twice about 60 seconds apart. First reading was 193, and second reading was 187. So about 190 basically. I'm guessing that is NOT a good number at all to have a full two hours after a fairly moderate carb lunch (37 grams net-carbs, after having had ZERO carbs for breakfast).

Especially considering that I lifted weights right before lunch.

I'm going to test again at 4 PM to get a 3 hour reading as well.

Then after dinner I intend to take 30-minute and two hour post-meal readings.

I think the only reason I had a semi-decent reading of 86 this morning, 2 hours post breakfast, is because I only ate about 1.5 ounces of lean ham. Basically a starvation breakfast. For me at least. Had I eaten my usual 5 egg breakfast, I suspect my BG's would've been much worse.

Will be tracking like a hawk for now on. Expense be darned. My health is worth everything to me.

I am darn sure going to get to the bottom of this and will make whatever diet changes I need to. I wish to avoid meds, as well as blindness, foot amputations, dialysis, etc.

But if I'm getting these kinds of readings after 7+ years on low carb (about 70 to 75 grams a day), then I wonder how bad I'd be if I'd been eating SAD all those years instead. Yikes!

I really do have to wonder if my high saturated fat intake is partly the cause of this. Seems to becoming more and more accepted that sat-fats (at least certain kinds) impair cellular insulin sensitivity. A claim I used to be very skeptical of, but now I'm not so sure.

Then again maybe not.

My current course of action will be to simply go on a very strict KETO diet (As opposed to my usual 70-ish grams of carbs per day), to see if that helps.

If it does not help, I will then go on a KETO diet composed mostly of mono-fats, as opposed to sat-fats, to see if that makes any difference.

I probably should also really cut down on my caffeine intake as well, as I do abuse it. Already cut it down by 50% today.

My wife is the one who got me started on testing. She was having some health issues, and is now seeing an endocrinologist who recommends low carb. Her doc says my wife is on the cusp of being per-diabteic. Also has low thyroid. Doc says the root cause is likely adrenal exhaustion brought about by stress, lack of sleep, and caffeine abuse. She got my wife on tea instead from day-one.

So that's how I got to testing my BG's too. And also got me to thinking my coffee abuse needs to come to a halt.

I'm burning through my wife's supply of test strips at a rapid pace, so I better go buy her some new ones so I don't get in trouble.

I ordered my own testing kit and strips from Amazon.com, but won't get here for a few days.

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Addendum - Just checked at 3 hour post lunch mark, and it is now at 95. So all the way up to about 190 at 2 hours, then a 100 point drop over the next hour.

But still on high-side really.

I think this explains my "hypo" reactions I get a lot. I get very irritable after such a rapid drop in relative glucose levels. Even though I'm not obviously in a state of true "low" blood-sugar, I believe the rapid drop, relative to the previous extreme high, makes me pump out stress hormones that put me in "fight or flight" mode.

Well at least I do appear to have a somewhat functioning pancreas still.

Will keep updating over next few weeks with my readings and thoughts on what has now become a very personal interest in achieving healthy BG's within context of LC eating plan.

Yes, have read both their books twice. Even before I know I had this issue. (Though the frequent urination and thirst should've led me to this conclusion much sooner.)

Jennie's book actually discouraged me from keto diet. She seems to think keto is prone to creating side-effects, and hard to sustain long-term. She says maybe aim for 100 grams of carbs per day instead, then use meds to cover the rest.

Of course Bernseins version is ultra strict.

Since moderate version of low carb I've been following has NOT worked well for me, I intend to get VERY strict. I need to re-read Bernstein's book now.

I've read it 3 or 4 times, plus dipping in when I need particular information, and I'm still learning new stuff all the time! When I encourage people to read Dr. B's book, I tell them that his was the first explanation of diabetes I really understood. But there's so much to learn - and the ADA doesn't have anything really helpful, except for the occasional LC recipe.

I'm leery of anyone who says eat more carbs & cover with meds. They are NOT perfect. I know people on various meds, including insulin, and none of them are doing well - and none are eating LC. I took metformin for several years, until I found out it was causing my intestinal problems.

Honesty admission - I occasionally take a small does of glipizide to bring down my BG if I've eaten too many carbs & it's too high. But that's very occasional as it brings down my BG quickly & sometimes too low. So I'm cautious with it.

I don't have diabetes but ~10 years ago bought a meter and strips to see how I react to various foods and found the 30/60/120 testing schedule (and fasting levels) was the way to go. I went through the 100 strips that came with my "free" meter in 10 days, but that was all I needed to learn that for me, I cannot eat more than ~12 carbs per meal or my BG will spike (as Bernstein found). I also noticed that if I have no cravings or thoughts/obsessions about food, my BG level is nice and steady, so I can now go by how I feel to keep on track. Writing down how you've been feeling when you take your readings, as well as everything you ate can be very helpful when trying to make sense of your BG numbers.

Every once in a while I'll buy 10 or 50 strips to see if anything has changed. And vLCvHF hasn't changed my fasting BG at all over the 10 years. I wonder if the people on "LC" who have their BG rise over time are eating too many carbs (for them) or too much protein and not enough fat?

Note that on some brands/models of meters you need to code/calibrate the new batch of strips according to the directions that came with the meter. Not doing that can result in odd readings.

The 95 after 3 hours is good - for a diabetic. I agree about that high of 190 - that is NOT good. You might want to lose the apple & peanuts.

A precipitous drop can make you feel like you're at a low BG even when you aren't. There's a name for that but I can't remember what it is.

I'm at 20g carbs - gross, not net - per day. Dr. B doesn't approve of the net carbs thing. At first I ignored that because I could eat a few more carbs if they were fiber, but I finally stopped doing that. I think my body can't tell the difference between fiber & regular carbs and reacts the same. Or maybe I was doing the math wrong. I'm not too good with numbers.

Stop eating the fruits. That's where your sugar is coming from.
Instead of changing your entire diet just take small steps and eliminate the fruit first and see if that changes your readings.
ps. The salsa may also have added sugar in it.

I envy you that things have happened as they are supposed to. As for what I eat in a typical day: 20-30 total carbs (not net), 65-80 grams of protein, 100-120 grams of fat. Calories are typically 1300-1500.

As far as pp blood readings, they are much lower than Jeff's. FBS today was 110, 1 hr after breakfast (5 g carbs, 27 g protein, 39 g fat) was 133, dropped to 114 at 2 hr and back to 110 by 3 hr.

Before lunch (11g carbs, 25 g protein and 41 g fat) I was 96, at 1 hr I was 120, 113 at 2 hr.

I'm pleased with how I eat and pleased with post prandial readings, and simply don't understand why fasting levels are so high given my good post-prandials. I'd be curious though, do you think I should further reduce carbs and/or protein and up fat? How low do you think one can go on protein without loss of lean mass?

Back to Jeff: The one thing that can really bring down my fasting levels is to IF twice a week, basically delaying breakfast till my noon meal and then eating a normal dinner at the normal time. Jeff, it does not come easy to me, it does not feel "normal" and the only way I can do it is to go to the gym mid-morning where I *cannot* eat. I find my energy is not decreased in any way (I seem to be well adapted to burning fat). It is very motivating, though, to see blood sugar come closer to normal (mid eighties to low 90s and occasional low eighties). My schedule fell apart on Dec 16, and will remain irregular due to travel till January 6, and I've not been fasting on a regular basis. Cant wait to get back to it on January 7, at which time I am hoping to get FBS back down to mid 70s (where it was a little over a year ago).

I'm not sure I would recommend you fast yet though. Since you are still eating relatively many carbs, you might want to adjust to 20-30-50 grams of carbs per day first (ketosis). Many of us have observed that fasting seems easier since we are already in ketosis. Hopefully you will find that ketosis evens out your blood sugars making fasting much less of a hardship.

I don't think it's the coffee raising my BG, if anything it's the reverse. I usually have 3 cups (cream & sweetener) during the morning, and I sip on them and make them last. It's after at least two cups of coffee that the BG numbers come down.

It's really frustrating to have these BG issues after eating LC for years. On the other hand, if I had been eating the SAD I suppose I'd be running BG in the hundreds every day, and the doctors would have started removing toes by this time. Ack!

Good post. Nice to hear not everyone sees a rise in FBG on VLC. And I also have to wonder if those who do are simply eating more carbs than they realize, or too much protein even.

Well it's been a very illuminating past couple of days for me as a result of testing my glucose levels after meals and in morning fasted state.

Had high morning FBG's and readings in 190's after moderate carb meals. (My high reading after yesterdays "low" carb lunch was probably because my idea of "low" carb was simply not low enough for me.) Including after today's lunch of about 35 grams carbs, which spiked my BG up to 190's.

But went to Newks this evening for dinner and had a VLC dinner of cob salad. Did not eat so much as a crouton with it. And it's very interesting that despite the dinner's 1200 calorie content, my sugars were MUCH better after that meal. Down to 88 about 15 minutes after eating dinner. Then down to 77 two hours after dinner.

So basically within a day I went from 190's BG's all the way down to mid-70's reading simply by going from my "moderate version" of LC to strict VLC.

Will be curious to see if my morning FBG's also improve like that tomorrow.

Will be tracking for now on.

Basically, no change. My glucometer reads in low numbers. For example, "adults without diabetes should have BS readings below 6.1 with an optimal range of 3.6 - 5.4." Over 7 is in the diabetic range.

My fasting BG on rising was 4.6 and after coffee was 4.6.
My highest reading was 5.4, 1 1/2 hours after my evening low carb meal (the third reading post meal).
My lowest reading was 3.1 -- 1/2 hour after a low carb lunch and went back up from there.
Mostly readings were some fraction of 4: between 4.1 and 4.7.

I decided I was not pre-diabetic and stopped testing.