Food nemeses and happy discoveries

[everydayupsanddowns]

Morning folks.

For those of you who self-monitor to find your individual reaction to foods, I was just wondering if you had any particular foods which you found a complete nightmare to eat and can either never get the dose/estimate/timing right (if you take meds), or they just always cause complete BG chaos for you (even though you may love them).

On the other hand... I also wondered if you may have made some unexpected happy discoveries of foods which you expected to be really tricky, but which your body seems to cope absolutely fine with.

Here are mine..

My nemeses are probably breakfast cereal, buffets and beer.

Breakfast cereal - I'm happy to just avoid altogether (I can never get it right, and actually I really don't enjoy it enough to try!)
Buffets - A complete nightmare! I can never guess the carbs right. Often a whole trestle table creaking with unguessable beige. Rarely a chance to prebolus and a loooooooong tail where those carbs (slowed by the fat) just keep on coming. I usually make a guess, then add at least 25% for margin of error.
Beer - A work in progress this. Approx 20g CHO in a pint which hits me like a train. but then the liver-suppressing qualities of alcohol cause variable amounts of 'dip' later. I am selflessly committing myself to extended n=1 research over the next decades to try to improve my performance. 😛

My happy discoveries have been pizza, chocolate and most recently bakewell tart.

Not things I eat often, but given their reputation for inducing BG chaos in lots of T1s, I seem to get away with very mild wobbles on my sensor trace. Often far less upheaval than some of my 'safe' choices 🙄

What are yours?

 

[eggyg]

Porridge is my nemesis. Doesn’t matter how long before ( even an hour doesn’t work) I pre bolus or use my usual 1:5 morning ratio. I can rise from, say, 6 to 16 in an hour! I feel like I’m walking in treacle and feel really unwell. So it’s a no from me!
Legumes don’t bother me at all and I don’t bolus for them or I would hypo. I would have liked Cadbury’s Creme Eggs to have been the answer to that question, but alas, it’s not to be.😉

 

[trophywench]

Bananas are my nemesis but they were easy enough to give up, not a thing I accidentally ever got ambushed by.

Mike re bakewell - because the 'sponge' filling of it is made with ground almonds, that's why and though you put red jam on the bottom pastry base, before you lob the 'sponge' on top it really is a very thin layer, recipes tell you to melt the jam and sieve it!

 

[SB2015]

Like others I had to abandon my porridge with bananas at breakfast, that was my first lesson off the Libre seeing Mount Everest on there. I now enjoy my own homemade kettle ‘porridge’ based on quinoa, which changed the mountains I had previously, to the low fells with an appropriate pre bolus. Easy to do for breakfast.

Buffets!!! Yup they are very difficult, especially when I go to the course I do at The Old Kennels about three times a year, where everyone bring a dish, and they are always delicious and I just want to try everything. So I do and then deal with the consequences with corrections and get on with whatever I am making.

Our evening meals at home are great, as my OH has become an expert on calculating carbs. He arrives with the carb count, and suggested adjustments to multi wave Bolus where the fat content is too high, half an hour before we are going to eat. I am not quite as efficient on my weeks of cooking as I find I get engrossed in doing the preparations and forget to pre Bolus.
So we pretty much we eat anything and it doesn’t matter whose week it is to cook.

Eating out- just guess as best I can and enjoy what I eat.

 

[Robin]

A couple of glasses of red wine with my evening meal kills my dawn effect stone dead. I only drink it on Friday and Sunday evenings, though, and were I to try it as a daily therapy I suspect my body would adapt and the effect would wear off!
Porridge is my nemesis. If I eat oat based muesli, provided I whack the insulin in early enough I’m fine, but cook those oats and...

 

[Eddy Edson]

Nemeses are grains, parsnips and watmelon (? where did that come from).

I miss watermelon.

 

[NotWorriedAtAll]

Nemesis was very unexpected - white fish!!
I love white fish but even steamed with butter it spikes my blood sugars and that has been a huge disappointment for me. So I don't eat that any more. Tuna and sardines and shellfish are fine for me though so not the end of the world.

I am slowly beginning to try things I thought were totally no-nos now I have been doing fine for a year.
The last couple of days I have experimented with actual real white bread. It is a local bakery that makes a very small round loaf and one very thin slice ( I always liked very thing bread anyway) is 8g and the carb content is near enough 50% so 4g per slice. I had two boiled eggs and two slices of toasted bread (16g bread so about 8g carb) and my blood sugars went up to 8.3 mmol/L straight away after eating and dropped to 7.6 half an hour later so I'm counting that as okay for a now and then treat.

 

[Ljc]

My nice surprises are, Depending on my BG level at the time I can eat one of the following without any bolus , an apple, a pear a lage bowl of strawberries with a few cherries I’ve always got some frozen, or a bowl of my pot luck stew which among other things is full of root veg.

 

[Schrodinger]

Buffets usually cause some fun and games.
Curry.
Tapas.
Italian Restaurants.
Thai food especially Thai buffets.
Cakes.

Does not stop eating any of them, it just means I have to experiment more to eventually get it right 🙂

Breakfast cereal have almost got that sorted.

 

[trophywench]

Well it is possible for the body to turn protein into glucose if the person is not eating enough of anything easer to make it from. Old fashioned advice for bolusing used to be 50% for protein and 10% for fat but personally I've obviously never eaten that little carb in order to require to jab for it.

 

[Leonora]

ANY CEREAL- makes my BGs climb super high and, trust me, I've tried them all. I also can't even eat half an apple!!!!

Eddoes-a tropical potatoe-have been a blessing. They make a great mash and hardly touch my BGs. Strangely I can also have half a Snicker. I've tested 1, 2, and 3 hours after and my BGs haven't budged. It's become a weekly treat.

 

[nonethewiser]

Those lovely delicious white baguettes you get from sandwich shops, size varies so bolus is pure guesswork. BBQ another, all that meat sends bg high long after eating, not as bad now being on pump. Maybe more cant think.

Recently on travels been enjoying cream tea with Mrs on afternoon, bg stays in range which is bonus, dont restrict many foods but not that adventurous if honest.

 

[SB2015]

Buffets usually cause some fun and games.
Curry.
Tapas.
Italian Restaurants.
Thai food especially Thai buffets.
Cakes.

Does not stop eating any of them, it just means I have to experiment more to eventually get it right 🙂

Breakfast cereal have almost got that sorted.

Sounds like a very good excuse.

 

[Felinia]

My big no-no's are potatoes and apples. Yet a slice of lower carb bread has virtually no effect, so I can enjoy my boiled egg and soldiers. English buffets are totally impossible. I've been known to just take the lettuce and tomato dressing, and if I'm lucky, a drumstick or boiled egg quarter! The holiday buffets in hotels are so much better, and I live on salads when away. I'm lucky that I'm not on medication and hope to stay that way.

 

[Deleted member 25429]

Mine is potato in any shape or form
Do miss beef and onion crisps from m& s

 

[Toucan]

Happy Discovery - A choc ice of the low price supermarket economy type, with a stingy covering of chocolate . (however not the full blown magnum style with the really thick chocolate no no no,. ( problem with the economy ones though is how to only eat 1 out of a pack of 6)

My nemesis is pasta, and any pulses - lentils, beans etc.

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

Nemesis was very unexpected - white fish!!

Wow! That is a surprising one (though diabetes does like to throw so many curveballs Inguess nothing should really come as a surprise!)

Just out of interest, how many times did you check it - was there any chance it could have been a rogue strip?

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

These are really great folks!

I love the fact that they are so different, and those happy surprises are really encouraging 🙂

 

[stephknits]

Great thread! Sadly my nemesis is beer too, Mike. I live opposite an award winning CAMRA pub, which has 8 beers on tap, changing regularly. Like you, I get a huge rise very quickly, but if I try to counteract it, I can go low later. Here's to continued experiments...
I find I can keep a reasonably good line with ice-cream and dark choc.

 

[m1dnc]

The evil one has to be pasta in any shape or form. I've tried every which way to bolus for it: dual wave, square wave, stand on your head and wave a rainbow flag wave, but nothing seems to work. I have a bit of angel hair spaghetti (my fave) and my bg is still sky high mid-morning the next day. No wonder the long distance runners love it.

(Cocktails are a bit naughty too, but I didn't say that.)