Hi tattpinkies, welcome to the forum
🙂 What may be happening is this: when you eat your blood glucose levels rise quickly as you digest the food. In response to this, your pancreas produces insulin in order to bring your levels down again by allowing your body's cells to use the glucose in your blood. Unfortunately, as your insulin response is impaired it is possible that it reacts a little late and also overproduces insulin which then results in a fairly rapid fall - this is known as 'reactive hypoglycamia'. It doesn't necessarily mean that your levels have dropped too low, just that they are lower than what is 'normal' for you. If this is the case then eating something sweet will raise your levels again and make you feel a little better.
Alternatively, you may be feeling drained simply because your levels have gone high because of what you have eaten. Your body wants to use the glucose in your blood for energy, but can't do this very efficiently because your insulin is either insufficient for the task, or because you have something called 'insulin resistance', which means your cells can't respond to the insulin very well.
The only way to know what is really happening is to test your blood glucose levels before and after eating, I'm afraid, it's not really possible to know very well what is happening just by how you feel. Although your diet may sound healthy, it is quite possible that some of the things you are eating are things your body does not tolerate well. This can be a very individual response - there is no one-size-fits-all - so again, the only way to know for sure is to test. Muesli, for example, can be quite heavy in sugar and carbohydrate content, and many Type 2s would not tolerate it well even though it is supposed to be healthy. Some fruits are also likely to have a dramatic effect on your levels also, so once again possibly not healthy for you.
I would recommend starting a food diary and writing down in particular the carb content of your food and drink so that you can build a picture of what you are eating, and in what quantities. You could then look for places where you might be able to make substitutions more suitable for your diabetes. Also, it is worth looking into the GI/GL diet -
The GL Diet for Dummies is a good introduction. This explains how to select combinations of food which will release their energy slowly and steadily and have a more gradual impact on your levels. I would also highly recommend reading
Jennifer's Advice and
Maggie Davey's letter, and getting a copy of
Type 2 Diabetes: The First Year by Gretchen Becker so that you can gain a solid understanding of how diabetes affects you and strategies to manage it well
🙂
Do try and get a meter and a prescription for some test strips, it will transform your understanding of your tolerances for food and improve your general health and well-being! Please let us know if you have any questions and there will always be someone here to help
🙂
