Breakfast

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lordburnside

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This mornings breakfast + Weetabix and 3 cups of tea with 1/3rd of a spoon full of sugar in each - BG spike to 14.2
Yesterdays breakfast as above plus one slice toast, Lurkpak and the faintest smear of jam - BG spike to 14.5. 2 1/2 hours to get back to 7.

I guess these spikes don't mean toast and jam is OK really and Weetabix is bad.

I know two lots of carbs is bad but I was just trying this out. Tomorrow I will have toast but no Weetabix.

Just trying to work this diabetes out!
 
What was your pre breakfast reading? You need to focus on the rise caused by breakfast, rather than the overall height of the spike at least in the early stages of diagnosis when your levels are likely higher. At breakfast time particularly, the before eating reading is important because your levels will likely be rising from the moment you wake up, so you might wake up on 7.2 but by the time you get washed and dressed and get breakfast made, it could easily have risen to above 10 due to the liver releasing glucose from it's stores. Generally food hitting the stomach switches off this liver glucose release, so testing just before eating and then 2 hours after, gives you the clearest picture of how you reacted to the food you ate rather than that liver glucose inflating the data..
How many Weetabix did you have? You might get away with just one if two spikes you too high. I think @Martin.A has just one with his yoghurt and berries.

Are you weening yourself off the sugar in your tea?
 
rebrascora said:
What was your pre breakfast reading? You need to focus on the rise caused by breakfast, rather than the overall height of the spike at least in the early stages of diagnosis when your levels are likely higher. At breakfast time particularly, the before eating reading is important because your levels will likely be rising from the moment you wake up, so you might wake up on 7.2 but by the time you get washed and dressed and get breakfast made, it could easily have risen to above 10 due to the liver releasing glucose from it's stores. Generally food hitting the stomach switches off this liver glucose release, so testing just before eating and then 2 hours after, gives you the clearest picture of how you reacted to the food you ate rather than that liver glucose inflating the data..
How many Weetabix did you have? You might get away with just one if two spikes you too high. I think @Martin.A has just one with his yoghurt and berries.

Are you weening yourself off the sugar in your tea?
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Hi,
Pre breakfast and while asleep was 7.7ish which I think is high anyway. I had 2 weetabix and plenty of milk.
 
I forget that you are using a sensor! Have you double checked your sensor readings against a finger prick as sensors can exaggerate highs and lows?
 
You may benefit by reading through some of the answers to your previous posts as some of the things you are still doing are one that people have suggested might be causing the problem if indeed it is a problem.
Look at the timings of when those readings are.
 
Yoghurt has the same amount of carbs as milk, neither of which are particularly high carb at about 5g carbs per 100mls, so unless you are drinking half a pint, it is only adding a few extra carbs, but yoghurt is more filling, which is important, particularly if you need to drop to just one Weetabix.
 
But if you are having 'plenty of milk' with weetabix you could easily be adding 10g of carb. 2 weetabix and plenty of milk could easily be 40g of carb.
 
rebrascora said:
Yoghurt has the same amount of carbs as milk, neither of which are particularly high carb at about 5g carbs per 100mls, so unless you are drinking half a pint, it is only adding a few extra carbs, but yoghurt is more filling, which is important, particularly if you need to drop to just one Weetabix.
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Thanks for the reply. One weetabix? Not worth getting a bowl dirty - lol.
I am considering not having breakfast and just having lunch and dinner. Lunch is salad and has not much effect and dinner is followed by a 4 mile walk which keeps the spike low. I need to lose more weight too! I dont feel 2 weetabix and tea was excessive but now I am diabetic maybe I should consider just one weetabix. I remember an ad on the telly promoting 3 weetabix!
 
I mostly have 20g of porridge made with water and 40g blueberries which is about 25g of carbohydrate. As a type 1 I don't eat a low carb diet. I would always eat breakfast! Most important meal of the day!
 
Leadinglights said:
You may benefit by reading through some of the answers to your previous posts as some of the things you are still doing are one that people have suggested might be causing the problem if indeed it is a problem.
Look at the timings of when those readings are.
Click to expand...
I understand I have had plenty of advice but I am just experimenting and I had a pint of milk sitting in the fridge.
I didnt think food would be so complicated. As a newbie to this I am just finding my way and coming to terms with a different way of eating that seems to be difficult at the moment.
Ideally I would have a choice of 7 breakfasts and dinners that don't spike so much and I can live with that. For now I need to lose weight and get my BG down. My goal is to have a good reading when I get my 3 month blood test in April and the reading is well below the 55 it was. I am wanting a gold star! I should be up for at least a bronze.
I might try fasting more, I might try shakes for a week to see if that works. I realise I need to have a good eating regime for the future. Unfortunately I have a week in London coming up and I love a London pub (but lots of walking).
 
JonathanGi said:
I mostly have 20g of porridge made with water and 40g blueberries which is about 25g of carbohydrate. As a type 1 I don't eat a low carb diet. I would always eat breakfast! Most important meal of the day!
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Porridge and water sounds desperate. Lol. I like yoghurt and blueberries and a few nuts. Not sure I would like porridge and water.
 
rebrascora said:
How many Weetabix did you have? You might get away with just one if two spikes you too high. I think @Martin.A has just one with his yoghurt and berries.
Click to expand...
Yes, just the one. Having had to give up my favourite Just Right cereal, and reading that wholegrain would be better, I did a pre- and post- Weetabix test in the early days and found that my post-meal reading was almost back to pre-meal after 2 hours. These days I'll sometimes do overnight oats instead but I measure out 20g of oats as that's more or less the same carbs as a single Weetabix.
 
lordburnside said:
I understand I have had plenty of advice but I am just experimenting and I had a pint of milk sitting in the fridge.
I didnt think food would be so complicated. As a newbie to this I am just finding my way and coming to terms with a different way of eating that seems to be difficult at the moment.
Ideally I would have a choice of 7 breakfasts and dinners that don't spike so much and I can live with that. For now I need to lose weight and get my BG down. My goal is to have a good reading when I get my 3 month blood test in April and the reading is well below the 55 it was. I am wanting a gold star! I should be up for at least a bronze.
I might try fasting more, I might try shakes for a week to see if that works. I realise I need to have a good eating regime for the future. Unfortunately I have a week in London coming up and I love a London pub (but lots of walking).
Click to expand...
I agree with experimenting but with all experiments keeping good records of what you do and doing replicates to make sure the effect is genuine.
I don't know if you keep a food diary but doing that can help to spot the foods which consistently give you a bigger increase than 3mmol/l after 2 hours. By looking at the in between level you may be rejecting things that are fine. It should then be possible to identify some breakfasts which are safe for you and keep you from feeling hungry.
I'm afraid it can be complicated as people respond differently to carbs in that some people can tolerate 20g carbs if bread but not if rice and others will be the other way round, no one size fits all.
 
I think it is important to be careful with comments about "high carb" foods.
As mentioned at the top of every page, " Everyone manages their health differently. Please be mindful of this."
Whilst you may think milk contains "a lot" of carbs, this may be tolerated by some others.
It reminds me of someone on a different forum referring to bananas as 100% carb. I was keen to jump on and remind the poster that they contain about 20 to 25% carbs and that extra 75% could make a huge difference to someone carb counting.
At 5g carbs per 100ml, milk is not high carb. Maybe what you meant was that the carbs in milk are to be considered as well as the carbs in toast and weetabix.
 
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lordburnside said:
I didnt think food would be so complicated.
Click to expand...
I thought that in the beginning but quickly learned that it doesn't have to be. I've since found that I can eat pretty much the same meals as before, having ditched rice for riced cauliflower, potatoes for celeriac or cauli, and pasta for a half-portion of a non-grain variety, thus taking out the high carb ingredients. It's been amazing to see what a few simple swaps can do.
 
No advice really except to keep on the experimenting and write everything down so that after a while you can look for general patterns. Perhaps have one breakfast for a week and then change to another for a week rather than day by day. When you have got a few weeks worth then scratch your head and try to work out what suits you best.

You will be dead lucky if you find absolute winners but you should be able to work out the best direction of travel.

PS... I'd be trying to get rid of the sugar in your tea .... not for some magic instantaneous effect on your BG but to begin to train your system to recognise that lots of other interesting flavours exist once you remove sweetness from the mix. This may then then pass on to how you react to other foodstuffs with a cumulative long term effect.

PPS I absolutely agree with the last post by @Martin.A .
 
Thanks for replying. You are right I should cut out sugar in tea and coffee and I am down to one third of a spoon.
Guilty as charged. I will just have to get used to no sugar if I can. Alternatively I might cut down on tea and coffee.
I have Twinings Orange and Lotus Flower tea which is great and I hope healthy apart from the sugar. Coffee is Gold Blend but whoever is buying it in the office keeps picking up the powdered variety or the Intense variety which is not so good.
I only drink tea coffee and water and rarely a glass of weak squash. Not much variety in drinks!
 
lordburnside said:
Thanks for replying. You are right I should cut out sugar in tea and coffee and I am down to one third of a spoon.
Guilty as charged. I will just have to get used to no sugar if I can. Alternatively I might cut down on tea and coffee.
I have Twinings Orange and Lotus Flower tea which is great and I hope healthy apart from the sugar. Coffee is Gold Blend but whoever is buying it in the office keeps picking up the powdered variety or the Intense variety which is not so good.
I only drink tea coffee and water and rarely a glass of weak squash. Not much variety in drinks!
Click to expand...
Sparkling flavoured water is very refreshing.
 
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