Glucose level help?

[Kath Newman]

Hi, as I’ve said before I have recently been diagnosed with type 2, diet before diagnosis was fairly good (been following slimming world and have always cooked from scratch so no processed food) but since diagnosis have drastically reduced carbs. My worry is that checking my glucose 2 hours after meals the level is hovering between 13 & 15 which doesn’t seem good. I’ve only been on metformin for just over a week so maybe it takes a couple of weeks before levels are ok?

thanks to everyone on this forum, it’s great

 

[Drummer]

If the low carb eating doesn't produce results, you could well be something more interesting than an ordinary type two.
What sort of things would be a typical day's menu for you?

 

[Inka]

Hi @Kath Newman What are you eating and what’s your blood sugar before the meal?

 

[Kath Newman]

Hello, thanks for your replies.

Typical days;
Tomato and Mushroom omelette
strawberries, almonds and mature cheddar
tuna stuffed peppers with salad

Grilled bacon and mushroom sandwich (brown seeded bread)
Apple, strawberries, almonds and cheese
Slimming world (so packed with veg) chilli con carne and jacket potato

2 weetabix and skimmed milk
Orange, almonds, cheese and strawberries
Slow cooked beef, new potatoes and lots of veg

I drink lots of water throughout the day, a couple of black coffees and a couple of G&T's in the evening. I try to walk for an hour each day as well.

My glucose before eating is between 7.6 and 9.0

 

[Inka]

Ok, so that’s not hugely carb-heavy. You could experiment with having smaller portions of carbs or using lower carb substitutes eg with your chilli you could have cauliflower rice. Jacket potatoes are quite high GI so tend to put your blood sugar up quickly. You also have to have a reasonably sized one to bake and they, of course, will have more carbs.

Walking is a fabulous form of exercise. If you’re able to keep active after your meals that can help too. Even a 10 minute walk or 15 minutes of tidying up where you move round the house rather than sit down can help too.

 

[PattiEvans]

Hi @Kath Newman Metformin takes a while to “ramp up”, so give it a chance. However you don’t say what dose you are on. I believe the minimum effective dose is 1500mg per day. Sometimes doctors start you on a low dose because of the side effects and then increase it slowly.

 

[Drummer]

The bread, apple, chilli, if it has beans, potato, weetabix (or any cereal) skimmed milk, orange, and any heavy carb veges would all be off my list of foods to include, certainly in the early days.
Maybe try beans again later, once your numbers go down, as some people can eat them, and some - like me - find that they seem to have more carbs than are listed for them.

 

[Lucyr]

Some people would be okay with this sort of diet. The first day example looks fine but it depends on the proportion of tomatoes, strawberries and what is in the salad and how big the peppers are.

I would have high readings if I ate a large tomato at a meal or one whole pepper or lots of strawberries. These days I share a tomato with my husband and he gets a whole one as well and I slice up peppers and eat maybe half a slice chopped up into little squares so I get the flavour all through my meal but not much pepper in total. Onions are another heavy carb and I can eat one single spring onion or a slice of a big onion at one meal - but usually I do the same with a big onion and just have a small amount chopped up tiny to get the flavour through stuff without eating much of it. I chop up onions and peppers and tomatoes and then freeze them and add sprinkles to recipes the way I would with herbs and garnishes.

I cannot eat wheat bread at all. A single slice has my sugars shooting up into the teens. So I make my own keto bread (see my keto thread on here for a recipe) and that only has 1g - 2g of carbs per slice and so that is ok. Real bread never passes my lips any more.
An apple is very high in carbs - I haven't eaten more than a tiny taste of an apple for two years. It is ok if you are about to do a high energy workout to get rid of the carbs straight away but I prefer to keep my sugars level and so I only eat berries and only three or four at a time per meal. Haven't eaten orange either. last summer we had clementines and I had a few segments while my husband had the rest of the fruit. I still have a lot of them frozen at the bottom of my freezer.

Chilli con carne is usually very high in bean content which is mainly starch - so converts to glucose in the blood. I never eat pulses for that reason.
I don't eat potatoes (I have celeriac instead and prefer it now - you can cook it exactly like potato and it is delicious and a tiny fraction of the carbs)

I don't take any meds any more. My bloods by avoiding high carbs and eating low carbs keep my bloods at around 5.4 - 6.2 pre meal and 5.9 - 7.0 after a meal.

Once you work out what ingredients to swap out and which to swap in instead it gets much easier.

This all seems very extreme to be recommending to a new person, it’s more likely to overwhelm someone than encourage them! Making more manageable changes as Kath has already done is a better approach to jumping straight to something as extreme as not eating more than half a tomato or more than one spring onion.

The metformin will take a few weeks to work, any exercise you can add will help, and if the levels haven’t come down enough after than you’ll have the choice or more medication or more extreme dietary changes.

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

Well done on the adjustments you’ve been making already @Kath Newman

As you can see from just a few responses, different people can have very different sensitivity to carbohydrates, and the important thing is to develop an eating plan which works for you as an individual, and which you enjoy and find flexible enough to sustain long-term.

You have only recently been diagnosed, and a gradual reduction in average BG levels is easier on the fine blood vessels, so don’t panic about not seeing immediate reductions into in-range numbers - a gentle descent can be a better option.

It might be really helpful to check immediately before as well as 2hrs after eating to see what the effect of your various meals are. As long as your BG isn’t rising by more than 2-3mmol/L at 2hrs, you should start to see your levels come down over time. You’ll also be able to identify any specific carbs that you seem to be more sensitive to, and think about reducing portions of those or trying swaps.

Let us know how things go, and keep chipping away at it! It’s a marathon not a sprint etc etc 🙂

 

[Leadinglights]

Well done on the adjustments you’ve been making already @Kath Newman

As you can see from just a few responses, different people can have very different sensitivity to carbohydrates, and the important thing is to develop an eating plan which works for you as an individual, and which you enjoy and find flexible enough to sustain long-term.

You have only recently been diagnosed, and a gradual reduction in average BG levels is easier on the fine blood vessels, so don’t panic about not seeing immediate reductions into in-range numbers - a gentle descent can be a better option.

It might be really helpful to check immediately before as well as 2hrs after eating to see what the effect of your various meals are. As long as your BG isn’t rising by more than 2-3mmol/L at 2hrs, you should start to see your levels come down over time. You’ll also be able to identify any specific carbs that you seem to be more sensitive to, and think about reducing portions of those or trying swaps.

Let us know how things go, and keep chipping away at it! It’s a marathon not a sprint etc etc 🙂

I totally agree with bringing down your levels slowly as a sudden reduction in carbs can indeed cause vision issues, I went down to 60g per day immediately and it has taken my eyes 7 months to get back to sort of normal. If you adopt a regime of testing then you can see just what you can tolerate without going to extreme measure which you might find hard to sustain. So that would be good advice to @Kath Newman at this early stage.

 

[NotWorriedAtAll]

This all seems very extreme to be recommending to a new person, it’s more likely to overwhelm someone than encourage them! Making more manageable changes as Kath has already done is a better approach to jumping straight to something as extreme as not eating more than half a tomato or more than one spring onion.

The metformin will take a few weeks to work, any exercise you can add will help, and if the levels haven’t come down enough after than you’ll have the choice or more medication or more extreme dietary changes.

I have deleted it - sorry.

 

[Kath Newman]

Well done on the adjustments you’ve been making already @Kath Newman

As you can see from just a few responses, different people can have very different sensitivity to carbohydrates, and the important thing is to develop an eating plan which works for you as an individual, and which you enjoy and find flexible enough to sustain long-term.

You have only recently been diagnosed, and a gradual reduction in average BG levels is easier on the fine blood vessels, so don’t panic about not seeing immediate reductions into in-range numbers - a gentle descent can be a better option.

It might be really helpful to check immediately before as well as 2hrs after eating to see what the effect of your various meals are. As long as your BG isn’t rising by more than 2-3mmol/L at 2hrs, you should start to see your levels come down over time. You’ll also be able to identify any specific carbs that you seem to be more sensitive to, and think about reducing portions of those or trying swaps.

Let us know how things go, and keep chipping away at it! It’s a marathon not a sprint etc etc 🙂

Thank you, have been monitoring my levels and trying to link them with what I’ve eaten but doesn’t seem to be any rationale … for example this morning I had an omelette, spent the next two hours cleaning and levels had risen from 8 to 16, last night I had grilled chicken, small portion homemade pasta salad and green salad and levels were 7.6 to 13.8. I am seeing my diabetic nurse early September and have a feeling my medication will be increased. Only on 1000mg metformin so plenty of scope to increase

 

[Leadinglights]

Thank you, have been monitoring my levels and trying to link them with what I’ve eaten but doesn’t seem to be any rationale … for example this morning I had an omelette, spent the next two hours cleaning and levels had risen from 8 to 16, last night I had grilled chicken, small portion homemade pasta salad and green salad and levels were 7.6 to 13.8. I am seeing my diabetic nurse early September and have a feeling my medication will be increased. Only on 1000mg metformin so plenty of scope to increase

Those do seem unexpectedly high increases from the food you have eaten, worth trying to keep a good record of what you have and the approx carb amount alongside your readings. This will give you some evidence to show to your diabetic nurse.

 

[Kath Newman]

Thank you, will do