Help with snacks

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I don't know how insulin affects what snacks you need to have/avoid so I'm not sure if listing my preferred snacks will be helpful but here they are anyway:

Mixed nuts (plain)
Oatcakes with cheese and cucumber
Carrot sticks and hummus
1 or 2 rice cakes with salt and pepper (or slice of cheese)
Berries with 0% fat Fage/greek yogurt
Sliced apple with peanut butter
Mini omelettes made in small muffin pan

Hodmedods do great roasted pulses too that are great for a snack on the go. https://hodmedods.co.uk/products/roasted-pulses-selection
 
I would be thinking about why you need snacks in the first place. It is likely because your BG levels are rising and then falling dramatically in between meals. If you can adjust your diet to give you more stable BG levels, you shouldn't feel hungry or need snacks. If the snacks are just a habit, then it is time to break it for the benefit of your health and give you control over your food intake and weight. My gut feeling is that it is a craving due to fluctuating levels though.... I used to be a sugar addict pre-diagnosis and was regularly battling hunger and cravings and eating more and more, so changing my diet and eating foods which stabilize my BG levels has been a revelation as to how little I actually need to eat and not feel hungry, when before I was almost constantly craving/hungry and yet eating twice as much.
 
victoriacwooldridge1976 said:
I am trying to break the habit but having sugar lows between meals so need something in-between that won't spike my levels
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Then your insulin doses are probably too high if you are dropping below 4 or if they are false hypos ie levels are above 4 but make you feel really shaky, then maybe have just half a digestive biscuit or one prune or dried apricot works well for me to steady things up when my levels get close to 4. It amazes me how such a small amount of food is enough when previously I would have eaten half a packet or dried fruit without any thought.
 
Thanks Barbara - that's what is happening, my sugars have been so high for so long I'm getting the shakes at 5 then panicking and eating too many biscuits to feel better again. Looking for something healthy that won't spike my sugars too much but will get me to my next meal xx
 
I would suggest ONE piece of dried fruit like a prune/apricot/small fig and then maybe a small chunk of cheese or half a hard boiled egg or a small handful of nuts. Learning to moderate food when you feel like that takes time and discipline, so I understand that you will probably want to eat everything in site in the early days. I portion out my hypo treatment so that I don't just have a handful of whatever and then go back for more. Those little resealable plastic bags are good. Once I have had my treatment, that is it and I just monitor. I will often feel worst after eating because there is a slight delay in the adrenaline kicking in and it is that which makes your heart pound and you sweat and feel really ill so you have to trust that what you have eaten will do it's job and just ride that feeling out. Gradually you will stop getting that strong reaction at those levels if you stop topping them up too high again.

It always amazes me how a very small amount of something can have such a significant effect on raising my levels. So one prune or dried apricot is about 5g carbs and will raise my BG by about 1mmol.
If I am under 4mmols/l then I will use Jelly Babies (JBs) as they work slightly quicker than prunes but 1 JB is about 5g carbs so never more than 3 of them and usually just 1 or 2 depending upon how far below 4 my levels are. 3.5-4 and I usually just have 1JB. Below 3.5 and I will have 2.
 
victoriacwooldridge1976 said:
Hi, I am type 2 and new to insulin. I have puled on the weight in such a short space of time - any tips on snacks please?
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Have you considered cutting the snacks out? Allowing yourself to spend time at normal bgs rather than constantly spiking bg back up with biscuits will help you get used to normal bgs.
 
victoriacwooldridge1976 said:
Yes trying that, had really good breakfast, but it's not sustaining me to lunchtime- I have to be up early, so breakfast is usually around 8ish
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Sounds a fairly standard / lateish breakfast. What time is lunch?
 
Alpen.
Lunch is usually between 12noon and 1pm - more closer to noon as I am usually starving. Just feel like its a vicious cycle, trying to break habits and behave, but have a meltdown when my sugars are low. Ill be honest, i am really struggling with this mentally :(
 
Hi again.

Would you be able to give us a bit of back history to your journey with diabetes.
Things like when you were diagnosed and how that diagnosis came about? ie symptomatic or discovered via routine blood test?
What if any dietary advice you were given?
What if any oral medication did you use before going on to insulin?
Which insulin(s) are you using?
How frequently do you test your levels and are you adjusting your doses yourself or are they set by a nurse?

Are you keeping a food diary along with your readings?

Alpen is quite high carb so will likely be spiking your BG levels before the insulin is bringing you down, but as it does so you will then feel hungry and want to eat, causing this vicious cycle. If you are on fixed doses of mixed insulin then you are a bit snookered regarding adjusting things.

I wonder if the free 14 day trial of Freestyle Libre might be helpful to you so that you can watch more closely what your BG levels are doing and help you to choose foods which will not spike you so high or perhaps time your insulin better to stop your levels spiking and dropping, which is what I suspect is happening. If you look on the Freestyle Libre Website you should be able to find the free trial. I personally bought the starter kit and then self funded for several months before I got it on prescription and it has been a game changer for me.... and many others... in helping to understand how my body works and how best to use my insulin and which foods are best avoided because they spike me too high.
 
victoriacwooldridge1976 said:
Alpen.
Lunch is usually between 12noon and 1pm - more closer to noon as I am usually starving. Just feel like its a vicious cycle, trying to break habits and behave, but have a meltdown when my sugars are low. Ill be honest, i am really struggling with this mentally :(
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I was going to ask the same questions but I was beaten to it.
 
victoriacwooldridge1976 said:
Hi, I am type 2 and new to insulin. I have puled on the weight in such a short space of time - any tips on snacks please?
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Hello @victoriacwooldridge1976
Are you on a mixed insulin by any chance? If so unfortunately the way it works (profile) means you haven't an option to cut out snacks if this is the case.
Perhaps try 20 carbs for a snack consisting of some fruit and see if that helps. You could also talk to your diabetes nurse and ask to swap to a basal bolus, then you wouldn't need to snack.
 
Ok, so - I was diagnosed 15yrs ago and truthfully never managed it well. I lost my Dad when I was 14, he was type one and went into a hypoglycemic coma and never came out of it, so I have feared this for most of my adult life and tried to avoid insulin for a long time :(
I am on novomix which is 30% fast release and 70% slow release, so this is probably why I need a snack. I really want to get this in control as I have an 11yr old son that i need to be there for. I can't let him go through what I went through.

I really do appreciate everyone taking the time to give me advice. I have been so scared and felt alone. I am very lucky to have a supportive husband and family. Just really good to talk to people that are going through this journey too xx
 
From when I was diagnosed until relatively recently I used to mix my own and it would end up being similar to your novomix ratio for my morning dose, and then closer to the inverse in the evening. I would have to have a mid-morning snack and a mid-afternoon snack (and a pre-bed snack), which tended to be a biscuit or two with a cup of coffee for the day time ones, and a bowl of cereal in the evening.

You therefore do need to spread out what you eat over the day, however you could look at reducing the overall dose so you can eat less for breakfast/lunch/dinner to make up for the fact that you have to eat in between meals.

Basal bolus does make life much easier re flexibility, though tbh I find I snack more now because I can.
 
Oh! Goodness! How dreadfully sad to lose your Dad like that and at such a young age. That must have been ever so traumatic for you and understandably in the back of your mind now that you are starting on insulin yourself. However insulins and monitoring systems have improved dramatically in the interim period and there should be no reason for anyone to suffer such a fate with modern treatment provided they take the trouble to manage their diabetes well.

I would encourage you again to at least get a free trail of Freestyle Libre and ask about going onto a basal/bolus insulin regime where your meal insulin is separate of your long acting insulin and you can then adjust them both independently for what your body needs and what you want to eat and when you want to eat or even skip meals if you like as I oftn do on a low carb way of eating. It is also easier to manage your levels through illness etc with separate insulins because you can use the meal time insulin to correct higher levels and bring them down into range if they start head into orbit. It takes a bit of extra toime and effort to understand how to use and adjust those insulins yourself, but well worth it for the flexibility and fine tuning of your levels and doses that they allow you. At the moment, it sounds like you are eating to your insulin and that is causing you to put on weight when you should be adjusting your insulin to what you need, which will enable you to lose weight, providing you reduce what you eat.
 
Sorry to hear about the loss of your Dad in such tragic circumstances @victoriacwooldridge1976 :(

I can imagine what a lasting effect that sort of experience must have had.

When I started on insulin I was also put on a mixed variety, because I think the feeling was it was easier to get your head around. But I soon found it was frustratingly inflexible, and needed ‘feeding’ at regular intervals, while also not being particularly powerful at actually managing glucose responses from carbohydrates in meals.

Even though basal:bolus means more jabs in a day I find it makes things so much more manageable and flexible, because the two different insulins (the part for background coverage, and the part for meals/corrections) can be varied independently of each other and taken at times to better suit my life.

So for some meals which are faster absorbed I can take the meal dose and then wait a while before starting to eat so that the insulin has a bit of a headstart.

Plus as others have said, it makes it possible to vary meal sizes, delay meals, or even skip them entirely - because you aren’t tied in to the schedule of your mixed insulin.

Perhaps it’s something to ask your surgery about?
 
everydayupsanddowns said:
Sorry to hear about the loss of your Dad in such tragic circumstances @victoriacwooldridge1976 :(

I can imagine what a lasting effect that sort of experience must have had.

When I started on insulin I was also put on a mixed variety, because I think the feeling was it was easier to get your head around. But I soon found it was frustratingly inflexible, and needed ‘feeding’ at regular intervals, while also not being particularly powerful at actually managing glucose responses from carbohydrates in meals.

Even though basal:bolus means more jabs in a day I find it makes things so much more manageable and flexible, because the two different insulins (the part for background coverage, and the part for meals/corrections) can be varied independently of each other and taken at times to better suit my life.

So for some meals which are faster absorbed I can take the meal dose and then wait a while before starting to eat so that the insulin has a bit of a headstart.

Plus as others have said, it makes it possible to vary meal sizes, delay meals, or even skip them entirely - because you aren’t tied in to the schedule of your mixed insulin.

Perhaps it’s something to ask your surgery about?
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Thank you.

Yes, the more I read up on this and the advice I am getting, I feel the Basal:bolus regime may be better for me. I feel like I am fighting a loosing battle. 🙂
 
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