low carbs

[Carolg]

This is going to sound stupid, but i think i have confused myself with reading too much. How many carbs make up a low carb daily amount. I understand that different foods affect people differently. Its just i am not getting my levels down much, and i am obviously doing it all wrong, although i have cut out lots of stuff. Msybe partially stress of waiting for my bloods coming back, and hidden stress for a family matter. I appreciate any help anyone can give. Thamks

 

[pottersusan]

Not stupid at all, I've wondered the same thing. I'm sure I read on here somewhere that below 100g is low carb. I'm not sure I achieve that!

 

[Carolg]

Its a mystery to me Susan.i'm afraid i set out with good intentions, writing everything down, then its not embedded in my routine-testing but not in a good pattern.i went right back to the start of the book northener suggests-first year of type 2 diabetes and trying to sort out my head. I thimk whats happened is i have stuff from diabetes uk which serms to be based on potions of this and that, carbs n calories book, and recipe books.

 

[DeusXM]

The whole point of low-carbing isn't to hit some magic arbitrary number - it is to eat the amount of carbohydrate per meal that your body can safely process without spiking.

So for some people, that might be 100g (although probably not all in the same meal!). For others, it might be less than 20g. What you need to do is work out where you need to be through testing your blood sugar. I would suggest though that the majority of T2s will need to probably start looking at less than 50g a day though to see a significant effect. By way of comparison, an average supermarket sandwich is probably 45g of carbs.

 

[Northerner]

Are you keeping a food diary Carol? If so, what amount of carbs are you currently consuming? If not, then start one, recording the amount of carbs in everything you eat and drink, then you'll know where you stand currently. In theory, a non-diabetic person is recommended to eat around 200-250g of carbs a day. As I'm on insulin I can theoretically eat as much carb as I want, I jjust need to match my insulin doses to it. In practice, however, I find that I have around 100-150g per day - I don't regard that as 'low carb', more medium carb, I'd probably have problems trying to eat as much as 250g a day! 😱 .

As DeusXM says, it usually needs to be lower than this for a Type 2, but the only true way to find out is to test using a schedule as described in Test,Review, Adjust by Alan S 🙂

 

[AndBreathe]

Its a mystery to me Susan.i'm afraid i set out with good intentions, writing everything down, then its not embedded in my routine-testing but not in a good pattern.i went right back to the start of the book northener suggests-first year of type 2 diabetes and trying to sort out my head. I thimk whats happened is i have stuff from diabetes uk which serms to be based on potions of this and that, carbs n calories book, and recipe books.

Carol - Forgive me if I'm not interpreting things correctly, but I think what you're saying is that you find yourself in a bit of a muddle, with conflicting information on carbs, in particular? I know, initially at least, I found the conflicting information from respected sources like the NHS and some diabetic charities and/or websites unhelpful, to put it politely. I wasn't alone in that and you're not alone in that. One day (in a pink and fluffy land, far, far away,) we may just find we have one message, which could be more helpful to diabetics. That message, to my mind, wouldn't be fully diet based, but that's a whole separate rant!

Let me make a suggestion to you, for a way forward, which hopefully will give you a way of consistently recording what you do, and getting you immediate feedback on your performance, that you can review after a week or two, then tweak as necessary?

How about, if you haven't already, you set up an account on MyFitnessPal (MFP). It is available on the PB, at www.myfitnesspal.com, or as a phone or tablet app from the usual places. Use MFP to record everything you eat and drink. It seems a bit of a faff to begin with, but once you have your staple meals in there it takes moments to update. Literally moments. I have used this from the outset and still keep my diary today, as I find it sort of keeps me from having just one more thing, several times a day! (Not that anyone else might ever consider such a thing. 🙂 )

Alongside that, keep records of your testing. I used an app for that for ages, but now (lazily), I just refer to my meter. Most meters, provided they are set up properly, record the time and date of a test, so you can go back and look, and they usually are able to work out averages over 7, 30 and 90 days, which gets useful after a while.

Just start off by making your best efforts in terms of what you are eating, but testing every meal. So, testing as you start to eat, then two hours later. Your MFP will record your carbs and calories for you, and your testing will give you your blood feedback.

Don't make lots of changes to begin with. Have a week or so, just doing as you have been, and that should help show up what's going on and whether you have any specific culprits in making your bloods higher than you would like. Once you see for yourself that x, y or z food is affecting you, you can look for alternatives. If there's nothing particularly horrendous (although many find they have at least one horror story.), then you can look at your average total carbs and calories over the previous week or two and decide if carbs or calories, or both need to be trimmed back a bit.

I found doing things in that way took a lot of pressure off me thinking about it what seemed like every minute of every day, because I had other things to be getting on with too, and over thinking wasn't helping my cause at all.

Just try investing a bit in yourself, and you'll get there. Most folks find after a bit of trial and error they can make some progress, but some people also find that their body just isn't able to recover quite so well and they might need a bit more medical support than their initial prescriptions provide. There's no shame in that, or no big worry, but at least you would have the documented evidence to take to your Doc to explain what's going on and what you have tried.

Do try not to get tied into the mantra of "I only want to eat x gr of cabs a day" because someone else does. You're not them.

Really good luck with it all.

 

[Carolg]

Thanks Deusxm,northerner and andbreathe and all other comments. Lots of information to digest, and i intermittently kept a diary. I have been testing but not in a proper pattern.
Got fasting blood results from last week-13.5 (was 20 in november then around 16 2 weeks after starting metformin. My HB1Ac was 105 in november and now 109. Now miserable and really determined to get to grips with this. I tried to download my fitnesspal, but came up problems with site. I will try tommorrow at work. Got an appointment tomorrow with practice nurse (squezed in before her holiday) on a positive note BG before lunch 9.5 and 10.5 tonight before tea. I know this is not telling much and still high but

• i plan to set alarm on monitor for at work for testing 2 hrs after meals,and make time for me
• read article again ,test,review and adjust and follow instructions
• and try to relax and not constantly think diabetes
• Prepare for meals
• Keep a record every day(started today)
• My fitness pal
• Look at exercise and just do it
• Take it a day at a time

Here's planning for some positive changes. Thanks again

 

[Alan.tnh]

Great question, and excellent replies, I too will be taking on board some of this advice as I'm sure others who read this will. Ta Al

 

[Carolg]

I like when i see questions that i feel too daft to ask, but its daft not to ask

 

[Alan.tnh]

maybe this proves the point that the only daft thing is not to ask at all,

 

[AndBreathe]

Honestly Carol, my bet is you can make big changes by doing simple things, but organisation is the key.

Your numbers are high; there's no getting away from that, but with organisation, and no panics, I'm sure you can make a difference. I know I bleat on about recording things, but it is the bedrock of understanding what's going on. In T2, we sometimes have odd, curved balls thrown at us (as do T1s and other, I'm sure), so it's best not to make changes based on a single event, and that's where the records come in handy. They also can give you breathing space to think about other things (remember those things called life and family?). If you record everything you eat and your testing results, you're not having to remember them all the time, and I use the count-down timer on my phone to count my two hour testing window. It works a charm.

Before you know it, you'll have a new routine and feel a million times better.

 

[Carolg]

Thanks andbreathe.one good change i have made is not buying or eating much rubbish, and not grazing. Think thats why my weight has gone down. I don't feel ill as was when diagnosed.there is a bit of family stress and worry at moment, so the less i need to juggle in my head the better.here's hoping the nurse is fine tomorrow, i won't go feeling like a failure thanks to all the advice here.

without trying to bore, but pleased bg only up by 0.3 2 hours after meal-now just to try to sustain and lower that.