New to forum looking for guidance type 2

[Toucan]

What do you eat for snacks ?

A few nuts (usually walnuts of brazils); handful of olives; some celery sticks or strips of peppers with soft cheese.
Another option some people use is to have proteins available in the fridge e.g some hard boiled eggs or chicken drumsticks.

Generally though, if you can, try to have a main meal that sustains you and don't stint on portions too much as long as it is not high carb items.

Fruit is surprisingly high in carbs, if you do eat it, try to make it berries.
There is a useful book www.carbsandcals.com which gives very helpful information on carb values, and some of them are quite surprising!

 

[Davesooty]

Thanks again

 

[rebrascora]

What you may find is that once you cut back on the carbs you are eating, you will not feel the need to snack so much but in the interim period, make sure to have access to plenty of low carb treats available. Boiled eggs with mayonnaise are very filling or a chunk of cheese or a cooked sausage.

 

[Davesooty]

i got the shakes half hour ago exactly an hour after eating 2 bacon and eggs with tomato checked my blood which was 4.3. I ate a small chunk of cheese which has helped but don’t know for how long. It doesn’t feel right to have this an hour after eating no carbs

 

[rebrascora]

Dave, are you on any medication for your diabetes. It is something we should have asked before suggesting you go low carb. The reason I ask is that a reading of 4.3 is much lower than I would have expected from someone who is exhibiting symptoms of high BG.... fatigue etc. Some medication like gliclazide works by encouraging your pancreas to squeeze out a bit more insulin. If there are no carbs for that extra insulin to work on, then it can drop you a bit low, so you need to reduce your carb intake slowly and in conjunction with a reduction in gliclazide and discussion with your medical team.

It may however be that your body is used to running at much higher levels and is responding to what it perceives as a low reading or it has rapidly decreased, a bit like a junky coming off drugs. The chunk of cheese was a good idea. It may take time for your body to adjust to running on a different type of fuel and it may complain a bit like this at first. I would suggest you change your diet more more gradually, particularly if you have been eating lots of bread etc until now. Maybe just half your carb intake for one meal each day and then maybe half it for another meal after a few days or a week.
If it drops below 4, then have a small sweet snack like a couple of jelly babies and retest after 15 mins to make sure it has come back up. Also check the calibration of your BG meter as that reading is a little surprising from the description of your symptoms. Which meter have you got?

 

[Davesooty]

I’m on 2 metformin twice a day
i have the Braun Omnitest
i know in the past when I have tested having the shakes it was around 4 which I felt didnt seem right.
i stopped doing blood tests when things settled down months ago
just started again this morning to try and get a handle on things but it’s confusing when things don’t improve following a meal

 

[rebrascora]

Have the test strips been open for that time or did you open a new pot. They are supposed to be discarded a month after opening I believe as they can degrade after the seal is broken. Unfortunately we are just guessing that high BG is causing your fatigue if you have not been testing, so it could possible be due to something else and not diabetes related, like anaemia for instance.
Your body can get that shaky feeling at a variety of levels if your BG is dropping rapidly or it is used to being at 14 say and then drops to 6, so there is no guarantee that the shaky feeling will always happen at 4 or that your meter is reading accurately if it has not been used for some time. Do you have a test solution for it to check the calibration?

 

[rebrascora]

Also was this the first meal of the day and what time did you eat last night and did you take a reading before eating this meal today and have you taken exercise this morning before eating or after or not at all?..... so many factors can affect BG

That is the max dose of Metformin which suggests your HbA1c must have been pretty high. Do you know what your last HbA1c reading was and when?

 

[Davesooty]

I took a reading first thing 7.6 then 2 hours after eating weetabix 10.3
had bacon eggs at 11.45 got the shakes an hour later reading was 4.3
i usually exercise before eating but didn’t this morning as I read you should eat something first if diabetic
I skipped exercise in any case today
the strips I’m using are old
my hba1c was 68 if I remember correctly

 

[Drummer]

You are going from the high carb to no carb too fast, I suspect.
Try having something else with your bacon and eggs - tomato, courgette and mushrooms always seems to be good for me. I eat as much as I want at breakfast and then don't need to eat again until the evening - but I am an old hand at the low carbing and you seem to have needed to feed the need for carbs regularly - you might get some false hypos even when your metabolism starts to work again - it probably could not believe that you had not eaten any carbs for breakfast.

 

[Davesooty]

Thanks Martin I’ll try smaller portion

 

[trophywench]

Dave - nothing about diabetes is 'one size fits all' - keeping your sense of humour is recommended!

 

[Sharron1]

Hi and welcome.

I am 2 years (how did that happen?) Into this journey. I managed to.get my levels down to non diabetic by really sticking to simple low carb foods. Snacking is a problem, i either have some tofu (like cavity wall filler) that does the job, or a baby bel cheese and an oat cake. It took a while and it takes patience.But this forum is great for advice and support. Good luck.

 

[SB2015]

Hi Dave

Well done in increasing your exercise and starting to sort out what foods your body will tolerate. Ince you have that information you can start to make swaps and/or reduce portion sizes.

What is it that makes you feel that you need to snack every two hours. You may find that this is because of high glucose levels after meals and the drop afterwards making you feel hungry.
If you need to snack you could try non carb things like nuts. I now try to keep at least four hours between any carbs to let my body process them and also to give my levels time to settle.

A useful tip I was given was to try to do at least 15 min of activity, or at least not to sit down for that time after any meal. This really helps me to avoid spikes glucose levels after a meal.

Keep in touch and keep asking questions.

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

Feeling a little trembly at 4.3 is probably your body being used to higher BG levels and giving off hypo warning signs a little early.

Hypo symptoms wouldn't usually kick-in until 3.5-3.9ish, but if your BG has been running slightly higher than the normal range for a while your ‘glucose thermostat’ can get a little out of kilter. Warning symptoms can also be triggered at higher levels of the rate of drop is rapid.

This should settle down over the next few months as you spend more time in the ’normal’ range of 4-9 🙂

 

[trophywench]

I reckon 4.3 is a really excellent level to start getting hypo symptoms at because at that level we have enough time to catch and rectify it before we sail merrily downward into shark infested waters Clinically that's what anyone on hypo inducing drugs (most commonly insulin and glipizides) wants, cos once it gets down as far as 3.3 it absolutely DOES affect your brain functioning properly and that's a recognised medically proven FACT.

As your body gets gradually accustomed to more normal BG levels, the violence of those symptoms will lessen. These things simply take time, so be patient.