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Newcastle in USA

trophywench said:
But not the bread or at least - not so much of it - once you go back from the shakes and progress onto proper food again.
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@Trenton Tony Be careful with bread

I've never been to the USA, I only know what I've seen & learned from YouTube, but as far as I can gather, like much of American food it has a high level of added sugar, High Fructose Corn Syrup, and other additives, so you will have to be careful about finding substitutes and reducing your carbohydrate consumption.

Search YouTube for 'American Bread'
 
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zuludog said:
@Trenton Tony Be careful with bread

I've never been to the USA, I only know what I've seen & learned from YouTube, but as far as I can gather, like much of American food it has a high level of added sugar, High Fructose Corn Syrup, and other additives, so you will have to be careful about finding substitutes and reducing your carbohydrate consumption.

Search YouTube for 'American Bread'
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I am British and frequently travel to the USA (I have just returned from a business trip just outside Boston and have another business trip to Vegas planned).
Yes, I have noticed some bread in USA is sweet but like the UK, there is a huge variety of bread available and not all of it is as sweet. On my trips, I usual visit a local supermarket (I find it quite fascinating to see what is offer in different countries). For example, during my latest trip, I noticed some interesting middle eastern flatbreads in a small town supermarket from a local bakery.

However, I am not convinced the sweetness of American bread is relevant when all carbs affect BG.
Philly cheese steak in a "British" bun with fries would not be part of a low carb diet.
 
rebrascora said:
The monitor is measuring Blood Glucose levels which wander up and down throughout the day and night so it is constantly changing. 142 is 7.9mmols/l so not too bad at all considering your HbA1c is in the 80s.
Was this a fasting reading and when did you take it? It can make a significant difference between taking it as soon as you wake up, before you get out of bed and taking it half an hour later when you are up ad dressed and having a coffee. Our liver acts a bit like a back up battery for when we don't have any food digesting and releasing glucose into our blood and first thing on a morning when we have fasted all night, our liver starts to pump out extra glucose from it's stores to give us energy for the day ahead. This surge of glucose is referred to as Dawn Phenomenon or sometimes Foot on the Floor Syndrome as sometimes it starts in the early hours before we wake up (DP) and sometimes it waits until we wake up and swing our legs out of bed and onto the floor (FOTF). I am insulin dependant and if I didn't inject insulin to cover it, my levels can rise by as much as 6mmols (108mg/dl) in the first hour after getting up as a result of FOTF. It is believed it is a throw back to prehistoric times when we needed energy to hunt or gather our first meal of the day, but obviously it doesn't take nearly as much energy to walk into the kitchen and open the fridge. People without diabetes also experience it, but their body releases enough insulin to cover it, so it is only really us people with diabetes who see a rise because our body is not able to efficiently balance our BG levels. Physical and emotional stress can also cause the liver to release more glucose, which is why very strenuous exercise can cause levels to rise whilst more gentle exercise will usually cause it to drop. Not that strenuous exercise doesn't have benefits in the long run for diabetes, but it can sometimes be discouraging to see a rise when you are really working physically and expecting levels to drop. Walking is probably one of the best exercises for lowering BG levels and costs nothing. Gardening is also really good for dropping your BG levels.

Anyway, what I intended to say was that BG levels go up and down a lot in response to all sorts of things (there are something like 42 factors which impact your levels but the main 3 are probably food, exercise and medication). The difference between your readings of 138 and 142mg/dl are negligible and well within the error margin of your test kit, so don't worry about these minir day to day fluctuations but develop a strategy of testing regularly at the same time in your day ie when you wake up even if it is 7am one day and 9am another or after you are up and dressed and about to have coffee and compare like with like and look for a general downward trend over weeks and months and ignore the day to day wavering of it. Hope that makes sense. 1 day down, good luck with Day 2!
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Thank you for the information. Now the 3rd day in the row that FBG rose. Trying to keep it in perspective.
 
Hi @Trenton Tony - Thats seven pounds in a few days. Probably mostly water at the moment but things are heading in the right direction straight away. When it comes to your blood glucose levels I am guessing that your FBG is your waking level. Two points about that.

First is that the error bar on a blood glucose reading is higher than most appreciate. It is around +/- 20 in mg/dl. What that means is that although your readings appear to be going up the changes are not statistically significant. If you want to follow the effects on blood glucose you would be better to look at some other metric...for example the readings before and a couple of hours after a meal. Alternately, take a few measurements at various times during the day for a few days and look at the trends.

Second is that most members seem to find that when aiming to reduce blood glucose by diet, the waking reading is the last to be significantly affected. I'm no expert but I am guessing its because there is a lot going on that affect blood glucose and readjusting those processes takes far longer than the simple thing of eating less carbohydrate.

Just keep going is my thought, use your bathroom scales as your main monitor and keep posting your progress if that helps.
 
Day 4
262 lbs
135 fbg

Completed 3 days on the diet and weirdly the scaled moved up on the last day! That wasn't such good news, but luckily fbg is starting to look better. Based on the limited data points I have right now it looks like the heavier I am the lower my blood sugar is! LOL.
 
Docb said:
Hi @Trenton Tony - Thats seven pounds in a few days. Probably mostly water at the moment but things are heading in the right direction straight away. When it comes to your blood glucose levels I am guessing that your FBG is your waking level. Two points about that.

First is that the error bar on a blood glucose reading is higher than most appreciate. It is around +/- 20 in mg/dl. What that means is that although your readings appear to be going up the changes are not statistically significant. If you want to follow the effects on blood glucose you would be better to look at some other metric...for example the readings before and a couple of hours after a meal. Alternately, take a few measurements at various times during the day for a few days and look at the trends.

Second is that most members seem to find that when aiming to reduce blood glucose by diet, the waking reading is the last to be significantly affected. I'm no expert but I am guessing its because there is a lot going on that affect blood glucose and readjusting those processes takes far longer than the simple thing of eating less carbohydrate.

Just keep going is my thought, use your bathroom scales as your main monitor and keep posting your progress if that helps.
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Thats for that. I'm patient now and will try to keep it in perspective. Would be real nice to see it come back down but I'm going to need to be realistic. Took 5 decades to create this problem I'm guessing its gonna take more than a few days to fix.
 
Trenton Tony said:
Thats for that. I'm patient now and will try to keep it in perspective. Would be real nice to see it come back down but I'm going to need to be realistic. Took 5 decades to create this problem I'm guessing its gonna take more than a few days to fix.
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Keeping a perspective is the key and you don't get it by fretting over day to day results. Week by week or month by month is much more instructive. Figuring out a plan is relatively easy, the hard bit is having the patience and determination needed to carry it through. It is one of the forum mantras that getting T2 diabetes under control is a marathon and not a sprint.

Took you 5 decades to get that way, it will take a year to turn things around and then you can look forwards to another 5 decades if you keep it turned around.
 
Trenton Tony said:
Thank you for the information. Now the 3rd day in the row that FBG rose. Trying to keep it in perspective.
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How are you determining you FBG is rising?
 
Trenton Tony said:
CVS finger prick monitor in the morning before my first shake.
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Yes, but is your FBG rising or is it you, rising later in the morning? Blood glucose is constantly fluctuating, but from a certain point in the morning (around 04:30) the trend is normally on the up. Unless you're making sure to test at the exact time each morning, your results might be just be falling foul of one of many confounding variables.

Testing is frought with inaccuracies and confounding variables, which isn't necessarily an issue...as long as you understand the issues and view the results in that context. The alternative is to turn your fingers into sieves to gather enough data points to average out a more accurate perspective. But if you really want a better idea of what's going on, sporadic use of a Dexcom ONE+ etc. will be much more useful.

Either way, perhaps just trust in the process. You're tring to get rid of ectopic fat, the amount of which is determined by your own personal fat threashold. That might take a while.
 
Day 5
261 lbs
144 fbg

Weight dropped a little from yesterday, but FBG went up. Starting to feel a little hunger now. But still manageable. Weekend will be a new experience for me. Just got to try and make it thru to Monday.
 
Hope your weekend is going OK.

I think @pjgtech had the odd plate of salad when he was struggling, hungry or tempted and really relished it. It may seem odd to think of a salad as a treat but a bit of balsamic dressing on some mixed leaves and cucumber and peppers can really make it zing, especially when you have just had bland shakes for a few days and chewing food can be an important part of feeling sated, which of course you don't get from the shakes.
 
Yes, I did (and still do) have little salads, I quite like Apple Cider vinegar as a salad dressing, and its supposed to be good for you too? But would sometimes also have a small amount of salad cream, or a dollop of mustard.
Salads are so varied too, with so many possible ingredients, so you can very them and not get bored.
Keep at it Tony, as above maybe don't look at the scales every day, its easy to get fixated on them!
 
Hope your week one has continued to go well @Trenton Tony

Keep going! It’s a marathon not a sprint. Try not to sweat the occasional wobbles, look for the longer-term trend 🙂
 
saffron15 said:
@Trenton Tony is it worth weighing yourself just twice a week.? I weigh once a week but every day can be a bit misleading or demotivating. Whatever you decide you are clearly motivated to change. Good luck.
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Good idea Saffron. I think I will move to that eventually. But I'm an engineer by trade so need the analytics to support an itch. If it becomes too much though definately will start to scale it back.
 
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