testing bs

[Marmite]

So many of you have replied to my concerns and I am so grateful. You have each made some excellent pointers and examples. Now ,on this testing procedure; I can understand that a bowl of porridge can be tested before and after as you describe as it is one food (ignoring milk). BUT if I have a dinner comprising several items I won't be sure which food is responsible for the result. Do you really eat a plate of boiled potato simply to do this?. yuk! Then next day similar with a plate of single something else.? I can already sense a lot of smiles for my ignorance - please forgive. thank you ALL for all the previous replies to my "listen to diabetes uk or NHS or magazine articles" delemma, very informative.

 

[Robin]

Eating a plate of potatoes on their own will give you a different result from eating them as part of a meal,(much more likely to give you a spike) because with a whole meal, you’ve got protein, fat, fibre from salad or veg, etc to slow down the digestion of the carbs in the potatoes. So eat a fairly usual sort of meal with potatoes, then try a different meal with potatoes at some future point, and gradually build up a picture. It’s probably the case that the rest of the meal consists of fairly similar amounts of fat, protein, etc, even if it’s not the same actual ingredients.
And if a food gives you a spike, don’t write it off completely if it’s something you really like, just try and alter the balance of the meal, ie, a smaller portion of the suspect food, and see if that works for you.

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

I think the general idea is must to gather information. To eat what you eat, in the portions and combinations that you normally would and review the results. Not taking any one result as definitive, but rechecking meals (either identical or similar) a few times to see whether the results are consistent.

As an example, say you had a sandwich, piece of fruit and chocolate biscuit for lunch and you got a high result, you might get a large rise... so you might take the obvious route and ditch the biscuit... Now a smaller rise.

How about swapping the fruit (apple for some berries in plain greek yoghurt) better? worse?

Is the chocolate biscuit a complete no no, or could you have one occasionally as long as you don’t *also* have fruit?

Or is it still too large a rise? Is it more the bread? Swap the berries back in and go for an open sandwich...

An ongoing, playful, experimental, information gathering approach.

”Well... everytime I have [carby thing] it’s tricky... but luckily I seem to handle [insert something else equally carby here] perfectly fine, so I generally opt for that instead” sort of thing 🙂

 

[rebrascora]

Since it is Sunday, another example would be a Sunday roast dinner with roast beef, Yorkshire Puddings, potatoes and veg. The main carbs for you to consider are in the potatoes and Yorkies, so if your normal portions give you too much of a spike in BG, try just one Yorkie instead of 2 next time or maybe half your portion of potatoes, but stick with 2 Yorkies if that is your usual portion and test again next week. If it is still too high, ditch the Yorkies altogether or if you really like then have the half portion and a half portion of potatoes with your meal and see how that goes. Be aware that new potatoes are generally lower carb than mature potatoes and mashed potato will usually hit the blood stream very quickly, so if you like potatoes, new ones are your best choice and mash probably the least good choice.
If you normally have a dessert with your Sunday roast then that will obviously also play into the equation, so you might start the experiment by leaving the main meal alone and swapping the dessert for cheese with no or very minimal crackers and see how that goes and then start cutting portions of tatties and/or Yorkies if you are still too high.
As a pre-diabetic, swapping your pudding for a cheese board might be enough to bring that meal into line with what your body can cope with, or you may need to reduce the portion of tatties and Yorkies as well.
Keeping a food diary including portion sizes of the main carbohydrate foods on the plate (ie 2 Yorkies and 3 pieces of potatoes) along with readings will guide you in making the right decisions over the coming weeks. For fully blown diabetics, these amounts would probably be far in excess of what they can get away with but the starting point should be what you currently eat, test, see how that affects your levels and then start cutting things back a bit here and there until you find a level which suits your food preferences and your body's tolerance of them.
As Mike says, it takes a spirit of experimentation and a few months to figure out your best choices.

Breakfast is probably a good meal to start working on first to get the hang of it because we tend to eat the same thing for breakfast most days, so you will be able to find what works for you after a few days/week due to there being less variables involved.

 

[rebrascora]

It is a good idea to invest in some cheap digital kitchen scales (approx. £5) to weigh out portion sizes of breakfast cereals as it is very easy to use much larger portions of these than intended and unless you eat Shredded Wheat or Weetabix reducing portion size is subjective unless you weigh it.

 

[Inka]

Most people tend to eat the same 30 or so meals, I’ve read. So the idea is to see how your normal meals affect you, not necessarily forensically explore every food. So for potatoes, you’d be looking at different cooking methods eg some people find mashed potato pushes their blood sugar up more than other types.

If a certain meal gives you a spike, you experiment with amending it by reducing or replacing the carb component eg less potatoes, only one potato plus extra green veg to bulk up the meal, etc

With porridge, the type of oats makes a difference eg Ready Brek is usually worse than proper old-fashioned jumbo oats. You can also make it with a different milk that has less carbs or with half milk half water. Have less oats and add a few berries, etc etc