I've always eaten high carb. For breakfast i typically ate 110 gr of carbs (bread) which get covered by 16 units of rai. Recently i came up with the idea to lose weight by cutting on my carb intake. I was also hoping that it would allow me to decrease my insulin usage and thus getting a smaller fault margin on my calculations.
Since that time i eat halve the amount of carbs that i used to (55 gr) combined with a small portions of plain organic non-flavored, non-sweetened yoghurt.
The funny thing is that i still have to inject the same amount of insulin.
This makes absolutely no sense to me.
From the nutrition label on my yoghurt box i estimate i eat about 8 gr of carbs each morning. My breakfast now would still be 47 gr of carbs less then it used to be. right ?
I might have heard something about yoghurt influencing glucagon, but i'm not really sure about that.
Does anyone have an explanation for this or has anyone had the same experience with yoghurt ?
No, I haven't had problems with yogurt, though I think some people do. For me, though, breakfast is a ■■■■■. I know you've lowered it a great deal from what you were eating, but for me 63 grams of carbs would still be a great deal for breakfast, which is the hardest meal of the day. (I eat between 6 and 19 and before lowering carbs I still only ate 20-something). I'm also struggling with losing/or at least stopping gaining weight and I find it's the combination of lowering carbs and lowering insulin that helps. I'd have to take over 10 units of insulin for that breakfast and that's way too much for me. But despite being a Type 1 with little insulin resistance I still have a very hard time keeping from gaining weight so that's my own experience.
The mental model many people have of breakfast - "more carbs will take more insulin" - breaks down completely when I apply it to me.
I know that if I eat zero carbs for breakfast, it takes far far more insulin to keep my bg tamed, than if I eat a moderate number of carbs.
Maybe, how much it takes to tame dawn phenomenon, varies from person to person.
For me, a moderate amount of carbs essentially takes Dawn Phenomenon and "nips it in the bud" (as Barney Fife would say: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=de_P2aUZJyA ). No carbs, is a guarantee that Dawn Phenomenon will require many many more units of insulin.
Many yogurts contain wheat flour that can add to higher BG and also milk contains lactic acid that is a natural sugar in the yogurt and your blood can convert it into adenine triphosphate or ATP as we call it.This converts into higher BG levels and into a higher anaerobic metabolism in the blood and higher BG,i hope this explains things.
I actually think DP and morning carb sensitivity are two different things. I don't have DP at all; in other words, if I put off eating my blood sugar won't continue to climb. I think you are absolutely right that some carbs is necessary to "tame the DP best".
But for those of us who don't have DP the picture is different, where definitely the more carbs we eat the more insulin we need and for me, at least, if it gets past a certain level even my usual I:C is not reliable. My I:C for breakfast is 1:6 where for lunch it's 1:11 and dinner it's 1:16. I also notice that if I really limit carbs then I need to bolus for protein. Like if I just have an omelet I have to bolus for 6 carbs even though the vegies are no more than 4.
Thanks for all the replies. i'm strangely comforted knowing breakfast is a mystery to many of us (or make that 'diabetes').
I actually always thought morning-carb-sensitivity and DP were the same...
About the calculations: i've been wondering if maybe a big percentage of my morning bolus maybe only covers DP and my coffee and that the real carb intake actually only accounts for the rest of the bolus (like f.ex. 50/50). changing the carb intake may then only influence 50 percent of my bolus whereas the other 50 percent (Dp and coffee) actually remain the same... That would explain why the c:i ratio doesn't pan out...
Wouldn't those things show up in the nutrition label or do they not fall under the category energy/carbs ?
And that leads me to another, maybe more important question: if so that my energy intake and thus my insulin use remain the same when replacing half of my bread portion by a small portion of yoghurt, does this mean that my efforts to lose weight will have no effect ?
In a word no as every ones metabolism works in different ways as it breaks it down from food they take into the body.That would be very hard to fit that onto a label or carb info
I think that makes a lot of sense, anexco! Question: If you wake up and you are high do you do a correction, or do you add in a correction to your bolus to account for being high? If you start out high before the meal it's harder to end up in a good target range after. Some people with DP find they need to do a correction as soon as they wake up. Some people also need to bolus some for coffee and definitely for milk if you have it. So those things would definitely influence your morning insulin needs. You don't say anything about what your 2 hour pp numbers are like. If they're high you definitely might consider lowing your carb intake at breakfast (which would help with lowering the insulin use and consequently make it easier to lose weight).
Anexco, I don't believe in feeding my DP. For the last 12 years I have gotten the jump on DP by a small dose of Lantus at 9 or 10 pm. My BG will not go up in the morning due to anything but carbs. I eat 8 grams toast (2 pc of low carb bread), cream cheese on top of it (the pretense is that it's a bagel), and 10 grams yogurt (Chobani or Dannon's Diabetic Friendly, 6 grams). My I:C is 1u:4-5 grams and it stays there.
I am no longer drinking coffee due to some other drugs I take for rheumatoid arthritis, so I put any kind of tea with this that's closest to the door of my cupboard and a half-swig of 5 hr energy. And I read the NYT A and B, meaning first section and business in the light of the rising sun.
