Do you find it’s possible to have an occasional carby meal? There are times that I find it near impossible to eat low-carb (i.e., I was at an event on Thursday and Friday for work where the only thing I could eat in the catered lunch was fruit, and I was limited in what I could bring because it was a nut-free environment, also there was no lunch break and no way to reheat foods, so the things I brought had to be quick and easy to eat). But during those times I eat carbs, I’m spiking high even when I halve my I:C ratio. It causes an instant spike even when I pre-bolus and use the lower ratio. Today I’ve been using a 1:4 ratio and am still hovering just above target range having eaten carbs. I need to re-stock my fridge and freezer with the low-carb foods I’ve been eating, but I’ve been working late for the past week or two, so haven’t been keeping up with batch cooking in the evenings.
Do people just bolus like 20 units when they decide to eat carbs, or once you go low-carb and your body adapts to it, is it just not possible to ever eat carbs? My theory is that if my body is in a fat-burning mode, maybe when I eat carbs it literally ignores those carbs (since it’s looking out for fat) and lets them float around in my bloodstream for quite a while before getting rid of them. No idea if that’s right or not. I’d be interested to know the physiology of how it works, if it’s something that’s normal versus something that’s just unique to me.
I think it takes a few days to a week for the body to go back to carbs. The same as when it goes low carb.
do a carb meal bolus and a correction, that will give you an idea of your C:I with a high carb meal.
It may easier to have a fasting meal, or take cheese and boiled eggs in their shell. fat bombs or anything else you like for a snack.
Hi Jan. I definitely don’t know the science behind this. But I do know that since I have been eating low-carb for the last six years, any time I indulge in significant carbohydrate intake it will take my body at least a couple days and sometimes up to a week or more to recover. It is like I have to start all over. If I keep my carb intake low enough I can still have a treat here and there. I also do not find injecting huge amounts of insulin in order to counteract the carbohydrates a winning strategy in any way.
I don’t know that I have any real answers for how to deal with your situation. But the result of your limited food selection is something that I can completely sympathize with. All you can really do is to go in as prepared as possible. But it does make it more difficult when your time is limited and you cannot prepare your food ahead of time as you might normally do. But Jen, if anyone can hang in there it has got to be you. There are few here at TU more capable of overcoming challenges then you are.
Yes, definitely it’s possible to have higher carb meals on occasion, at least for me. For a given value of “higher carb” and “on occasion.” I am not insulin-dependent, so I can’t eat a lot of carbs without getting out of my preferred BG range. And I don’t do it often (once a week on Fridays and then on holidays). But I’m still pretty strict:
I normally eat ~25g of net carbs per day, with a total carb intake of ~45g (inclusive of dietary fiber).
On Friday’s, when we have family dinner with my parents, my brother and his family, all the family dogs, etc., and my mother is cooking (and she really doesn’t get low-carb), I eat somewhat greater amounts of carbs. By which I mean, I eat less than 50g of net carbs in the day, and no more than 80g total carbs. I have not found this to affect me in any way at all, other than having slightly higher postprandials on Friday’s (I still don’t eat any more than about 30g gross carbs at dinner on Friday, and I’m usually in the 70-80 mg/dL range before dinner, rarely more than 115 mg/dL an hour after dinner).
I think I get away with more carbs on Fridays because I exercise a lot. I bike to work and back, I go on longer “exercise” rides at high intensity once or twice a week, and I do strength training three times a week. My body is pretty much always glycogen-starved. So when I do eat more carbs than normal, I’m sure a lot of it is just immediately sucked up by hungry muscles. I often find that Saturday morning’s workout is the easiest of the week (have more energy).
On Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas (well, in theory… haven’t done Easter or Christmas since diagnosis), I’ll eat more. I didn’t track how many carbs I had last Thursday, I just exercised in the morning as per usual and tested my blood sugar. My before and after numbers were great, so I didn’t care too much about the particulars. I still ate low-carb for the entire meal, I just ate a lot and didn’t bother measuring (or tracking) portions. I suspect I probably was pushing 100g gross carbs and 60 or 70g net for the day.
As far as the science of it goes, there isn’t a lot of science out there on how exactly ketogenic diets work, what determines whether someone is “fat-adapted,” etc. But what experience (of myself and others) suggests is that you can tolerate more carbs and keep insulin requirements low with regular exercise. While many people on “strict keto” aim for less than 20g of net carbs per day (for weight loss) and low protein intake, I commonly eat 160g of protein a day and 25-30g net carbs. I don’t think I’ve been “out of ketosis” in months. Even on the days I’ve had almost 100g of carbs, the amount I exercise seems to provide a huge buffer. Has to do with the glycogen storing processes, I’m sure. I eat so few carbs normally that on days I eat more my muscles just “suck it all up.”
I meant that you work out the carbs and what you think the bolus should be, give the dose, eat the meal, (check as you like) but see what the BG is at 4 hrs and work out a correction factor (or insulin sensitivity, 1U drops BG by X points) dose if needed, add them together and that gives the amount of insulin you really needed for that many carbs. this then becomes your C:I ratio for next time you have a high carb meal and redo the test to fine tune.
