This is interesting to me – or at least eye-opening. Here and in other threads I see low-carbers say they eat 120 g a day, or 100 g or 90 g a day. I always thought of myself as a carb-hog, but I’m averaging about 100 a day (unless I accidentally made some French pastries while passing through the kitchen). I know many people eat far less carb than that, but it’s kind of weird to think I’ve been a low-carber all along and never knew it!
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WOW. I don’t see how they can justify labeling 120 carbs as “low carbing”. LOL! Maybe it makes them feel better about themselves?? As if they are doing something good for their diabetes? I think IF it works for them, FINE, but to call 120 low carbing? IMO, NO!
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I always figured SUPER low carbs like veggies and chicken 
I have no idea. That’s why eating “low carb” I think has never really worked for me because maybe I was too restrictive? I’m not sure! I’ve never really looked into others low carb definitions, I just guessed. I figured being told to stick to 60g of carbs per meal a long time ago, I would just decrease that if need be. I just eat what works. I think I have it figured out for the time being. (hopefully lol)
Two words: “avoid pizza.” Avoid it like the plague. Delicious, and impossible.
I’m still struggling to get my BG in control after indulging in it yesterday. Sigh.
That’s why I posted this thread because I was trying low carb out which meant; maybe at most 20g per meal, I was eating just protein like a burger or chicken, with a salad, or veggies. I wasn’t drinking any carbs either, only water or unsweet tea. If I had any carbs it would be in fruit, maybe salad dressing. This never has worked for me much, so I’m back to my other ways of eating but I was being restrictive in my carbs eating low carb, so I’m confused about what it really means. lol
I have absolutely no problem maintaining my blood sugar and my weight eating pizza about every couple of weeks. At each sitting I only eat 2 pieces, however. I think because the rest of the day I don’t eat fatty foods I don’t become resistant so I don’t need very much insulin for the pizza and I my blood sugar doesn’t Spike
If a person goes on a strict diet and never ever has anything fun to eat they are going to get disgusted with that strict diet and eventually say the hell with it
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Totally. I found that amusing also.
We eat what we eat.
The category that it seems to fit into (depending on somebody else’s idea of a categorization) is amusing.
If you’re going super low carb, you need to go high fat (and usually moderate protein). So veggies and chicken could be part of it, but also you need things like cheese, bacon, avocados, butter, oils, nuts, etc.
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I was! Chicken and veggies was just an example carb wise, but I’d always eat it with butter, and have a salad with ranch dressing and cheese, bacon, etc. Anytime I’ve tried low carb, I did high fat as well, and always ate protein.
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Dr. Bernstein rails against the ‘moderate protein/high fat’ version of low carb. He believes in eating a high protein diet, and the fat that accompanies it naturally. People are constantly questioning him about that, as it goes against everything written about ketogenic diets.
Well, yesterday I saw this video and – what do you know - Dr. Bernstein is right again! Kudos to him.
In short, for those following a low-carb diet, protein DOES NOT increase glucose. Watch this really interesting presentation:
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It’s really simple. Low carb. I eat lots of fruits vegetables meat fish chicken. Hardly any processed foods.
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Thanks for providing the link to this interesting video, @Negg. One point that caught my attention is the presenter’s conclusion that we need more protein as we age.
I know that Bernstein has taken the position of a higher protein diet with children with diabetes. Are you saying that he also asserts this with adults? It’s been a while since I’ve read Bernstein’s work, so my memory is foggy on this point.
I think adopting a carb-limited diet is one of the most beneficial habits I use for living with diabetes.
Awesome @Terry4.
I was diagnosed with T2DM in Aug 2017. I was being seen for kidney stones, and had blood work done. The lab tech called me at home and told me I was in dire need of medical attention. My BG level was 594. I didn’t know what that meant, but I went to the ER. I didn’t even wait. When I got to the ER they put me in a room immediately. Did some tests. My HBa1c was 11.8%. Again, meaningless to me. I was in the ER for about eight hours or so. They wouldn’t let me leave until my BG was below 300.
So first thing I do on the way home is buy a BG meter. Then once Home, research everything I could about diabetes. So I learned what the numbers all meant. I learned the difference between types 1and 2.
Soon I went to a nutrition class at the hospital. No doubt I needed it, I was sure. My typical diet was like this… morning, big bowl of oatmeal or maybe Cheerios. Lunch, some form of fast food usually, which usually includes large amounts of rice, bread or potatoes. Dinner, bread, pasta, rice, potatoes. Bedtime snack, some fruit, apples oranges, at least a few of them to make up for the fast food. I was also known to go through several large bags of Tostito chips in a day. Not to mention cases of my dew per week.
So in nutrition class I learned a little about carbohydrates. That I could still eat them, just not as much. I was told by the dietitian that I should eat 45-60 grams of carbs per meal. And I should eat it as spread out as much as possible. Even breaking three meals a day into 5 smaller meals. I had heard of that before. But I’d always be too hungry to do that.
After about a month of this ADA suggested diet that the hospital wanted me to eat, my BG levels weren’t getting below 200. Not only that, they were barely staying under 300. I was extremly worried about this. Back to the internet, big time research project. WHAT CAUSES TYPE 2 DIABETES. In my case it pretty much looked like onset caused by insulin resistance because of the way I was eating. Pretty much 90% of my diet was carbohydrates. So I wondered what would happen if I tried going low carb again? I did it a few years ago, could I do it again?
So I decided not to just go low carb, but go zero carb. I knew I had an addiction to sweets. And like an alcoholic I’d probably have a relapse back into my old ways if I allowed myself even a small amount. So I went cold turkey. The withdrawals weren’t nearly as bad as I expected. Probably because I had plenty of glycogen stores throughout my body to pull from. In my first two weeks of zero carb I lost 40 pounds. That’s no typo. Forty pounds in fourteen days. As the weight loss slowed down I figured it would be a good time to start checking my keytones. Using the urine test sticks, sure enough, I had some moderate ketones. Probably around 3 to 4 according The the tester chart. I was in nutritional Ketosis. It was easier than I expected it would be.
Two days after going zero carb my BG was completely in control. It was no longer wildly varying from high 100’s to high 200’s. It was consistently between 80-100. Well, mostly. Sometimes after a meal it would spike around 120. And there was a few instances when I had some hidden sugars in the food that pushed me up to 160ish. That was back in Nov-Dec 2017, and haven’t had that happen again since.
In January 2018 I went back to see my endocrinologist. Got new blood work done. My HBa1c went from 11.8% down to 5.8% in about four months.
My BG has had a consistent daily avg of under 100, with most days being in the 80’s, and occasionally dipping into the 60’s. All this without ever feeling hungry, or feeling hypoglycemic. Even with BG levels in the 60’s feeling like I have plenty of energy to do just about anything.
Keto Vitae
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Impressive. And you surely think: wouldn’t it be much easier if they told you to stop carbs completely since the beginning? No, they have to tell us all this typical dietician crap about how carbs are really important for us and how much we need to eat them for the muscles and brain, all unsupported by scientifical data by the way. Until we realise that we do not!!! And in fact, everything gets easier and all blood levels get much better without them… I still consume about 50 g or less a day though, due to the veg mainly. I read Dr. Bernsteins books and loved one passage that talked about how alaskans used to live off whales and hunting and were all nicely skinny and healthy, until the government decided to help them out by sending massive amounts of flour… which in a few years increased type 2 diabetes and obesity by a huge amount.
I also believe in intermittent fasting, in the end the more I eat the more work I need to put to compensate my sugars so, why bother eating huge amounts? Easy to write and difficult to do in practice.
All the best my fellow low carbers
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I order a Hamburger, for instance, but I take the bun off and eat the Burger and Tomato and Lettuce and Pickle and Condiments with a knife and fork.
I poach my egg 7 minutes, to avoid the butter when you fry it. Two slices of Ham with Mustard, half a piece of Whole Grain Bread, toasted with fruit preserves. Yum.
I like to eat fruit, but I watch my numbers, because dome fruits have lots.
Since I’m very early LADA, I don’t need insulin yet. I have, however, been reading a lot. You might find this article interesting since, as you get to the middle and beyond, he talks about the insulin required for protein and various ways to deal with it. Just a thought.
I don’t alter my eating much, unless something is out of the ordinary or I’m trying to trouble shoot something bad. I focus more on managing bolus. But, I’m a vegetarian (30 years) with a family history of kidney disease, so I don’t think low carb a good fit is for me, personally.
Wow. I’ve now watched a few of his videos. Very interesting. I’d love to be able to comment on them via youtube, but I’m unable. In one video it mentions insulin and insulin resistance, weight gain, and Type 2 diabetes. I want to tell him that there is a lot of persons with Type 1 diabetes who have insulin and insulin resistant weight gain issues as well. I read an NIH study (2015) which said approximately 50% of patients with Type 1 diabetes are currently obese or overweight. Another more recent one was from Joslin I believe, saying about the same thing.
My best control comes from low carb (these past few months 0-50 carbs as my husband and I are trying our hand with keto). Reading labels and knowing many are not true, helped. I was in a state of constant high blood sugars and it took a few months to figure it all out (this community helped considerably), part of the problem was the artificial sweeteners (no cal/no carb) I was adding to my ice tea. It actually had a huge impact and were not carb free. I’ve switched to stevia drops now with great success. Does anyone remember the day the DOC (Tudiabetes) shut down the FDA servers when they had the meeting on the updating nutrition labels? I do. The entire experience was awesome; we made a difference that day. They’ve come a long way and this community helped a lot; yet, more still needs to be done.
People in the DOC have had an outstanding effect on me maintaining my best control. I do better when I’m here. I miss Pup (jrtpup). Old timers will remember her. Pup got me through my first Thanksgiving meal by explaining how to extend the bolus on my pump - which was far from being a low carb day; I was in normal range the entire day/night. Pup got me through a lot actually. RIP Pup.
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My control increased significantly after I got a Dexcom. Not changing my eating habits at all, just knowing constantly how I was trending and being able to correct quickly, had an immediate impact on my A1C (8+ down to a 6.6 in three months).
Then I went LCHF while pregnant and found that to be kind of magical. Best LCHF food? Cheesecake!
Now, I eat pretty low carb but definitely whole foods. Processed foods do such whacky things to my bg. Whole foods spike less and seem healthier in general. 
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