How long does your bg stay high after you've "cheated"?

I’m Type 2, only been diagnosed for about 4 weeks. I’ve been eating very low carb and my bg has been staying anywhere from 99 to 117. Yesterday I had a weak moment and ate a can of peaches. Tested 1 hour later and my bg was 139. Then this morning my fasting bg was 145. Is this normal? I mean is it normal for numbers to be high for hours and hours after a cheat?

It could be… the higher your BS is, the more your body (and meds) has to work to bring it down, and sometimes it just can’t keep up. Plus if you’ve been eating low carb and suddenly eat much more, that puts added strain on things.

Peaches aren’t necessarily "bad"in general - but the type in heavy syrup really can be. Del Monte makes some that have no added sugar and are pretty reasonable in terms of carbs (7g per serving, 14g for the whole can). Any dietician will tell you that just eating a fresh one is a lot better for you than canned though :slight_smile:

Yes. If I eat a few slices of bread the BG will be out of control for at least 1/2 day and this with a lot of insulin.

Next time grab a protein/cheese, whip up an egg, warm up 3 brown n serve sausages, or take 1/8 cup nuts. They satisfy longer than the fruit. Any fruit.
My BG stays up at least 5-6 hours and what I go to bed with, I wake up with. I punish myself mentally for even longer. So, back to sentence 1. And smile!

It can be. How high you go and how long you stay there depends on how many carbs you eat, how fast they’re absorbed, and how much pancreatic function you’ve still got left. Carbs that are low on the glycemic index are generally expected to absorb more slowly, which for a T2 diabetic may mean that you don’t go up all that high, but you may stay at that moderate peak for hours, instead of spiking and then coming back down. Carbs that are eaten together with fat may do the same – the fat slows down carb absorption, so even something that would normally hit hard and fade fast may instead hit moderately and then take a while to come back down. Pasta is particularly notorious for this, as the hard wheat flour takes a while to break down; pizza is also, since you get a big slug of fat from the cheese and some toppings, plus the crusts are sometimes durum flour as well.

Your fasting glucose can be high on the morning after a carb excursion. It could be that your body used up enough insulin dealing with the spike to deplete its ability to keep up with normal base metabolic requirements, or it could be that it dealt with the spike okay, but in the process dropped you out the bottom of the range that’s usual for you – when that happens, it triggers a counter-regulatory response and makes your liver produce some new glucose, which will spike your levels. That can happen even if you don’t actually get objectively low; the body sort of resets what it thinks is normal based on where you’ve been lately, so something that’s out of that range can fake it into acting like you’re low even if you’re in the range that’s physiologically safe.

If you stay back up on the low-carb wagon today, your fasting glucose should be down again in the morning. Be aware that carbs beget carb cravings, and be prepared to deal with those today.

Thank you everyone for your informative answers. I’m fairly new at this so still learning. I miss fruit so much. The peaches I ate were the No Sugar Added kind, only about 25 carbs in the whole can. Today I ate one half of a banana and it didn’t make my numbers go up so that made me happy!

Dear Patricia.

We can’t live for ever antways and I am not sure I would want to. sometimes the hell with BG. I eat a navel orange, kiwi, apple, pineapple or blueberries and usually at least 3 per day. Even 1/2 banana. you have to slack off a bit or we go nuts.

Anthony…True oh so true!!

Patricia,

You’re doing great! Only way we know how different foods effect us is by trial & error.