I’ve heard some of you say that this has made a substantial difference in your control. What did you do to test? How long did you wait to eat between “tests”?
Everyone’s body is different. Me personally my glucose levels don’t get affected by vegetables, meats, and sauces like some do. But its the starches (bread, pasta, rice) that give me the spikes. When I first got my meter, I would test everything I ate. Before, after, 1 hour, 2 hours, even 3 hours. I now have got it down to a point that I only test during cheat days. My advice to you is test everything you eat for awhile so you know exactly how your body reacts towards the foods you eat.
Stuff that I learned from all the testing…
High fat and carbs don’t seem to peak till about 2-3 hours. (Pizza sucks so MUCH) It also tends to make your levels stay high sometimes for half a day!!
Fruits seem to peak less then an hour after eating. ( I ate a apple and it jumped from 93 to 123 but after two hours it went below 100)
Pretty soon your going to find out some foods don’t affect you and some make your glucose spike like crazy.
I have tested every new recipe. I will test before, 1 hour and 2 hours after. Generally I only tested 1 new food a day in the early days, now having a fairly good grasp of the foods I eat I only try a new food or recipe a couple of times a month. I do go and retest prepared foods time to time in case they changed something, I also retest ‘surprise’ foods, foods that tested safer than I expected examples are strawberries and watermelon time to time. Now did it make a difference, sure did, in the last 4 months my lowest was 80 and my highest was 127 twice.
Try building your pizza on a low carb tortilla, it works, just watch the sauce a lot of times it is loaded with sugar or high fructose corn syrup.
A great alternative to sauce is to use thinly sliced tomatoes and herbs (oregeno, garlic, etc). I don’t like really saucy pizza so this is what I usually do… works great
I think some of this just comes with experience… over time you begin to notice patterns with certain “trouble” foods and you learn to adapt.
I agree…I think this comes with experience. Personally I tested first for foods I commonly take (like rice, bread. fruits, pasta). Then I also tested on foods I love/like to eat (not necessarily healthy for me, but I like it, so there…LOL)) I also tested based on quantities (like a half a cup of ice cream.or a small slice of cake). I also did the common test procedure of checking 1 hour after then 2 hours after eating. Indeed though, results will vary depending on the individual.
We test my niece’s blood sugar two hours after eating. Now that we have the cgms, will will be able to omit this test. Things we knew generally but that cgms confirmed. (1) fruit spikes her high very quickly, even though we may use fruit as a desert and prebolus the meal. Seems her Novolog does not show her coming down on the monitor until one hour, 15 or twenty minutes past eating. We now give the fruit later, i.e., 55 minutes after eating, with insulin given at the beginning for the meal (2) Quinoa pasta does not spike her at all. In fact we have to give her twenty free grams of it, plus give a little fruit with it at the beginning of the meal. We use the carb count on the box which is equivalent to regular pasta. (3) Pizza spikes again up to six hours postprandial, even after the combo bolus wears off and (4) very surprisingly, lasagna made by our local pizza parlor does not spike her at all. I have given her hefty pieces of it with no problem. It is a cheese lasagna, but has a lot of meat in it. And we also noticed that lows do not come up as quickly as we had thought. We have used fruit for lower blood sugars (not a low) when there was insulin on board, And she gets a lot of fruit because there is almost always insulin on board at the two and a half to three hour mark. P.S. My sister said that glutin free pretzels by Glutino (she is not celiac) and gluten free pancake mix do not spike her, but I will have to see that to believe it. Seems, although not celiac, gluten free products digest in such a way as to avoid spikes. We will do a lot more investigation of this.