Aaaahhh, I am having serious trouble staying motivated eating this ~50g of carbs per day! It's not that it's hard but it's not resulting in what I was hoping which is:
a) weight loss b) better blood sugars (secondary)
I don't know what I'm doing wrong but I am not losing weight at all! In fact, I was losing weight faster before than I am at this point.
And, the past few days my blood sugars have gotten kind of crappy. Which just reaffirms my thinking that food is NOT the only (nor biggest) impact on my blood sugars, for me. Which then makes me really unmotivated! My statistics for the past few days:
38% of readings 4-7 (70-125 mg/dl) 38% of readings 7-11 (125-200 mg/dl)
7% of readings >11 (>200 mg/dl)
12% of readings <4 (<70 mg/dl) Those are pretty much similar to the types of results I was getting when I was eating 100-120g of carbs per day (which is much easier in terms of planning mneals). I do want to give this a chance, and I don't think 10 days is a fair chance. If anyone has any suggestions about my problems, please share, it would really help my motivation if I at least had something to work with.
Also, last night I had a bad infusion set, and within two and a half hours of changing the set I felt sick and had massive ketones (like darker than the darkest colour on the strip!). I have NEVER developed that high a level of ketones (usually, if a site is bad, I'll have maybe small or moderate ketones at two or three hours), so now the whole idea of eating so low carb that I'm spilling ketones constantly is just sooooo unappealing (even though I know technically they are unrelated).
I can feel your frustration! I am trying to go less than 100 per day and I have been having wild swings as well but I think my apidra doesn't like me :( I feel like it has a 60 hour mark and then all contents are shot. Keep plugging along, you will find your "sweet" spot.
Hi, Jen ... I tried going low-carb (about the same daily amounts as you) for three months back in the summer, and ultimately it just didn't work out for me (sorry - you were wanting motivation, weren't you!). In the first couple of weeks, all was great BG-wise, and I lost a few pounds, but as my body started to adapt (or whatever it was doing!), I found that non-carb foods started to have more of an (unpredictable) effect on my BGs, that the weight loss pretty much stopped, and my thyroid meds were suddenly all out of whack. The icing on the cake (hardy har) was the .5% rise in my A1c at the end of the three months! Those problems, combined with the fact that I really wasn't digging my low-carb diet all that much, made me go back ...
Not, however, to exactly the same diet I'd been on before. I have continued to stay away from pasta- and rice-based dishes, and I suppose I've become somewhat more conscious of and conscientious about my carb consumption. So I see the low-carb experiment as having added a few more bits of knowledge to my diabetes tool kit (or backpack, as I think the Connected in Motion folks refer to it).
I'm convinced that unpredictable hormone fluctuations are the primary culprits in my own blood sugar craziness, but I've yet to find anything or anyone to help with that.
Anyhoo, thanks for your post and lots of cheers and good karma from over here on Pine St. :) (Lovely weather we're having here in Van-city, eh?)
Have you spoken to a registered dietitian about this Jen? Are you exercising? Ten days is too soon to hope to see results. What is your weight loss goal over how much time?
Thanks for all your comments. It really helps to hear others' experiences! I also tend to think hormones are one of the biggest factors in my blood sugars. It seems to follow that type of schedule, but it's not always consistent nor predictable.
I am exercising every day for 30-60 minutes. One good thing that's happened is that my insulin doses HAVE dropped back to where they used to be in the summer (after the summer they shot up dramatically for some reason). But it's hard to tell if this is the result of going low-carb or of exercising every day.
Today I did go off the diet and ate a higher carb (though not "high-carb") breakfast and lunch, and then at dinner went completely crazy and had something like 80g of carbs because I was eating out. But I think tomorrow I'll get back to it. Before I started going ~50g a day I was eating ~120g a day which I think is reasonable and which was not nearly as hard to stick to (and which I was actually losing more weight on than I have been the past week and a half).
In terms of weight, I need to lose 65-70 pounds before I am at my ideal weight. That is according to charts, though, and I may not need to lose quite that much because I do have the type of body where I look like I weight less than I really do. I don't have a specific time goal for my weight loss—as long as I see downward movement each week (even just 0.2 of a pound) I am happy. I have spoken to a dietitian about losing weight though not specifically about this diet. She just said there wasn't much I could do with my diet that I wasn't already doing, and that maybe more exercise each day would help. Not all that helpful ...
@Heather, do you know if Connected in Motion does stuff around Vancouver? I've heard a lot of good things about them but they seem to be for really athletic people and also most events (at least that I've heard of) seem to be in Ontario. I'd be curious to learn more about them!
Hi Jen Sounds like you're making a great effort, and I'm sure the exercise would have helped reduce your insulin requirements as well as providing many more benefits including the 'feel good factor'. Sorry you didn't have much luck with the dietitian. Can I recommend getting a second opinion. I'd offer to help, but I'm in Australia lol. It may take some time but you're doing good work so far, so keep it up!
Just had another thought - have you spoken to your endocrinologist about this, as you could be developing some insulin resistance due to hormones and other factors, and there are medications that can help. Hope that helps. Sal.
One thing that might be helpful would be to find some other goal to shoot for, that doesn't have that much to do w/ diabetes? Like w/ working out, if you are riding 10 miles on your stationary bike, ride 11 or 12 or 15? Or if you run 3 miles in whatever time, try to run 10% faster, not all at once but do some intervals to run stronger and see what happens? I get an element of play with exercising that way that makes it more fun, even if it's sort of like chasing my tail. It doesn't always work, sometimes I'll get pumped up to "run fast today" but am too creaky or it's windy or the snow is slickerier than I thought but I still feel better if I get out there and try. That is a huge accomplishment in itself. Winter is always a downer time for me. I get an occasional fast run in but the short days, cold weather (although it's really warm now...) and crappy conditions seem to conspire to slow me down. For me, it's really key to keep slogging along because it will be spring soon, even if there's another round of blizzards!!
Weight stuff has been a ***VERY*** long haul for me and, while I've plateaued, I still think about it a lot. I'm still not 100% sure about an ontological approach to low carb and find it easier to try to eat "less carbs" as a way to work to compete incrementally too? Instead of going from 150G to 40G, maybe split the difference and "allow" yourself a bit more? I've seen a lot of discussions @ Tu which serve as a "magnet" for the "I eat 30G-40G of carbs only, nothing except homemade, nut flour 'bread'" and, while that's a great approach and I've totally replaced pretzels with nuts for snacking during the week myself, it's not for everyone. I don't recall seeing a lot of clear answers to the question "how many carbs qualify as 'low carb'?" either? To me, the way to hit some weight loss is to eat less carbs, for a sustained period of time. My P90X buddy has had **Spectacular** results and I've seen some of his blog posts about the more extreme carb "aiming" that he and his minions do, carbs aimed before big workouts and forgoing any carbs in the evening? This is something intriguing but I haven't drank that koolaid yet. I suspect that there may be something to it but I haven't been able to cut out a lot of carbs @ night just yet. Work in progress for me perhaps? Just keep at it!!
Actually, I am doing GREAT with exercise. I love it! I'm at the point where I "miss" my exercise at night if I don't do it (like I've missed the past two days now for various reasons), and there have been a few days I started out feeling so lazy but ended up doing more/longer than I intended. I'm trying to go for a longer distance each time or a slightly longer time. Winter is usually the time I do NO exercise, so I'm really happy about the fact that I'm doing it every day and I"m sure it'll pay off.
I think I will try to stick to 60-70g of carbs for a while since I seem to be able to do that pretty easily without feeling like I'm on a "diet" and see how that works. That's sort of in the middle of where I was before and what I was aiming for.
Re. CIM, they do the odd summer event in Vancouver — the Grouse Grind, maybe a bike ride or two. The organizers are very athletic types, but the participants seem to be a real mix of abilities, shapes and sizes. And their whole approach seems very inclusive. I've actually yet to take part in an "official" CIM event. I've been more intimidated by the prospect of being twice as OLD as everyone else there! :) But we should keep tabs on their schedule and check them out next time they come to town!
Jen , Jen from CIM ( Heather mentioned this group ) ia a TuD member from ON ! Another group you may want to have a look at is Chris Jarvis's http://www.ichallengediabetes.org/I_Challenge/Events_Calendar.html I participated in a hike in Vernon , Silver Star last summer ...he promised he will be back to our part of BC ...Heather knows him ! He is a motivational speaker as well .
