I was diagnosed in December of 2010. I haven’t been tested yet, but the doctor said type 2. In hingsight, I remember having bouts of hypoglycemia as early as 2000. I was about 30 pounds overweight at diagnosis, but have lost 15. My BMI now is within the normal range. I’m pretty distressed today because I realize that I’m not controlling this very well…I hit 219 after lunch at one hour. I always test at one hour because I think it’s a stricter standard, plus I got used to it when I had gestational and they tell you to test one hour after eating. I haven’t done another blood test since diagnosis, but at diagnosis my A1C was 7.7. I saw the endo for the first time last week and she was pretty relaxed about the whole thing. She told me to test after two hours and keep it under 140. I am under 140 at two hours about 99% of the time. But at one hour, I routinely spike to 200. I told her this and she said, “that’s fine.” From trolling around on this site, I don’t think spiking to over 200 is fine. Plus, I feel TERRIBLE when I have these spikes…My heart seems to be pounding, and I feel so sleepy and aggravated. I have two small children and find myself snapping at them and feeling so overwhelmed by how bad I feel, the magnitude of being diagnosed with this disease, and the guilt over my number.
So, why am I spiking? I just can’t give up the carbs…I’m trying, but failing. I used to eat carbs from morning until night before diagnosis, so this cutting carbs is a radical break from what I’m used to. For example, today I went to Islands, got a chicken burger, took off one side of the whole wheat bun, then proceeded to eat about fifty of my daughter’s french fries. One hour later, 219. I just make such bad food choices and I don’t have the discipline to stop myself…I’m really afraid of what condition I’ll be in in ten years. I don’t want to be on insulin either…not for a very long time. I had to take it with my second pregnancy and had some really scary lows. I never want to go through that again. Right now I’m on 500 mg of Metformin, twice a day…I guess I’d like to hear from someone who like me, started out rough and then really got controll of this. I feel pretty hopeless right now…
I dunno about the T2 meds at all but, in my experience w/ an insulin pump, .05U/ hour in a basal rate can easily make a 30-60 point difference in my BG. I don’t think that Metformin comes in doses that are cut that closely, like 500-600-700 but when things change, I can usually fix significant numbers pretty easily with small boosts. Maybe a walk around the block or something (another thing that I do a lot of when my numbers get off…just a short walk will push things the right way?) like that will help? If you want to eat french fries, insulin may not be a bad solution either, I can usually bludgeon french fries into submission with my insulin pump. I don’t do it that often but I certainly would like to eat them several times/ day, at least for a while?
Carb addiction is self-perpetuating - and progressive. For us, too many carbs is like ingesting poison.
I understand the struggle, but the reality is this…unless you want to burn out your pancreas and become insulin-dependent (which may happen after long term T2 anyway) - you need to get a handle on eating and how you think about eating. It’s not just a matter of giving up carbs - it’s a matter of which carbs and how many per meal. Complex carbs with at least 3 g fiber per serving. For T2s who are insulin resistant - fat is important as well.
The best “cure” for T2 that we know of so far is diet and exercise. You would be amazed at how moderate exercise and activity will bring down your numbers - think of it that way versus losing weight. I am exercising to control my BG
Acceptance, flipping the switch in your head, taking responsibility for your health - these are all difficult to face sometimes - but you CAN do it. What would you say to a good friend who was struggling this way? THAT is what you need to say to yourself - versus beating yourself up.
Start out with something doable - try Weight Watchers - only don’t do anything “white” (bread, potatoes, pasta) - it will help with portion control and reduced fat, but you can still have some carbs.
While you are in the early stages of this, getting by (so to speak) with only 1000 mg of metformin and no insulin injections, NOW is the time to develop some very good habits. You’re relatively young, slim and fit (compared to me!!!) so take my advice (please) and don’t become me (obese, 50-ish, insulin injections several times per day, nerve twinges in my feet that scare the heck out of me vis a vis neuropathy):
– Get a high-quality pedometer (I love my Omron) and work yourself up to walking 10,000 steps most days (five out of seven at least). Yes, chasing after the kids counts, but not if it adds up to 2,500 steps. You need 10,000. Go!
– Learn to count carbs now and watch for their effect on your bg’s; salads, greens and steamed veggies are your friends, french fries? not so much;
– Get enough sleep – lie down in a dark room with your eyes closed for at least 7-1/2 to 8 hours most nights (29 out of 30) because that is when your body is breaking down the stress hormones, such as cortisol, that wreak havoc with a type 2 diabetic’s insulin resistance. You’re a young parent; your kids want you go grow up to be a young grandparent; get your sleep.
If I had taken my own advice years back, I wouldn’t be in my current pickle – and trust me, you wouldn’t like my current pickle. It’s a very sour pickle indeed.
I’m horrible to anyone within cranky distance when high. I’m not delightful when low either. My poor husband has learned to stay out of the way. Not fair to him at all.
I was a carb junkie before T1. I rarely ate enough protein & was vegetarian. Pasta, rice, beans, lots of different grains, bread, bread & more bread. Did I mention bread:)
You can take control of the carb cravings. Most everyone ate a carb laden diet & you can change it. For me, it was a matter of feeding my mouth or feeding my health. I didn’t want to take humungous insulin doses & experience the high/low roller coaster that left me wiped out. No food is worth it. Best thing I ever did for my health & emotional well-being was go low carb. I promise that carb yearnings go away. They hold no enticement for me any more.
The trick to not feeling deprived is to find lower carb substitutes for the texture & foods you like. I eat muffins, cakes, wafffles/pancakes & cookies made from almond flour & coconut flour. There are ingenious wonderful low carb recipes on-line. Eat sufficient protein so you’re not hungry. Carbs digest so quickly that we feel hungry soon after eating & then reach for more carbs. I used to have a bowl of cereal a couple of hours after dinner.
I used to love pasta, bread, crackers. Now I can’t eat them at all even with tonnes of injected insulin. You get used to it. 200 after 1 hour is not fine.
Even the diabetics with the tightest control will spike an hour or so after a meal! Guaranteed! It is normal! It takes your medication a little while to kick in. It is not harmful and as long as it goes down you will be fine. The tiredness is also normal after a meal, and your “snappiness” is probably partly due to your anxiety and a normal part of being a mother of two small children!
I do not quite understand what your comment about not being tested yet. Do you mean that you have not yet had a A1C test? Or that you have not been tested at all but the doctor is making assumptions that you are diabetic?
Now to the carbs. You do not have to give up carbs altogether. You can eat slow release carbs in the form of potatoes, pasta, rice, whole grain bread (but I found in the US that sugar or glucose or corn syrup is routinely added to bread. I could not find one that did not have it in it). You could try investing in a bread machine and make your own without sugar etc. You can also eat things like cous cous. I was told to eat a limited amout of carbs for each meal. To make it easier, so not having to weigh everything they gave me directions to use table spoon sizes. So, for example 4 carbs would be 4 tablesoons of say, cous cous.
And if it is any comfort to you my last A1C was 9.9!
Four level TBS of cous cous has 8-12 carbs depending on which source you use. Four TBS isn’t much. Weighing food is a pain, but more accurate, not that we can weigh everything we eat. Hope you weren’t told to estimate that one a tablespoon equals one carb because I was told that a cup of vegetables had a particular number of carbs. Makes no sense since one cup of peas has a lot more carbs than one cup of broccoli.
I am a recovering carbaholic, as are many others on this site. Like you, carbs were a large part of my diet. I now limit myself to 40 to 50 g per day. This is surprising, as I was never disciplined around food. This site is a great resource for low carb recipes. You don’t have to feel deprived.
The spike and the carb cravings are related, one causes the other. So the key is to eliminate the spikes. You need to find out what exactly it is that is spiking you. The website bloodsugar101 has a simple technique to accomplish this.
I had to eliminate whole groups of foods, all grains, potatoes fruit etc. For me, and many others, whole wheat, brown rice etc. make no difference. But that’s me, you need to find out what is spiking you, and modify your diet accordingly. Regular exercise makes a big difference, it doesn’t have to be extreme, walking works great.
You can do this. Realizing where you will end up if you don’t change is the first step. Don’t listen to your Dr., spiking like you do is a big deal. For me eliminating the drowsy feeling after a carby meal is a huge motivator.
Welcome. It can be hard getting a diagnosis and suddenly having to make a whole bunch of changes. You have to be reasonable with yourself. It will take time to change. But you can do it. Don’t test at 1 hr after eating, if your blood sugar goes high for a short time that doesn’t matter, it just needs to come down. Test 2 hrs after your first bite. If you can get your readings down below 140 mg/dl a that time, then you are doing well, and it sounds like you are there.
Second, I think many of us have gone through similar things changing our diets. It is hard. I might recommend the new Atkins book “The New Atkins for You.” It has lots of good explanations and suggestions of things to eat.
And finally, you need to keep things in perspective, give yourself credit. Three months after diagnosis, I was still unable to get my blood sugars down after meals like you have. I took nearly a year to get my diet in order and finally bring my blood sugar under control. You didn’t become diabetic overnight, and you won’t fix it overnight. You need to remind yourself that you are doing great and that you will be ok.
Wow, if I were under 140 at two hours 99% of the time, I’d be one happy puppy.
I’d say you are in fact doing pretty well for a new dx. Please don’t lose hope. The more you test and experiment, the more patterns you will find and the tighter a grip you’ll get on this.
Please do not feel guilt if the number you get is not what you were expecting. It is just a number - but at the same time, it’s an opportunity to adjust other factors (food, exercise, stress) so that the next time, the number you get will be different. Do not think of it as ‘the number is too high, I have failed’. Instead, think ‘ok the number is too high, next time I will go for a walk after eating, or eat 25 fries instead of 50’.
And if your body does need extra help, then please think of insulin as your friend.
On me, a chicken burger (plain chicken, not breaded) with NO bun and ZERO fries would easily send me to 140 and it would stay there for hours without a helping hand from insulin.
Thanks! You’re right about a little exercise bringing the number down…If I’m not too depressed about my number I’ll try to do housework, which usually brings it down quickly. I just can’t go to the insulin quite yet…I’ve had bad experiences with it while pregnant. I dropped to 30 while getting the swine flu shot and didn’t have any food with me. I had to bum a cookie from a lady in the waiting room
I know…my pancreas is what I’m thinking about when I get depressed over the number. I just have to take this more seriously than I am. At the moment, when I’m about to eat a handful of cookies, I think, one little spike won’t hurt…But all those spikes add up and before you know it, you’re out of control.
I’m going to start exercising soon. My baby is only 13 months old and I’m just dead beat from chasing her around. I used to exercise regularly before I had her which probably helped me not get diabetes sooner. When I was six months pregnant, and I had become diabetic in the month or so before, my A1C was 6.2…Which the doctor said meant that I wasn’t diabetic before the pregnancy. The exercise must has helped.
I started out on 500 mg of metformin, then 1000, then 1700 and now 2550. It took me taking 3 x 850 before I started to see lower bgs after meals. I also control my carbs. Many of us find things like bread are deadly to our bgs, even if it is whole wheat. I have found sprouted bread works pretty good. For example this morning I had 2 slices of Eziekel Sesame sprouted grain toast with coconut oil and Walden Farms jam. BG was 111 at 1 hour. It tastes pretty good too. So sometimes it is about finding alternatives. French fries are also deadly for me. The combo of transfats and starch seem like a mainline to bg spikes. Some find exercise works and I do exercise 1-2 hours daily but I spike with exercise. To me it is all about food choice. As a recovering carbaholic the more carbs you eat the more you want. I bet after eating your daughter’s fries you were probably craving more carbs within a few hours. It may take awhile to eliminate the cravings and they really never disappear completely but by tweaking meals you soon become satisfied with althernatives.
If you’re spiking early then catching up, you might try adding more healthy fat to your diet and lower the glycemic index of the carbs you eat so that they hit you more slowly. I use a lot of olive oil, peanut butter and nuts. I’m a Type 1 and my weight issue is keeping it on but still you migh be able to slow down absorbtion and give your pancreas a chance to do its thing.
There are lots of providers who tell you X is fine in part to keep you from getting discouraged. Believe your body, not their patter. This is a marathon not a sprint, it takes time to get everything down.
First, you are so NOT A FAILURE! You enjoy a huge number of successes every day, focus on the positive.
You have received a diagnosis that you will have to live with for the rest of your life, so settle down for the long haul. You aren’t going to suddenly “fix this” and move on, but you will incorporate it into your life. Some days your control will be awesome, some days it will STINK. Just remember that every test, every A1C is a report about the past and you can’t change it, focus on today. There is NO GUILT, only numbers that provide information. You can then act on the information.
bsc gives good advice that I will repeat. Don’t test @ 1 hour, it will just drive you crazy and you may end up chasing lows. IOW, you are getting poor information if you are over 200 after 1 hour, but under 140 after 2. After 2 hours is much better information, really! Instead, consider making some gradual changes to your diet that reduce the amount of carbs you get at any one meal and consider eating more, smaller meals.
Hi Mila’s Mama: You most certainly are not failing. Since you had to use insulin with one pregnancy, have you considered that you might have slow-onset Type 1 diabetes, sometimes called LADA (latent autoimmune diabetes in adults)? Many women with GDM who must use insulin during pregnancy actually have autoimmune gestational diabetes (I wrote a whole blog on it, check it out). Many women here on TuD had GDM and turns out they have Type 1 diabetes now (although most were misdiagnosed as having Type 2 diabetes). Something to think about, and if you do have LADA you should be on exogenous insulin (I know that you had some scary lows, but there are things you can do to avoid them). The gold standard for determining if you have LADA is antibody testing (GADA, ICA, IA-2). Good luck to you, and use TuD to get the support you need.
I’ve heard that better control in the beginning means better control much later, even if you’re not as strict after a few years. I guess for some reason, the early stages of the disease are very important. I try to like veggies, I’m just having to retrain myself from years of carb abuse. I feel good when I eat the right thing, it’s just that moment before I binge where I crave the fullness that only a bunch of carbs give you. You know, the satisfaction you feel after a big burger, rather than a salad. Maybe that’s just the addiction talking. The sleep thing is so important, and looking back, I’ve been sleep deprived my entire life. People who sleep more are healthier, slimmer, etc. Thanks to the diabetes, I’m getting enough sleep for the first time in my life. It makes me so tired…I get eight hours a night now! I will definately take your advise…I do want to grow old with my girls! I hope your pickle is getting better. I guess it’s never too late to change, even if it just means less insulin a day. As for the feet…Thant can reverse a bit as well! Thank you!
I would love to learn how to make low-carb goodies. I even bought the almond flour, but haven’t made anything yet. Interestingly, the things you mention as spiking you, don’t spike me if I eat them in moderation. Beans are great, so is whole wheat pasta…No spike at all. What gets me, is all the unhealthy stuff I was addicted to before diagnosis. Cookies, cake, fries, candy…So sad about losing my old friends, cake and cookies I feel better knowing the carb cravings will go away. I think they have already a bit, but I still eat too many to really break the habit. Thank you! How old were you when you got type 1, btw?
