I’m new to this forum. I’ve had Type 2 diabetes for about 12 years. I eat something before I go to bed because i take my Metformin and Zocor. Last night I ate 2 canned pears in lite syrup and cottage cheese, 2 strawberries and some blueberries. I thought the protein in the cottage cheese would be my protein and this combination of foods would not make my sugar go up. I took it at 10:30 and 11:30pm 10:30 was 1 hour after eating and it was 177 and in 2 hours was 157. That is too high for me. I have a good A1c and don’t need to lose weight. HELP!
Well, when I look at what you ate I see 1 pear (assuming they were halved like most would 20-30g carbs plus good amount of sugar if they were fresh), strawberry and blueberry, few more carbs and sugar, cottage cheese about 5g carbs, the light syrup, while less sugar than non-light is not diet or close to free…
Not sure it makes a difference but if I ate that before bed (being a type1) I’d have to give myself roughly 4 units of insulin as that would be a pretty rich before bedtime snack for me, almost the equal of a light dinner. I gave up on any canned/syrup/light syrup fruits decades ago because of this. If yo can eat them with no repercussions more power to you but I could not eat the canned pears for the life of me and without much more background that would look like the culprit that brought on the highs.
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I definitely don’t want to start a “T1’s Pile On” here but yow… what @JC14 said. YDMD indeed.
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Thanks…what would you eat before going to bed? Give me some examples…
What is YDMD?
Unfortunately we are often told that fruits are good healthy foods but diabetes is really about managing the carbs in your diet. And fruits often have a very high sugar (carb) content. I actually think cottage cheese alone is a great snack. And if you don’t like it plain you can mix things in. Personally I like Sriracha, but you can add sugar free Torani syrup, cinnamon, vanilla, salsa or maybe even some sugar free jello mix.
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Your Diabetes May Differ 
To be honest, I no longer eat anything before bed unless my BG is low (I take insulin bow), but in the past, especially when I was on oral meds, my go-to night time snack was a single scoop of a low-carb ice cream (about 15g carbs) – it has a little fat, a little (ok, very little) protein and a few carbs – and the results I saw from this were excellent – and it was a fun snack to boot!
OH…I haven’t had ice cream in a long time. I’ll experiment with that. Usually I have almonds or peanuts and a fruit. It is just discouraging when you think you are doing the right thing and then have the blood sugar be high…DARN
I’d eat everything but the canned fruit, maybe a little more cottage cheese, couple more berries and see how that effects your sugar.
I don’t eat before bed unless I have reason to think I’m likely to go low, e.g., if I have a lot of IOB for some reason. When that does happen, I try to count the carbs as precisely as humanly possible to balance them against the insulin in my system. And I usually err just slightly on the side of caution (I’d rather be a little high when sleeping than significantly low). But the situation seldom arises. Very seldom.
[quote=“judymo, post:1, topic:52298, full:true”]
I’m new to this forum. I’ve had Type 2 diabetes for about 12 years. I eat something before I go to bed because i take my Metformin and Zocor. Last night I ate 2 canned pears in lite syrup and cottage cheese, 2 strawberries and some blueberries. I thought the protein in the cottage cheese would be my protein and this combination of foods would not make my sugar go up. I took it at 10:30 and 11:30pm 10:30 was 1 hour after eating and it was 177 and in 2 hours was 157. That is too high for me. I have a good A1c and don’t need to lose weight. HELP!
[/quote]I don’t know if it was the wrong thing to eat but maybe it was just too much. Was this different than your usual before bed nosh habit? Since you know that his selection causes high bg, then you can adjust the menu a little and figure out what does work.
I generally go zero carbs from dinner time on, unless it’s a special occasion, and even then I frequently beg off from deserts particularly. Because it’s just SUCH a pain to undershoot and have a nasty shock in the a.m., or what’s worse, overshoot and have to stagger out of bed at 3 to get some sugar. I tell people “I can, but it’s just so much simpler not to.” Keeping a couple of glucose tabs on your night table is a good idea, especially on those nights when you know you might have misunderestimated.
Or at any other time, or all the time. It’s just basic prudence.
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I think he meant YDMV, or “your diabetes may vary” as everyone’s diabetes is different. I can hardly tolerate any fruit, almost everything fruit spikes me quickly. strawberries not so much. I’d probably just have the cottage cheese if I needed to eat before bed.
(oops I see now “your diabetes may differ”
anyway, welcome to our community!!!
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Second that! Welcome @judymo!
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May I add my two cents.
I am sure you already know this, however, if you haven’t already, don’t forget to factor that your liver (a storage site for glycogen) will still produce glucose during a time of fast. Too think about the types of carbs you consumed. Were the simple, complex and the amount of time it take the metabolized carbs to get into your blood stream plus the effect of glucose production on the part of the liver. The metformin will control that but not halt the production of glucose.
Personally, I’d be curious to know what was your fasting glucose in the AM to really see what effect consuming what you consumed at 10:30pm had on your fasting blood glucose.
I hope this provides some insight.