Pretty great day until tonight, which is my own fault becuase I had sushi and tempura tonight and knew I would probably be high, and I think I also messed up by reducing the bolus by 50%. Hopefully I don’t crash in the middle of the night AND tomorrow will be better because I only have sushi about once a month, if that.
12:49 - 3.2 (58) - Skittles (20g), -10% basal (6 hours)
8:04 - 7.3 (131) - Breakfast (25g)
10:44 - 5.6 (101)
12:01 - 3.3 (59) - Skittles (8g), lunch (15g)
1:00 - 9.5 (171)
2:22 - 6.4 (115) - Cartridge and site change
4:49 - 4.2 (76) - Snack (8g)
7:15 - 7.1 (128) - Dinner (90g!), bolus reduced 1/2 for exercise
8:28 - 12.4 (223) - 30 mins. on bike
9:19 - 8.8 (158)
10:34 - 12.8 (230) - Correction
12:13 - 15.0 (270) - Correction
I love sushi! May I ask what kind of sushi you had? Common sushi with rice does spike me up. But sushi sashimi hardly does except if I dip it in their concoction sauce.
I have gotten pretty good at simple sushi lunches. Miso soup + two pieces of sushi + a California roll. Treating it as fast-acting carbs is pretty much good enough.
But tempura… that’s tricky. The deep frying does some complicated things to the foods that makes them absorb like a fatty food whether they were or not in terms of digestion, and hit with a big bg rise like 4 or 5 hours later.
I usually aim for sashimi too, a lot of places seem to offer a seaweed salad type of dish w/ seaweed, tuna, etc. too. Whole Foods has pretty decent brown rice rolls that while prepackaged seem reasonably fresh, are tasty and don’t seem to spike me too. I don’t usually reduce the bolus if I’m eating huge food, even if I’m hoping to squeeze in a workout afterwards. Come to think of it, that doesn’t happen that much. I think that tempura may have more carbs b/c the flour in the batter is ground up more finely than in regular fried stuff? Very yummy but I really clobber it with a huge dose. Still, lots of good data there!
Unfortunately I don’t do the “real” raw fish sushi so it’s usually the stuff with more rice! I have tried brown rice sushi from Safeway and it was nasty, I’ll have to try the Whole Foods stuff (I ate from a sushi restaurant last night and I wish more of them had brown rice).
I usually reduce my bolus prior to exercise but am thinking I shouldn’t have done that tonight. I also did a combo bolus so even more of it was spread out over five hours (the same period I was high, actually). I’m thinking I should have just done a regular bolus, might have gotten better results.
I woke up at 2.8 (50) this morning but seeing as how it’s six hours after my last bolus, I’m not sure it’s the bolus that did it. Usually I would set a -10% basal on days I exercised and I forgot to do that, but I don’t think the exercise I did yesterday was very intense. I did have my iPhone alarm set for 2:30 AM to test and slept through that, so for all I know I might have been low all night … and now that I’ve had five lows in the past three days I am barely feeling low even at 50, so that needs some fixing!
Have you tried backing down on basal instead of bolus, for exercise? I still always bolus for my food, but I reduce my basal by 40 to 60 percent (depending on how intense my exercise will be) for 30-60 minutes before, during, and about 30 minutes after. Once in a while if I’m eating a snack high in protein to keep me steady before exercise but it’s still also high carb I will bolus for all but about 10 carbs and then reduce my basal only 30-40%.
I’ve tried adjusting basal for exercise but I found it hard to get right—I would either still drop low, or I would end up going high for hours, sometimes with ketones as well. My endo said (and I think books like Pumping Insulin agree) that for exercise shorter than 60 minutes it’s easier to adjust bolus insulin and/or eat beforehand (I’m just trying to lose weight so don’t want to eat) rather than adjusting basal rates.