Today I faced evil and had a bowl of cereal for breakfast. And I spiked like crazy. I tried super low carb for about a month. It started off great with lots of flat lines on the Dexcom, but then I started getting fairly high BG readings that were hard to bring down. I think it was the delayed digestion of things like nuts, cheese, etc. I also continued to lose weight which is something that I don’t want to do.
So I’ve added back some carbs while keeping breakfast at about 23 carbs and trying to avoid carbs at dinner and especially after dinner.
Last night my Dexcom kept alarming for lows. I ignored most of them and ate a few glucose tabs from my bedside table. I woke up at 49 which definitely said that my Dex had been right all night. I am really bad about clearing alarms when I don’t want to wake up.
So for the first time in almost two months, I had about 35g of cereal and milk for breakfast. I think it’s the milk that I miss more than the cereal. But the spike was horrible and the evil cereal/milk combo won out. Tomorrow it’s Greek Yogurt and blueberries or peanut butter toast.
try almond milk...it has nearly no carbs. I find a can eat just about anything if I wait a good 20 minutes or so after I bolus to eat, factoring in I'm not low when I inject. It's about timing the insulin with the carbs, not about the carbs...in my experience. Milk does spike me though.
I have a theory that flat days exacerbate dawn phenomenon the day after? I haven't taken notes or done anything organized but I have noticed that I seem to get more pronounced spikes the day after really flat days. Which makes getting flat weeks sort of dicey? I have some really small bowls I use for smaller servings of cereal that seem to work ok. Like 1/2 serving?
I've given up on cereal but I drink milk with breakfast every morning. It helps wash down the peanut butter and toast. Scaling up the amount of peanut butter at breakfast helped me gain some weight. I originally ate about 40 grams but I'm up at about 64 grams now.
Maybe we should add this to the "Ya know your diabetic when" post. Ya know your diabetic when you crave something as simple as a bowl of cereal with milk in the morning.
Most non D folks see cereal as a quick convenient breakfast and would love to have bacon and eggs sometimes. Us diabetics would just love the sweet crunchy taste of a bowl of Captain Crunch occasionally. Life is sometimes cruel.
You can use a small amount of granola and mix it with lots of different fresh berries..(they almost have no carbs) an a handful of nuts and lots of yogurt..yummm..you feel satisfied after that meal and you don't get peaks...
I eat cereal all the time and don't have any more problems with it then anything else. I usually eat fairly large bowls. Like 70 grams. It makes no sense to me that people with diabetes seem to have so much trouble with cereal. I generally don't check after meals but I can easily feel spikes as I feel horrible. Tonight about 1.5 hours half after dinner I felt like total ■■■■ and checked to see 177. If I ate cereal and I spiked I would certainly feel it. I can't say it never happens but not anymore then anything else. It's not the cereal that is evil its the f***** diabetes.
Maybe you can, peggysue, and I envy you for that! Granola was my favorite breakfast for years - granola, fruit and yogurt. But I tried every (non-starvation) serving size, combination and type and for me I will end up in the 200s. We're all different.
Yeah, I could eat a big bowl of cereal with fruit and milk for breakfast and a sub sandwich for lunch (with fries) and 3 slices of pizza for dinner too if I didn't check my blood sugar.
You are right Zoe..we are all different. And you know, if I eat the same for 2 days and have de same activities those days..my sugars are still different from day to day...I'm from the Netherlands and the granola's here don't have so much sugar as in the U.S.versions. I worked a lot in the U.S. and whenever I had granola there for breakfast, my sugars went high as well..so there must be something different.
Love the almond milk, I drink the Vanilla unsweetened variety by Blue Diamond, absolutely terrific. One cup equals 2 grams of carbs and like 30 calories:)
I don't have a dexcom but I've been trying to write everything down lately and I had a "flat day" a couple of weeks ago... the whole day around 160ish which is GREAT for me. The next day started great then BAM 250 that wouldn't budge.
I ate a small bowl of Lucky Charms before I worked out, 10-15G of cereal, as my BG had tailed off to 83 after the AM spike...it seems to have worked out well, running up to 118 (CGM) "during" but headed back down to 106 afterwards.
I never ate granola with sugar as I haven't eaten sugar at all for 17 years. If you go to a health food store or even in many markets, you can find granola without sugar or honey. But it still spiked my blood sugars. So did every "healthy" "high fiber" etc etc cereal I could find in my amazing market, Berkeley Bowl that had every healthy food you could think of. I tried, believe me; some of us just can't tolerate cereal, just like some of us can't tolerate rice, or pasta or potatoes - and some can. Has nothing to do with country.
I think that you’re right that everything in America has way too much sugar. I would be wise to make my own granola, but I’m not too interested in spending much time in the kitchen. You’re right that plain yogurt affects the blood sugar less than milk. I usually eat full fat regular yogurt. I’ve been eating full fat Greek Yogurt recently. I feel like I’m eating sour cream and don’t like it as well as regular yogurt.
