I needed to make a change in my life. I was feeling tired all the time and struggling with poor decisions. As a whole, I felt unhealthy. My blood sugars were out of control and I started to just not care anymore about what was happening with my diabetes. Then my sister, who isn't diabetic, introduced me to the PALEO diet. I have been on it for 2 weeks and I feel like a million bucks! I am still having blood sugar issues but now it's because I don't know how to cover for the foods I am eating. I tend to run more lows.
Is anyone on this diet? What do you think of it? How do you make it work as a Type 1 diabetic? Any pointers would be great!
Good for you for trying something new. It's discouraging with diabetes to see an endless string of bad BG numbers with roller-coaster changes.
I use a low carb diet that overlaps Paleo quite a bit. Where my diet differs is that I eat dairy. I use heavy cream, yogurt, and cheese. I've been on this diet for a year and a half and it's been wonderful. I lost weight, feel better, and my blood sugar is much easier to control. Not magically wonderfully perfect, but much better than before low carb.
I totally had to overhaul my insulin regimen. The first thing I needed to discover was a new basal profile that corresponded to my changed way of eating. I used this method to adjust my basal rates.
I also made many changes to my insulin to carb ratio and my insulin sensitivity factor. MY total daily dose of insulin was about cut in half.
With lower carb meals I found I had to dose insulin based on protein and fat as well. Search this site for posts under the group "TAGgers United." It's an inactive group but I got a lot of ideas about how to use extended boluses to cover protein and fat. I give myself an immediate bolus for the carb content of the meal and then give an extended bolus for the protein and fat. I could give you more details if you're interested.
My life changed for the better when I started to eat fewer carbs. Not everyone can stick with it, but it makes so much more sense than trying to eat all the carbs you want and then giving yourself huge doses of insulin. Fewer carbs = less insulin = smaller mistakes.
I eat a diet that very closely resembles the paleo diet, except that i do eat cheese and certain other low carb foods that are not allowed by paleo. I love the food and everything about the diet, and am 110% healthier on this diet now than i was before i got diabetes. I did a success story on 'marks daily apple' which can better summarize,found here: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/type-1-diabetes-no-match-for-primal-lifestyle/#axzz2Av1sVARk. I was lucky enough to find this diet early on while i was honeymooning, but testing has confirmed my honeymoon is over now and this diet is still as effective now as it was in the beginning!
Once you learn how the different foods in the diet affect your blood sugar and how to bolus for protein as others have said, management should become much easier for you. Since you are taking much less insulin, bg swings should be much less and easier to correct. And now that i am used to eating this way, i am not even tempted anymore by the 'off limits' food.
Good luck with the new diet and im sure you will benefit from it!
My daughter 9, has been eating somewhat like this for over 2 years now. We sort of follow a fungal lifestyle made by Doug Kaufman. His whole idea is that diabetes has a fungal undertone. She was diagnosed in Aug of 2011 and we started the lifestyle change that December. She was officially off insulin about 2 months or so after August. I started to notice lower numbers if she didnt have too many carbs. I prayed and researched and the doctors are amazed. Her last 2 A1C checks within the year were 5.3 and 5.6, she started at 10. She continues to have yeast infections which I tie to the fungal link. But they’ve become less and less lately. Keep up with the Paleo Diet, we just don’t eat corn and less sugar.
"I started working with diabetes educators and nutritionists at the local hospital and was told that I should take in about 320 CARBS/DAY(!!) based on my activity level. And they call themselves nutritionists?? Even my endocrinologist said I could eat whatever I wanted because the disease “sucks enough the way it is” and I just needed to shoot up with enough insulin to cover the food I was eating. At this point I still did not know any better so I bought into their conventional wisdom."
And then the docs blame the patients for poor management.
Sounds good if it works for you! For me Paleo makes sense, and I would love to be able to eat all the fruits they do :) But it's not realy working for me. So I do low carb version of it and I do eat dairy.
I am not really in fat numbers for LCHF, but something in between
