My doctor told me that after starting insulin, I would gain some weight.
Hey. I'll have you know, it is Alfred E. Nemann. Below is one of my more important intellectual contributions:
What me worry?
oops, only 2x Ns! I must have mixed him up w/ Johnny! I have several of my Uncle’s 1960s Mad books that he left @ my Grandma’s house when he moved out. Great stuff!! “What Me Worry?” “Potrzbie” etc.!
The first thing I noticed after I was diagnosed with Type 1 and began taking insulin was how much more energy I had and how much better I felt. I really hadn’t realized how tired I had been for the couple of months before diagnosis. Insulin was like a wonder drug—instant energy. I hope she is experiencing the same thing, especially since she is so young and active. I use glucose tablets to treat lows–4 g carbs and 15 calories per tablet, and although they don’t taste horrible there is certainly no temptation to overindulge. Best of luck to both of you.
It does seem like your daughter is just putting back on the weight she lost before her diagnosis, but it is true that it is easy to gain weight while taking insulin. As one user mentioned, insulin is a fat-storing hormone. Also, it’s hard to get your carb: insulin ratio to be perfect, and sometimes this means you’ll give yourself too much insulin, which may require you to eat an extra 15 carbs or drink some juice. I was diagnosed at age 10, and I’m 27 now, but even these days, I worry about giving too much insulin because I’m afraid it will make me gain weight. I think my fear might be a bit irrational. If you’re delivering the right amount of insulin, you should be fine. I’ve always been really active too, just to help keep my blood sugars down in addition to insulin.
I think that’s what we’re trying to figure out – the carb/insulin factor & how to adjust it. Plus, I’ve seen discussions about insulin and weight gain. So I guess we have to see if she’ll hit a leveling-off with the weight & then work & work on the ratios.
Insulin: carb ratios take trial & error. Wish there was an easier way to do this. The book Using Insulin is a good place to start. Also check out www.bloodsugar101. Adjustments to doses should be small ones–one unit at a time… It’s impossible to hit the correct formula making major changes. Also good to keep any change the same for three days to get an idea where things stand. Sometimes, highs & lows aren’t easily explanable. This is where record keeping is a huge help. Most people have different ratios for different meals, so what works for lunch won’t necessarily work for dinner. Breakfast tends to be a time of greater insulin resistance/carb sensitivity. I eat mostly protein for breakfast to control this. Lunch, when we’re most active, can be a larger ratio.
I think that you actually want to get the ratio and then control the diet? The ratio is the #of carbs ‘processed’ by a unit of insulin. I don’t think that changes a lot unless you drastically adjust your activity level or change your weight significantly, like +/- 20%. I do think that the ratios and basal rates do change as you age/ develop/ grow though as I think some of my ‘problems’ over the years may have been b/c in my head I thought "I need x amt of insulin’ but I needed .75x or 2x or whatever? Once you know how much insulin will process the food, you need to figure out how much food will maintain your weight and support your activities?
The thing that got me when I peaked at 275 lbs is that I was very cognisant of having elevated BG and simply took too much insulin so I was always running low, needing treatment, eating large amounts of food to stave off lows, etc. At the same time I was not very active and that wasn’t a good combo.
Ugh, this stuff is hard! And the math element just makes my eyes fuzz & my mind go numb!
I gained about 30 lbs in the 6 months after being diagnosed and starting insulin. It will reduce eventually but the fact that she is active will definitely help. Just give it some time and stay healthy !
If you don’t have one, I can’t recommend getting a food scale enough. I’m not married to mine, in that I don’t use it all the time, but if you want to know precisely how much food you are eating, it is invaluable. I kind of use it for both keeping an eye on my glucometer and my pantsometer and it is useful for both. When I was younger, I would measure ‘a bowl’ of cereal by dumping cereal in, a bit less if it was buoyant. Now I can see how much cereal is in a serving and know exactly how much to eat. If I want two servings, I can do that two but a lot of the ‘bowls’ I had in my youth were probably 3 or 4 ‘servings’? There are portion control anomalys like that all over the place and it is very useful to know the food precisely if you are trying to figure out a ratio?
It sounds like your daughter needed to gain every ounce back that she did. Mine (18) lost 32 lbs while on an exchange program to Italy and regained it ALL in 3 months post dx, thank goodness! She became an almond and walnut fiend!! One thing you might think about down the line is looking into the pump. One advantage, especially for someone very physically active, is that there are many adjustments to be made to avoid lows. It can be frustrating on MDI to have to “eat up” to exercise, especially if you are trying to lose some weight. You can lower the basal amount a few hours before exercising and even disconnect while exercising if you need to. Once you have that long acting insulin working, nothing you can do short of snacking will diminish its effect.
Hope all continues to go well!
We got a great scale at Bed, Bath & Beyond that will even calculate how many carbs in the dish! Like keeping track of all numbers, it’s not in regular use yet. We did stock up on measuring cups, etc. The kitchen is now a cross between a cooking gadget store and a medical supply closet. Plus, I keep reading books & going to the grocery for healthy snacks, so we have a ton of those too.
I’d recommend the EatSmart scale. You punch in a code for the food and weigh it and it gives you carbs, protein, fat, calories and other stats. You can zero out and keep adding ingredients and it will give you a running total. Makes it fairly painless. You can get a discount thru tudiabetes. Click on resources–> discounts at the top of the page.
I have one that does a ‘food label’ thingy that I’m sort of a sucker for. I don’t use it that much though and really just sort of guesstimate like 80% of the time and look up info in Calorie King. I use it for portion control as much as BG control but it works really well for that. I am also extremely conservative and eat pretty much the same thing for breakfast and lunch 5 days a week too. Not a wildly popular option but we are very busy at work so I really just shovel it in while I’m working. Since we got the dog, I am a ZOMBIE in the morning so breakfast is about the last part of the equation.
Samantha is already interested in the pump, but the doctor’s office says she has to do a year with shots before the insurance company will cover it. Definitely looking into it.
I was 14 when I was diagnosed, and during ketoacidosis, I went from (5’2) 125 down to 85 in two weeks. During my 11 day hospital stay, I gained back almost 30 pounds, by the time my body got back to ‘normal’ after leaving the hospital, I weighed roughly 10 - 15 pounds more than I did before I developed symptoms. I decided to wait about a year to allow my body to ‘settle’ and adjust to having diabetes, before I started any form of heavy exercise regime. I have since lost the weight and found that other than the issues of balancing blood sugar while being active It was no more difficult than losing weight when not diabetic. Is your daughter on tudiabetes? It would be interesting to talk to someone who was also diagnosed as a teenager.
Woah, gaining 30 lbs from hospital food (blech) is almost more alarming than losing 40 lbs due to diabetes! I’m glad you’ve recovered!
She’s not on here yet, but I may get her started! She is 14 right now, just diagnosed. In 9th grade, so just started high school. She is the only student at her school with Type 1 (1500 kids there). The school seems a bit apprehensive. I’m working on that stuff too. She is on facebook & I’d love to have you talk to her if you can send her a message that way.
I was diagnosed at 11 and I’m 28 now. Get her a 504 for her school so she can check her blood, give her insulin, eat snacks, etc. Yeah, she’ll gain weight (I went from 80 lbs to 60 lbs in like a month before my diagnosis and then “blossomed” to around 100 and maintained that through high school). When I went on a pump senior year which eliminated the need for snacks, I shrank to around 96 and my team was trying to get me to gain weight with butter!!! Of course college and having a baby erased all that good metabolism (I need to lose about 30)…but tell her not to worry about anything but being “healthy”. It is much more important to watch carbs, eat healthy protein, “good” fats, whole grains, fruits, and veggies, lowfat dairy, etc., and keep her blood sugar under control than to worry about her weight at her age. I recommend the ADA cookbooks, my mom always cooked with those.