I am beginning to put on weight. I am measuring my food portions. I did not eat this much food pre diabetes. This week, I am beginning my exercise routine (Nintendo WII Fit). I wonder how much exercise is needed to combat this problem.
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You measure your food portions but do you watch the number of carbs you eat? I have gained a few pounds. I am back to being a strict low carb diet and exercising again. I would exercising for about 30 min to an hour is fine. How do you like the Wii Fit game? I was thinking about buying a Wii just for exercise game…lol
Maybe, I am doing a poor job measuring my cards. I was told, by a dietitian to have 60 to 65 grams of card per meal.
It’s a possibly that your basal rate of insulin is too high. I had a similar situation and my new endocrinologist dropped my basal rate substantially (by more than half). It was explained to me that too high basal rates can cause weight gain or inability to lose weight, high blood sugars (because the liver starts sending out too much sugar), and can cause excessive hunger. I would talk to your doctor about this and see if that could be your problem. I have a new doctor who is much more knowledgable…my old doctor is the one that had me on such a high basal rate. Now my blood sugars are reading as they should and my weight is coming down.
BTW…the Wii Fit is awesome isn’t it? I just got one as well and loooooove it!
Hey DeAndre,
Welcome to the group!
Know it’s overwhelming when you’re recently diagnosed. I felt totally confused with info overload when I was diagnosed in late May. Head was spinning!
There’s a lot of good info about low carb being the best way to control our condition & to avoid complications. Not trying to add to the confusion, but 60-65 grams per meal is way high for us. Don’t know if you’re not doing a good job carb counting, but eating this many carbs is a prescription for weight gain & out of control blood glucose. How are your numbers two hours after eating? Too many carbs requires a lot of insulin, a lot of insulin is hard to regulate. The more a person weighs, the more insulin their bodies require.
Guess we were all told to eat a certain amount of carbs by dieticians & doctors. Sadly, what we were told is outdated, over the top & not in our best interests.
If you’re interested, a good place to start is checking out Dr. Richard Bernstein. He’s a pioneer in controlling diabetes & is a Type 1 diabetic. I completely ignored the nonsense I was told by dieticians spewing ADA crap. www.diabetesincontrol.com has sections of Dr. Bernstein’s book, Diabetes Solution, on their site. Click on the link on the bottom that says archived writers (or something like that) & the drop down menu lists Dr. B. His book is wonderful, Encourage you to get it. It changed my life.
Wow! That’s a lot of carbs! I agree with Gerri that’s what’s putting on the pounds. Wow! I would say look around and find out what’s best for you and your body. I try to stay under 35 carbs per meal 40 would be my max. Do you count carbs?
The amount of carbs I was told to eat way way more than I ever ate before, too, just like DeAndre. I don’t eat 60 carbs in a whole day. Even by ridiculous ADA standards, 60-65 carbs per meal is high!
I kept asking–are you sure I’m supposed to eat this much? I was tired & cranky & bloated–all from carb overload. My BG was all over the place & every week my doctor was changing my insulin doses. I was frustrated & near tears. Felt totally out of control. Knew in my heart that there had to be a better way. I walked out of the diabetes education class I was told to attend. Told my husband that I was never going back & that it didn’t make sense to eat this many carbs when I didn’t have a working pancreas.
Thankfully, I have a wonderful internist who’s supportive. He helped me a lot & was encouraging that I do my own research & follow my instincts. I can’t say he was as supportive about as low carb as I wanted to do, but he wasn’t an ■■■ about it. I went through two endos & a CDE before I found an endo who would be accepting of what I wanted.
Personally, I need a lot more than Wii Fit (I do own it) to keep my weight under control and to have the body I want.
It is a fun game and has some great stretching exercises. I do use it on the days I’m not lifting weights or doing other workouts.
Consider high-intensity interval training (google HIIT). It is very effective and you can be done with a workout in under 20 minutes.
Dear DeAndre you have discovered the major downfall with insulin. I started a blog in the type 2 forum asking if weight gain was inevitable using insulin. The people have responded which some ideas. Also you can whatch the symlin, amylin video. very expensive stuff but if anything can make you loose weight it is worth gold. Dr. Richard Bernstein’s book and ideas if they work for you would be a miracle. He proposes an extremely low carb diet that is also very low in calories.
Exercise I think several hours per day of fair high intensity. You can easily eat in 5 minutes the same amount of calories that you can loose on a thread mill in one hour. I am going to try again adding metformin and limiting the carbs to very little less than 10 grams per meal alla Dr. Atkins. Not limiting calories. I will exercise as much as my body allows which is about 1 1/2 per day. I wonder if I will loose even 1 pound.
I follow Dr. Bernstein’s guidelines & I’m having a problem gaining weight. No way not to lose weight & lower your insulin dosage doing this. I’ve started to eat more protein to gain some needed pounds. It’s not particularly low calorie because of the fats, but it’s the carbs that put on the pounds.
A non-diabetic friend is now getting recipes from me & she’s lost a lot of weight. More importantly, she’s keeping it off. She’s done every weight loss program there is & it’s the only thing that’s helped her.
I was worried that I’d be hungry all the time, but I’m not. Once you lower your carb intake, the carb cravings go away. Protein keeps you from being hungry.
Check out some of the discussions on exercise. You’ll need to adjust your insulin & stop to test frequently, depending on the intensity. Check with your doctor, too. Some people go very low with a major work out & then go high several hours later. It’s difficult to adjust doses accordingly, when you’re new to all this.
Eating 60-65 grams of carbs will not only pack weight on you, it will make it REALLY tough to control your blood sugar.
It is standard dietitian advice–handed out by dietitians who DO NOT have diabetes, have never measured their own blood sugar, and who are working from old, outdated, erroneous data.
Most of us find that without insulin under 15 grams works best. With insulin I try to stay under 40 as that gives me the best blood sugars and avoids the hunger I’ll get if I eat more carbs.
Weight control I would say is one of the most difficult things to deal with as a diabetic. I can fluctuate between 5-10lbs in one month depending on how well I am controlling my diabetes.
I agree with the rest of the comments about 60-65 carbs being way too much. Remember you are in control of your diabetes, not your doctors. It is sad because you want to trust them but can’t really. I usually disregard everything my endo says and rely on my nurse educator (NE). She has three kids with diabetes so really gets it (I suggest trying to find someone like this, who is personally affected by diabetes). If you tell your doc. or NE that 60-65 carbs isn’t working for you and they don’t listen I would suggest you find a new doctor or NE. I have had diabetes for 20 years and am still looking for the right doc. 
I say FIGHT for your right to be happy. Tell your diabetes management team 60 carbs just isn’t working and that they need to find you a new regimen. Stick to your guns! Good Luck.
I was told to get on a 2200 cal diet with 4 carb choices for breakfast 5 for lunch and 5 for dinner
4=60g carbs
5=75g carbs
5=75g carbs
14=210g carbs per day
Well, whoever told you that isn’t a person with diabetes who is maintaining normal, healthy blood sugars.
The advice given to people with diabetes is dreadful. Ask the people you meet here who have health histories you’d like to emulate what they do, and you’ll end up a lot healthier.
I did this ten years ago, and ended up completely ignoring my doctor’s advice. Good thing too. That doctor thought blood sugars over 250 were normal. I kid you not.
I would ask for my money back.
Seriously.
People don’t do that, because the insurance pays for it, but you are paying for the insurance.
I had a “Diabetic Expert” dietician tell me it is okay to eat donuts, ice cream, and cookies. “Oh, just in moderate amounts”…well, what the heck is a moderate amount? It is putting oneself on a slippery slope to eat those things, because then I crave things like that. It is far easier to just not eat them. My body doesn’t need them, and I wonder why Dieticians are always pushing bad food at us, and then saying it’s okay.
Maybe they just want to stay in business.
Jenny is so right. I disregarded the dietary guidelines given me (given to all of us), fired two endos & walked out of a diabetes education class because I didn’t even eat that many carbs per meal before I was diagnosed. I knew nothing about diabetes, but it just didn’t make sense to eat like that without a functioning pancreas. I asked my doctors–why can’t I eat less & take less insulin? They looked at me like I was nuts. Good thing I didn’t care what they thought:)
When I was in the hospital with DKA, I was reprimanded by nurses for not eating mashed potatoes, pasta, white bread & fruit cups. Utter insanity! Every meal I ate there was making me sicker & the amount of insulin they gave me was huge. When I got home, I cut the recommended carbs in half & immediately had better control. My insulin needs correspondingly dropped, of course, & along with this the huge swings from terrible highs & terrible lows. From there, I researched low carb & found Jenny’s blog & Dr. Bernstein (mentioned in my previous post here).
Too bad we can’t file a class action suit against the ADA & their guidelines. High carbs=more insulin=more $ for pharm companies & their buddies at the ADA.
Dear Gerri.
11 years ago when I developped full fleadged diabetes, I went to see the dietitian. She was talking muffins and I was talking sauerkraut (a totally alien concept in the Anglo world, athought Captain Cook used it in his discovery trip of the Pacific to prevent his men from getting scurvy). Well I said I did not eat muffins before becomming a diabetic and I certainly did not intend to eat any now. The consultation end there.
Good for you, Anthony!
When I went to the diabetes center (within the hospital) to meet with the nurse & sign up for UN-education classes, they had a big bowl of candy (not sugar free) & cans of diet soda in the reception area. Knew then it didn’t bode well.
I love sauerkraut. My mouth waters just thinking about it. I used to eat sauerkraut sandwiches on rye bread with mustard as a kid–weird, I know.
Another point about weight gain as a type 1 on insulin (and, because I get weary of the back-and-forth on carbs): If your blood sugars are recently in better control, any excess glucose (from any food source) you used to pee out of your body is now available to be used for energy–or turned into fat.
You might try asking a dietitian to look at total number of calories you’re on, in addition to how those calories are distributed among protein, healthy fats, and carbs from all sources. Then, you’ll have to go home and do lots of experimenting to settle on the amounts that work for you (the bad news: I’ve been trying to figure out this for 35+ years and still have no magic formula; the good news: there’s lots of great advice on this site!)
As for amount of exercise, very general numbers are 30 minutes a day of continuous activity for weight maintenance, 60 minutes a day for weight loss. The really great thing about physical activity (which, I admit, I hate doing) is it’s win-win: helps weight, helps blood sugars.
You need to rember the insulin will make you put on weight. I was told the i should not be eating any more then i was before hand. If you fell like you are eating to much you can cut down on your carbs but must rember to cut down on you insulin as well to avoid being LOW. My Dietitian told be to eat 90g at every meal and i could not, now i eat 40 to 45g at every meal and have a nice stedy weight. As for exercise you can never do to much just make sure that you get your heart rate up.
Hope this helps Greg