2/
Now this is an observational study and because I don’t have a very large sample may not be representative of what’s actually going on. Some might argue it borders close on the anecdotal.

Add to that a myriad of confounding factors such as time of day, what my bgs were in the past week, type of carbs consumed, whether I exercised or not and also the perils of self reporting although in this case I have no incentive to cheat. Oh and also all blood glucose meters have a margin of error.

So why bother collecting such data? Because it could be a basis for further exploration and might be a good enough argument to start some testing on the hypothesis that there is a significant ratio between the amount of carbs we eat and our bg levels.

I have a Continuous Blood Glucose Monitor (CGM) but I can’t afford to use it all the time. My plan is to get some funding for this exercise so I can use my CGM.

Sadly so far none in the medical industry are showing any interest. I don’t care if someone else takes up the ball as long as *someone* does it.

@A DiabetesTeam Member Thanks for this. It never occurred to me to look for optimal carbs duh! My only excuse is that I’m still in data collection mode.

I think I can persuade my inner accountant to resume continuous glucose monitoring at least until I get a good idea of my optimum carb level.

Yeh I’m like you re going down rabbit holes - not only that but in much of maths which I’m teaching myself. I have to keep focussing! But at least I can apply the statistics principles I so far learned to my data which gives me an incentive to keep on studying.

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A Diabete...

@A DiabetesTeam Member @A DiabetesTeam Member Re: varying the calories. Same with carbs. I’m on a very low carb diet and I find sometimes I have to up the carbs because my bgs start rising. I suspect this is because

1) The liver dumps carbs into my bloodstream because it detects low bgs and because I’m insulin resistant the excess sloshes around in my body. The liver doesn’t know about the insulin resistance and that’s the nub of T2 diabetes. The homeostatic process is broken.

And/or

2) My body starts to extract every gram of carbs not just from straight carbs but other foods that are not carbs. I believe the process is called gluconeogenesis and in reality practically anything we consume can eventually be broken down into glucose.

In my very low carb case I suspect the body in an effort to keep glucose at a given level starts to break down non carb foods into glucose. The glucose level or BGs are higher than they should be because the body gets habituated to that level.

As with calories the strategy is to trick the body into thinking that everything is ok (according to its standards) and the tactics are upping the carbs but making sure that they are low Glycemic Load carbs. More on Glycemic Load in a later post sometime.

As a footnote I’m doing on and off ratios between weight (grams) of carbs in a food eaten and blood glucose level. There is a sort of correlation between the two in the sense that the more carbs I consume the less the ratio is and the less carbs I consume the greater the ratio. However this correlation does not work all the time. There’s no “always” in T2 diabetes and probably other syndromes.

This is how I work out the ratio. I divided the total grams of carbs consumed in a meal by the bg reading (using the European version) and that gives me the ratio.

Here are three examples (all dinners) which are just samples and must not be taken as proof of any strong correlation.

First sample is when I ate more carbs than usual.
A=Blood glucose level (US measurement)
B=Carbs consumed
A/B=Ratio
A) 8.5 (153)
B) 15.7g
Ratio 0.54 (9.7)

Second sample where I ate the carbs I usually eat.
A) 6.8 (122)
B) 2.0g
Ratio 3.4 (61)

The next sample is based on mid range between 15.7g carbs and 2.0g carbs = 6.9g

A) 7.9 (142)
B) 6.8g
Ratio 1.2 (20.9)

So just judging solely on these samples it could be concluded that the ratio goes up by a significant amount when I eat less carbs. Even the mid range goes up as well.

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A Diabete...

A Diabete...

The funny thing is when I got my diagnosis of diabetes and decided to change my eating I never dreamed it would come off as quickly as it did since I’ve been battling my weight all my life. I never lost that much weight that quickly. Even my Dr was surprised. The only thing that can explain it is I have been insulin resistant all my life and removing the foods that spike blood glucose was what made the difference. I never planned on losing that much weight. I was aiming for a weight of 150 but I’m at 140 give or take a pound or so on any given day. I weigh Iess than I did when I got married 43 years ago and for the first time I weigh less than my husband. He is a little guy, he is 5’6” and I’m 5’ 7”. I’m made from good German stock😂 Always loved it when they said I was big boned. I’ve accepted the fact that I will never be able to eat certain foods again. The nature of the beast we all are fighting.

Plateaus are normal but very frustrating. For me I find that I need to actually eat more. Seems contradictory but it’s what works for me. I don’t eat junk food , just more healthy foods. I also find that if I vary my calorie intake through out the weight loss journey I’m less likely to hit a plateau. If I cut my calories to low I don’t lose and it’s always been that way for me. When I lost 45 lbs I was eating 1500 to 1600 hundred calories a day. I had the weight off in 6 months but the one thing I did differently this time was cut out all sugar, pasta, breads, rice, potatoes, pretty much any high starchy foods and I think that that was the difference. I still don’t eat them. I substitute cauliflower rice for rice in dishes, zoodles, palmini noodles or spaghetti squash for pasta, keto bread for regular bread, monk fruit / erythritol, stevia, or allulose for sugar, I will eat a small sweet potato occasionally but never more than 15 g worth of carbs, once in a while I’ll eat 1/2 c cheesey potatoes or Mac and cheese but it’s very seldom. If I bake I use almond flour. I found lakanto muffin mixes and I’ll make them, freeze leftovers so I can make traditional for the rest of the family and I can pull out 1 or 2 for me. I hope this helps you out. I know weight loss is different for everyone. You got this!!