There's HOW many carbs in that!?

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Diabetes runs in my family, so I've always been interested in the results of my glucose test during my yearly physicals.

I would also occassionally check my blood at home, more out of curiousity than anything.

Last year, my A1C (a test which gives you an average over the last 3 months) had crept up a little, but was still right in the mid range. My doctor told me to cut back on process sugar, to which I replied "I don't eat any foods that have processed sugar. No soda, even diet, no ice cream, only whole grain bread, brown rice, etc." Plus I only very rarely eat the occassional bakery item. Less than once a month. It doesn't appeal to me. I also exercise regularly.

Well, this year I was shocked to see it more than crept up, my A1C was at the upper limit of normal, well in the pre-diabetes catagory, and if it was any higher it would be labled diabetes.

That is NOT going to happen to me.

So, for the last 3 weeks I've been charting all my carb grams, made myself a list of the common food items I eat, tracking my morning and 2 hours post meal glucose.

In my research, I see I'm not to have more than 250 grams carbs a day. I don't know, that seemed high to me.
I've been doing things like having 1 slice of bread instead of 2, doing some prioritizing of what I want, and being mindful of my meals, and I getting anywhere for about 150 to 170 grams a day. It just seems, after 3 weeks, that anything much over that would just be junk food.

At 250 carbs Meals are supposed to be around 45 grams each, which my largest meal is, and snacks 15 each. You do the math to add up to 250. That's a lot of snacking
I just eat meals, and a later night mini meal, as I go to bed late, around 2am and need something around 11pm or midnight.

I'll be fine, thanks for asking. Very Happy

But, what I wanted to share was my absolute shock of how many carbs are in some foods I really enjoyed, and never knew I was sabotaging myself.

First off, orange juice. The good, not fron concentrate kind. I love orange juice and would sometimes drink 3 glasses a day. Strangely enough, I'm not that fond of oranges by themselves.

A cup of that stuff has 26 grams of carbs! Shocked

Oh well, maybe a half cup of that here and there.

Raisin bran. That was my go to snack at night. A nice big bowl of raisin bran, probably up to 2 cups of the cereal alone.

A just about fell over when I looked at the box and saw that a HALF cup has 45 grams of carbs! Thats an entire meal. This is a good organic brand too, without added sugar. It's the damn raisins.
That's not even a splurge food. Who want a 1/2 cup of cereal?

Apples? 26 grams. Fine if it's a mini meal with some peanut butter, or half of one chopped up in a salad, but that's a little rich for my blood for a daily thing.

A banana? 30 freaking grams of carbs.

I love legumes, and I can totally get behind a half cup being 20 grams, but I'm not going to be adding that half cup of brown rice for 24 more grams. Not even a quarter cup. Nuh uh. Instead, I take a nice slice of whole grain bread.

So at first it was a bit of a struggle try to balance what would satisfy me taste wise, give me a satiated feeling for hours, and not be foods from a box or tin. There's nothing worse than going to the grocery store, and seeing people buying all sorts of crap in packages that looks like it would taste like "I have diabetes, I have to eat this the rest of my life, just kill me now"

I'm developing meals that do all 3.

For breakfast today, for just under 22 grams of carbs, I had a slice of buttered whole grain toast, smothered by an entire sauteed in VOO, portobello mushroom, and 2 eggs.
With that big mushroom, the meal was huge.

Just finished a meal of 3/4 cup of curried red lentils and tomato, and a salad of romaine, cashews, grapes, onions and champagne dressing.
If I hadn't had the lentils, I would have added a cup of cooked sweet potato to the salad.
47 carbs, and frankly, I feel ever so slightly over full.

Later on I'll probably have a granny smith apple with peanut butter.

My takeaways thus far are that nuts and nut butters are your friend. They lend an air of deeper taste to a meal. I keep a jar of unsalted peanuts in my car, and if I go to the pool and realize I'll get hungry soon, a small handful takes care of that.
Other friends that may be on the high side of carbs when looked at alone, make a satisfying base. Like sweet potato, dried beans, good bread.

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@chai2,

I remember liking some sort of Stauffer's apple gloop, so I checked out the label last year. The number of calories was astonishing, and my assumption was that they were all from carbs.

By the way, a fresh tomato is much better food than an apple. I should point out that is doesn't take long to get very tired of fresh tomatoes.

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@roger,

I don't like raw tomato that much roger. I prefer them cooked.

I get the smaller campari tomatoes, and have always diced up 2 or 3 of them, along with onion and maybe mushrooms, and sauteed and added egg(s) to them.

I'm not a vegetarian, but meat isn't really that appealing to me in general. It's certainly not a daily thing for me. I don't like complicated food, and I'm just as happy with some home made black beans with some diced (this time raw) tomato on top, and maybe some cheese. I flavor my beans with chipotle powder, cumin and sometimes some cajun spices. Oh, and always put a little apple cider vinegar in your legumes.

Apples and grapes are for me something to add to a salad, along with nuts. Mostly no to tomatoes in a salad, and yes to sweet onion and sweet potato. I don't really sit down often and eat just an apple. Although I will later, with the peanut butter.

What you said about the Stauffers apple glop? That's the kind of thing that I imagine people actually eat because they've just gotten used to it, it's easy, fast and you don't have to think about it. No offense meant to you roger. It seems like it's the type of food that like a drug you've become dependant on. You actually really don't want it, if you really think about it, but if you're bodies been used to it, you'll feel bad if you don't get it.

Thankfully, I think my situation is too much of a good thing, and not realizing some of them had much more carbs than I thought.

Tsk. This coming year my current health insurance plan isn't being offered, but I think I know which one I'll go with. Unfortunatley that means having to make a new office visit with a new doctor to get a A1C, rather than just asking my current doctor (who doesn't take my new plan) to just order another test in a few months.

roger, is your diabetes hereditary?

My mother died of diabetes. They cut off one leg, and they were waiting for her to get better so they could take off the other.
However, she was also a woman who never did anything physical just for the sake of moving, and had the idea you could just open a can of something, or eat some other distasteful processed mess, with no awareness that it once came from the earth, or what else was in it.

I swear, I figure I was a changeling child, left with them as some sort of joke.

Actually, I was more like Stewie in the Family Guy.

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No, I haven't become dependent on that glop. I read the label, put it back in the freezer, and never looked at it again. I was pointing out another food that carries a surprising carb load, and one that really looks kind of healthy in the picture.

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Interesting observations, things I've learned and my general experience thus far...

Please, if you don't like this topic, I ask that you do not mark it down. I notice it had a zero. It may be interesting to others, and also it helps me to write about my experience, feelings and results. Thanks.

I wasn't prepared for how bad I'd feel for a while. I don't mean horrible, I gotta get in bed, but definately "this sucks". This is from someone who wasn't even eating junk food like chips, candy, diet or regular soda, white bread etc. Haven't eaten that stuff in years and years. I cannot imagine what cutting sugar would be like for someone who really eats a lot of processed and sweet foods.

I now realize how much excess "good" carbs I was eating, (dried beans, brown rice, whole grain bread) and over taxing my body in general, and pancreas and liver specifically. Too much of a good thing. Beans are great, but I didn't realize I was eating at least a double portion. I was continutally providing easier carbs to my body for fuel, and not letting it seek energy from a deeper place.

It was a struggle at one point, for 3 or 4 days, dealing with this strange hunger. It wasn't a craving one would get, like "I want cake" It was this queasy feeling of desperate animal hunger that would come on suddenly. It wasn't a drop in blood sugar, I would check that first thing. Of course I would eat a reasonable amount then, the actual hunger would be gone, but I would remain with a feeling of something like "go seek out more food, winters coming" lol. But I stuck with my plan, and it abated, and went away.

http://images5.fanpop.com/image/photos/25600000/Winter-is-Coming-game-of-thrones-25614410-370-370.gif

For me, there is no possible way I could do this without physically keeping track of what I ate, in writing. I devised a spreadsheet that tracks individual meals, and daily totals. Don't kid yourself. If you don't measure it, write it down, make it a habit, you'll forget something, and then forget more, and yes, that is kind of a big deal.

Speaking of kidding yourself, the numbers of carbs suggested, and the abundance of crap in a can or box, makes me realize not just marketing, but the medical industry itself is setting you up for failure (IMO)

A lot of websites about diabetes tell people they should have about 250 grams of carbs a day.

That, my friends, is crazy as far as I'm concerned.

They go on to tell you to stay around 45 carbs per meal (so like 135 total) and 15 carbs for snacks. What? That's like 3 meals and 7 snacks a day! Non stop eating with no rest for your poor pancreas, ever!

Ok, so no one is going to eat 10 times a day. But they could be determined to get every carb they are allowed per day, and end up making bad choices, in more ways than one.

I think I have settled into an everyday satisfying amount of about 150 to 160 grams a day of 4 fairly equal eating events a day. That's a better way for me to think of it. An eating event.

At first it was confusing to me because there are foods that when you eat them, in your mind naturally this other food or 2 goes with them. I had to totally rethink that.
Sometimes there was no "well, I can have one or the other" because it just wouldn't work and be enough, or tasty. So, I would come up with a third option, or combination of 2 other foods, which I would decide would work.

That was the other challenging part. Staring into the refridgerator and thinking "I don't want to have that with this, because it won't be worth it. What will I have instead?" I also have a list in progress of foods I commonly eat, and the portions I've chosen, with the number of carbs. That way, although you generally remember what the amount of different foods are, you don't have to keep looking them up. I didn't want to download/print out ready made lists. I want one for what I want to eat.

More to come later about physical changes and an important tool I've found.

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I watch carbs but it's for weight loss, not diabetes (or pre-). It's no set amount. One thing that has helped enormously is a quarter of a container of tofu in 1/2 c oatmeal, plus some natural extract (chocolate is good, will try vanilla next) instead of a banana. Tofu has about 2 1/2 grams of carbs per 1/2 cup, a lot less than a banana. It ends up feeling like a lot of oatmeal and is filling. 1/2 c oatmeal has about 14 g carbs.

If you like pasta, try shiritake noodles (amazon sells them if you can't get them in the market). They come from a Japanese vegetable. Warning: the vegetable is packed in water and it's smelly. So rinse it twice and then nuke it once plain, for 2 minutes on high, and then once with whatever you're cooking it with. 3 1/2 oz of shiritake noodles has 4 calories and less than one gram of carbs, whereas regular pasta has about 25 grams for the same quantity.

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@jespah,

I know people love, and get a lot of benefits from sharing recipes, tips and substitutions for things. Thanks jes.

I am, for better or worse, more of a food minimalist. Not in the "I only look at food as fuel". I love eating tasty things. More in that I prefer eating most things in its most simple state. Warning, this is just my musing here. Since menopause I've been advised to avoid soy, so the tofu is out. Anyway, the idea of adding it, mixing it in with oatmeal, and some kind of extract, isn't appealing. The reason being I'm not into trying to make one food taste like something else, especially if it's in the interest of trying to fool myself into thinking I'm eathing something I shouldn't have anyway.

Artificial sweeteners of any kind, extracts, 99% the of vegetarian products that are concocted to imitate something else, eating this kind of noodle as a substitute for that kind of noodle, etc. is a real turn off for my appetite.

Ditto for taking perfectly good food items and mucking about with them so much that it becomes a job rather than just getting something to eat. For instance, I honestly do not get smoothies, or why people are so crazy about them. I've had 2 in my life. Once to see what it was all about, and was disappointed. The second time was when I was with a friend, she wanted a smoothie, I was hungry, so...when in Rome. I'd much rather eat a pint of nice blueberries. I take my coffee black, no sugar since I first started drinking it, plain yogurt is fine by me, and no cheese on my burger thanks.

I don't think my tastebuds are unrefined, more like unspoiled,

stepping on my soapbox for a second.

I think there are a lot of people out there who are so used to most things they eat having so many things, i.e. chemicals, preservatives, various flavors and so forth, they have no idea what the real thing tastes like.

getting down from soap box.
Very Happy

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Since I'm not one to go in for desserts much (as a child we had dessert on birthdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas & Easter) it's hard for me to absorb that many people eat dessert every day after dinner.

Something I have noticied in the past year or so, I guess while I was destroying beta cells in my pancreas, was that I would sometimes get a craving for something sweet after a meal. I realize now that was a shot across the bow that something was going awry.

I was eating too much of even the right kinds of carbs, causing faster blood sugar rise, forcing production of insulin, resulting in wanting more carbs. A hamster wheel.

The only three I've cut out are raisin bran, orange juice, and brown rice. What I have done with all other healthy carbs is realizing a serving is 1/2 a cup, not a cup. Also not to eat a few of the things together. It's been.....interesting.

It's all about the spike. So, I've also looked up the glycemic load (as opposed to the glycemic index) of my usual foods. Fortunately most of my diet was already at the lower end, and if it wasn't, it was something I would just as soon not eat anyway.

I am having a problem with morning syndrome, where my glucose is under 100 when I go to bed, but rises overnight. This morning it was 114.
On the mornings I've recorded, I've had 14 reads over 100, 5 under 100. I'd like to reverse that.

The read the reason for morning syndrome is that everyones liver produces glucose before awakening, to give the body the energy to get out of bed. Then the pancreas produces insulin. In insulin resistance, it doesn't produce enough.

I've started taking apple cider vinegar tablets with dinner, sometimes lunch, and before I go to bed. It helps keep glucose low after meals definately, I'm hoping it will soon start working while I sleep.

I wondered why acv would do this.
It seems that back when we were hunter gatherers, the carbs we ate were obviously the whole, slow digesting grain. It would actually start to ferment in our stomach, as it was taking so long to digest. The fermentation was a signal to the pancreas that there was plenty of energy available that was left to be digested, so don't bother to try to regulate anything. Pancreas, go back to sleep. Nowadays, with our diets of simple carbs, our poor pancreas never gets a rest, and is always on overtime. Poor little pancreas. I'm sorry for what I've done to you. I hope I can make it up to you. Go take a nap.

The other thing I notice is the well known effect of quite a bit of weight being dropped in a short time. I knew instinctively this was carb bloat, water. If more weight comes off (since I am eating overall less food), it would be at a normal rate.

I wondered though why all this water loss. Well, here the answer...

The liver stores an emergency supply of carbs in the form of glycogen. When you limit the constant supply of carbs it uses that up. The thing is, each glycogen gram binds to 4 gram of water. So, as the glycogen is burned, the water comes off too. I found that interesting.

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I have a couple of ladles that I have discovered measure out exactly half a cup. Very useful for serving out a portion of legumes, or small vegetables like peas, diced canned tomatoes, etc. No need to dirty a measuring cup, which I prefer to use for dry, or drier things.

In a pinch, I know that a cup is the size of my fist. I have small hands.

chipotle and cinamon in black or red beans, mmmmmm.

Found a forum for people with diabetes. Reading the posts, they seem really knowledgable about the chemistry there.

I'm going to ask them about my morning syndrome.

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@chai2,

Send me a link? I probably wouldn't spend a lot of time there unless it holds my interest, but it might be a good resource.

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@roger,

Done!

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@chai2,

Thank you.

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Asked at the diabetes forum about my morning phenomenon, where my liver dumps glucose into the blood in the middle of the night.

I'd be fine before and 2 hours after meals, but my morning reading, which should of course be 100 or less, just wouldn't get below that mark. Sometimes being as high as 114 or 117.

This liver dump occurs for most people at around 3am, and for people without prediabetes/diabetes, this isn't a problem, because the pacreas then secrets insulin.

I've got a lazy pancreas, or wearing out.

Since I go to bed at between 2 and 3am, someone suggested I eat a small piece of cheese, or nuts right before going to bed.

This morning, fasting reading was 96!

Too soon to tell of course if this was just a glitch, but I felt successful.

And Yay! I get to eat cheese right before bed!

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@chai2,

My dad's dentist and doctor both recommend a small piece of hard cheese before bedtime. The dentist says not to brush his teeth afterward. Says the enzymes in the cheese do good work overnight.

__

Since the dentist and doc are brothers, I used to think it was a family tradition - then I read up on the science. Oh, ok. Doc recommends it re pancreas and dentist re gum/tooth health.

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@ehBeth,

I'd heard that too, about cheddar cheese, which is of course, hard

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@ehBeth,

I'd heard that too, about cheddar cheese, which is of course, hard

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@chai2,

Old cheddar+ is hard. I wouldn't call a mild or medium cheddar hard cheese. Mild is soft, and medium's neither here nor there. I'd go with a 2 year aged plus if I wanted to use it as my hard cheese.

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@ehBeth,

Oh, I only eat sharp aged.

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I'm baaaack.

Since my last post, my eating, and quite of bit of "me" has done a 180 degree turn.

Things that would make anyone, including me, say "No way! You can't eat like that, that goes against every single thing we've ever learned"

Well, yeah, everything we've learned since around 1960, which I think was when we really started mistrusting food, and started fiddling around with it, and getting fatter....and sicker.

Keep in mind I am not promoting anything, just journaling/documenting what has happened to me recently. If you're interested, keep reading. If not, don't.

In starting my restricting carb journey, like I said before, I couldn't have done this without charting what I was eating, everyday, and everything. There would be some days that seemingly out of the blue were just harder. There didn't seem to be any reason. Until that is, I took a broader view and looked at how that day compared to days where I had energy, was satiated and happy. Not only what did I eat, but what did I put together to eat at the same time? What time of day or night? I've discovered if I'm going to eat This, I damn well better eat That with it.

For instance, one early evening I ate 3/4 of a cup of fresh strawberries. Not even an entire cup! Shortly after that, for the rest of the night, until 2am, I felt like a vampire that hadn't fed in a year. I tried cheese and a few other foods with no carbs, but fat. Finally, before going to bed, I gave up and dove into a jar of peanut butter. I didn't let it get to me, the next morning my BG was high, but not that high. However, I thought, "I'm not going to live like this, what's going on?"
The answer was as simple as a mere tablespoon of pumpkin seed kernels. I can eat a cup of strawberries, with a little stevia on them, as long as I put a TB of pumpkin seeds on top. Just enough fat, and a little protein, to slow down the sugar in the fruit. Success is sweeter than a strawberry.

My dawn phenomena continues, but the numbers have dropped to a Much narrower, lower range. Whereas when I started watching my carbs in any one week my morning glucose would vary between 97 to 125. Now it runs between 94 and 104. BUT! The main thing is that at all other times, even after eating a meal, my BG (blood glucose) doesn't even get over 110, and after 2 hours it's be anywhere from 85 to 95. So overall, if I were to have an A1C test after 3 months, my average BG would be low.

I'll be back later to start writing about the weirdness, the stuff that seems at first to make no sense. Gotta take a break.

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Just following along as diabetes has invested itself in my family for several generations.

Reading that first post and the o.j. carbs, what I always remember is prior to Mother getting the official diagnosis of diabetes, she'd occasionally have a day where she felt offish and o.j. would revive her. Of course later I learned that a hit of sugar was often what kept a diabetic from visiting the other side or slipping into a possibly irreversible coma.

My blood sugar level tends to run in the 90s, considering my erratic dietary patterns that leaves me confused (more than usual😄), the doctors just tell me to stay with it as long as it works.

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