Sunday, March 18, 2012

Testing blood sugar levels is ruling my life right now

Just plugging along here. It's been a bit of a stressful month surrounding the type 2 diabetes. I've been on 500 mg Metformin ER for a week now. For the first three days, I gained seven pounds, then it all went away over the next three days. I've been testing my blood sugars like mad. Nothing I do seems to make sense when I interpret it through my glucometer. Then someone suggested that I was trying to do too many different things, and to give the Met ER a chance to start working. I'm still getting used to how it makes me feel. I spent a few days feeling nauseous and dizzy. Now the dizzies are there till late afternoon and the nausea only appears once or twice a day. It reminds me of when I was pregnant! I can't seem to exercise when this dizzy. I lose my balance easily and I'm clumsy all the time.

I tested my blood sugars before and after eating every meal, after certain macro-nutrient combinations, after cardio exercise vs strength training vs Pilates. It's obvious I'm mostly dealing with high morning blood sugars, and if I don't eat but do cardio exercise in the morning, the blood sugar only goes up from the morning wake-up numbers. A lot. Sometimes, eating in the morning helps my blood sugar comes down faster, but only if I eat a small amount of protein with a very small amount of fibrous vegetable and a little bit of fat. Like under 10 gm protein and 5 net gm carb and 15 gm fat. That's a poached egg on a bed of sauteed spinach and a big cup of coffee with heavy cream...175 calories. And doing cardio doesn't seem to help in the mornings, but Pilates does. And so does weight training. I seem to be able to do more cardio later, like after lunch and dinner.

I still have a lot of situations to test out. It's all making me a bit mad, but I'm coming to understand the importance of keeping the blood sugar numbers down. I really can't go over 20 gm of protein, 5 net gm of carbohydrates and 15 gm of fat at a meal. I'm sensitive to all of it. This is really helping me cut back how much I eat. I can have up to four of these tiny meals a day, spaced out every four hours. It doesn't help me at all to save calories for later in the day for a bigger meal. I have to let go of my beloved big dinner!

I'm just figuring a lot of this out. I hope living like this will help the rate of weight loss to pick up momentum.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The metformin does incredible damage to the heart. I was on metformin for 9 yrs and now have heart disease. A recent study in France to see about the link between metformin and heart disease was shut down after too many on the real metformin died from heart attacks. Do your research, I did and stopped the metformin before it could do MORE damage

Anonymous said...

http://www.whitakerwellness.com/health-concerns/diabetes/only-you-can-prevent-diabetic-complications/

led headlights said...

A recent study in France to see about the link between metformin and heart disease was shut down after too many on the real metformin died from heart attacks.

Chris said...

When I was diagnosed,the testing also took over my life, but after a few months of tender fingertips a got into a normal routine, lost weight and am feeling much better now.