Eating Without Bolusing After 10am

i am practically living on chocolate :blush:

only problem is, that no matter how much i love chocolate, it is no way to liveā€¦not to mention that it melts when i carry it in my bag with me all day.

1 Like

Have you recently done a basal test? Where you donā€™t eat all day and make sure your BG stays flat with NO bolus and NO food?

If you have to correct with food or insulin, you just adjust and have to start over on another day.

It kinda sucks, but itā€™s useful. We can post some general guidelines on how to do it. Itā€™s a good thing for everyone to examine on occasion.

i loath basal testing. i avoid it at all costs :wink: i hate the starvation, i hate the needing corrections and having to scrap the entire testing, only to have to start again.
i have done them in the past and i found it completely unhelpful. i ended up lowering my basals by 1/2 and then when i tried to live on those basal rates, it was a complete failure. i ended up just making some moderate changes from my existing basals, and it ended up working out fine. just a tweak here and there was all i ended up needing.

I agree. My pump has 16 different rates for a day.

One issue with basal testing is it presumes that the liver acts the same under fasting situations as it does when youā€™re eating. My personal experience is that this is absolutely not the caseā€”my liver tends to increase output when fasting. So fasting basal testing might be useful to get some idea of whatā€™s up, but I donā€™t know that the results translate to regular functioning for everyone.

1 Like

I donā€™t think you said what the ā€œsnackā€ was so its unclear what you are eating and how much. I agree it sounds like your basal is too high, if you are eating carb through the day without bolusing for them. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing - some people prefer to eat to their insulin, rather than bolusing for their eating; its a matter of preference. All of us used to eat to our insulin, back in the day when we were taking one injection a day of NPH insulin (which is what I was started on) - I much prefer MDI, but Iā€™m sure some people donā€™t.

I assume you WOULD need to bolus if you ate five or ten times the amount of that snack at one time, right?

Final thought, if you are exercising a lot more than you used to, then it makes sense that your insulin sensitivity is higher and you need less insulin. Itā€™s important to adapt when things change - and they WILL change when you have T1 diabetes.

1 Like

i am eating a sm. handful of raw almonds and some cheese. sometimes i have a few spoons of peanut butter. none of these effects my bg. in fact, this snack stabalizes my bgs throughout the day.

but btw as an aside, if i try and eat this exact same snack in the morning, my bgs sky-rocket. also, i just got home from a very successful endo appt. my doc lowered my basal rates sig. and set me on 1 basal/24 hours (.55) my A1c was 5.8 % )

Nice A1C! Well done, DM!

When you say your doctor lowered them, are you able to make changes yourself if needed? Or do you only make changes with temporary basals?

he agreed with just about everything you have been suggesting to me :smile: . he also suggested that i lower my bedtime basal to 90% for 12 hours on the days that i have been swimming. the only thing that he didnt want to get into was a discussion about the Levimir; but, otherwise he was very pleased with how i have negotiated all of my basal/bolus/bg management.

i went in there prepared for a disagreeable discussion. i was astounded. but then again, once he looked at the downloaded FreeStyle Pro 2 week graph, how could he argue with success :blush: ?

he lowered my basal rates to .55 24/7 (just one basal setting.) so i decided, that i would pay OOP to wear another sensor for another 2 weeks to see how the new basal settings would work. it was very expensive, but my health and my sense of well-being was deffinately worth the cost. ($350 ) and he wouldnt charge me an appointment fee. i was quite pleased with that. all in all, a good deal.

now i ask myself, ā€œwho was this masked man???ā€ this certainly was not my regular endo :wink: .

eric, (and everyone else who has been supporting me and rooting me on through this experimentation) i feel so elated. i am on top of the world with joy over my success.

now all i have to do is to keep it up. i know that it wont always work the way i would like it to; i know that not every day is a perfect day. i want to be able to roll with the realities of D life, but the benefits out-weigh the disappointments. PLEASE REMIND ME OF THIS WHEN I AM FRUSTRATED AND BLUE!!!
ā€™
yours truly,
DM

You will probably want to shorten your zero basal time before swimming.

You have been doing 2 1/2 hours. But with this change, 1 1/2 or 2 hours would probably fit betterā€¦

okay. iā€™ll try that tomorrow. but i donā€™t want to get into the pool below 125-ish.
still too nervous. (despite all the faith i have in you :wink: .)

Sure, understood.

Keep in mind, before you were getting .625 units per hour, that was a bit more, so you needed to zero TB for longer.

But now, at .55 units per hour, you are not getting as much, so a shorter time of zero TB will put you in the same sweet spot.

Kinda have to go back to the drawing board a bit.

And the lower basal may also affect how much insulin you need for meals. So you might have some new learning to do!

been there, done that :wink:

(but thanks for the reminder; it will help me to go with the flow rather than getting immediately frustrated.)

i tried to do the ponders sugar surfing basal experiments; i practically starved myself silly. it was miserableā€¦the entire experience. i lost about 5 pounds and got no where helpful at all. i finally went back to my original basal rates and tweaked from there. ponders methods failed me completely. and i was a cranky B the entire week that i attempted his plan.

oy vey

2.5 hours post dinner, bg 95. phew. not bad at all (and that includes a little piece of chcoclate :blush: .)

I am not familiar with that.

consider yourself lucky. ask eric about it. iā€™m certain he can inform you :blush: