I’ll get my revenge when I start giving you workouts.
Look up the running term “800 meter repeats”
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The rule is that nothing happened so long as you ate directly out of a bag/container/etc. If it doesn’t make it to a plate or bowl, it never existed.
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Just putting this out there…but do you ever feel like the TRowePrice commercial
disclaimers “Past performance is not a guarantee of future results” is really about blood sugar? Bc that’s the kind of rollercoaster I’m riding since 4pm today. Just…what??? Why is it doing that??? Anyway, I wanted to rival @Nickyghaleb for random thoughts on her own thread…
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I have a lot of rules, but THIS one is nice…
I don’t do random thoughts. My thoughts are all tightly connected… I only let you guys in on the good ones. 
And that’s a good one.
I can do those in my sleep.
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And I’m usually terrible about water, but I’ve been making myself drink it lately. I’m even doing a pretty decent amount, and those factors are still climbing… Either way, you’re right that water is important, and it certainly wouldn’t hurt to try to increase a little more and watch those numbers…
This is probably in vain… But I’ll try to explain why I think it’s interstitial fluid…And there really IS no big reveal, by the way. I’ve been at this for a while now, and it was working really well… and I did want to do something with it. Maybe explain it to others and show others how it could be used… and then I hit some kind of obstacle. And I just don’t understand what it could be.
First of all, it does have to do with Medtronic, but that is only because Medtronic makes the ISIG visible. I believe all sensors rely on this value, but only Medtronic allows the user to pull it up from their pump menu. The ISIG is the signal from the interstitial fluid… which is why I think the interstitial fluid is important here. It’s the raw signal, before any processing takes place or any calculations. The sensor uses this signal in order to produce a sensor glucose value, but it does that through its algorithm and all of the other things it does like filtering… and noise reduction and such (And if it sounds like i just made up those last two things it’s because i just made up those last two things… they exist but probably not in that combination).
When I use a current BG, collected by finger stick, and I divide it by my current ISIG, I get a calibration factor. This value reflects the amount of glucose in the interstitial fluid. Medtronic people are told that they will not be able to calibrate outside of the range of 2-8 because those are just bad numbers, but after MONTHS of collecting values, I learned that those are not just “bad” numbers, those numbers reflect a change in blood sugar… or, I guess, they reflect whether or not glucose is increasing or decreasing within the interstitial fluid. And over this time, I learned my own patterns. This is very confusing to try to explain, but I was able to rely on these numbers in order to do a form of “sugar surfing”… and they worked REALLY well. For myself, a calibration factor of a 5.5 in the absence of conditions that would cause a change in blood sugar was my “stable” calibration factor. Unfortunately, it turned out to have a little more meaning than that… because it some of this “reflection” was also based on rate of change… so a 5.5 when moving from a 3.8 no longer meant “stable”, it meant that there was a big push into the IF. It meant to get up. Go do some cleaning. Maybe jump for a few minutes (i have a trampoline). I’m kind of just explaining things out loud, but my point is I learned these patterns, and I began to use them to determine when I was really crashing, when I was only on a slow descent, or when I was low but actually needed insulin… All from the same BG… just the addition of knowing that calibration factor. But that value is a value that comes from my interstitial fluid. Not from my blood. And what is crazy is that even with this recent change in factors, my blood sugars have not adjusted themselves accordingly and YET they also do seem to reflect the change… so it’s not just an artificially inflated calibration factor… my blood sugar does bounce quickly and sometimes just drifts up when that calibration factor reveals the push in the interstitial fluid…
I don’t want you guys to think i’m crazy. I hope that’s not what I’m achieving with this. I had my eye on this group for a couple of months before I finally posted anything because you all seemed to know a great deal about a great deal. I thought someone here might understand the things I was finding and be able to help me understand them.
Long story short… just kidding… For months I’ve used those factors as a part of my management every single day and all day long. Their use did WONDERS in helping me avoid rollercoasters because it prevented me from making common over-treatment mistakes. Then, starting about 6-7 weeks ago, my range began to change. My factors were higher, and they stopped making as much sense. I thought it was my sensor, so i changed it. I thought it was that box, so i opened up a new one. I thought it was my transmitter, so I changed that out as well. But they’re persisting. And they are not limited to only the change in value… they actually are connected to how my blood sugar is behaving. Today, with a blood sugar of a 67 following exercise, I had a calibration factor of a 9.5. This would normally show me that I was on the rise. So I decided to try to just trust it even though it’s really been different than what it was… I jumped for 3 minutes on the trampoline. Then again. Then pre-bolused for a salad. When the timer went off, my BG was a 77 with an 8.5. I had at some point during this felt the beginning of some symptoms of being low… but I had my eye on the calibration factor and was trying to trust it. An hour and a half later, I sat down to eat my salad at a BG of a 106. I’m seeing this all over the place… not just after exercise… and I’m trying to figure it out.
The other things I have considered, and considered as a REAL possibility, has to do with diet and activity… I did start up a bad habit of constant snacking throughout the day, and I wondered if it couldn’t just mean that there is glucose sitting over in the interstitial fluid that maybe would normally clear out if I’d give it the chance. I also have, in starting up a Facebook group and camping out here, begun SITTING for WAY MORE time than I have in years. I am usually on the go all day, dancing, going up and down the stairs, playing with the kids, exercising… but since starting up the facebook group, i sometimes sit for hours a day. I also wondered if maybe that change could make for some kind of residual presence of glucose where it would normally be cleared out. Whatever it is that is causing it, the result is that my BG is quick to spring.
There it is. 1/18th of it all. And now it’s here, and I hope you guys don’t think I’m a nut job.
I’ll be around tomorrow, checking for responses… nervously.
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@Nickyghaleb, that’s all very interesting and I’m sure you’re onto something, but I don’t know anything about the topic.
But I do know that my sedentary days at my office job behave entirely differently than my home days where I’m typically constantly moving. Completely different treatment plan all the way around.
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Okay… it is begrudgingly and with a touch of bitterness that I ask this… because SOMEtimes I really don’t like to admit I have no idea what I’m doing or talking about… but how do I figure out what kind of calories I’m eating?
What are you TALKING about?? I don’t even know where to BEGIN. You’re talking about counting up calories??? What? TOTAL calories?? And then going back in and figuring out which of those calories are from fat and all of that???
Seriously? This is necessary, right… I’m not just getting paraded around here for poos and giggles… Eric?
This is a setback. I have no idea what I eat, and I don’t particularly want to think about it really… i eat coffee. I eat cheese. I eat turkey. I eat eggs. I eat bananas. I eat zucchini. YES, i eat chips. Dammit. I eat COOKIES. I eat chicken. Sometimes in the form of soup. WHAT DO I DO WITH THIS??
Thank you… i appreciate hearing that. I’ve had a million conversations with endos and educators about different basal rates, but I’ve never made use of them. Not for hormones. Not for sick days. Not for laziness or lounging. The only basals i’ve ever adjusted were for exercise and those were just “temps”.
I’m sitting now. I’ve probably been sitting for a total of 2 hours this morning. I’ll sit for many, many more hours before the day is done. I haven’t had a routine like this in a really long time— 20 years. I am up all day long and running around. Just thinking out loud here… again. Sorry. I am going to have to learn how to do some of this inside my head. 
Thank you. I’m going to get up, if I can, and do things that do not require sitting. I’ll see what happens with that…
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And last night, chocolate chips.
I would hope that you know better at this point.
No, it is not necessary. But it is helpful.
I am not trying to come up with any restrictions. You can eat whatever you want. But you should know what you are eating. A general idea.
Everyone should know if they are eating properly. It isn’t just because of diabetes.
If you are having BG struggles, it is useful to know - or at least have a general idea - what your diet looks like in terms of carbs, fat, and protein.
What is the balance of things? Do you get enough protein? Too much carbs? Not enough?
It really is a helpful thing to make sure you are eating well. You might be fine with your diet. But unless you write down a few days and look at it, you don’t really know.
There are all kinds of websites and apps that help you with things like that.
Imagine you eat a turkey sandwich. Bread, mayo, lettuce, and turkey. You look at how much of each thing the sandwich has, and how much is in each thing, and add it up.
Maybe the 2 slices of bread has about 160 calories, and those calories are maybe something like 10% fat, 75% carbs, 15% protein.
And then you do the same for the other stuff in the sandwich.
After a few days of normal “average” meals, you have an idea of your typical calorie breakdown.
This is useful stuff.
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Had to check.
And all jokes aside, I do have a general idea. I actually DO eat a well-balanced diet. The chocolate chips… they’re just a thing. I do that sometimes, too. But in general, I eat lots of protein, lots of veggies, a little fruit, a moderate amount of carbs (that’s the only fuzzy area because it can change with the wind… and if you can break me of that, we’re going to get you a reality show series).
I was never a fan of tracking my food. This brings me back to sitting in a room with an educator and team of doctors and over-eager medical students and a detailed log of the things I had eaten in the last three days and people just shaking their heads and asking “why?”… I’m a grazer. I don’t have a good reason.
THIS is all unnecessary— all this explanation. You mentioned finding a website. That’s a good idea. I’ll do that now.
With all this paving, this better turn out to be the yellow brick road we’re laying down…
In fact, if you had led off with, “get yourself to a calorie-tracker website”, we could’ve skipped right over that last little exchange… Turns out they are out there…
Will that work?? Can i just track this stuff for a couple of days and give you something from that?
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I had to track my eating for a week and calculate daily calories and percentages of carbs, fat, and protein for a nutrition course. I just wrote down everything I ate w/nutrient values, tallied up the number of calories (for the day) and grams of carbs, fat, and protein eaten. Then you take those grams and convert to percentages:
For carbs/protein, multiply by 4 and divide by number of calories (then multiple by 100 to get a percentage)
For fat, multiple by 9 instead; everything else is the same.
So if I ate 2000 calories in a day, and ate 250g carbs, 250x4 = 1000/2000 = .5x100 = 50% of my calories came from carbs.
ETA: that sounds so complicated and like a lot of work, but I promise it isn’t. I had fun doing it, even 
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Took me 2 minutes on a website… so i take back whatever i may have admitted there over the last couple of posts… confessions made during distress are stricken from the record.
Is this what you want?? Because this (plus another coffee… or 2) is what a typical day looks like.
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That is the ONLY part of your message that made it into my brain… everything else just bounced off my eyeballs.
I tried a very lazy and cheesy shortcut just now… just dumping a few generics into an online calorie tracker… and we’ll see if it passes the test (Eric’s approval). It won’t, and I already know that, so I will start up a log and start collecting info and then will sit with your post at the end of it all. And hope something gets through.
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Sure.
This isn’t one of those things where people shake their head at you and chastise you for not eating properly. It is just useful for you to know what your diet looks like.
Really, it’s useful for anyone, not just T1D’s.
The myfitnesspal site works fine. Whatever you think makes it easier.
And Emily (@Pianoplayer7008) has experience doing this, so maybe she can offer advice on it too.
So, using that makes things so much easier than when I was taking that course (which was in high school, so @Eric, not sure how much advice I’ll remember ). I had to look up every bit of food individually… Using the numbers from the screenshot:
Carb percentage - 70x4/1424x100 = 20%
Fat percentage - (80-18)x9/1424x100 = 40%
Protein percentage - 89x4/1424x100 = 25%
One thought I had after seeing these numbers - have you been eating this much fat with these few carbs for a while now, or does it happen to coincide with the rising numbers you’ve seen? I was reminded of this thread. I know you’re not quite that low carb, but perhaps eating so few calories, and most of them from fat, are increasing insulin resistance? Another possibility, if you had been eating more carbs and less fat before - maybe what you’re seeing are the delayed rises from fat? Thoughts, Eric? As this is totally out of my realm of experience… 
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