Thanksgiving is Upon Us, how will you be Bolusing?

I’m slightly confused, then. I thought that you wanted to keep your max spike under a certain level (varies for each person obviously), so I thought it wouldn’t matter WHEN you see the highest number; goal is to just keep under your “high” at any point (within reason, obviously). For me, I am back in range at 2 hrs most of the time no matter how high I went, because I still have some insulin production, and it kicks in around 1.5 hrs if I’m still high and brings things down further (exception is when I have a delayed spike around that time; then the delayed response isn’t really effective). So if I only went by my 2 hr number, I’d be “fine” all the time, even with hitting 200s at 30 mins-1hr?

I usually do a dual bolus of sorts (MDI) when I eat a carb and fat heavy meal (like pizza). For something simple carb like this, I thought Afrezza would be better, as the simple carbs “burn out” fast, just like Afrezza does.

have you ever considered scooping out the inside of the bagel so you can stuff it with all the good stuff, like creamed cheese and salmon and tomatoes? it really reduces the carbs.

however when i eat anything like huge amount of carbs mixed with something fatty like creamed cheese, i MUST do a dual bolus over 2 hours to compensate for the slow digestion caused by all that creamed cheese fat. :wink:

i have decided for myself to stick with bialies. much easier and there is no malt in them (as there is in bagals, which i believe accounts for the greater need for insulin…just my personal oppinion)

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Only the good bagels. I had a brief stint as a bagel maker. One of the supervisors told us to stop using malt because it was adding to the cost. (Like what - a tenth of a cent per bagel???) It is possible I let slip how stupid I thought that idea was. I was really not a good fit for that job.
lol

ha ha ha :wink:

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Yes, when I do eat bagels, I usually scoop them these days, unless it’s a situation when I could really use the carbs (sometimes I combine bagel breakfast sandwiches and long hikes with my gf and her dogs, and that usually works out well).

Do the dogs get the “scoopings” ?
:smile:

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Quantity and density definitely come into it. Typically at breakfast I have a couple of slices of bread, weighing anywhere from 35 to 55 g. (I eat different kinds of bread, but always use the 0.5 carb percentage, which never lets me down.) My two bagels weighed 74 and 82 g each, so each bagel weighed much more than my usual amount of bread. But even then, if the bulk of the weight/density is from flour, the 0.5 carb percentage should still work. It does for the denser breads I eat, like Icelandic rye or Swedish limpa, which tend to use slightly lower-carb rye flour rather than wheat.

As for the malt (powder or syrup), recipes I’ve used call for about 1 tablespoon (15 g carb) in the dough for 20 or so bagels, and another tablespoon or so is diluted in a big pot of cooking water, so there’s not enough added carb to really concern ourselves with.

Anyway, I figured the carb percentage needed to be higher and I had a hunch the insulin needed to be stretched out a bit, though I can’t really say why; it just took some tinkering to figure out how much. And sadly these were supermarket bagels, so I’ll have to experiment all over again when I get to eat the real McCoy (yoo-hoo, St-Viateur, I’m over here!).

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The “toppings” on the bagels was mentioned above.
Could it be the toppings that actually delay the carbs hitting on the bagel and hence the need to extend? Or are you eating the bagel raw (not really raw - baked normally but not toasted - lol) and untopped (like an apple)?

(I used to like them like that when they were fresh out of the oven. During my previous short lived career as a baker.)

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Ha no, but often we get them an extra sausage patty and they loooooove that. I’m sure they would also love bagel scoopings though, and pretty much any thing else even remotely edible, but one of them isn’t supposed to eat grain because of pancreatic problems (lack of digestive enzymes, not insulin).

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Butter, a little cheese, 1/2 teaspoon jam (not together, obviously) – same as on my toast many mornings (with no extended). But that would be the obvious culprit if I were enjoying cream cheese and lox with them.

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I don’t want to be the person raining on the unlimited food parade, but I’m going to do it. Unless somebody is incredibly stable (which @Pianoplayer7008 might be), I think that there are times when it is okay to give up on a food.

I am really happy to read that most people have fought their cereal/banana split/bagels/whatever battles and come out the other side with a solution! That is great news, and maybe someday, it will work for EH. But for now, there are certain things that just aren’t worth it. Life is short, we can live without whatever it is.

This more comes from EH than it does from me, as early on in his diagnosis, he realized that when he ate certain things, he felt like crap. So he quit eating them. It’s been 11 years, and last weekend he spent the better part of the day on somebody’s couch at 200 while we were out of town visiting friends because he had cereal for breakfast. Sure, we could spend a series of weekends trying to figure out how to bolus for cereal, or we could eat eggs and fruit and enjoy our weekends. :bacon: :fried_egg: :broccoli: :carrot: :grin:

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Absolutely. It all depends on the person. When I was shoveling food into my mouth at Target while shopping with my kids this morning because my BG was finally plummeting (thank you, dysfunctional pancreas), I decided I’m going to put my cereal experiments on hold until my pancreas is a little less in play. I might find it “easier” to deal with it when I don’t have that extra “help” (or I might not), but for right now, it’s just not worth it, as much as I love cereal (and I LOVE cereal!).

ETA: y’all are making me feel really glad I found some lower carb (for GF) bagels on sale this week. I’m going to try the hollowing out trick - my daughter will be more than happy to get the “filler” portion!

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That is what it is really about. Not trying to figure out how to manage any sort of food under the sun.

Rather, how to enjoy life the way YOU choose to do so.

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Hehe. I am imagining you zipping through Target, eating a Gogurt, with a red shopping cart with babies, cursing your own pancreas. It makes for a funny image! :shopping_cart: :cookie: :baby: :family_woman_girl_boy: :cloud_with_lightning:

Well, I do hope that you find a way to enjoy cereal again. It’s just so sugary! Even the stuff that supposed to be better seems to have a lot of carbs.

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I find a non-sugary cereal with about 2 g of refined sugar (half a teaspoon) sprinkled on top to be better tasting then the sugary cereals with more sugar baked in.

(non-diabetic point of view. lol)

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Agree. Even if the food doesn’t make you feel like crap, there are times when the effort to figure it out takes the pleasure out of it. Recently I made a pumpkin bread pudding that was outrageously good but, each night around 2 a.m., sent me zooming up above 200 and resistant to corrections. I didn’t feel like crap, but I was sure as heck frustrated, and losing sleep. Fiddling with carb counts and boluses didn’t have any effect, and after the third night I ripped up the recipe and told my partner he could finish the rest on his own. :plate_with_cutlery: :cry:

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LOL! There was definitely less zipping and more standing/shaking, and a lot more “eat, eat, eat, eat” going on in my brain than cursing. :wink:

Yes! This was a cereal with the flakes almost entirely made up of bean flours with slivered almonds, but it did have sugary stuff added (I did remove the sugar coated dried cranberries today, so sad). And @Thomas, I have yet to find a decent GF non sugary cereal that won’t cause a spike - I’ve even tried plain corn Chex with unsweetened almond milk.

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You will eventually realize that Target always makes you drop. Ask any of the long-termers here. I’m not making that up.

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True - it does drop in Target. But for some reason, by the time we are driving out of the parking lot, the BG is usually rising. Very puzzling situation…
:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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