“Pretzels really do a job on spiking my blood sugars. Does this not happen for you?”
I guess it depends on what you call a spike. If I have a reasonable BG (like 120 or less) and I use at least a 30-40 min pre-bolus for lunch (pretzels). And if I’m lucky, my BG will go up, but not out of range. And then it will come back down before dinner (sometimes I even need a little snack in the afternoon). I’m much more insulin sensitive at dinner time and over night, so I don’t mind going into dinner a little higher.
I think the pre-bolus is key. I should be pre-bolusing for bagels and pretzels and I’m not. Right now, what happens is that I bolus as I’m eating and the pretzels/bagels glucose has a high glycemic index, so that by the time the insulin hits, I’m already declining. I’ll try the pre-bolusing.
There are certain foods that spike me. I know what they are. So, for those types of carbs, I do a long pre-bolus and let the insulin really sink in before eating/drinking. It also depends on how high or low my BGs are before eating. If I am eating anything in general, I wait 15 minutes after I bolus to eat. If my BGs are on the lower side (70) I will only pre-bolus 10 minutes.
Hmmm large soft pretzels! I prebolus 30 minutes before I eat one and it works like a charm. Maybe I go up to 130 but not for very long. I have always found for me that it’s so much nicer to get the prebolus timing down than to try to deal with any highs afterwards.
Except for Afrezza…you can take that when you eat…
Carbonaut. I just checked the package which shows 37g carb and 34g fibre (so I count it as 3g net carbs, and it seems to affect my blood sugars so (unlike some products marketed as “keto-friendly”).
I haven’t bothered trying to find a low-carb bagel, since my experience with other low-carb foods has been generally disappointing. Instead over several years of tinkering I’ve worked out a formula that applies only to bagels. (Except for pizza, which is a straightforward extended bolus, everything else I eat is a simple carb factor.)
Carb factor is 0.7. Multiply dose by 1.25 for bagel dose. 50% up front and extend the rest over 1.5 hours. Too much work? Not when they’re fresh from St. Viateur.
Regarding pizza, I had some whole foods pizza earlier this week and that really spiked my blood sugars. Then I had pizza from a local bakery and it had a much less severe effect.
Which leads me to think that it’s all about what’s in the dough. I am now asking all the bakers I interact with - do you put malt in your dough?
Not too different than my approach, I just have more turkey, chicken, and veggies…small servings but I generally don’t go 3 hours without eating something…it seems as though that keeps the BG lined up…if the number starts dropping I’ll have 4 sips of mango juice, an Izze, or some Perfect Bar.
@bostrav59 The “natural” pizza maybe was lower in fat so it hit your system faster? So a spike showed up more. I say this because being a vegan the pizza I love has no cheese, it has fat but not the amounts of a regular pizza. I dose for it with a third prebolus, a third when I eat and a third a half hour after and I usually don’t go above 130-140. However a place here started making a vegan pizza with sofrito sauce…high fat and they put on a lot of vegan cheese. more fat. Yum! But man, I found out about that complaint of pizza being hard to dose for…hours later my bg level would still start to climb and I eat less of it. So adding that more fat really made a difference when those carbs hit. I’ve since gotten it without the vegan cheese and it doesn’t cause the same issues. Most places put sugar in the dough and the sauce. Being a strict vegan, I don’t eat white sugar because of the possible filter process, malt is actually okay for me, but rarely used. So hence I rarely can get a take out pizza from anywhere!
Well. since I have recently escaped from the chains of the black turtleneck and can now link my phone to my computer I figured I’d report what I just ate. One of the better meals of my life (prepared by my wife after a visit to WinCo where we found the fishmonger setting up his stand):
So, yeah, I had already started eating (only my wife’s family photographs food before they eat it, well, I do sometimes, but not when it is this good). Chicken (garlic roasted I believe; bought cooked), “salad greens” (whatever that means), some strawberries and pears, maybe the significant carbs in the latter but based on recent discoveries on other threads, maybe not. Then the fish (well, molluscs):
Fresh (also from WinCo), 5lb bag we took half. The monger warned that we needed to keep them cool because they were still alive; not frozen. I tell you they were every bit as good as completely fresh scallops, maybe better. Of course I had to have seconds:
I always understate, so I should say one of the best meals of my life.
I’m doing OMAD, so that is what I ate today, in some sense (I ate two eggs early on, had my normal complement of tea, and scarfed three or four strawberries before the meal). I did 35g for the meal and hit a peak (sugar high) of 121mg/dL after (I was 83 when I did the 35). I’m going up now, currently 120, two hours latter, but AndoidAPS is kicking in a basal rise and some small boluses ("SMB"s).
I live in a slightly different time zone, so I managed to have breakfast and drink coffee. I’m a real coffee lover, sweet coffee replaces chocolate for me when sugar drops. That’s why I purchased a coffee maker https://www.stayroasted.com/coffee-makers/ which helps me to save money at coffee shops. For breakfast, I usually have a scramble and vegetables.
