Thank you!
I’m going to try this! I just drink plain water, no carbs!
Oh, I missed this post! Reading now!
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Hi. Could use a hand here Eric.
I’m officially an insulin dependent T2 but functionally a T1 as I have very little insulin coming out (0.7 cpeptide but no antibodies) .
My Chiropractor suggesting doing 2-3 machines for 10 min each daily. I’ve been going to the workout room at my apartment most nights after work around 10:30 and eating a sensible dinner at 10pm first, bolusing appropriately for the meal.
I do 10 min on elliptical machine #1, 10 min on elliptical #2 and 10 min on a tread mill. I go very slow (walking pace).
Current weight about 225 lbs.
What I notice is I typically start out around 150 glucose. By the time I’m done, it can be near 100 but sometimes after it dips down into the 70s or 80s then spikes back up back to 150 or sometimes higher!
I typically don’t eat or drink anything afterwards. I take a shower and relax before going to bed between 1-2 am.
Any suggestions?
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Sure, let’s start with a little background on your setup.
Are you cutting basal during this time?
Tell me how hard the work is for you. 30 minutes total, right? Is it all easy?
Tell me a little bit about your diet. Low carb? Moderate carb? High carb?
Since you are doing this 30 minutes after dinner, one possible guess is that the exercise is slowing your digestion. When your body is active, it puts the less important stuff on the back-burner for a bit. It focuses everything on the hard work - the exercise. So one possibility is that the food is coming in later, more after the exercise than what you might be used to.
Perhaps an easy adjustment to experiment with is to move dinner to be a little earlier. Start with that and see if it changes anything.
But let’s talk about the other questions I had too.
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Thanks Eric.
Some background.
I just started doing omnipod DIY loop last week. I keep forgetting to cut the basal. I’m also needing to fine tune my settings by a basal test. Needing to find time to do it!
The work is very easy for me. I’m purposely not making it hard because I find that when I do anything strenuous or for a long time, I get bored and stop it. I’m working on consistency hence the changing every 10 min. I’ve been doing this for over a month now and miss a few here and there and take Sundays off but otherwise fairly consistent. I liken it to taking a 30 min walk.
My work schedule is such that I get off at 9:30pm each night, home by 10 when I immediately eat a lower carb dinner of some grilled meat (burger, hot dogs or chicken mostly) and some frozen veggies with butter (brocoli, cauliflower or the like) and try to hit the gym by 10:30. I don’t like to be there any earlier because it technically closes at 9:30 and I don’t want to make too much noise late to wake people up. It’s a converted apartment on the first floor.
I’m not a morning person, so I don’t want to do it in the morning.
Normally I don’t eat or drink anything afterwards except maybe some water.
I guess I must be eating too many calories throughout my day because I have not lost one single pound in over a month doing this. I feel a slight bit more of energy, but I thought I’d feel a major difference.
Is that low carb dinner, like low-carb or no-carb?
How about during the day? Are you getting any carbs there?
If the workout is very low intensity, your body is primarily using fat to fuel it. So you don’t necessarily need to have a lot of carbs to do that workout.
But the spike afterwords makes me think it is one of two things:
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Either your body is responding to the workout with liver glycogen.
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Or the Loop setup is cutting your basal too much after dinner. A possibility I see is that Loop sees a bolus for dinner, you don’t enter much carbs, so it thinks you are gonna drop and it cuts your basal. Then it sees the early drop from the workout, and it cuts your basal even more.
Let’s try to narrow it down. Did you have the same issue before Loop?
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Meals wise, here is what a typical day looks like:
10 am wake up or there abouts.
11:30am leave for work, leaving a bit early if possible if erands need running.
12-1pm lunch at work consisting of some meat and vegie. If I don’t like the entre, I get either a chicken breast or cheeseburger no bun. I used to bolus 10 units for this. Unsweatened tea to drink.
5:30 meal break. This is the meal I need the most help with. It’s the largest of the day.
1 slice whole wheat bread (down from 4 slices, 2 sandwiches)
2 tsp mayo on the bread
Ham, Turkey, bologna or whatever lunch meat is avail 3-5 slices
1 low carb (11 ish) flavored yogurt
1 piece fruit (apple, peach, plumb, grapes whatever is on sale)
1 mozzarella cheese stick
1 low carb protein shake from Sams generic forget the name
sometimes a protein bar
D0esn’t always fill me up
Used to bolus 10 units
10pm dinner. Grilled meat and vegie. Sometimes a salad
10:30 work out 30 min
11:15pm shower and relax until 1-3 am. Typically TV, computer or the like.
Sound like I really need to do the testing on https://seemycgm.com/2019/05/14/juicebox-method-to-loop/ but sounds like a lot of work /time right now that I just don’t have.
Loop seems to make it more pronounced because of the automation so I notice it more.
If it helps, check, my graph at https://bradsxdrip.herokuapp.com .
I’m in the loop study, so I have to make loop work for the next 12 months and I want to. So that’s my #1 goal. I think it would be great to see steady #s around 110 but am open to suggestions. Before loop I was happy to stay under 200. Last A1C was like 6.3 but lots of spikes high and a few lows. Working on consistency.
Also would like to lose some weight. I’m currently 225 and would like to eventually get to about 175 but 200 first.
Can you help me out with the carb numbers? What is your best guess on total carbs per day? Disregard they days that are not typical. Just kind of a general average. I see a piece of fruit, and a piece of bread. Is that it for carbs?
I think you might need a small bolus to counter-act this. Above I mentioned two possibilities that I thought of. And perhaps it is just a combination of both of them.
Your body is going to fuel the workout, one way or the other.
Even if you don’t eat any carbs, your body will still make glucose (gluconeogenesis).
If your body is working very easily, it will use primarily fat for fuel. But even if you are using almost all fat, your body still needs a bit of glucose to allow the fat to be used.
For efficient fat metabolism, the complete oxidation of Acetyl CoA in the Krebs cycle requires a derivative of carbs, which is oxaloacetate.
A simple explanation of that is that your body needs some glucose to most efficiently burn fat for fuel. A candle (the fat) needs a wick (the glucose) to burn.
So a distinct possibility is that your liver is needing to respond to the exercise by releasing glycogen. And that means you might just need a small bolus for your exercise.
Would you want to try it? Maybe 20 minutes into the workout, a small bolus?
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If I had to guess, and it is only a guess, I’d say roughly 30 per meal so 90 total? Sometimes I eat microwave popcorn for a snack around 8:15pm and have sunflower seeds and almonds at my desk when hunger strikes.
Not a bad idea. Might try it tonight depending on where my numbers are. I find if I can start exercising at 150 I go down to about 100 during and after then climb back up.
Your carb numbers are probably not too much of a factor. 90 per day isn’t extreme one way or the other.
If you are consistently spiking after your workout, then a bolus at 20 minutes makes sense. The only risk is if the spike only happens “sometimes”…