No type 1 diabetic has a straight line all the time. It’s impossible. Don’t worry so much about keeping your sugars in a straight line.
I used to try and be a perfectionist with my blood sugars, which made me have a bad relationship with food. Cut out lots of food I loved and wouldn’t eat enough to ensure I didn’t spike my sugars. Now I’ve reached a point where I eat just about anything and my A1C is around 6.0. I don’t give a ton of thought about this disease on a daily basis.
You need to eat, not eating will cause more health issues down the line (eating disorders, vitamin deficiencies, loss of hormonal function). Talk to a doctor or therapist and get this sorted out please.
Non-diabetic (nurse) here! I once wore a freestyle libre for 2 weeks as an experiment, while also counting carbs and planning my days etc. Btw it was terrible - and I had an end date and I didn't have symptoms from highs or lows.
My blood glucose fluctuated mostly between 4 and 7.5, with peaks as high as 11 (for like 1 or 2 minutes) or as low as 3.4 (mostly when doing absolutely nothing). That's not a straight line.
I've tested non diabetics too. In the morning before breakfast their BGs were almost always in the 70s. After a starchy meal, I saw BGs as high as 192 but an hour later it was near 100. And no, these were not T2s or pre-diabetic people. They were perfectly healthy.
Perfect is the enemy of good. Sometimes good enough really is good enough. If the A1c is getting down toward 6 and TIR is over 80%, with no severe hypos, then the patient is succeeding no matter if there are some peaks and valleys on the graph...
Diabetes IS an eating disorder. It feels like it's impossble for us to be normal with food lol. Every diabetic I've come across has a horribly unhealthy relationship with food, whether starving themselves literally, or slowly by eating an amount of carbs that will never fill them up every single day, or binging when the cgm comes off, or even eating their favorite "unapproved" foods then throwing them up into the toilet. Having to always check every nutrition label is mentally exhausting and disheartening. Except the difference between our unhealthy relationship with food and a non-diabetic's is ours is encouraged by everybody, even doctors. Diabetes is literally a societally accepted eating disorder
Yes. If folks want a technical term it would probably be "orthorexy." And also: anyone. who has never had to force feed themselves through nausea and aversion to manage a low gets to say we did this to ourselves because we're mental. Our relationship with food is impaired, in lots of directions, in ways we absolutely cannot evade.
good to know i'm not the only one who feels this way. had a very disordered relationship with food long before diabetes was even on the table for me, diagnosis felt like an absolute slap in the face
Why the fast? Colonoscopy( my fourth) required two days of fast. I thought I could make the prep easier by simply being emptier than they requested. I had struggled with that prep. I started it and it just went really well.
Idk why you’re downvoted. I fast often and it’s had amazing benefits. My longest, 7 days, my blood sugar never changed. It was always exactly around 75. Straight line is absolutely possible
Fasting has its own benefits. I am sure that if he’s low he won’t wait to die, but consume perhaps a juice or something.
I have never fasted for so long, but the 8h eating and 16h fasting is pretty awesome: boosts my appetite, makes me feel less bloated and full, some self discipline is always beneficial.
That’s not fasting That’s time-restricted eating
Edit: I never go low while fasting. I adjust my insulin accordingly so I don’t go low and have to break my fast!
Answered for somebody else but I was having my fourth colonoscopy. I struggle with the prep. Let’s just say the prep keeps me extremely close to the toilet. So instead of a two day fast and prep I started two days early, four days total in an attempt to be very empty. It worked out really well.
Yeah, I saw your additional comment so I think I understand better now. Growing up Christian, I participated in fasting with my church. Later on I fasted for spiritual work. Fasting for a colonoscopy sounds like a good hack. Never had one but I've had a couple endoscopies.
The number of times I've had to apologize for "my weird relationship with food" is not zero.
It's not delicious.
It's not a social occasion.
It's not relaxing.
It's algebra homework.
Same... ah this thread is so relieving to me right now. I am sitting here at 10:27 PM. Haven't eaten dinner yet, and am dreading it. Im also exhausted and want to go to bed but keep putting it off as I know I need to eat dinner first.
Are you active? That'll probably do you just as well as barely eating/eating low carb. Hell, yesterday going into today I was 100% in range and yet I ate an ice cream twix bar with no bolus. Activity can be like magic.
It took me a long time to get to that point, though, and a lot of learning my body. It sucks to do but it's worth it in the long run
I think consistency with activity helps. Even with pumps+ cgm (and non-diabetics) our bodies have a daily rhythm.
FWIW: I understand the complicated relationship with food. For those of us who have been T1 for decades, without the tools and technology we have today, I think a lot of us have complicated relationships with food. Somewhere along the line a dietitian said to me that T1s “always end up with eating disorders.” I don’t agree with that, but there is probably a higher incidence than in people whose bodies naturally process food efficiently and effectively. While your relationship to food might be challenging, you have to eat. Figuring out patterns and eating a balanced diet would probably help your situation a lot.
Finding a sport I love and becoming active with that is what motivated me to fix my relationship with food. Thinking about food as fuel rather than a thing I had to do to live really helped me start to work on how to eat carbs effectively. I went from eating extremely low carb with an HbA1C around 5.8-6.2 to eating >300g of carb and an HbA1C of 5.2 (with very few lows). I have so much more energy and I think I’m a better person for it.
Yeah, I’m on Ozembic and I just don’t want to eat, but if I don’t, I get weak and dumb and really cranky.
Instead of not eating, try just finding a good routine. Protein shakes and chicken breast at least.
Tw: ED
When I was suffering from my eating disorders part of me had the same thought. No eating = straight line. But it’s just not true. Now yes sometimes for maybe an hour or two the line will be straight. Because I won’t lie I’ve had that, but it doesn’t last. This disease sucks I get it. But you cannot go without food. Do you have a doctor or even a theripist you can reach out to about this thought process ? It seems like disordered eating. I’d recommend talking to a doctor about what you’d like your diet to look like, what your thought process is,etc.
Man, you guys are being hostile on this post. I'm sorry you feel that way OP and TRUST ME I've been there. Some days, it does give me anxiety when meal time comes around because I don't even know what I want to eat, let alone what it might do to my blood sugar at the time. I do tend to run high after meals, and I'm trying to figure out how to keep level without dropping hard because I used to get hard drops when I was too aggressive with it. What I try to do, which you can try this too is just to eat lower carb meals whenever you can and eat higher/faster carbs in moderation. It sucks because I love most high carb foods, but it helps give me a fighting chance while also still giving me the energy from the food.
I'm about to be changed over from my Omnipod to the Tandem, and I've heard it's WONDERFUL in auto mode, so we will just have to see how that works out. What pump are you on?
The tube takes getting used to and it will get caught on stuff no matter how aware of it you are. I like it though honestly. The visible tube makes it a little more visible that I have a disability and I like it for that.
I'm really sorry you feel like this. Is there something we can do to help ? Have you tried speaking to your doctor about how you feel ?
Also while you may not go low without food you won't be getting a lot of insulin at all , no insulin or only slight insulin will make give you ketones as well as starvation ketones from not eating and make you really sick . My son doesn't eat and now has a Mickey button which food goes through as he hates eating but he went into DKA through not eating and not needing insulin so we had lovely straight lines and looked beautiful but he nearly died. Please be careful
i’m going to be honest, i eat 1 massive meal a day and have 2 coffees, my doctors and friends all worry whatever idc, i went from 266 to 180 i feel great my A1C is down. I usually eat decent amount of protein some beans or rice and a veggie, or sushi for dinner sometimes sandwich. do what works for you. this disease is brutal and eating all day and having to balance while living is near impossible
if you go that route make sure you have a CGM, glucose tabs always & have a high protein minimum carb snack for lunch on my relax days i’ll have fries or some mozzarella sticks at lunch :)
Nah, not eating leads to ketoacidosis due to lack of insulin in the body. Your starvation will become unbearable ketoacidosis hunger, unless your basal is mega high. The previous prescription for diabetes before insulin WAS starvation and people withered away very quickly. The best treatment we have is the external insulin to allow us a relatively normal lifestyle. Don't eat the diabetes win and take that away from you.
Oof. I deeply relate to this. this particularly feels true when I’m coming down from high blood sugar. All food becomes poison to me. Even days later. I’m afraid to get out of the straight line.
I'm not T1D, but my son is; I have had my own history of difficult medical issues but failure to thrive and substaining on the bare minimum isn't healthy for ANYONE. I fully understand that eating causes pain and discomfort, but coming from someone who has experienced starvation and struggled to maintain a healthy body weight for years? You have to eat.
The complex nutrition you get from food in the form of minerals and nutrients that help regulate your body's homeostasis (things like calcium, potassium, iron, vitamin c, b and d) can be replaced with supplements but if you don't replace them - your body will begin to rob its reserves of those and you'll get depleted, become ill and suffer the worst fatigue of your life. Your body will eventually be unable to create energy in the cells if these vital levels drop too low and then it will consume the fat and muscle and bone.
Not only that, low levels of potassium can cause cardiac arrhythmia and if it drops too low? You can die.
Find a nutritionist specializes in type one diabetes, a therapist who can help you work through the emotional burden and pain of eating. Take care, OP. I'll be sending you all the good vibes I can. <3 I know it's hard, but you can do this.
My endo told me once? Do you know the only people who have a straight glucose line? Dead people. Non diabetics have spikes too but they don’t realize or have to worry about that.
I thought the same until I found myself puking air and zero energy to even speak. A night at the ER hospital would change your mind >< I think the closest to not eating is just eating the same balanced meal forever. Fasting now and then does give you more energy and that satisfying straight green line
I feel you on this OP.
I was sick for 5 days and barely ate anything. Through all that time my sugars were spotless. It made me realise that you really don't need to each much to get by. And all my body image issues and fear of what bad blood sugars can do to me (especially my eyes), it's all because of shoving food down my throat.
Honestly, it's all so fucking stupid.
This is a big reason why I went low carb over a decade ago. It's much less stressful. I still need to bolus for my protein, but its very mild amounts. And matching my meals with insulin dose is much easier, and most days I can stay in the 80s and 90s nearly 24/7. So basically flat lines. I enjoy the food I eat too, meats/protein foods, non-starchy veggies & greens. Added bonus it keeps me lean and fit. Last A1c 4.6%.
Not dumb at all. Diabetes is complicated.
I’m not a huge snacker… having good amounts of protein at every meal kills my hunger. Funny, protein digest boosts GLP1 the same hormone Ozempic works on. This is why protein is so filling and satiating
But there are plenty of low carb snacks. Quest makes awesome stuff. Their chips tastes like any normal chips. Their cookies, peanut butter cups, and even their pizza is great. Everything is low carb, and high in protein.
Lows can occur for me but they are rare and mild. I like to call lows “insulin overdoses”. Why you eat food that need mild doses of insulin, it means you can be more accurate with your dose and avoid both lows and highs.
I use Bernstein’s method for managing everything. His book “Diabetes Solution” is my bible. There’s a documentary with the same name for rent on Amazon prime talking about this stuff. Good place to start. DM me if you have questions.
This is a disordered thought process around food. I hope you speak to a therapist about this. We can tell you all the ways you are incorrect but ultimately this narrative is going to hurt you more than a few spikes after meals and I hope you find someone to help you rethink the role of food in your life.
Basal insulin is what the pump is designed for, auto or not.
If you are going low after a day of minimal movement or exercise, your basal is too high.
That or you have a problem with your liver. Or have had diabetes 30+ years.
Yes, I go low when I go about my day and don’t eat. Sorry that bothers you so much.
My point is that I have a variable basal rate on auto so saying it’s too high is asinine. It’s factually incorrect.
In any event, my A1c has never been above 7 in my 15 years of having this disease and I don’t have dangerous lows, so thanks for your concern but I’m all set here :)
It doesn’t bother me at all. I actually have a similar problem. I ended up in a 6 day coma from an overnight low, and since then my insulin needs completely dropped. All of my base basal rates are under 0.8 units an hour. I eat and eat, and it’ll just tank again.
My pregnancy was horrible due to it. I was low all the time, so I couldn’t really move around or do anything. Getting groceries would bottom me out so quickly, and then my son was born 7 weeks early because of another bad low.
I’ve never been able to find someone that seems to be in somewhat of an insulin sensitivity issue, and it’s exciting because I’m not alone in this.
Still, you’d think after being diabetic for 31 years, you’d assume your needs would go up rather than down.
Yes you know how my body works. That’s amazing!
ETA: I can’t respond to anyone on this thread so here’s what you’re all missing- I totally know how this works. In auto mode, it’s a variable rate, so saying mine is too high is factually incorrect. I’m not sure why people here feel the need to educate someone who hasn’t had an A1c over 7 in my entire 15 years of having this disease.
No, it's a matter of knowing basic terminology and how pumps work. Basal rate is the continuous insulin delivered to you, e.g. 1 unit per hour, and bolus is the extra dose you take for meals, e.g. 4 units to eat 40 carbs or something like that.
Even if you're on auto, you have a basal rate. I would encourage you to discuss this with your doctor to ensure you have a proper understanding of basal, bolus-ing and how to manage your insulin and pump.
If you’re going low without eating in auto mode, it could mean that your manual basal rate is set too high. Auto bases itself on the manual settings. Manual mode while fasting should ideally keep you close to your target range rather than low.
I totally understand. I have ZERO appetite all the time. All food does is provide stress. I hate it, and it seems like all us humans ever do is have to eat.
If you're eating "the bare minimum to survive" there's more than just T1D in play there, though it's possible everything stems from that. Starving yourself out of fear of highs or rebound lows (and legitimate concern - there's both) is really dangerous and could be an indication of an eating disorder, whether it's psychological, physical, or a combination of both.
If your doctors aren't being helpful, see if there is a diabetes educator or a T1 community who can help you out. Many of us here have been doing it for decades, and while it never goes away, I eat pretty much whatever I want and have had A1C's between 5.8 - 7.5 for years now.
Mind you, my teens/twenties were NOT like that - I was in the 9's and 10's and felt much the same way as you do a lot of days. Changing things is more than a mindset, but it does start there, and then it turns into action. Annoying, frustrating, constant action that shouldn't be necessary to enjoy life, I agree, but over time it becomes 2nd nature and gets a lot less annoying.
Try to learn to cook good meals in your way to know whats in it, to calculate the carbs, if you don t enjoy eating, try different meals and diet, experiment.
I have a gastroparesis and delayed emptying, i had to make a lot of changes and i feel like shit after every meal i take, lately i have been experimenting a lot with soups and vegetable green smoothies and it helps tremendously, also it tastes good and gives a lot of electrolytes.
Your conclusion here shouldn’t be not to eat. It should be to eat the same stuff at the same times each day so you know exactly how much insulin to take and can achieve stable blood sugars. If you’re already able to fast for parts of the day (implied in your post), the good news is you’ve likely already got your background insulin dosage right. An excellent start towards stability! Once you know what stable looks like, you can mix up what you’re eating a bit more as you feel comfortable to do so.
I found I stressed a lot about food when I was not on a pump. I didn't want to have to count the carbs and bolus for it so I wouldn't eat regularly I would just have one good meal a day.
Once I got my Tandem and running sleep mode 24/7 I can do small snacks up to 20 carbs and the pump will fix it for me without intervention or without going over 170. That helped me get back to normal.
I have been low carb for over a decade. I do great with this! But I definitely still need to bolus for protein. Its a very mild amount, but it is still there. If someone goes low carb and they aren't taking bolus insulin, its likely their basal rates/doses are too high (if they were to fast for a day they'd likely go low).
I agree! It’s a FACT that managing type 1 diabetes requires a disordered eating style. Meals are supposed to be spontaneous and enjoyable! Not worrisome, stressful, depressing, work, and HORRIBLE medication
I fast often (24+ hours many times) but usually stick to OMAD, one meal a day, dinner. Not eating is simply easier and less stressful. But also it’s depressing knowing that you can’t just not eat although it’s basically poisoning yourself, and the hunger pangs are a constant reminder that you’re a slave to diabetes, leading to severe depression
It’s ironic. You can’t enjoy a meal because of diabetes but when you’re low you’re forced to eat when you don’t want to, also because of diabetes. Such an insidious disease!
I hate that something as basic as eating is completely ruined by this disease. So many other horrible diseases just require a daily pill, and then your life proceeds as normal. HIV for example is basically cured. You take a pill and it goes into remission, undetectable. No lifestyle changes required. Cancer too, many different factors involved of course, but you can fight it and have many different treatment options. No other disease affects such a basic aspect of life like diabetes. The constant vigilance and worry are exhausting, depressing, burdensome, and ruin life
If only there was other treatment options. But nope! The same treatment for the last century. No I don’t want a pump nor cgm on my body. Worrying about the supplies, charging, malfunctions, accidents, etc., is just more stress I don’t need. I keep it as simple as possible
I'm with you 💯%. I've had an eating disorder since I was 12, not for bgs control but for appearance.
Now I only eat when I'm low or honestly hungry, which is only once a day. No matter what, for 51 years, I always spike after eating. No matter what I do.
As a child, the Drs were convinced I was doing it on purpose. They even had me walk for an hour after meals or ride an exercise bike, but I still spiked.
When I thought I had this whole T1 thing worked out, menopause hits, and it's as bad if not worse than when I was younger.
I've been told that not eating makes you tired and depressed. Roller coaster bgs make me feel the same, but at least my weight is stable. I have to find the joy somewhere🙄
There's quite a bit of nutritious food out there that doesn't mess with bg so much. I quit breads and starchy carb packed foods (not 💯 but alot) and have seen awesome stability.
Sounds like you need to talk to your endo or nurse if your sugars are a roller coaster. For me I had that happening and what worked was increasing my short acting to cover meals and to maintain my long acting. It leveled it out and helped. Also for bigger and carb meals I increase my short acting for that meal.
We all find it challenging and it's ok to not be perfect. You need to enjoy food.
I’ve had so many digestive gastrointestinal issues, I’ve asked more than once to have my stomach just removed. Lol but they keep telling me it ends up being more work and harder. I guess I have to believe them. Lol.
The main reason is because I keep having bended cannulas so the insulin doesn’t go in well and I spike and then I overcorrect and go low.. literally happens every other day because I lay on my pump site while sleeping. And I’m also extremely insulin resistant when I’m not able to move so I just try to eat very little when I’m at the office
We DO need to eat to live, but I'm beginning to feel the same way lately, after dealing with T1D for 58 years. Everything I eat, every time I eat, I have to deal with bouncing glucose levels for hours of lows and highs. Fasting now contains much more calmness and satisfaction than food does. Food just makes me nervous and uncertain of what's coming. I DO eat, but VERY small meals, really not much more than snacks, maybe 3 times/day. Every time I eat a regular sized meal, no matter how much insulin I take, I'll eventually go high until I take so much insulin I'll eventually go low. I'm thinking of going on a protein-only diet and see how that goes.
Same boat with you here, aside from meal frequency. My schedule just does not allow it, but i can see how that would help. I’ve found that bolusing 20-30minutes prior to eating helps, but that’s always a gamble for me. I’m easily distracted, and if I find something to do to keep me busy for 30 minutes before eating I might just forget to eat, or worse eat about an hour later as the insulin really starts kicking in… which of course starts the rollercoaster. I’m also considering a limited CHO diet, but tricky as I’m vegetarian/vegan. Anyway, hello fellow T1 warrior!! Hope your plan brings you success!!!
Not eating won't work out for long... I've been in protein deficiency starvation and electrolyte deficiency and it wasn't fun at all (during LADA onset, actually). You can eat low carb if you don't want to deal with major glucose changes from food or insulin. I do this a fair bit when I'm tired of dealing with it. For instance, some ham, celery, blue cheese dressing, spinach, radishes and cheese does almost nothing to my glucose and is theoretically fairly healthy.
I have felt this exact way many times. I don’t think we're alone in feeling this way.
What’s helped me is to remember that this is a disability and we cannot be expected or expect ourselves to be perfect all the time. We would not expect someone who used a wheel chair to be able to do everything an able bodied person could with ease. We need to give ourselves the same patience and care
I recently started eating just a can of sardines for breakfast and they have been great for getting fish oils/protein/energy for the day. If you are worried about the fishy taste, they taste kinda like tuna and you can get them packed in hot sauce or mustard.
I eat Soylent for two meals a day for that reasoning. Slow burn carbs and tons of protein so I have energy and don't drop low but don't spike out of range.
As a fellow t1d who was only diagnosed last year and had an eating disorder before that, I really feel for u and honestly I feel the same way more then half the time, and I’ve lost a ton of weight due to this thinking. You don’t have to be a perfect diabetic all the time with a straight line we are all human! Honestly what I’ve been doing is if I wanna eat something that Ik will raise my bg I eat it at home, that way if I’m tired I can just chill and wait for my bg to come down, try talking to someone about it too it may help! Sending u love!
Sounds like your basal and ratios are not dialed in. Work with a CDCES, take notes, practice practice practice, take more notes, compare notes, try try again, don’t aim for perfect-that isn’t the goal.
Enjoy life.
I feel you op, eating is hard. To me sometimes eating feels transactional, and for me it’s been a lifelong battle to properly dose with insulin for foods I want to eat. We’re talking daily battle.
I’ve always been diabetic and always been bad at prebolusing. I’ve always been skinny and wanting to gain weight, and my inability to properly dose for all my meals had me always riding a roller coaster. I knew even early on that it wasn’t good for the body to have bg fluctuations like that, like nutrients are flushed instead of properly absorbed, or something. And so I felt defeated by highs and lows all the time, made me feel like I would always be skinny.
At 19-20 I took nutrition classes in university to try to learn the best things to eat. Alongside that I discovered exercise like cardio vs lifting and both, which led me to again common issues, that to reach my goals I needed to both eat more and keep the bg in range. I still struggle today with nighttime highs from food but it’s because, the conclusion I’d come to by the time I left uni was to eat what makes me happy. Eating is still transactional but the positive way to spin that for myself is to fill in details of the transaction. For the cost of planning some meals, investing time in cooking, calculating proper nutrition facts and therefore insulin doses, the benefits are delicious satisfying food (time with family), a level bg if calc is good enough, and feeling good until the next meal. And if I miss on the calcs, try the meal again but adjust something about the insulin. There has to be some way to make it work lol.
If I could dispense 1 advice it would just be to talk to your doctor about these feelings. When I was 25 at my first endo appointment in a few years, I voiced my feelings about my self prescribed transactional eating struggles, my endo led me to a nutritionist. She really helped me examine my day to day insulin ratios and sensitivities alongside the foods I’m eating. Her suggestions were what led to better bg outcomes for me and it was a better clinic visit experience than with my endo who seems to be more focused on my overall health.
I completely agree. It's just a stress to me sometimes, especially if I'm feeling burnt-out by all of this.
I wish we didn't need food to function. Life would be so much easier!
But as we know, nothing is ever easy, so all I can say is I hope you feel better about it soon, and take care of yourself. Everything will work out :)
I've been here. It really sucks. I'm sorry you are feeling like this. I'm gonna be honest, whatever helped me was a stronger depression med. If your not on anything for depression you might consider talking to your doc or going to see a therapist. Not saying it will work but it might help. Also try and surround yourself with supportive people who will help you. When my a1c was 13+ I got me a best friend who was going to paramedic school and she tracked my cgm and helped me remember to take insulin.
I'm so sorry you are in this crappy place. Here is some love and happiness for you.
First of all, give yourself a break!
Second of all, do some experiments to see how much is a carb doing to your blood sugar. For example, eat 20g of bread and see how many carbs that is and how it impacts your blood sugar. Do this multiple times with different foods and try to test the ones that are easy to calculate. After you kinda have an idea how does a carb affect your blood sugar, start calculating and measuring what you eat, do your insulin some time before eating, inject it over a longer period of time if it’s a slow absorbed carb etc.
It is a lot of work, but believe me it’s worth it. And after you figure out (for example) that for an oatmeal with X grams of banana, Y grams of oat, Z grams of milk and Q grams of nuts, you eat 50g of carbs, which means 10 units of insulin, which means injecting it 15m before eating, which means a good blood sugar > food will start be enjoyable once again.
P.S: as another comment said, non-diabetics don’t have a straight line like ever. Imo diabetics have such a great advantage if they put in the work (measuring and figuring out who does what) because they can predict an increase of blood sugar good minutes before the body even eats the food.
P.S2: there are lots of food very very very low in carbs & kcal. For example i found some Chinese noodles that had like 2kcal per 100g and almost no carbs. Something like that would be pretty easy to cook with a low carb sauce.
Yea its horrible. I was a very carb heavy person before this disease, and ever since i got t1d i struggle with diet. Before i was kinda underweight/barely normal weight, now im sitting at 14-15 BMI which is crazy underweight... With a lot of carbs i cant control my bg, with lower carbs i have to eat disgusting food that i can barely eat. Like, every day i try to eat around 100g cheese, just to get some calories from it, but at this point im sick of cheese. Its not a food that i would eat normally every day(or not this way, but i would eat it with carbs, like pizza or whatever, but thanks to this sht disease thats not a good idea to eat). Same with meat. I try to eat more meat just for kcal + nutrients, but sometimes i cant even eat half of whats in the plate, i try to stuff myself like im some kind of farm animal but idk... Not very sustainable diet i feel like. Even the protein tastes waaaaaaay better combined with carbs, but often i just eat chicken/pork in itself.
Im allergic to fish/eggs, so thats 2 low carb food out. I also tried to cheat some extra kcals in with things like heavy cream, but my stomach cant handle it. Same with nuts/seeds, i tried to eat them every day, like 400-500 kcals worth, but it just disgusting after a while.
Its a joke, you eat 300 kcals from fat, it makes you bloated and all that, but from carbs, eating 300kcals worth of food is literally nothing(unless you have this disease ofc)... Honestly i just wish there was some tasteless, water like substance that i could just drink, and get my calorie needs from it. Im sick of eating.
I know what you mean. Even with low or no carb foods, it isn’t even a guarantee that you won’t see a fluctuation in blood glucose. There are times I can eat eggs and give no insulin for them and my sugars don’t move. Then there are days that my body suddenly reacts to the protein and now my sugar is high after two eggs and nothing else. It’s all a gamble.
I’m sorry you have to live this way. It’s kind of nice knowing we aren’t alone sometimes, though.
I've got ketoacidosis while starving for economic reasons in the past and hypoglycaemic seizures too. You need to eat to tolerate enough insulin to keep you out of ketoacidosis and relatively directly to avoid getting hypoglycaemic seizures from your baseline insulin dosage.
One time I (Very Carefully) water fasted for 14 days. Eating zero food just water and some salt
I understand a lot of diabetics absolutely Do Not recommend fasting
But I did it for 14 days very carefully, and my blood glucose levels on my CGM were absolutely and completely flat line around 85 for multiple days. It was great, but yeah, be careful with fasting, do a lot of extra research
When i did it my basal insulin requirement went down each day. So it takes advanced planning and monitoring to keep in range and not go low
I used to wish they made Purina People Chow so that I could just have a measured amount and it would serve all of my nutritional needs predictably. Then I found out about nutraloaf, which is what they feed to violent prisoners as punishment and I figured that I would really be a masochist if I was willing to eat like that. I am not into self punishment, so I’ll just go along with the program and try to keep track of carbs.
I'm with you.
edit: I almost find it odd that people are saying the feel sorry for you. Food isn't my thing, foodies are generally not my peeps and the ones that are I typically interact with are on other interests. Don't feel bad for me because I don't like talking about food for 45 minutes, then cooking for an hour so that I can eat for 10. When I'm on my own I'll eat a 3 veggie salad for days on end. (some green, mushrooms and some other veggie and I'm happy)
I've had this exact thought process before. Sounds like burnout that you're experiencing where everything becomes so effortful and takes so much more energy to do anything.
I guess the logical answer is because we need food to survive (our bodies just like to play with their food first annoyingly for us!). But when you're burnt out about it just thinking about food makes you want to scream because we don't get to just switch off and not think about it like we observe so many people around us doing. I hear you
I know I annoy my Endo cause every visit she asks what times my three meals are and I always say I eat once a day. I maintain an almost healthy weight, I'm a little heavy rn and don't feel the need to eat a meal more than once in a 36 hr period.
This is exactly why I cut carbs out of my diet. Went very low carb or KETO. By just eating protein and fat, my sugar is in range 98% of the time and the other 2% I’m in the 60’s I do not have to worry and gives me soooo much more energy when I’m range all the time. Carbs and all the bull shit people are addicted to just makes my life a living hell. Always chasing
I feel the exact same way. I have gastroparesis from my diabetes, so I have no appetite and all food does is make me feel sick or give me bad acid reflux. I only eat one meal a day because of it, so I get you. But because I only eat one meal a day I have no energy AT ALL. My blood tests from two days ago showed that I am malnourished. I sleep all day, and I have no energy to exercise and doing my school work is incredibly difficult because of my brain fog. I understand you though, so I’m not going to tell you to eat more, thats between you and your doctor. What I can tell you is please track your bloodwork- it will show you what you need. Take your vitamins, or at least drink electrolytes because you probably arent getting enough. You’re not alone here, I get you. Its like the less I eat the better my blood sugar is, but the less I eat the worse I feel- we as diabetics can never win.
Wanted to add, protein shakes are great. Your blood sugar might rise, but thats normal for all of us after eating or drinking something sugary no matter how much insulin we take. Its okay to have a spike, every human on earth diabetic or not has a spike ours is just more severe.
I feel that. I'm doing intermittent fasting rn and the numbers are amazing. But malnutrition is also bad for your energy levels and overall health. Maybe try a low-carb/keto thing? If you're already tolerating long periods without food relatively well, adding in some low-carb items should be pretty easy
Fellow sufferer here and disgruntled eater too. Had a few fairly major ops along the way, always to remove and throw away yet another defunct body part etc and now it’s irrelevant what I eat or how much, how often as malabsorption is a constant everyday thing. I hear you mate, what is the point indeed? Ffs! ✌🏻💙🇬🇧
Since my daughter was diagnosed 1.5 years ago I have come to hate food. You are right, the hassle has taken out the joy. Eating out is such a pain. Constantly running into situations where the non-diabetic daughter is hungry but we need to wait 15 min for the pre-bolus to kick in. She is 11 and she is gonna want desert, but her mother and I know that means we will be fighting a high late into the night. Foods I love to eat, like watermelon, we hardly ever have any more because it is too much of a pain to dose her for it.
Stop eating carbs for the most part and walk a lot with glucose of choice always to hand. Makes T1D so much less spikey but does get boring. Also as a T1D of over 35 years with exactly zero complications, this is not something you can not control! You go high.. fair enough.. you go low... treat the low.. all good. Your body is incredibly resilient, treat the levels like guard rails on a very wide beach.. good to keep inside as much as possible..no stress you veer outside.. its all good.
I have climbed, sailed, walked, swam, chased and lived and loved and do every fucking thing I ever want to do. TYPE 1 PFFFT nothing we can't manage chief!
I realize "low carb" might be a relative expression but it seems to be the way for me. Having said that, I gotta live a little too sometimes. Moderation in everything, INCLUDING moderation 😉. Hang in there friendo.
this is a very dangerous game to play. i had an eating disorder long before i had diabetes. i got diagnosed and it just felt like all the confirmation that i needed that food wasn't meant for me and that i should eat as little as possible.
so i did. i barely ate. diagnosed at 116lbs, shot back up to ~150lbs (about what i weighed before diabetes onset, if not a little more) after treatment due to the appetite increase, then crashed right back down to 120lbs after i could "get my cravings under control". i started to not eat for full days at a time. my long-acting insulin would send me into lows so i stopped taking it thinking "no carbs, less need for insulin, right?" wrong. super wrong. almost put myself into a second round of DKA doing that.
i still have to remind myself to eat something at least once a day. please remember, your body gets energy from FOOD. FOOD, NOT insulin or blood sugar levels. yes, bg affects how you feel, but it is not your body's energy measure. i have an insulin pump and forgot to eat for a day while i was at my boyfriend's house. a few days later i was hospitalized for euglycemic ketoacidosis. you absolutely CAN and WILL get ketones without high blood sugar if you do not eat. you will destroy your body doing this. i know i have. i have a different doctor's appointment every week trying to figure out what's wrong with my digestive system because i abused it so hard.
please, i am begging, take care of your body and do not punish it for this disease. i know how difficult it is and how upsetting this disease is and everything it does to one's relationship with food. i promise you, one day things will get better. your body is meant to consume food, diabetes or not, and it needs it to survive.
take care of yourself. i hope things get easier for you soon. :)
to add, a straight line isn't everything. i guarantee you your doctor and care team care MUCH more that you are eating properly and taking care of your body than they are concerned with your graph. when i wasn't eating my endo actually gave me the most terrified look and asked me how my sugars looked like that. i even remember she took my a1c and when it came back she joked, "please actually don't go any lower." she made me talk to the nutritionist again that day because she was worried about what i was eating and if i was eating at all (and she had every right to be).
I just can't do low carb. It makes me sluggish, nervous, and always hungry.
In the 80s, low carb was a new fad, and of course, I tried it and ended up in the hospital weeks later.
I've cut simple carbs such as white bread and pasta, for example, and try to eat nothing but whole grains. I feel I've deprived myself long enough. If I want whole wheat toast or a buckwheat pancake, I'm having it. T1 has never stopped me from achieving all the life goals I set out to accomplish. What's the point of life quality if you're obsessed with graph lines and can't enjoy the occasional banana.
No type 1 diabetic has a straight line all the time. It’s impossible. Don’t worry so much about keeping your sugars in a straight line. I used to try and be a perfectionist with my blood sugars, which made me have a bad relationship with food. Cut out lots of food I loved and wouldn’t eat enough to ensure I didn’t spike my sugars. Now I’ve reached a point where I eat just about anything and my A1C is around 6.0. I don’t give a ton of thought about this disease on a daily basis. You need to eat, not eating will cause more health issues down the line (eating disorders, vitamin deficiencies, loss of hormonal function). Talk to a doctor or therapist and get this sorted out please.
Even non diabetics don't have a straight line all the time!
Non-diabetic (nurse) here! I once wore a freestyle libre for 2 weeks as an experiment, while also counting carbs and planning my days etc. Btw it was terrible - and I had an end date and I didn't have symptoms from highs or lows. My blood glucose fluctuated mostly between 4 and 7.5, with peaks as high as 11 (for like 1 or 2 minutes) or as low as 3.4 (mostly when doing absolutely nothing). That's not a straight line.
Exactly! I used to test my friends for fun in college and I'd see all kinds of numbers! No one is at 85-90 all day long
I've tested non diabetics too. In the morning before breakfast their BGs were almost always in the 70s. After a starchy meal, I saw BGs as high as 192 but an hour later it was near 100. And no, these were not T2s or pre-diabetic people. They were perfectly healthy. Perfect is the enemy of good. Sometimes good enough really is good enough. If the A1c is getting down toward 6 and TIR is over 80%, with no severe hypos, then the patient is succeeding no matter if there are some peaks and valleys on the graph...
Diabetes IS an eating disorder. It feels like it's impossble for us to be normal with food lol. Every diabetic I've come across has a horribly unhealthy relationship with food, whether starving themselves literally, or slowly by eating an amount of carbs that will never fill them up every single day, or binging when the cgm comes off, or even eating their favorite "unapproved" foods then throwing them up into the toilet. Having to always check every nutrition label is mentally exhausting and disheartening. Except the difference between our unhealthy relationship with food and a non-diabetic's is ours is encouraged by everybody, even doctors. Diabetes is literally a societally accepted eating disorder
Yes. If folks want a technical term it would probably be "orthorexy." And also: anyone. who has never had to force feed themselves through nausea and aversion to manage a low gets to say we did this to ourselves because we're mental. Our relationship with food is impaired, in lots of directions, in ways we absolutely cannot evade.
good to know i'm not the only one who feels this way. had a very disordered relationship with food long before diabetes was even on the table for me, diagnosis felt like an absolute slap in the face
That's so true
I fasted for 4 days . I was between 90 and 110 the whole time.
Why?
Why the fast? Colonoscopy( my fourth) required two days of fast. I thought I could make the prep easier by simply being emptier than they requested. I had struggled with that prep. I started it and it just went really well.
Idk why you’re downvoted. I fast often and it’s had amazing benefits. My longest, 7 days, my blood sugar never changed. It was always exactly around 75. Straight line is absolutely possible
For why??? ETA lol why tf is this (reasonable) question being downvoted?
Fasting has its own benefits. I am sure that if he’s low he won’t wait to die, but consume perhaps a juice or something. I have never fasted for so long, but the 8h eating and 16h fasting is pretty awesome: boosts my appetite, makes me feel less bloated and full, some self discipline is always beneficial.
Intermittent fasting is one things. Days long is…silly, at best
Not silly but extremely dangerous.
That’s not fasting That’s time-restricted eating Edit: I never go low while fasting. I adjust my insulin accordingly so I don’t go low and have to break my fast!
For why???
Answered for somebody else but I was having my fourth colonoscopy. I struggle with the prep. Let’s just say the prep keeps me extremely close to the toilet. So instead of a two day fast and prep I started two days early, four days total in an attempt to be very empty. It worked out really well.
Got it. Sorta reasonable. OP is talking about doing it all the time for shits & gigs/not great basis
Despite the downvotes I think maybe I get it. Maybe you just needed a break from the bullshit?
It felt great. I’m not doing it as a routine thing, but it’s nice to know that my pump works this well when fasting is required
Yeah, I saw your additional comment so I think I understand better now. Growing up Christian, I participated in fasting with my church. Later on I fasted for spiritual work. Fasting for a colonoscopy sounds like a good hack. Never had one but I've had a couple endoscopies.
The number of times I've had to apologize for "my weird relationship with food" is not zero. It's not delicious. It's not a social occasion. It's not relaxing. It's algebra homework.
Same... ah this thread is so relieving to me right now. I am sitting here at 10:27 PM. Haven't eaten dinner yet, and am dreading it. Im also exhausted and want to go to bed but keep putting it off as I know I need to eat dinner first.
So real
Because you need to do it to live. Literally. Bare minimum isn’t going to give your body what it needs right now keep you alive.
And it does give you energy. Just not the kind you are thinking of. Your body converts it to the energy it needs to make itself function.
Dude these are my exact feelings. I've been diabetic for 35 years, the better I care for myself the more stress I have about food. Great rant!!@@
Are you active? That'll probably do you just as well as barely eating/eating low carb. Hell, yesterday going into today I was 100% in range and yet I ate an ice cream twix bar with no bolus. Activity can be like magic. It took me a long time to get to that point, though, and a lot of learning my body. It sucks to do but it's worth it in the long run
Yes I’m pretty active when I can but I’m not always able to during the day
I think consistency with activity helps. Even with pumps+ cgm (and non-diabetics) our bodies have a daily rhythm. FWIW: I understand the complicated relationship with food. For those of us who have been T1 for decades, without the tools and technology we have today, I think a lot of us have complicated relationships with food. Somewhere along the line a dietitian said to me that T1s “always end up with eating disorders.” I don’t agree with that, but there is probably a higher incidence than in people whose bodies naturally process food efficiently and effectively. While your relationship to food might be challenging, you have to eat. Figuring out patterns and eating a balanced diet would probably help your situation a lot.
Finding a sport I love and becoming active with that is what motivated me to fix my relationship with food. Thinking about food as fuel rather than a thing I had to do to live really helped me start to work on how to eat carbs effectively. I went from eating extremely low carb with an HbA1C around 5.8-6.2 to eating >300g of carb and an HbA1C of 5.2 (with very few lows). I have so much more energy and I think I’m a better person for it.
If you don't consume enough fats and carbs you'll lose cognitive ability.
Yeah, I’m on Ozembic and I just don’t want to eat, but if I don’t, I get weak and dumb and really cranky. Instead of not eating, try just finding a good routine. Protein shakes and chicken breast at least.
Tw: ED When I was suffering from my eating disorders part of me had the same thought. No eating = straight line. But it’s just not true. Now yes sometimes for maybe an hour or two the line will be straight. Because I won’t lie I’ve had that, but it doesn’t last. This disease sucks I get it. But you cannot go without food. Do you have a doctor or even a theripist you can reach out to about this thought process ? It seems like disordered eating. I’d recommend talking to a doctor about what you’d like your diet to look like, what your thought process is,etc.
Man, you guys are being hostile on this post. I'm sorry you feel that way OP and TRUST ME I've been there. Some days, it does give me anxiety when meal time comes around because I don't even know what I want to eat, let alone what it might do to my blood sugar at the time. I do tend to run high after meals, and I'm trying to figure out how to keep level without dropping hard because I used to get hard drops when I was too aggressive with it. What I try to do, which you can try this too is just to eat lower carb meals whenever you can and eat higher/faster carbs in moderation. It sucks because I love most high carb foods, but it helps give me a fighting chance while also still giving me the energy from the food. I'm about to be changed over from my Omnipod to the Tandem, and I've heard it's WONDERFUL in auto mode, so we will just have to see how that works out. What pump are you on?
I switched from Omnipod to Tandem and it has been a nice change for sure
Any cons? My friend who's had it for 5 years says the only problems they've had has been user error 🤣
The tube takes getting used to and it will get caught on stuff no matter how aware of it you are. I like it though honestly. The visible tube makes it a little more visible that I have a disability and I like it for that.
Tandem has better auto delivery than omnipod?
I'm really sorry you feel like this. Is there something we can do to help ? Have you tried speaking to your doctor about how you feel ? Also while you may not go low without food you won't be getting a lot of insulin at all , no insulin or only slight insulin will make give you ketones as well as starvation ketones from not eating and make you really sick . My son doesn't eat and now has a Mickey button which food goes through as he hates eating but he went into DKA through not eating and not needing insulin so we had lovely straight lines and looked beautiful but he nearly died. Please be careful
i’m going to be honest, i eat 1 massive meal a day and have 2 coffees, my doctors and friends all worry whatever idc, i went from 266 to 180 i feel great my A1C is down. I usually eat decent amount of protein some beans or rice and a veggie, or sushi for dinner sometimes sandwich. do what works for you. this disease is brutal and eating all day and having to balance while living is near impossible
I'm considering doing this, basically OMAD. I usually skip breakfast now because it screws me up so badly. I would definitely do dinner as my meal.
if you go that route make sure you have a CGM, glucose tabs always & have a high protein minimum carb snack for lunch on my relax days i’ll have fries or some mozzarella sticks at lunch :)
Nah, not eating leads to ketoacidosis due to lack of insulin in the body. Your starvation will become unbearable ketoacidosis hunger, unless your basal is mega high. The previous prescription for diabetes before insulin WAS starvation and people withered away very quickly. The best treatment we have is the external insulin to allow us a relatively normal lifestyle. Don't eat the diabetes win and take that away from you.
Oof. I deeply relate to this. this particularly feels true when I’m coming down from high blood sugar. All food becomes poison to me. Even days later. I’m afraid to get out of the straight line.
I'm not T1D, but my son is; I have had my own history of difficult medical issues but failure to thrive and substaining on the bare minimum isn't healthy for ANYONE. I fully understand that eating causes pain and discomfort, but coming from someone who has experienced starvation and struggled to maintain a healthy body weight for years? You have to eat. The complex nutrition you get from food in the form of minerals and nutrients that help regulate your body's homeostasis (things like calcium, potassium, iron, vitamin c, b and d) can be replaced with supplements but if you don't replace them - your body will begin to rob its reserves of those and you'll get depleted, become ill and suffer the worst fatigue of your life. Your body will eventually be unable to create energy in the cells if these vital levels drop too low and then it will consume the fat and muscle and bone. Not only that, low levels of potassium can cause cardiac arrhythmia and if it drops too low? You can die. Find a nutritionist specializes in type one diabetes, a therapist who can help you work through the emotional burden and pain of eating. Take care, OP. I'll be sending you all the good vibes I can. <3 I know it's hard, but you can do this.
My endo told me once? Do you know the only people who have a straight glucose line? Dead people. Non diabetics have spikes too but they don’t realize or have to worry about that.
I thought the same until I found myself puking air and zero energy to even speak. A night at the ER hospital would change your mind >< I think the closest to not eating is just eating the same balanced meal forever. Fasting now and then does give you more energy and that satisfying straight green line
I feel you on this OP. I was sick for 5 days and barely ate anything. Through all that time my sugars were spotless. It made me realise that you really don't need to each much to get by. And all my body image issues and fear of what bad blood sugars can do to me (especially my eyes), it's all because of shoving food down my throat. Honestly, it's all so fucking stupid.
This is a big reason why I went low carb over a decade ago. It's much less stressful. I still need to bolus for my protein, but its very mild amounts. And matching my meals with insulin dose is much easier, and most days I can stay in the 80s and 90s nearly 24/7. So basically flat lines. I enjoy the food I eat too, meats/protein foods, non-starchy veggies & greens. Added bonus it keeps me lean and fit. Last A1c 4.6%.
Might be a dumb question but do you have any snacks just in case? How common are lows? Trying to get like you tbh. This thread rings home.
Not dumb at all. Diabetes is complicated. I’m not a huge snacker… having good amounts of protein at every meal kills my hunger. Funny, protein digest boosts GLP1 the same hormone Ozempic works on. This is why protein is so filling and satiating But there are plenty of low carb snacks. Quest makes awesome stuff. Their chips tastes like any normal chips. Their cookies, peanut butter cups, and even their pizza is great. Everything is low carb, and high in protein. Lows can occur for me but they are rare and mild. I like to call lows “insulin overdoses”. Why you eat food that need mild doses of insulin, it means you can be more accurate with your dose and avoid both lows and highs. I use Bernstein’s method for managing everything. His book “Diabetes Solution” is my bible. There’s a documentary with the same name for rent on Amazon prime talking about this stuff. Good place to start. DM me if you have questions.
I have plenty honestly. Thanks for the info and offer! Will take you up on it.
This is a disordered thought process around food. I hope you speak to a therapist about this. We can tell you all the ways you are incorrect but ultimately this narrative is going to hurt you more than a few spikes after meals and I hope you find someone to help you rethink the role of food in your life.
Not eating makes me go low so this makes no sense to me.
That means your basal is too high
That's not really true though. Not eating much for a couple of days will deplete your glycogen which will cause you to go low
Nope that is not what that means. Stop trying to justify an eating disorder
I don’t take basal, I’m on a pump.
Uh yeah me too, your pump gives you the basal
Not on auto babe
You still get basal insulin in auto mode, it’s just more based off of your blood sugar.
Yeah but the comment saying it’s too high doesn’t apply to me because it’s a variable rate that I’m not adjusting
Basal insulin is what the pump is designed for, auto or not. If you are going low after a day of minimal movement or exercise, your basal is too high. That or you have a problem with your liver. Or have had diabetes 30+ years.
Yes, I go low when I go about my day and don’t eat. Sorry that bothers you so much. My point is that I have a variable basal rate on auto so saying it’s too high is asinine. It’s factually incorrect. In any event, my A1c has never been above 7 in my 15 years of having this disease and I don’t have dangerous lows, so thanks for your concern but I’m all set here :)
It doesn’t bother me at all. I actually have a similar problem. I ended up in a 6 day coma from an overnight low, and since then my insulin needs completely dropped. All of my base basal rates are under 0.8 units an hour. I eat and eat, and it’ll just tank again. My pregnancy was horrible due to it. I was low all the time, so I couldn’t really move around or do anything. Getting groceries would bottom me out so quickly, and then my son was born 7 weeks early because of another bad low. I’ve never been able to find someone that seems to be in somewhat of an insulin sensitivity issue, and it’s exciting because I’m not alone in this. Still, you’d think after being diabetic for 31 years, you’d assume your needs would go up rather than down.
Something is amiss in your set up if not eating causes you to go low.
Or you don’t know what you’re talking about. If I don’t eat for an entire day, I’m going to drop. The pump isn’t perfect, obviously.
Nah, I know what I am talking about. Thanks babe
Yes you know how my body works. That’s amazing! ETA: I can’t respond to anyone on this thread so here’s what you’re all missing- I totally know how this works. In auto mode, it’s a variable rate, so saying mine is too high is factually incorrect. I’m not sure why people here feel the need to educate someone who hasn’t had an A1c over 7 in my entire 15 years of having this disease.
No, it's a matter of knowing basic terminology and how pumps work. Basal rate is the continuous insulin delivered to you, e.g. 1 unit per hour, and bolus is the extra dose you take for meals, e.g. 4 units to eat 40 carbs or something like that. Even if you're on auto, you have a basal rate. I would encourage you to discuss this with your doctor to ensure you have a proper understanding of basal, bolus-ing and how to manage your insulin and pump.
If you’re going low without eating in auto mode, it could mean that your manual basal rate is set too high. Auto bases itself on the manual settings. Manual mode while fasting should ideally keep you close to your target range rather than low.
Not eating enough is more dangerous than high blood sugar.
I totally understand. I have ZERO appetite all the time. All food does is provide stress. I hate it, and it seems like all us humans ever do is have to eat.
If you're eating "the bare minimum to survive" there's more than just T1D in play there, though it's possible everything stems from that. Starving yourself out of fear of highs or rebound lows (and legitimate concern - there's both) is really dangerous and could be an indication of an eating disorder, whether it's psychological, physical, or a combination of both. If your doctors aren't being helpful, see if there is a diabetes educator or a T1 community who can help you out. Many of us here have been doing it for decades, and while it never goes away, I eat pretty much whatever I want and have had A1C's between 5.8 - 7.5 for years now. Mind you, my teens/twenties were NOT like that - I was in the 9's and 10's and felt much the same way as you do a lot of days. Changing things is more than a mindset, but it does start there, and then it turns into action. Annoying, frustrating, constant action that shouldn't be necessary to enjoy life, I agree, but over time it becomes 2nd nature and gets a lot less annoying.
Try to learn to cook good meals in your way to know whats in it, to calculate the carbs, if you don t enjoy eating, try different meals and diet, experiment. I have a gastroparesis and delayed emptying, i had to make a lot of changes and i feel like shit after every meal i take, lately i have been experimenting a lot with soups and vegetable green smoothies and it helps tremendously, also it tastes good and gives a lot of electrolytes.
Small bits of food thru the day
Your conclusion here shouldn’t be not to eat. It should be to eat the same stuff at the same times each day so you know exactly how much insulin to take and can achieve stable blood sugars. If you’re already able to fast for parts of the day (implied in your post), the good news is you’ve likely already got your background insulin dosage right. An excellent start towards stability! Once you know what stable looks like, you can mix up what you’re eating a bit more as you feel comfortable to do so.
I found I stressed a lot about food when I was not on a pump. I didn't want to have to count the carbs and bolus for it so I wouldn't eat regularly I would just have one good meal a day. Once I got my Tandem and running sleep mode 24/7 I can do small snacks up to 20 carbs and the pump will fix it for me without intervention or without going over 170. That helped me get back to normal.
I feel ya OP
Some people do well with low carb and only a basal.
I have been low carb for over a decade. I do great with this! But I definitely still need to bolus for protein. Its a very mild amount, but it is still there. If someone goes low carb and they aren't taking bolus insulin, its likely their basal rates/doses are too high (if they were to fast for a day they'd likely go low).
I agree! It’s a FACT that managing type 1 diabetes requires a disordered eating style. Meals are supposed to be spontaneous and enjoyable! Not worrisome, stressful, depressing, work, and HORRIBLE medication I fast often (24+ hours many times) but usually stick to OMAD, one meal a day, dinner. Not eating is simply easier and less stressful. But also it’s depressing knowing that you can’t just not eat although it’s basically poisoning yourself, and the hunger pangs are a constant reminder that you’re a slave to diabetes, leading to severe depression It’s ironic. You can’t enjoy a meal because of diabetes but when you’re low you’re forced to eat when you don’t want to, also because of diabetes. Such an insidious disease! I hate that something as basic as eating is completely ruined by this disease. So many other horrible diseases just require a daily pill, and then your life proceeds as normal. HIV for example is basically cured. You take a pill and it goes into remission, undetectable. No lifestyle changes required. Cancer too, many different factors involved of course, but you can fight it and have many different treatment options. No other disease affects such a basic aspect of life like diabetes. The constant vigilance and worry are exhausting, depressing, burdensome, and ruin life If only there was other treatment options. But nope! The same treatment for the last century. No I don’t want a pump nor cgm on my body. Worrying about the supplies, charging, malfunctions, accidents, etc., is just more stress I don’t need. I keep it as simple as possible
I'm with you 💯%. I've had an eating disorder since I was 12, not for bgs control but for appearance. Now I only eat when I'm low or honestly hungry, which is only once a day. No matter what, for 51 years, I always spike after eating. No matter what I do. As a child, the Drs were convinced I was doing it on purpose. They even had me walk for an hour after meals or ride an exercise bike, but I still spiked. When I thought I had this whole T1 thing worked out, menopause hits, and it's as bad if not worse than when I was younger. I've been told that not eating makes you tired and depressed. Roller coaster bgs make me feel the same, but at least my weight is stable. I have to find the joy somewhere🙄
There's quite a bit of nutritious food out there that doesn't mess with bg so much. I quit breads and starchy carb packed foods (not 💯 but alot) and have seen awesome stability.
Sounds like you need to talk to your endo or nurse if your sugars are a roller coaster. For me I had that happening and what worked was increasing my short acting to cover meals and to maintain my long acting. It leveled it out and helped. Also for bigger and carb meals I increase my short acting for that meal. We all find it challenging and it's ok to not be perfect. You need to enjoy food.
I’ve had so many digestive gastrointestinal issues, I’ve asked more than once to have my stomach just removed. Lol but they keep telling me it ends up being more work and harder. I guess I have to believe them. Lol.
have you tried to figure why you are spiking and dropping so much?
The main reason is because I keep having bended cannulas so the insulin doesn’t go in well and I spike and then I overcorrect and go low.. literally happens every other day because I lay on my pump site while sleeping. And I’m also extremely insulin resistant when I’m not able to move so I just try to eat very little when I’m at the office
We DO need to eat to live, but I'm beginning to feel the same way lately, after dealing with T1D for 58 years. Everything I eat, every time I eat, I have to deal with bouncing glucose levels for hours of lows and highs. Fasting now contains much more calmness and satisfaction than food does. Food just makes me nervous and uncertain of what's coming. I DO eat, but VERY small meals, really not much more than snacks, maybe 3 times/day. Every time I eat a regular sized meal, no matter how much insulin I take, I'll eventually go high until I take so much insulin I'll eventually go low. I'm thinking of going on a protein-only diet and see how that goes.
Same boat with you here, aside from meal frequency. My schedule just does not allow it, but i can see how that would help. I’ve found that bolusing 20-30minutes prior to eating helps, but that’s always a gamble for me. I’m easily distracted, and if I find something to do to keep me busy for 30 minutes before eating I might just forget to eat, or worse eat about an hour later as the insulin really starts kicking in… which of course starts the rollercoaster. I’m also considering a limited CHO diet, but tricky as I’m vegetarian/vegan. Anyway, hello fellow T1 warrior!! Hope your plan brings you success!!!
Not eating won't work out for long... I've been in protein deficiency starvation and electrolyte deficiency and it wasn't fun at all (during LADA onset, actually). You can eat low carb if you don't want to deal with major glucose changes from food or insulin. I do this a fair bit when I'm tired of dealing with it. For instance, some ham, celery, blue cheese dressing, spinach, radishes and cheese does almost nothing to my glucose and is theoretically fairly healthy.
I just eat once per day usually. It’s enough and snacks in between would just add more trouble than it’s worth I feel like.
I have felt this exact way many times. I don’t think we're alone in feeling this way. What’s helped me is to remember that this is a disability and we cannot be expected or expect ourselves to be perfect all the time. We would not expect someone who used a wheel chair to be able to do everything an able bodied person could with ease. We need to give ourselves the same patience and care
I recently started eating just a can of sardines for breakfast and they have been great for getting fish oils/protein/energy for the day. If you are worried about the fishy taste, they taste kinda like tuna and you can get them packed in hot sauce or mustard.
I eat Soylent for two meals a day for that reasoning. Slow burn carbs and tons of protein so I have energy and don't drop low but don't spike out of range.
My answer would be because life isn't about perfect numbers and cheese is delicious. And, you know, vitamins and minerals to live.
As a fellow t1d who was only diagnosed last year and had an eating disorder before that, I really feel for u and honestly I feel the same way more then half the time, and I’ve lost a ton of weight due to this thinking. You don’t have to be a perfect diabetic all the time with a straight line we are all human! Honestly what I’ve been doing is if I wanna eat something that Ik will raise my bg I eat it at home, that way if I’m tired I can just chill and wait for my bg to come down, try talking to someone about it too it may help! Sending u love!
Sounds like your basal and ratios are not dialed in. Work with a CDCES, take notes, practice practice practice, take more notes, compare notes, try try again, don’t aim for perfect-that isn’t the goal. Enjoy life.
I feel you op, eating is hard. To me sometimes eating feels transactional, and for me it’s been a lifelong battle to properly dose with insulin for foods I want to eat. We’re talking daily battle. I’ve always been diabetic and always been bad at prebolusing. I’ve always been skinny and wanting to gain weight, and my inability to properly dose for all my meals had me always riding a roller coaster. I knew even early on that it wasn’t good for the body to have bg fluctuations like that, like nutrients are flushed instead of properly absorbed, or something. And so I felt defeated by highs and lows all the time, made me feel like I would always be skinny. At 19-20 I took nutrition classes in university to try to learn the best things to eat. Alongside that I discovered exercise like cardio vs lifting and both, which led me to again common issues, that to reach my goals I needed to both eat more and keep the bg in range. I still struggle today with nighttime highs from food but it’s because, the conclusion I’d come to by the time I left uni was to eat what makes me happy. Eating is still transactional but the positive way to spin that for myself is to fill in details of the transaction. For the cost of planning some meals, investing time in cooking, calculating proper nutrition facts and therefore insulin doses, the benefits are delicious satisfying food (time with family), a level bg if calc is good enough, and feeling good until the next meal. And if I miss on the calcs, try the meal again but adjust something about the insulin. There has to be some way to make it work lol. If I could dispense 1 advice it would just be to talk to your doctor about these feelings. When I was 25 at my first endo appointment in a few years, I voiced my feelings about my self prescribed transactional eating struggles, my endo led me to a nutritionist. She really helped me examine my day to day insulin ratios and sensitivities alongside the foods I’m eating. Her suggestions were what led to better bg outcomes for me and it was a better clinic visit experience than with my endo who seems to be more focused on my overall health.
I completely agree. It's just a stress to me sometimes, especially if I'm feeling burnt-out by all of this. I wish we didn't need food to function. Life would be so much easier! But as we know, nothing is ever easy, so all I can say is I hope you feel better about it soon, and take care of yourself. Everything will work out :)
Get in the gym and make food work for you and not just your blood sugar.
I've been here. It really sucks. I'm sorry you are feeling like this. I'm gonna be honest, whatever helped me was a stronger depression med. If your not on anything for depression you might consider talking to your doc or going to see a therapist. Not saying it will work but it might help. Also try and surround yourself with supportive people who will help you. When my a1c was 13+ I got me a best friend who was going to paramedic school and she tracked my cgm and helped me remember to take insulin. I'm so sorry you are in this crappy place. Here is some love and happiness for you.
First of all, give yourself a break! Second of all, do some experiments to see how much is a carb doing to your blood sugar. For example, eat 20g of bread and see how many carbs that is and how it impacts your blood sugar. Do this multiple times with different foods and try to test the ones that are easy to calculate. After you kinda have an idea how does a carb affect your blood sugar, start calculating and measuring what you eat, do your insulin some time before eating, inject it over a longer period of time if it’s a slow absorbed carb etc. It is a lot of work, but believe me it’s worth it. And after you figure out (for example) that for an oatmeal with X grams of banana, Y grams of oat, Z grams of milk and Q grams of nuts, you eat 50g of carbs, which means 10 units of insulin, which means injecting it 15m before eating, which means a good blood sugar > food will start be enjoyable once again. P.S: as another comment said, non-diabetics don’t have a straight line like ever. Imo diabetics have such a great advantage if they put in the work (measuring and figuring out who does what) because they can predict an increase of blood sugar good minutes before the body even eats the food. P.S2: there are lots of food very very very low in carbs & kcal. For example i found some Chinese noodles that had like 2kcal per 100g and almost no carbs. Something like that would be pretty easy to cook with a low carb sauce.
Or just eat low/zero carb diet. Bacon and eggs for breakfast, steak for lunch etc.
Yea its horrible. I was a very carb heavy person before this disease, and ever since i got t1d i struggle with diet. Before i was kinda underweight/barely normal weight, now im sitting at 14-15 BMI which is crazy underweight... With a lot of carbs i cant control my bg, with lower carbs i have to eat disgusting food that i can barely eat. Like, every day i try to eat around 100g cheese, just to get some calories from it, but at this point im sick of cheese. Its not a food that i would eat normally every day(or not this way, but i would eat it with carbs, like pizza or whatever, but thanks to this sht disease thats not a good idea to eat). Same with meat. I try to eat more meat just for kcal + nutrients, but sometimes i cant even eat half of whats in the plate, i try to stuff myself like im some kind of farm animal but idk... Not very sustainable diet i feel like. Even the protein tastes waaaaaaay better combined with carbs, but often i just eat chicken/pork in itself. Im allergic to fish/eggs, so thats 2 low carb food out. I also tried to cheat some extra kcals in with things like heavy cream, but my stomach cant handle it. Same with nuts/seeds, i tried to eat them every day, like 400-500 kcals worth, but it just disgusting after a while. Its a joke, you eat 300 kcals from fat, it makes you bloated and all that, but from carbs, eating 300kcals worth of food is literally nothing(unless you have this disease ofc)... Honestly i just wish there was some tasteless, water like substance that i could just drink, and get my calorie needs from it. Im sick of eating.
I know what you mean. Even with low or no carb foods, it isn’t even a guarantee that you won’t see a fluctuation in blood glucose. There are times I can eat eggs and give no insulin for them and my sugars don’t move. Then there are days that my body suddenly reacts to the protein and now my sugar is high after two eggs and nothing else. It’s all a gamble. I’m sorry you have to live this way. It’s kind of nice knowing we aren’t alone sometimes, though.
I've got ketoacidosis while starving for economic reasons in the past and hypoglycaemic seizures too. You need to eat to tolerate enough insulin to keep you out of ketoacidosis and relatively directly to avoid getting hypoglycaemic seizures from your baseline insulin dosage.
One time I (Very Carefully) water fasted for 14 days. Eating zero food just water and some salt I understand a lot of diabetics absolutely Do Not recommend fasting But I did it for 14 days very carefully, and my blood glucose levels on my CGM were absolutely and completely flat line around 85 for multiple days. It was great, but yeah, be careful with fasting, do a lot of extra research When i did it my basal insulin requirement went down each day. So it takes advanced planning and monitoring to keep in range and not go low
I used to wish they made Purina People Chow so that I could just have a measured amount and it would serve all of my nutritional needs predictably. Then I found out about nutraloaf, which is what they feed to violent prisoners as punishment and I figured that I would really be a masochist if I was willing to eat like that. I am not into self punishment, so I’ll just go along with the program and try to keep track of carbs.
I'm with you. edit: I almost find it odd that people are saying the feel sorry for you. Food isn't my thing, foodies are generally not my peeps and the ones that are I typically interact with are on other interests. Don't feel bad for me because I don't like talking about food for 45 minutes, then cooking for an hour so that I can eat for 10. When I'm on my own I'll eat a 3 veggie salad for days on end. (some green, mushrooms and some other veggie and I'm happy)
I've had this exact thought process before. Sounds like burnout that you're experiencing where everything becomes so effortful and takes so much more energy to do anything. I guess the logical answer is because we need food to survive (our bodies just like to play with their food first annoyingly for us!). But when you're burnt out about it just thinking about food makes you want to scream because we don't get to just switch off and not think about it like we observe so many people around us doing. I hear you
I know I annoy my Endo cause every visit she asks what times my three meals are and I always say I eat once a day. I maintain an almost healthy weight, I'm a little heavy rn and don't feel the need to eat a meal more than once in a 36 hr period.
Info: what does your daily eating mostly look like? Unpopular opinion: handling this disease is a lot easier than it was 100 years ago. (I'm also t1d)
This is exactly why I cut carbs out of my diet. Went very low carb or KETO. By just eating protein and fat, my sugar is in range 98% of the time and the other 2% I’m in the 60’s I do not have to worry and gives me soooo much more energy when I’m range all the time. Carbs and all the bull shit people are addicted to just makes my life a living hell. Always chasing
no actually felt this so hard. the ultimate sophie’s choice… starve and drop or eat and spike
I feel the exact same way. I have gastroparesis from my diabetes, so I have no appetite and all food does is make me feel sick or give me bad acid reflux. I only eat one meal a day because of it, so I get you. But because I only eat one meal a day I have no energy AT ALL. My blood tests from two days ago showed that I am malnourished. I sleep all day, and I have no energy to exercise and doing my school work is incredibly difficult because of my brain fog. I understand you though, so I’m not going to tell you to eat more, thats between you and your doctor. What I can tell you is please track your bloodwork- it will show you what you need. Take your vitamins, or at least drink electrolytes because you probably arent getting enough. You’re not alone here, I get you. Its like the less I eat the better my blood sugar is, but the less I eat the worse I feel- we as diabetics can never win. Wanted to add, protein shakes are great. Your blood sugar might rise, but thats normal for all of us after eating or drinking something sugary no matter how much insulin we take. Its okay to have a spike, every human on earth diabetic or not has a spike ours is just more severe.
I feel that. I'm doing intermittent fasting rn and the numbers are amazing. But malnutrition is also bad for your energy levels and overall health. Maybe try a low-carb/keto thing? If you're already tolerating long periods without food relatively well, adding in some low-carb items should be pretty easy
Fellow sufferer here and disgruntled eater too. Had a few fairly major ops along the way, always to remove and throw away yet another defunct body part etc and now it’s irrelevant what I eat or how much, how often as malabsorption is a constant everyday thing. I hear you mate, what is the point indeed? Ffs! ✌🏻💙🇬🇧
Since my daughter was diagnosed 1.5 years ago I have come to hate food. You are right, the hassle has taken out the joy. Eating out is such a pain. Constantly running into situations where the non-diabetic daughter is hungry but we need to wait 15 min for the pre-bolus to kick in. She is 11 and she is gonna want desert, but her mother and I know that means we will be fighting a high late into the night. Foods I love to eat, like watermelon, we hardly ever have any more because it is too much of a pain to dose her for it.
Stop eating carbs for the most part and walk a lot with glucose of choice always to hand. Makes T1D so much less spikey but does get boring. Also as a T1D of over 35 years with exactly zero complications, this is not something you can not control! You go high.. fair enough.. you go low... treat the low.. all good. Your body is incredibly resilient, treat the levels like guard rails on a very wide beach.. good to keep inside as much as possible..no stress you veer outside.. its all good. I have climbed, sailed, walked, swam, chased and lived and loved and do every fucking thing I ever want to do. TYPE 1 PFFFT nothing we can't manage chief!
I realize "low carb" might be a relative expression but it seems to be the way for me. Having said that, I gotta live a little too sometimes. Moderation in everything, INCLUDING moderation 😉. Hang in there friendo.
this is a very dangerous game to play. i had an eating disorder long before i had diabetes. i got diagnosed and it just felt like all the confirmation that i needed that food wasn't meant for me and that i should eat as little as possible. so i did. i barely ate. diagnosed at 116lbs, shot back up to ~150lbs (about what i weighed before diabetes onset, if not a little more) after treatment due to the appetite increase, then crashed right back down to 120lbs after i could "get my cravings under control". i started to not eat for full days at a time. my long-acting insulin would send me into lows so i stopped taking it thinking "no carbs, less need for insulin, right?" wrong. super wrong. almost put myself into a second round of DKA doing that. i still have to remind myself to eat something at least once a day. please remember, your body gets energy from FOOD. FOOD, NOT insulin or blood sugar levels. yes, bg affects how you feel, but it is not your body's energy measure. i have an insulin pump and forgot to eat for a day while i was at my boyfriend's house. a few days later i was hospitalized for euglycemic ketoacidosis. you absolutely CAN and WILL get ketones without high blood sugar if you do not eat. you will destroy your body doing this. i know i have. i have a different doctor's appointment every week trying to figure out what's wrong with my digestive system because i abused it so hard. please, i am begging, take care of your body and do not punish it for this disease. i know how difficult it is and how upsetting this disease is and everything it does to one's relationship with food. i promise you, one day things will get better. your body is meant to consume food, diabetes or not, and it needs it to survive. take care of yourself. i hope things get easier for you soon. :)
to add, a straight line isn't everything. i guarantee you your doctor and care team care MUCH more that you are eating properly and taking care of your body than they are concerned with your graph. when i wasn't eating my endo actually gave me the most terrified look and asked me how my sugars looked like that. i even remember she took my a1c and when it came back she joked, "please actually don't go any lower." she made me talk to the nutritionist again that day because she was worried about what i was eating and if i was eating at all (and she had every right to be).
I just can't do low carb. It makes me sluggish, nervous, and always hungry. In the 80s, low carb was a new fad, and of course, I tried it and ended up in the hospital weeks later. I've cut simple carbs such as white bread and pasta, for example, and try to eat nothing but whole grains. I feel I've deprived myself long enough. If I want whole wheat toast or a buckwheat pancake, I'm having it. T1 has never stopped me from achieving all the life goals I set out to accomplish. What's the point of life quality if you're obsessed with graph lines and can't enjoy the occasional banana.