My Diabetes counselor does not like my fasting blood sugar? Help wanted. page

[JimN]

I am new to the Primal diet, but in three weeks I have stabilized my blood sugar levels, cut my medication way down, and lost 6 lbs. The only thing I am not happy with is my fasting blood sugars. I wake up with blood sugar levels of 120 to 130. Ideally, I should be below 100. I have moved my metformin dose to dinner time hoping that it would "slow" my liver from releasing sugar into my system with little effect. During the day my sugars run from 110 to 120. This is being done while eating a lot more fruit (my main source of carbs).

The primal diet itself has helped me to not feel hungry and I have good energy levels. My theory is that the extra fat I am ingesting, is being converted into glucose by my liver. My plan, until I get some ideas from the Forum, is to;

1) Catalog what I eat trying to stay within 483 Calories of Protein, 300 Calories of Carbs, and 1519 Calories of fat (This based on Marks books and my goal to lose 8 lbs a month) and
2) Experiment up/down with my Metformin dose to see if that has an effect.

Any advice or actions that have worked for others would be welcomed. Thank you.

[Karma]

The natural levels of fructose in your "mostly fruits" is why your blood sugar is not coming down. Limit yourself to ONE serving of fruit per day and go vegetables for the remainder of your carbohydrates and fiber. After about two weeks of dropping the fruit habit you should see a corespoding drop in fasted blood sugar.

[alg2435]

Peas, carrots, brocolli, and quite a few other vegetables have plenty of carbohydrates...

[JimN]

Karma & alg2435,
Thank you for the info, I will see my diabetic counselor in two weeks and hopefully, with your advice, I will have better numbers to report.
JimN

[Apex Predator]

The natural levels of fructose in your "mostly fruits" is why your blood sugar is not coming down. Limit yourself to ONE serving of fruit per day and go vegetables for the remainder of your carbohydrates and fiber. After about two weeks of dropping the fruit habit you should see a corespoding drop in fasted blood sugar.

+1

Once you have insulin problems, fruit is an indulgence(I train diabetics). I would go off them could turkey and just do vegetables. You'll probably improvements very quickly.

[JimN]

As it turned out, I only had 1.5 fruits yesterday (1 apple and 1/2 orange) and my fasting blood sugar was 106 this morning. Hopefully it will keep improving by keeping a low fruit intake. Thanks for the advice.

[KestrelSF]

Hey Jim

Please keep sharing your experiences and how your blood sugar levels react to diet. I for one find people sharing these sorts of things to be the most valuable aspect of this board. I take the opinions with a grain of salt, but do pay attention when folks report "when I do X, Y happens". Sounds like in your case the fruit was problematic. When I was losing weight, (I went from ~320 to 165) I found that any more than a couple of pieces of fruit a week would stall weight loss for me and ANY dried fruit would make me gain weight.

Good luck on your journey

[abstractpersona]

What's stopping you from ditching fruit?
Eat fruit on days that start with S only, then, if you love fruit so much you can't give it up.

You don't seem like you're too concerned about your fasting blood sugar after all. Your counselor might not be happy, but to me it sounds like you're perfectly happy.

[JimN]

As the day has progressed, my highest blood sugar has been 97 (other than my 106 fasting). That is even after a banana in my protein shake this morning and (Grok Forbid) one chocolate crinkle cookie (my wife is making them for a party and thought they tasted funny - she has been eating primal longer than my 3 weeks, so I had to ease her mind. It tasted very good but gave me a headache too much sugar).

And Yes, my counselor is more worried than I am, but I knew my fasting sugars were too high. I am just glad and amazed that my sugars came down so fast, this is just day 2 limiting the fruit. My ultimate goal is to get off of all the med that I have been prescribed since being diagnosed as diabetic (I did skip all metformin last night and today with good results). Now have to get off the ACE inhibitor (BP med) and cholesterol meds. Just have not got up the courage to not take them. I will have my Dr. do my blood work in February and am thinking I need to do it soon to see what happens to my labs.

[Karma]

Nice work Jim, glad its working out for you. Avoiding fructose will be your #1 job for the next few months as your hormones re-balance after a time in full on confusion. As you get metabolicly less deranged, a little fruit now and then won't be nearly as much of an impact. I just can't pass up a fully tree ripened summer peach, but I treat is as a special occasion food not a three a week habit. Your diabetes counselor will try to steer you to conventional wisdom of lots of whole grains so watch out for that, it will overturn the progress you are making rather quickly.