Eat the same thing ~ every meal
Have you ever tried just eatting the same thing every meal? It seems boring and not nutritionally balanced right?
Wrong, I feel like I have finally figured out how to manage my blood sugar with this method and have had spot on numbers for the past 4 days. I aim for 130 and wear the Animus Ping Pump.
Sample meal plan for the past 4 days:
Breakfast- Bean burrito + orange = 35 carbs
Lunch - Tuna sandwich + apple = 35 carbs
Dinner - Bean burrito + 2 cups broccoli = 45 carbs
I make the bean burritos myself with homemade beans and low carb tortillas. I acutally make 4 pounds of beans on the weekends and then make 30 burritos wrap them in aluminum foil and freeze them. I then pull a few out of the freezer and put them in the refriedgerator before bed. This diet takes excellent self- dicipline but for the predictable blood sugars and predictable digestion times I argue it is worth it. What do you think of this idea?
This is my first post and I am representing San Francisco, California.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Gerri on -
Hey Michele,
I didn't receive much from diabetes ed classes either. Mine was given through the local hospital & I was the only T1. Nothing I was told pertained to me & I wonder if this is was the same with your class. Unfortunately, people who use pumps are given much more education, which leaves those of us on MDI learning on our own.
75 grams per meal & another 45 grams in snacks! Whoa, that is a lot! How old is your son?
His BG should be tested first thing in the morning, before every meal, 2 hrs after meals & before bed. With all that snacking, he should be testing before & after snacks, too. These readings should be logged, along with doses & what he's eating. Know that's a lot of record keeping, but it's the only way to learn how food effects him & to arrive at appropriate doses of insulin.
What his insulin dose before meals? Doctors typically start patients at a ratio of 1 unit of insulin (rapid acting) for every 15 carbs of food taken about 15 minutes before meals. During the honeymoon the dose is less. Is your son also on basal insulin? From testing, the dose &/or timing is adjusted. It takes constant fine tuning. People also usually have different insulin:carb ratios for different meals. Many are most carb sensitive/insulin resistant in the morning & have a lower ratio for breakfast.
In addition to a I:C ratio, you also need to learn your son's insulin sensitivity--how many points BG will be lowered by one unit of insulin. This is used to correct highs. Everyone's different & it's based on weight for starters. I'm a small person. It only takes 1 unit of insulin to lower my BG 60 pts.
Sorry, not trying to overwhelm you. While it sounds complicated, it's not & becomes second nature.
How is your son taking insulin now? Did they give you a sliding scale, or are you matching doses based on carbs? Sliding scale isn't accurate & not the way it should be done. People start out on a sliding scale until they learn to count carbs.
It's hard to tell if high BG is from being sick or from meals without testing constantly. High BG slows healing & effects our immune system. Consistently high BG also makes him more susceptible to getting ill.
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Permalink Reply by Michele Stark on -
Wow lots of info. He is on 22 units of lantus at bedtime, and 1:10 ratio at breakfast and dinner, 1:15 for lunch to avoid mid afternoon lows which he is prone to. He is a growing boy at almost 13 and fully in the middle of puberty. He has grown an inch and a half since october. I was told at diagnosis to keep him between 80 and 150 but the nurses keep saying his numbers are ok even though we are averaging around 140 by his meters calculations. I think we are too high. He has missed 13 days of school this year. We were not told to test after meals and I don't know how much to give to correct without getting a low later.
The nurses that give the support seem to think he should be between 80 and 180.
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Permalink Reply by Kristin on -
Michele, I agree that this is a lot of carbs, but please keep in mind that sometimes the recommendations for growing children and different than adults. It would be good to double check with the parents in this group:
Parents of kids with type 1
For example, I know the good range for blood sugars for kids can be higher to avoid lows.
Gerri gave you some good advice! Testing more often can help you seen what is going on. Your son might not like this... but a good idea is to make sure that you have a lancet device (poker) that doesn't hurt as much. They cost about 30 dollars to buy a new one, but if you can get free meters (sometimes there are free offers at drug stores or from your diabetes education center) then they come with it for free! I (and many others) prefer the SoftClix or MultiClix that come with the Accu-chek meter. I see that you are using Accu-chek so it might be that one :)
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Permalink Reply by Kathy on -
My meals are very much the same every day but not as basic as yours are (I do switch things up a bit from time to time). Also I have to spread out my carbs a bit more. I prefer not feeling sick when I eat so I go with what works - when I don't I feel it. I think if you can make it have everything you need then that's wonderful if you can stick to it. Food is only to keep us alive when it comes down to it.
T2 / Celiac
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Permalink Reply by iroseland on
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Yea.. I have tried it many times.. Actually when I am going to be eating alone for long periods of time I will end up doing it just out of convenience. Last spring while I was contracting in Seattle I spent a few weeks pretty much eating exactly the same thing every day. I started calling the Hormel meat loaf my nightly MRE. My control was actually pretty good, and I lost a bunch of weight. The only real problem was if I did my humulog before eating, I really needed to finish all of it or I would wake up in the middle of the night with a low.
Ivan!
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Permalink Reply by FatCatAnna on -
Ivan - that's the one thing I like about being on a pump now. I don't do the full dose all at once like I did when I was on MDI (multiple doseage injections). Instead, with experimenting over the few years I've been pumping (and I'm self taught on this as well - no diabetic educator was available for me due to my lack of French). I spread my insulin dosage over 1-3 hours (in my Animas pump it's called a Combo Bolus) depending on what I'm eating/blood sugar reading at time of gorging out. Then if I can't eat all the food on my plate, I simply cancel the function. I find since starting to take my insulin coverage for meals this way with my pump, hypos are far and few between. You can do this with MDI, but it means more jabbing, as I have a friend who controls her BG's this way (she uses 4 different types of insulin, checks BG's every 1/2 an hour, injects ALOT). That's too much work for me, I'm lazy, so I have the pump do it for me, tho' she does have an A1C of I believe 4.9% now - so she's doing something right - but have a feeling she may not be truthful with me on the amount of hypos she experiences to get that low an A1C (with this calculation she averages about 94 mg/dl or 5.2 mmol/l)
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