Fasting glucose 130

(John Squires) #1

My fasting glucose over the past 15 years has always been over 100. My A1C has been 5.3-5.9, tested every 3-6 months. I’m 66, weigh 235 (down from 251 6 weeks ago); and I started Keto a month ago. My ketones are usually .7 to 1.1; going as low as .1 one day and as high as 1.5 another day. My fasting glucose levels were below 100 almost every day for the past 10 days, then 119 yesterday and 130 today.

Yesterday, I fasted most of the day, then had two small chicken thighs and a Keto milkshake (a chocolate Muscle Milk protein drink with 30 grams protein and 2 net carbs, blended with homemade vanilla Keto ice cream made with coconut milk, heavy whipping cream, vanilla and Xylitol, plus some crushed ice). This morning, 12 hours later, 130 glucose and .7 ketones. My weight loss has stalled - perhaps one pound in the last week. I’m averaging about 1500 calories a day.

Any ideas on stalled weight loss and high fasting glucose?

(Anjum) #2

I am not a Keto expert by any means and still very new. I would take a guess and say you aren’t consuming enough calories. For some of us constant caloric deficit puts our bodies in emergency mode. Our body does the opposite of what we are trying to achieve. Are you using an APP ? Tracking your macros will help you to adjust the way you are eating. I am a 6 foot female - starting weight 241 - now 225 - my calories for the day are supposed to be 1700. I use Carb Manager, but have heard myFitness pal is good too.

#3

I agree that might not be enough food. I’m not sure how many carbs are in the drink as i’m not familiar with keto ice cream, but if there are trace amounts, that’s less than 5g of carbs all day. Sometimes adding some in to 20 or closer to 20 helps. Sometimes adding fat helps. Sometimes not eating all the protein at one time helps. Sometimes removing artificial sweeteners help.

If you’re eating once per day, I would replace the drink will real food - greens, butter, etc but that’s me.

(karen) #4

Do you often drink that shake or was this an experiment? If the latter, I’d say that’s pretty clearly the culprit.

(John Squires) #5

I read most of The Obesity Code today. Dr Jason Fung wrote the book in 2016 and he explains why all diets fail and how the dietary guidelines in the USA are actually disproved by virtually every honest study. One thing that disappointed me the most is that he said low/no glycemic sweeteners, including agave, Stevia, etc. may not affect blood glucose levels, but they do have a significant insulin response. My Keto ice cream called for 2/3 cup of Xylitol, plus I added some Stevia sweetened dark chocolate chips. Recipe makes 10 1/2 cup servings.

Dr Fungs book talks extensively about the chemistry of the interactions between the foods we eat, how the brain controls our metabolism, and how our body goes to great lengths to get back to its weight set point. Lots of fascinating studies are discussed. He repeats at least 100 times that calories don’t make us fat - insulin makes us fat. Hence my disappointment about Stevia affecting insulin response much like table sugar does. He says some decent things about the Mediterranean and Paleo and Atkins diets, though he points out that the body will usually adapt itself to whatever you are doing and will will stop the weight loss. He did not talk about the Keto diet, other than describing ketosis in his chapter on fasting.

He talks a lot about insulin resistance. No easy cure, though keeping carbs very low and eating good fats and moderate proteins is a good start. No processed foods, of course. He thinks our best chance to reduce insulin resistance and potentially reset our body’s ‘weight set point’ is fasting, including intermittent fasting. If you eat the same types of meals 2 or 3 times a day, every day, the brain will reduce your metabolism and burn fewer calories. Letting your insulin levels get very low, often, will make it much harder for the brain to adapt, so weight loss will be easier and your odds of getting a lower weight norm will increase. He talks about two fascinating studies that demonstrated how the brain speeds up or slows down your metabolism to keep you or get you back to your weight norm.

(John Squires) #6

Before Keto, I would mix a cup of ice cream with the protein drink as a nighttime snack. It tasted great. By substituting the ice cream with just 1/2 cup of Keto ice cream, I eliminated the sugar and added good fats. I added crushed ice to make it thicker. It tasted almost as good as it did with real ice cream, but was more Keto friendly.

I will monitor my sugar and ketone levels for several days before trying another shake. If it causes a sugar spike, I’ll have to give it up.

(karen) #7

I didn’t mean to say it sounded really bad, you obviously went to trouble to make it keto friendly, but there may still be something in it that’s messing you up. N=1! :slightly_smiling_face:

(John Squires) #8

My biggest concern about going Keto was that I’d have to give up so many foods that I liked. For example, I often would eat a half of a bagel with peanut butter and a side of bacon in the morning. A half bagel had 30 carbs. So I ordered low carb bagels online and was able to experience a familiar breakfast that was comforting, but only about 4 carbs. Bagel was smaller, somewhat tasteless, but the experience was familiar and satisfying. If my next milkshake results in a high fasting glucose, I’ll eliminate the Keto ice cream and try using more ice and either some heavy whipping cream or flavored coconut butter.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #9

If you became aware that your favorite food was killing you, would you still find it hard to give it up?

I find that I don’t miss glazed doughnuts nearly as much as I was afraid I would, now that I know what they were doing to me. And especially given that I feel so much better since I gave up sugar, sweets, and nearly all carbohydrate.

(Jan) #10

I am a big fan of Dr Fung as well. However, I haven’t seen any effect on my bg from stevia, erythritol, or Monkfruit. Or xylitol or sucralose, either. And I’ve tested myself with all of these.
I HAVE seen fasting bg effects with a few things - acesulfame potassium (ace k) definitely gives me an insulin surge, lower bg. And eating lots of protein in the evening seems to elevate my bg a bit.
I guess the point I’m trying to make is - everybody’s different. Test it out. Eliminate one thing at a time & look for a change. Or eliminate anything that might affect it, and add back one thing at a time. Just control your variables.

(John Squires) #11

I have given up the foods that I knew were killing me. Specifically, the same ones you mentioned. I am ashamed to admit this, but in 2017, before going Keto, I ordered and consumed the following from Amazon:

  1. 400 2.1 ounce Snickers Bars
  2. 108 1.8 ounce Twix Bars
  3. 25 pounds of cinnamon bears
  4. 18 1.4 ounce Heath bars
  5. 288 Ferraro Rocher Hazelnut chocolates (individual pieces)
  6. 16 pounds sourdough pretzels
  7. 2 pounds fudge plus a half pound free

That is 99 pounds of candy I ate in 52 weeks, not counting the ice cream, pretzels, chips, cookies, brownies, etc. Despite this, my A1c ranged from 5.1 to 5.9, averaging about 5.7. I got to the point where 2 candy bars during late night TV no longer left me satiated, so I would eat 3, sometimes 4. Then I went for my quarterly checkup and my A1c had jumped from 5.4 to 6.3. Lesson learned? 2 pounds of candy a week is OK, 3 pounds not so OK. Just kidding, as I was insulin resistant even though my A1C had been good.

The 6.3 caught my attention (this was late April 2018) and I started reading about Atkins (which my brother had followed with success). I then followed a link to the Keto diet and read about the carbohydrate addiction cycle, insulin resistance (which I have - my fasting glucose has always been over 100), and how ketosis burns fats and reduces insulin resistance. I had tried intermittent fasting 4Q2017 and began with a 4 day fast, followed by 16 hours of fasting daily for 3 months. That’s when my A1c fell to 5.3 and I lost 15 pounds. Then I went back to my old ways for 3 months and I gained 15 pounds and my A1c went to 6.4 - worst it had ever been.
I started keto diet at the end of April. In 6 weeks, I’ve lost 17 pounds. I have had zero added sugar - no candy bars, no chips of any kind. And in the same way I was when intermittent fasting, I have never felt hungry or had any cravings for anything. Actually, there was one day I sort of had a craving, and that was for a big bowl of fresh greens with bacon, cheese, cucumbers and low-carb ranch dressing. My mouth drooled when I thought about it. Trust me, this has never happened to me in my entire life.

I’ve been out to eat a couple times and have stayed carb free. While I don’t strictly count my carbs daily, I’m pretty certain that I eat from 10-25 per day.

But one thing I want you to understand is that I think we can still eat some of the foods we used to love - foods that became part of our lifestyle and provided comfort. We just need to find ways to make them keto friendly. My nightly milkshakes were comforting. I still have them sometimes, but I got rid of the ice cream, chose a chocolate protein drink with only 2 net carbs, and made my own Keto ice cream that had perhaps 3 carbs. I added ice and it tasted almost as good as the sugar bomb I had been eating before. I replaced my morning half-bagel (35 carbs) with peanut butter and side of bacon, with a keto half-bagel (4 carbs) with the same peanut butter and bacon.

For someone starting out on a keto diet, I think it is helpful for them to take some of their comfort foods and instead of telling them they can’t have them anymore, substitute ingredients to make them very low carb. When I first looked at the list of Keto foods I was allowed to eat, I liked the meats, but who can get excited about drinking MCT oil, coconut milk, avocados (have never liked them, but found a keto chocolate pudding recipe that used a full avocado and it was good), brussels sprouts (totally hated them, but found a great recipe using some onions lightly fried in butter, spices, lots of bacon, cook till browned, add a little chicken stock to deglaze the pan and infuse the spices into the sprouts…I love them and eat them regularly now).

I bought a ketone meter and check my ketones every day. I’m usually between .7 and 1.5 and I want to increase that, so am looking at ways to get more MCT oil added to my foods. Many of my morning glucose levels have been below 100, though I had that 130 a couple days ago that confused me. I had another milkshake last night, but eliminated the keto ice cream and substituted coconut milk, additional ice and a spoonful of chocolate flavored coconut oil. Wasn’t as good, but I’ll keep working on it. This morning’s blood sugar was 97.

Sorry for the long story, but this is a real life keto story and I think people who read it, especially newbies, will get some ideas and perhaps feel better about the future of their own journey. Rather than saying they have to stop eating the things they love because they’ll die, help them find ways to change the ingredients so they can still eat something familiar, but without all the carbs. I’d also encourage newbies to Google ‘keto recipes’. There are thousands of them available online, and as I was reading through them, I realized that most of the dishes I like can be made low carb with simple substitutions. When I did that, it was a huge morale boost to me, because real-life keto can be so much more tasty than what one would think by looking at the list of keto friendly foods.

This keto thing is not going to be a short term diet in order to lose X amount of weight. I like the way I feel most days, I like not being hungry and not craving sweets. I ate at least 100 pounds of sugar (around 200,000 calories I think) last year - more than that, because that’s just what I can identify from Amazon purchases. In the last 42 days, I’ve probably averaged 1 gram of added sugar per day. ZERO cravings in the last six weeks (except the green salad). This is now a lifestyle for me.

(John Squires) #12

Thanks for your comments about stevia, etc. I’m going to do some testing to see if they do affect my fasting glucose. I’ll go with no stevia for a few days, then have a day with a moderate amount of it and watch my glucose and ketone responses.

(Kaiden) #13

On the other hand… One thing I learned is that sweetness is relative. I learned this when I purchased three bags of keto dessert/candy items from Eating Evolved. They make three type of “keto cups.” Most of their coconut cup products have coconut sugar, but these three contain either stevia, coffee, or nothing. The coffee and the nothing are unsweetened, unless you consider baker’s chocolate or coconut butter to be sweet, which it isn’t.

I’ve learned to enjoy 100% baker’s chocolate, unsweetened ketchup, and I’ve even found soda knock off stuff (cola, root beer, and Dr. Pepper clone) without sweetener… just the flavoring.

It is possible to learn to enjoy the taste of things without making them sweet.

(John Squires) #14

Jan, in Dr. Fungs Obesity book, he states that artificial sweeteners affect insulin response to about the same degree as sugars. He does not provide any studies or references. And on his YouTube lectures (I’ve only watched two) he hasn’t mentioned them.

There was a controlled study a few years ago that concluded artificial sweeteners do have a glucose response. Most previous studies have said no glucose response, or the results were inconclusive. The explanation was that the sweet receptors in our tongue only recognize “sweet”, not the type of sweetener. So the brain is signaled that there is incoming sugar, and the brain calls for insulin to be released.

Then in one of Fung’s lectures, he said that we can’t assume that foods low on the glycemic index also have low insulin response. We should be looking at the Insulin Index of foods as well, though there are only about 160 (from memory) foods that have been scientifically tested for insulin response. Within that group, however there were some significant outliers. White fish, for example, had a very low glycemic index but the insulin response was about 4 times higher than one would expect, if the two were highly correlated. And there were a few foods that had pretty high glycemic scores, yet low insulin response scores.

This is important because, according to Fung, insulin is what we need to watch and treat. The disease is insulin resistance, yet the medical field only looks at glucose levels and tries to reduce those. High glucose levels are the result of insulin resistance. He says that focusing on trying to get a person’s glucose level down, when the root problem is insulin resistance, is like giving Ibuprofen to a person with a festering bacterial infection who has a headache, but otherwise feels OK. Treat the infection and the headache will go away. Treat the insulin resistance and the glucose highs/lows will go away.

Fung believes that the glycemic index is only about 25% of the answer to the insulin index. He’s done some work with factoring in protein and fiber amounts and the two indexes come into a little bit better correlation, but he thinks that glycemic+protein+fiber still only account for about 35% of the understanding of the relationship. So the takeaway at this point is to take a look at the insulin index and see if any of the foods you’re eating on your keto diet actually have a high insulin response. Unfortunately, a high percentage of the foods tested were breakfast cereals, snack foods, etc. White fish was the standout.

(Jan) #15

@Kaiden, I agree- my taste for sweets has decreased dramatically. And I do not crave sweet things at all. However, I really do enjoy a bit of golden Monkfruit in my morning coffee. I can take it without any sweetener, and I often do when I’m not at home. I’ve gone for quite a while with no sweeteners whatsoever. No change in bg, up or down, at least with the sweeteners I’ve listed. But I prefer my coffee slightly sweet.
Have you tried Trader Joe’s Montezuma chocolate? No added sweeteners, really delicious.