Glucose spike on cheat meal T2D on keto

(SA) #1

Hello

I have been on Keto for last 3 months and have had a cheat meal every 15th day mainly due to outdoor events.

I have t2d for 1 year now and my A1C was around 6.1. After keto diet it has come down to 5.7 as of last week. My cholesterol has drastically improved so I see my insulin resistance has come down drastically. My HLD has improved amazingly and Trig has come down too.

My doctor was advising me to take metformin but luckily I came across keto and started doing it.

My question is when I have the cheat meal my glucose level spikes immediately to 250 levels. I have never seen that level before starting keto. Pre keto the max I have seen is 170 that is after 2 hours of post lunch.

But now with keto on cheat meal my glucose stays at 250 for 2 hours and then after 3 hours I see it drop to 110-120 range.

I am very concerned about this and what damage it can cause to me. Should I stop keto altogether. Appreciate if anyone could advice how dangerous is this.

I know i have to avoid cheat days but something or the other will put me in a place to take carb meal and I do travel a lot so its not easy.

Thanks in advance.

(Banting & Yudkin & Atkins & Eadeses & Cordain & Taubes & Volek & Naiman & Bikman ) #2

There are ways to eat keto nearly everywhere, or skip a meal, if necessary.

If it spikes your glucose, you’re not as well as you think, and you should probably slow your roll with the cheat meals.

What does avoiding metformin and diabetes complications mean to you? More or less than bi weekly cheat meals?

(Jay AM) #3

So, your options are stop the thing that’s improving your health significantly or give up your cheat meals? I see something wrong with those priorities. And, your excuse about travelling is null. Do a search for truckers here. We have a whole topic about eating on the road. I am a trucker and I live on my truck, a huge majority of my food is either fast food or stuff that doesn’t require refrigeration. If you drive a regular vehicle to travel, you have access to everything. I can’t put my 70 foot vehicle into most places and still make things work. If flying is the problem, most airports have food you can make keto as well as picking up food in advance. As far as events outdoors, unless you’re going to a potato festival, I’m 100% that there is something keto there. Grilled food, cheese, mayo, veggies, devilled eggs.

Likely your glucose spikes come with a hyper insulin response. Basically, your body is used to being insulin resistant (this is what causes T2D and pre diabetes.) With insulin resistance the body keeps having to produce more and more insulin to get the same amount of glucose lowered. So, now you’ve kept glucose fairly low for a large number of days. This means insulin has been low too and you’re likely in ketosis. Fantastic. And then comes the high carb load again. Your body may not have high glucose normally but, that hasn’t stopped you from being insulin resistant. You also keep trying to give a fuel source your body isn’t actively using. You see a huge spike, it lasts for quite some time as your body scrambles to try to get it somewhere and dumps insulin in the attempt. It’s like panic mode. Eventually everything clears back up but, that takes a day or three. Are you causing damage doing this? Possibly. It’s up to you whether you’ll make the attempt to avoid it.

(SA) #4

Thanks for replying.

When flying internationally I have not been able to just survive always with keto diet, so I have gone with cheat option. I have skipped meals to avoid carbs and have carried nuts to munch on. But sometimes its just not possible, so I have been on carbs.

From what you both have said it looks like my insulin resistance is still high and thats why the high spike in sugar as against my preketo experience. So it may be same damaging effect of diabetes.

Will have to see how I can avoid the cheat meals in future. Thank you.

(Raj Seth) #5

If you get fully keto, and get fat adapted, then skipping that one meal every 2 weeks will be a breeze! Simple IF. problem solved
If you’re talking carb loading for days - I guess that’s a choice you have to make

(SA) #6

OK. I regularly use by Urine strips to see how well I am adapted, but you may be right, the long term adaptation benefits will be different as compared to the short term that I have been.

Biut still I just don’t understand why my blood glucose spikes so much, its like my beta cells are in sleep mode for 3 hours. Not sure whether I am causing permanent damage to it, thats more worrying me.

Thanks for your reply.

(Ken) #7

IMO, your blood glucose spikes because you still have some degree of hyperinsulinemia. You’re not adapted yet. You might want to reduce the amount of carbs for your day, but in reality it’s so infrequent that it’s probably not a real problem.

(SA) #8

As an update, I have completed 4 plus months of keto diet now.

Last month, I had to travel outside US and I had carried avacados as my backup plan and it really worked out well. Last week I was back in US and one thing I noticed is that, I was literally feeling low in energy and strength. I could feel it and was about to faint. First thing I did was to test my BG and it stayed almost around 110-120. I was already consuming enough of lime water + vinegar + salt. And also I tested my electrolytes and they were normal. Only thing that was on border was the uric acid which I think will be normalized if i consume more lime water and salt.

COming back to energy levels I don’t know what made me feel so terrible, finally after 3 days of this, with reluctance I ate one carb meal. Within 1 hour all of my fainting and energy loss symptoms vanished. My BG went to 180 and then came back to normal.

Has anyone aborbed this kind of energy loss while following this diet. I am pretty sure I consumed enough fat, may be low on carbs.

Is this normal or am I hurting my self.