What my blood sugar looks like, almost 5 years into low carb

[ctviggen]

I see people posting about blood sugar all the time. Here’s a point of reference. I have been low carb (permanently) since January 1, 2014. I had a small deviation into paleo (higher carb), delved into resistance starch (heated cooled potatoes and rice, plantains), started intermittent and long term fasting 3+ years ago, had a set back due to shoulder surgery (think major loss of muscle mass, lack of sleep). I am down somewhere around 50 pounds, still (slightly) “obese” by BMI, but have gained quite a bit of my former muscle back and DEXA scans showed (only over a year) a gain in muscle and loss in fat, though not much off the scale.

I had purchased a FreeStyle Libre continuous glucose monitor to test whether higher protein (very high sometimes, well over 100 grams in a meal) did anything to my blood sugar (it did not, and I’m not sure what if anything it did to ketones). I’m down to my last two “disks”. You attach a “disk” to your arm and it holds 8 hour of data. You use a reader to get the data. You can use a program to then look at the data. I’m using a CGM from Sweden (I’m not diabetic, and the FreeStyle is not over the counter in the USA but is in Sweden) and software from Canada. Consequently, the units are in mmol/L, and to convert to US units, multiply by 18: 5.6 = 100; 6.1 = 110; 5 = 90; 4 = 72. Unfortunately, the software does not let you scroll through the data so that you can see what your blood sugar was at any time. The limit of 4 is as low as you can set it. Each “disk” lasts two weeks and costs about $80 US. This device is meant for diabetics, so the scale is huge. Someone like me in ketosis all (most) of the time is basically a straight line on that scale. When you take data, the machine records that, so I’ve been trying to take data all the time. If I have the machine with me, I’ll take data right before eating, right after, and sometime after I finished.

My pattern is that my blood sugar is usually over 100 in the morning, goes up all day until around noon and goes down all day until around midnight or so, with blips sometimes for meals. If I stick to all meat, there’s not even a blip.

I took a bunch of data contemporaneously with my pin prick meter to verify. It’s hard to verify, though, as sometimes the pin prick meter is higher and sometimes it’s lower, though it’s generally slightly higher.

[ctviggen]

Here’s Thursday, Sept. 27. Fasting all day until dinner. Ate one meal. I think it was pork chops, some vegetables, some ricotta cheese (to finish it, left over from a recipe) with some 85 % chocolate. You see my blood sugar is over/near 100 (5.6) for quite a while in the morning.

[ctviggen]

Here is Friday, 28 September. I did a body by science (weight lifting to failure) in the morning after getting up. Normally, I add 22 minutes HIIT to that, but I skipped the HIIT that morning. I had lunch where the 5.4, 5.6 is, of ground beef (drained, 80%) and some red sauce, and one can salmon. 6.0 = 108. Although it doesn’t look like I had dinner, I had a salad with beef (12 ounces), and pork, olives, onions, etc. Olive oil, vinegar. Had yogurt with 85% chocolate.

[ctviggen]

Here is Saturday, Sept. 30. I’m doing a project in the basement (insulating the concrete and rim joist with rigid foam insulation). I worked in the basement until about noon, when I had my first meal of a 4-egg omelette with beef heart, some salsa, cheese, and some olives. I forgot to take measurements before and after the meal. You can see there’s literally no bump for that, although due to activity, my blood sugar stays high. (Usually HIIT causes a major increase in blood sugar for me, especially with lifting, so this is similar but on a lower scale.) Went to dinner, had prime rib (12 ounces?) and mushrooms. 1600 (4pm) is when we left. Came back (at the 4.7) and was hungry, so had ham, mustard, pickle spears, and also 2 types of yogurt and half an 85% chocolate bar. Note absolutely no blood sugar rise for this, or either meal really. Had one drink of gin with three olives before going to bed.

[ctviggen]

Oh yeah, if you see a red area, that means it went below 4.0 (72). My blood sugar always is lowest at night (unless I’m fasting a long time, when it can drop into the 60s in the day).

[Peter]

Looks pretty normal range - nice work.

I would think you had lots of other health benefits over the 5 years as well

[ctviggen]

Definitely have had many benefits over that time. No allergies, no chest congestion, better sleep, it goes on and on…

I just want people to know that getting blood sugar in the morning over 100 isn’t necessarily bad. My last HbA1c was 5.0, even though my blood sugar is “high” in the mornings.

Also, if anyone has the ability to get a CGM, I highly recommend them. I was trying to be good the night before Christmas, so while everyone else had sushi, I had some soup from the sushi place and meat. I was shocked to see my blood sugar skyrocket from soup! Whatever they used to thicken the soup (corn starch?) caused a blood sugar swing. I learned that potatoes still cause my blood sugar to go up (so much for resistant starch), although I will have potatoes sometimes. Things that I thought would cause my blood sugar to go up (popcorn) did not.

Eating all meat causes zero blood sugar rise for me. It’s as if I did not eat. I don’t seem much if any rise from cheese and other dairy, though I eat a lot less dairy now than I did when I started.