# cherry bakewell



## bakebeans (Jun 21, 2019)

I was very silly today I had a moment of weakness and ate lunch at a picnic like I would have 5 weeks ago. I had a ham and cheese sandwich, packet of crisps, twix biscuit, strawberries and tomatoes then to top it off ate a cherry bakewell. My sugars certainly took a hit and I learnt a valuable lesson : while I can’t stuff my face like a pig anymore I actually didn’t enjoy it. The sandwich and twix biscuit was delicious but the bakewell did nothing for me!! 

1 hour after eating I was at 10.4 
2 hours 11.9
Glass of water and 20 mins exercise 8.1
2 hours 45 mins after eating 7.4


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## Northerner (Jun 22, 2019)

It can be surprising how quickly your tastes can change after you have cut down on the sugary stuff for a while! Your body coped remarkably well with that carb fest, although obviously not ideal.


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## bakebeans (Jun 22, 2019)

It surprised me how much I didn’t enjoy it. I tested again 4 hours after I’d eaten and I was 4.2 does that mean my body is improving a little? I didn’t like seeing the bigger numbers I’d probably been hitting those a lot January -may without even realising it’s quite scary


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## Northerner (Jun 22, 2019)

bakebeans said:


> It surprised me how much I didn’t enjoy it. I tested again 4 hours after I’d eaten and I was 4.2 does that mean my body is improving a little? I didn’t like seeing the bigger numbers I’d probably been hitting those a lot January -may without even realising it’s quite scary


If you're back to 4.2 after 4 hours then yes, your body handled it well  And whilst the numbers were high after eating they were not exceptionally so - probably more of a 'spike' than anything sustained. The ideal situation is to try and avoid those spikes and look for things that will release their energy slowly and steadily. There's something called 'Glycaemic Load' which is a method of selecting food combinations that will have this slow, steady impact - The GL Diet for Dummies (no offence! ) is a very good introduction


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## bakebeans (Jun 22, 2019)

Thanks you I’ll look into it. This is what’s confusing me a couple of years ago I went to the drs as I’d tested my sugar level (parents are type 2 so was comparing with them) and it was 11 after an hour and some exercise it went down to 4 and my dr said that was fine it was what it was meant to do. Now people are saying that’s not right it shouldn’t spike that high makes me think maybe this has been going on longer than my dr thinks though she did test me 18 months ago and 42 was the magic number


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## Eddy Edson (Jun 22, 2019)

bakebeans said:


> Thanks you I’ll look into it. This is what’s confusing me a couple of years ago I went to the drs as I’d tested my sugar level (parents are type 2 so was comparing with them) and it was 11 after an hour and some exercise it went down to 4 and my dr said that was fine it was what it was meant to do. Now people are saying that’s not right it shouldn’t spike that high makes me think maybe this has been going on longer than my dr thinks though she did test me 18 months ago and 42 was the magic number



No surprise, but it depends on what you eat and who you are. 

This is one of my favourite charts, from an excellent recent study part of which involved seeing what happened to the BG of several hundred non-diabetics after eating a standard bagel+cream cheese meal on two different days. The chart shows just six of the participants, represented by different colours, and what happened to them on the two different days.  The glucose numbers are in American mg/dl so divide by 18 to get mmol/L.



Each person's profile didn't change very much between the two days, but there were huge differences between the ways people reacted.

Some people could go as high as ~11 after eating; a bunch of them could go well over 8. Some people peaked at < 60 min, others at 90+ min.  Some were still not back to their starting levels after 2.5 hours.

There's a range of recent CGM studies showing similar pictures for non-diabetics. Setting single-number targets which are roughly where an "average" non-diabetic might be after 2 hours after an "average" meal is really not very useful but is basically where the targets you see mentioned come from.  

If you're "naturally" the kind of person who went 10+ after eating a bagel before a diabetes DX, then it's not going to be very fruitful stressing about it after the DX. Non-diabetics can routinely go higher than 10, depending on who they are and what they eat.  

This kind of study also undermines the usefulness of the GI/GL stuff @Northerner mentions.  The point is that there is no "absolute" GI/GL measure for a food. The ones you see quoted are average values typically from very small studies.  But people's individuals reactions might have very little in common with these averages.

This chart is from another study, looking at hwo non-diabetics respond to different types of bread.  Apologies for it being hard to read - like that in the original paper.


Anyway, the chart on the left shows *average* BG after eating various kinds of bread.  As expected, the *average* peak is highest with high-GI white bread, and lowest with lower-GI oat bread.  

But those averages conceal a huge range of individual responses, as shown in the second chart. The boxes represent the levels seen by 25% - 75% of participants; the line in the box the average; and the end points the highest and lowest levels seen. 

You can see that plenty of people went higher with oat bread than they did with white, and so on. The range for spelt bread is remarkable!  

Takeaway: GI/GL is a nice idea but individual variability is so great that having a single number for each type of food isn't very meaningful.


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## Northerner (Jun 22, 2019)

Eddy Edson said:


> Takeaway: GI/GL is a nice idea but individual variability is so great that having a single number for each type of food isn't very meaningful.


It's a start though, and can be refined in combination with personal experience using the meter  There are few 'absolutes' where diabetes is concerned


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## Eddy Edson (Jun 22, 2019)

Northerner said:


> It's a start though, and can be refined in combination with personal experience using the meter  There are few 'absolutes' where diabetes is concerned



Yup


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## Jodee (Jun 22, 2019)

Wow, great information here 

I just did my weekly weigh in I am steadily losing the grams as each week goes by.

66.8kg this weeks weigh in and this week I've had potatoes and ordinary bread when I had lunch out.

66.5kg = 10st 5lb  or 147.26 lbs 

BG hasn't been in the 5s but ranging between 6s and couple of 7s
Going to focus more on the BG this weekend/week - except Tuesday I am eating lunch in Selfridges, could be a bit indulging


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## bakebeans (Jun 22, 2019)

Much better lunch today a dollop of peanut butter, carrot and celery sticks with a cup of tea. Bbq tonight though so I may treat myself to a bread roll with my burger.

Thanks again for all the info I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it many times again it’s wonderful the support, encouragement and advice you guys give


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## Eddy Edson (Jun 23, 2019)

So this morning I had a carb-frenzy breakfast - fruit+soy milk panna cotta+granola+big soy flat white. The fruit included watermelon, for some strange reason my fruit-nemesis when it comes to BG.  The panna cotta had about a ton of sugar. The granola was full of dried fruit.  

I estimate about 130g net carbs. Peaked at around 10 mmol/L around 60 min after eating, back down to 7.5 mmol/L after 2 hours.  How "abnormal"?

 First, 10.0/7.5 mmol/L are levels that non-diabetics can certainly see 1hr/2hrs after eating, and I am really sensitive to watermelon (go figure??) and pretty sensitive to the grains in the granola. 

On the other hand, in the non-diabetic CGM studies I've seen, these kinds of levels are not very common. 

On the other other hand, these CGM studies I've seen typically use standardised meals with ~50g carbs - and I actually have no idea what the spectrum of "normal" responses to my 130g carb-fest would look like.

From another direction, FWIW, my 1 hr/2 hr levels are within the "normal" levels for the old oral glucose tolerance test (11.0 / 7.8). But that typically uses  75g glucose, and I have no idea how that would compare with my 130g if various carbs.

So - screw it. It's not worth worrying about these short-term peaks, unless they go well above 11 and stay high for a long time.  Otherwise, focus on the average which gets reflected in the HbA1c.


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## Ditto (Jun 23, 2019)

I was led to believe that the two worst foods a diabetic can eat are watermelon and baked potato! I luvs both unfortunately, also white bread and white rice. I shall try to avoid them all. 

One of my favourite meals at the cafe is a jacket with chilli over.


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## Eddy Edson (Jun 23, 2019)

Ditto said:


> I was led to believe that the two worst foods a diabetic can eat are watermelon and baked potato! I luvs both unfortunately, also white bread and white rice. I shall try to avoid them all.
> 
> One of my favourite meals at the cafe is a jacket with chilli over.



Watermelon is I think another illustration of the probs with the GI/GL approach. From what I've seen, the normal comment is that watermelon has a high GI but it doesn't matter because the GL is low - ie fast acting carbs, but not very many of them for a normal serve, so overall a low impact on BG.  That could well be true on average. but it sure ain't true for me.


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## Ditto (Jun 23, 2019)

That sounds okay. They have nice watermelon slices in Tesco, I shall treat myself next week at the weekly shop and measure/test in the interests of science.


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## Eddy Edson (Jun 23, 2019)

Ditto said:


> That sounds okay. They have nice watermelon slices in Tesco, I shall treat myself next week at the weekly shop and measure/test in the interests of science.



Such dedication!


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## Eddy Edson (Jun 23, 2019)

Eddy Edson said:


> No surprise, but it depends on what you eat and who you are.
> 
> ...
> 
> Takeaway: GI/GL is a nice idea but individual variability is so great that having a single number for each type of food isn't very meaningful.



And the latest big study along the same lines: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-06/mcg-lsn060719.php

What particular foods do to your BG etc depends a lot on your gut microbes, and not so much on how many carbs etc they contain.


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## Northerner (Jun 23, 2019)

This is interesting also on the subject of gut bacteria 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/ar...on-weight-and-not-others-and-can-we-change-it


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## Jodee (Jun 23, 2019)

The Cherry Bakewells were on special in the shop today,  I looked and thought, and passed them buy.  I am having a small portion of brown rice with dinner shortly + salmon and salad.  BG before eating 6.0 - running a bit high today.


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## Ditto (Jun 24, 2019)

Eddy Edson said:


> Such dedication!


No, such greed! Just an excuse to eat watermelon, can't wait. 



> The Cherry Bakewells were on special in the shop today,


 They were on offer in our Nisa too, six in a box for a pound! I don't like Bakewells and I'm not that bothered by cakes or sweet stuff, now if it was potatoes or bread I'd be in like flynn!


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