hi everyone, i am still on the bsd. been a pretty good girl haha. my question is this….. I have found that if my breakfast is delayed by a few hours or more I feel quite ill. I become weak, shaky and sick to the stomach. I am not on insulin or other diabetic drugs. Do you think it is possible to have a hypo or low blood sugar when a diet controlled diabetic?
Thanks for your help
Bigeater
Hi Bigeater — I’m thinking you might be going too many hours without eating — if you skip breakfast, you will be up to fifteen or more hours between meals and maybe that is too much for your body (everyone is different). Shaky and stomach-sick are classic low-blood sugar responses.
You may also still be eating too many or too many of the wrong kind of carbohydrate which is interfering with your body’s ability to mobilize and use your fat stores. That can also lead to low blood sugar episodes.
Most of us who are fat have over-excited insulin responses or high background insulin — insulin is your “storage hormone” and locks away your calories in your fat cells — when insulin is high, you cannot access the stored fat and low blood sugar results.
To lower insulin, you must cut your carb intake to a very low level — 20 grams or less per day. Try that for a week or two and see what effect that has on these episodes. Then you can play around with adding in more carbs until you work out for yourself where your “sweet spot” lies. Everyone is different — don’t use a general guideline, use your own body!
And, I always also counsel, when really really hungry….EAT something (fat and protein) because we should honor true hunger in our wonderful, hard working, ever faithful bodies.
Bigeater, I have no personal experience of diabetes or low blood sugar, but what Californiagirl says makes a lot of sense. I agree, try lowering your carb intake – it’s not too difficult to stay around 20g a day if you are careful and it might sort the problem out. Anyway, just wanted to say that I hope you feel better soon, it must be miserable feeling like that every morning, so good luck and please let us know how you get on.
Hi, Thanks California Girl and Theodora,
It does sound like low blood sugar doesnt it? Luckily it only happens sometimes, like when people don’t give me time to have breakfast or I am so busy another meal is delayed. Mostly though it is the delayed breakfast, rarely happens at other times.
Given these episodes – I love the idea of fasting for 16hours plus but just don’t think my body would allow it.
On the carb note, yes, restrict carbs and don’t eat the baddies except on one occasion when I was hijacked by a potato demon. However, I will restrict further and see how that goes.
I think though, the simple solution is to eat breakfast in a timely manner or tell those breakfast interruptors to go away!
All the best
Bigeater