Hi all,
I am just starting the BSD as my Type 2 diabetes, which was previously within safe levels just with moderate exercise and a sensible diet (no weight loss), is now no longer OK. My blood sugar levels have risen to unacceptable levels so it’s time to take some action. I hope to lose enough weight to get reverse the diabetes.
I am curious about impacts of this kind of dietary change on BSL, and especially unexpected readings in the morning.
So I have been fasting (actually 16:8) and reducing calories and carbs over the past 5 days while waiting for the BSD books to turn up. I have also been testing my BSL more often. The fasting and major reduction in food and carb intake has brought down my BSL overall already in a few days, however I notice my fasting BSL in the morning is generally quite high. It seems to get better through the day. Yesterday it even went up in the hour after waking, even though I ate nothing (8.8 on waking, 9.6 an hour and a half later with no food and being quite active). Today it was 9.4 on waking even though yesterday I ate within a 7 hour window, ate low carb meals with no snacking, and worked hard at the gym for an hour. By contrast, my BSL improved during the day (and usually does), this afternoon it is 5.3, three hours after lunch.
Any clues why it would be rising so much overnight and in the early morning, without food?

Welcome to the forum TaytoP. You have made a really good start. It is absolutely normal to have high morning BSLs when you start cutting calories and carbs because your liver which (at the moment) is stuffed full of glucose starts dumping some (or a lot) of that glucose because you have gone lower overnight than it is used to.

It’s called the dawn phenomenon and is totally normal and happens to everyone. The problem with us – as type 2s – is that our livers are absolutely stuffed with glucose and have lots that they can dump into our blood. If you put dawn phenomenon into the top right hand corner search box you will find lots of info on it.

I didn’t have the dawn phenomenon for very long but some people found it went on for months. Mine completely went away when I dropped to 20g carbs and my liver had much more normal levels of glucose stored.

Thank you very much for your reply KrysiaD. I did go and do some research via the search bar and got some good information, thank you.
I am going to try the small dairy snack before bed and see if that changes it too. But I guess it’s a good thing if our liver thinks we might be starving, means we might lose some weight and some of that liver fat.

You are right that it is a good thing and that it means we might lose some liver fat and weight. I definitely lost the weight and assume that the liver fat went also. It is so wonderful that we can turn our health around and reverse some of the damage we have done to our bodies.