Hi all, just started the diet. Hubby needs to lose lots of weight and I need to lose just visceral fat as am in the healthy weight range but huge belly. Started reading the books in fact to support m-in-law who has type 2, but we decided to follow the diet too.
Tested ourselves this morning and my reading was 6.9😳
How ironic.
You dont need to test yourself if you are not diabetic. The difference between you and your M-I-L is that your blood glucose to insulin adjusts automatically so your reading of 6.9 means absolutely nothing. However, if you are just keeping M-I-L company with the testing you will see hers go down and yours might very well stay the same.
This is something that troubled me for a while.
I am not diagnosed with anything but I am in many of the risk categories and I developed new symptoms indicative of type 2 so this was a big motivation to follow the BSD as opposed to other diets. I bought a blood testing kit as DrMM suggests and gave it a go.
My first fasting reading was 5.6. On the American scale that would just put me into the pre-diabetic category. I took this as a sign I was hearing what my body was trying to tell me. I tested by blood before breakfast as part of my weekly weigh-in regime but just got frustrated and a little worried. The numbers were the same or even higher each week! One particularly stressful weigh-in morning I had a brainwave. I was getting myself wound up, pushing up my adrenaline and hence my blood sugars. I wasn’t testing myself until everyone was safely off to school or work. By that time I had worried about a dozen things, argued with the kids or maybe sat in a traffic jam or negotiated icy roads. Then I would worry about getting the test right as I struggled for a long time to get a big enough bead of blood to test. I would even wake earlier on weigh-in day and my first thought would be the blood test.
The solution for me was not to plan the test. Now I just grab the test kit from the side of my bed, every 5 days or so, when I first wake up. And of course I’ve had plenty of practice with the kit now so the process doesn’t bother me. I had my lowest ever reading this morning at 4.9.
I may not be right to interpret this the way I have – I have no expertise – but I think I’m on the right track now. I hope that helps you if you want to try again and understand your blood sugars.
Al
The diet is specifically aimed at people with diabetes or pre-diabetes so all the medical instructions are there for that purpose. Anyone can do the diet and it is a great way to lose weight quickly but there is no reason to conform to the rules about medications, testing, talking to your doctor etc. Non-diabetics testing will get completely differing readings and even if you think it looks high your body is able to cope with that and adjust the glucose / insulin ratio automatically. That is what diabetics cannot do and have to control that function with diet, exercise, medication etc. My husband suffers from white coat syndrome so every time he has his blood pressure taken at the doctors it is very high so he bought himself a blood pressure machine. In the end I had to hide it as he was testing 3 or 4 time a day – before getting up, on sitting up, before exercise, after exercise, you name it he tested. This is the effect you will get by testing BG and it will mean (and I keep saying this) ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. If you are going to become diabetic the only accurate test is the HbA1c or the glucose tolerance drink test, not one off finger pricks.