I had a … date with the devil???
YES!!! … and by devil I mean… Carbohydrates!!!
Now…I”m not talking about eating an orange wedge… or even a baked potato!
We are talking full BORE high carb eating!!! ………… however I remained GLUTEN FREE! :)
Note: If you are not drug / insulin free and if have not broken your carb addiction… please do NOT try this… please…
In case you missed the “Day 1” post … PLEASE go back and read it now, “click here“. I don’t want to spend ‘ink’ re-hashing it here. Thank you. :)
Date… continued… Day 2
Where I left off from the previous post … I had tested my blood sugar two hours post and it read … 146 mg/dl. The bad news is… that exceeds ‘normal’ and is in the diabetic ranges for two hours post meal.
I went to bed with a blood sugar reading of 129 mg/dl. Keep in mind, this was after eating a dinner of 145 grams of carbs for a total of 232 grams for the DAY!!! Far exceeding what I was accustomed to, typically sub 3o grams per day.
When I woke up on Day 2... I had ONE thing on my mind… testing my blood sugar.
My usual Overnight Fasting Blood Sugar range is in the 80s’… sometimes in the upper 70’s and sometimes in the lower 90’s… but usually in the 80’s. 
My Overnight Fasting Blood Sugar was … 93 mg/dl!!!
93 mg/dl after eating all those carbs?? My body did have some difficulty ‘handling’ the carbs for dinner the previous day but it obviously had NO difficulty going ‘normal’ overnight.
At this point I had riden a very INTENSE roller coaster ride emotionally.
There were times the previous day that I really thought I might have cured my insulin resistance… which would mean that I had cured my diabetes.
Then the delayed two hour reaction of the carbs from dinner dashed those hopes.
However, after seeing a 93 mg/dl … my hopes for a cure were re-kindled.
Why? … it’s well known that once you go very low carb for awhile, it can take some time before your body can adjust back to burning carbohydrates efficiently for fuel. With the 90 mg/dl, in my mind, I thought that perhaps there was still a chance.
Note: Going low carb primal does not make you insulin resistant… that’s a lie created by the American Diabetes Association and their pathetic ADA Minion. Going low carb primal simply makes your body accustomed to burning fat/ketones … and there is an adjustment period while your body adjusts to being more carbohydrate tolerant.
Let’s move ON!! :)
Breakfast
For breakfast I had, Two Bananas and an Apple … just those 3 things were 88.9 grams of carbs.
One Hour Post Meal Blood Sugar Reading = 205 mg/dl the first time. I was in shock so I failed to take a picture of the reading. I quickly took another reading and read … yep… 213 mg/dl.
In this meal, there was more pure sugar from the fruit and … there was ZERO fat to help slow down the carbohydrate processing.
I might as well have injected glucose directly into my blood stream.
Note: In my mind, this ‘seals the deal’. I am definitely still a diabetic, still definitely insulin resistant.
1 1/2 hours post meal = 187, I tested again and I read 187 mg/dl. My body was ‘dealing’ with the carbohydrates, that’s encouraging but not fast enough to prevent excessive cell and organ damage.
… after these results I thought about quitting the experiment all together but I decided to at least move forward until lunch time.
Pre-lunch Blood Sugar = 105 mg/dl … not bad, almost in normal ranges at this point. This was approximately three hours post breakfast.
Lunch
For lunch I had a pile of rice, a pile of boiled sweet potato and a pile of Beef Roast … it was GOOD! (click on the picture for enlarged view)
The meal was about 85 grams of carbs. Not much different than the breakfast in ‘carb count’… but as you can see (below) there was a big difference in blood sugar levels. 213 vs 157 mg/dl.
The starches in the rice and sweet potatoes (and white potatoes) definitely were easier to handle (with the fats from the meat) than almost pure sugar from the bananas and apples. Convinced me to stay away from eating a lot of fruit… for SURE!
The 1 hour post meal of 157 mg/dl was just more evidence that I am still diabetic. Combined with the numbers from post breakfast… there was very little doubt.
I read a 117 mg/dl two hours post meal … which is borderline ‘pre-diabetic’ blood sugar range, so my body is processing the blood sugar, it just takes it longer than ‘non-diabetics’.
Just to wrap up the ‘evidence’ portion of this post, below is my Overnight Fasting Blood Sugar reading on Day 3. This is after a day in which I consumed 185 grams of carbohydrates … far exceeding what I was accustomed to.
In the next section I’ll sum it all up! :)
Recap:
Day 1 – I consumed 232 grams of carbs … in a single DAY!
In 24 hours, I consumed 417 grams of CARBS!!!
Summary
I said that I wanted to accomplish three things with this experiment.
1) See if I am still diabetic. … I am.
2) Prove that I was diabetic… I am.
3) If my blood sugar does elevate, show others how I reduce blood sugars without drugs and insulin.
And I will do that in a future post… very soon. :)
Notes:
I did not ‘feel’ any energy loss or gain from this experiment, however it was only for 24 hours.
Once my blood sugars are back to ‘non-diabetic normal’, I am planning on doing this experiment again… but next time I will slowing increase the carbohydrate counts. :)
Final Observation: This test could be seen by some as a negative thing. After all I am still diabetic.
But I sincerely look at this as a positive!! Regardless, I am never going back to the way I ‘was’. That path lead me to poorer and poorer health, in addition to my diabetes.
This experiment proves something else too!!
I am STILL DIABETIC and I maintain NORMAL BLOOD SUGARS!!!!
Thanks to following a ‘low carb primal’ lifestyle!!!
Therefore… if I can do it… SO CAN YOU!!!!!!!!!! :)
Take care and please … I urge you!
Go primal and start THRIVING!!! … not just surviving!
Note: Here are the additional posts, Day 1, Day 2 and Follow Up.
Very interesting experiment. I hope you have not damaged yourself. I’m interested to see how long and how difficult it is for you to get your blood sugars to completely return to normal (pre-experiment). My husband is a diabetic. When he occasionally eats a high carb food, his BS spikes but does come back down thus suggesting to him that occasional cheats are okay. But one leads to another and pretty soon his BS’s are significantly higher all the time and I hear, “I don’t know why?” I do. I wish he was more interested learning to control his health issues. I’m always the “nag” and always frustrated.
Sincere thanks for the comment. :) You point out why I promote and preach total and complete adherence to a low carb paleo meal plan. I hope your husband ‘gets the message’ before it’s too late for him. :(
My BG is moving down, 106 and 93 the past two mornings. Both were after either intense exercise or a few carbohydrates … (not officially ‘overnight fasting’) so I am very happy with the results.
Btw, I am not doing anything special… just back to my previous ways of eating. :)
I hope that given enough time, the pancreas can heal, new beta cells created or old ones repaired, new insulin receptors activated…
Just for curiosity, did you received information from your doctor about the amount of beta cell damage? If so, that would be a good thing to check in the future. If the kidneys can heal in a ketogenic diet, I bet the pancreas can too, at least do so to an extent.
Cecilia, thanks for the comment. I have never had my pancreas tested so in reality I do not know if my blood sugar elevations are due to lack of insulin or insulin resistance.
Re: Pancreas healing – I have read studies where some pancreatic function is restored and there are some personal stories as well, so I don’t doubt that it occurs to some degree. I’ve yet to see a full blown Type 1 ‘heal’ their pancreas to the extent of weaning of insulin however.
I have thought of having my pancreas function tested … but in reality it really does not matter. Regardless I am going to eat in such a manner that does not require drugs or insulin. If some day I can not control my blood sugar through diet and exercise… then I would test for sure, to see what the best course of action would be.
Thanks for the comment! :)
The crazy thing about this disease “type 2 diabetes” is that they don’t give you a way to measure insulin. The real disease here is insulin resistance, or failure to create insulin, and those are really different things. But the glucometer only measures glucose, not the actual primary symptom of the disease.
One thing I discovered – for example – is that some kinds of fats create insulin resistance, whereas others improve insulin sensitivity. You can’t see that affect directly in the glucose numbers. It’s only by seeing insulin move high and glucose fail to adjust that the insulin sensitivity becomes obvious. I had to figure a lot of this out just by reading scientific papers and experimenting.
I would hope at some point in the future they would come up with a way to monitor insulin ketones and glucose all together.
1) Insulin Measurements – I could NOT agree MORE!! That would be very cool to see and compare.
2) Fats and Insulin Resistance – … I’m not convinced at all that fat causes insulin resistance. In my opinion, it’s a lack of carbs that causes carbohydrate sensitivities… and to be honest I hate it when people say fat causes insulin resistance… that’s what the ADA Minions say. AND it’s their reason for telling people to go low fat.
I’d love to see any real proof that fat causes IR. I know a Type 1 who remains high fat, but eats 50g of carbs per day and has maintained improved IR.
Thanks for ALL of the great comments!
Ooops, spoke too soon on your first day post. Yes, these numbers are diabetic.
What would be interesting to try is to use a small carbohydrate challenge with each meal, consisting mainly of tubers like yam and taro (avoid sweet potato because of high fructose content), maybe 30 grams of carbs for each of three meals (which is probably about 70 to 80 grams of tubers by weight). My guess is that you might actually put up tolerable numbers with that small amount of controlled glucose challenge, and you might actually feel a lot better than a ketogenic diet. See Perfect Health Diet on minimum glucose requirements.
You do a really superb job of managing your condition.
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