A morsel about non stop nibbling

By | 4 April, 2012
Sausages! Sausages!! Sausages!!!

Sausages! Sausages!! Sausages!!!

Eating three square meals a day will give better glucose control than munching away hour after hour. I don’t think I’ve ever been told this, but deep down I know that this works for me.

It makes sense. If I eat a meal my blood sugar rises and takes a while to fall. If I snack a couple of hours after the meal my blood sugar still hasn’t returned to normal from the meal before I start eating again, so the snack hits my bloodstream when my blood sugar is raised, and just raises it even higher for longer. In brief, this is why despite meticulous carb guestimating, buffets often result in diabetic armageddon.

This isn’t life changing news. But somehow reading the piece on it in the latest issue of diaTribe complete with handy graphs by real life diabetic and diabetes educator extrordianaire Gary Scheiner made me think about it properly for the first time in years. Interesting that you can know something, but not feel like it’s really sunk in until someone else reminds you of it.

7 thoughts on “A morsel about non stop nibbling

  1. Annette A

    Yes, I read tat and thought ‘makes sense. doesnt work for me, but it does make sense.’ (Doesnt work for me because of my screwed up digestive system which makes it easier for me to eat often but low carb, so I dont get many of the higher post meal spikes.) But then it occured to me – this goes against everything that I/my mother was taught when diagnosed (1977) that not only do you have to eat 3 times a day only but you also have to eat snacks 3 times a day as well, to counter the effects of the insulin action. So you were pretty much constantly grazing, and hence,I guess, almost constantly on a slightly (or greatly) increased blood sugar.
    Proof, once more, that things have got better, now we have insulins and therapies that mean we can actually eat in a way that suits being diabetic, rather than suiting the treatment.

    Reply
    1. Alison Post author

      I’d forgotten about those days of having to feed the insulin every few hours whether you were hungry or not.

      Reply
      1. Megs

        I’d forgotten about the need to feed insulin in the 1970’s too. I had to go to the school matrons room at 10.30am and 2.30pm every day and eat a biscuit regardless of whether I was hungry.

        Instead of being a treat, a snack became some sort of torture that made me different from the other kids, That has stuck with me ever since so I rarely ever have anything to nibble outside of the main meals.

        Reply
  2. Diana Maynard

    It depends a lot on what you eat though. The counter-argument (which works for me and many others) is that the fewer carbs you eat, the less your BG tends to rise after a meal. So if you eat more frequently but fewer carbs in one go (ie you eat the same total carbs but spread over the day more evenly), then you get an almost flat BG profile which is far better than rises and falls after your 3 meals. So it’s more a case of if you spread the same carbs over more meals, you get a flatter profile and you’re better off. If you just add more carbs as snacks, you get the problem you describe and you’re worse off. Of course, everyone is different and you have to do what works for you….

    Reply
    1. Alison Post author

      Fair point, which exposes even more assumptions that are in my head and I don’t realise – if it’s “free” food, like a raw carrot or a piece of cucumber, I don’t really class it as a snack!

      I find fewer carbs overall helps. Higher carb meals, with no carb snacks is doable. High carb meals with carb snacks which need to be bolused for is my worst case scenario.

      Reply
  3. Tim

    Golly! To be honest, I just eat exactly what I did and how I did before diagnosis and haven’t really given it much thought, let alone change anything. (Admittedly my diet pre-diagnosis was already a pretty healthy, well-rounded diet and I’ve never been much of a snacker)

    Reply
  4. lady up north

    Golly! To be honest, I just eat exactly what I did and how I did before diagnosis and haven’t really given it much thought, let alone change anything.

    Me too, but in my case this is curries at 1:30 am, McDonalds whenever I want, hugely carb meals such as casseroles with loads of dumplings and potatoes as the first thing all day at about 7 pm – no wonder my DSN despairs of me. And on other days I am snacking constantly from when I get up. On twice daily injections my sugar levels were totally erratic, on MDI they are merely very imperfect.

    Reply

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