I don't know anyone who doesn't like to eat out. It frees up everyone in the house from cooking and cleaning. Plus you get to eat foods that you don't normally eat because it either cost to much to feed the entire family or no one in the house likes some of the foods you do. So I see this as a win, win for every one. You would think. As for me, that is not the case; 9 times out of 10 my body and mind suffer the next morning, my sugars are extremely high. My body suffers because every time my sugars go over the 200s or higher it is causing damage to my organs, nerves, and blood cells. My mind suffers because I go into a state of frustration, aggravation, and sadness. Diabetes is known to cause depression, I can see why. When the majority of your life you have been able to eat whatever, whenever and now after 40 years you have to check your sugars before putting anything in your mouth plus ask yourself, "can I eat this"? becomes a real bummer. Every time I go out it becomes a guessing game as to how many carbohydrates I am actually eating. Sure there are apps to help you but they don't always have what you want to eat listed and that doesn't seem to matter to my body either. For example, I ate at a Mexican restaurant the other night and gave myself 4.60 units of insulin accounting for 88 carbohydrates. I had my pump give me 40% right away and the remaining 60% 2 hours later. I was in a low of blood sugars being at 44 mg/dL prior to eating my meal, I thought great, this won't be so bad than. I ate only half of my meal including half of the dessert, good, right? Wrong! That didn't seem to make a difference either.
The reason for giving myself 40% of my insulin right away and then the rest of it (60%) 2 hours later is because some carbohydrates will peak later than 2 hours and my insulin is a fast acting insulin. Meaning that once the insulin is injected into my body it goes to work right away and that won't help me when it takes awhile for foods to break down into sugars. I could drop down into hypoglycemic aka low blood sugar level if giving myself ALL the insulin at once. I already started in a low with this Mexican meal so I definitely don't want to stay in a low. I hate the way I feel in a low- can't think clearly, body shakes and feels very weak/drained, and I begin to sweat.
So, it seems as if I did everything right; calculations are to the best of my knowledge not knowing exactly my carbohydrate intake. I forgot to mention that I have also been experimenting with a drug called Symlin which is to replace the hormone Amylin that my body no longer produces because this hormone is also made in the pancreas. Amylin helps regulate the rate at which food is digested. Guess what my sugars where the next morning, 4:47am 243 mg/dL. Some may ask, "is that good or bad"? The normal range is 70-99 mg/dL, you be the judge.
Another example of eating out: sugars are 125 mg/dL to start, according to an app I have, I am about to eat a vanilla cone from McDonald's that has 27 carbs for 3.7 oz size. So I tell my insulin pump that I am going to eat 35 carbs (I do this often because I know that giving me the exact amount of insulin for the exact amount of carbs, especially highly processed carbs doesn't work). I take my sugars 4 hours later and they are 236 mg/dL. A normal blood sugar level range is 70-99 mg/dL and should typically peak 40 mg/dL within a 2 hour time range and begin to come back down to a normal range going into the 3rd and 4th hour.
It is clearly obvious that I shouldn't have any ice cream. Does that mean I shouldn't go out to eat either? Enjoying simple things isn't so simple any more :-[.
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