Sometimes I make "bad" food choices. It happens. Sometimes (read: almost always) it causes problems for the rest of the day.
This morning, I had a bowl of cereal for breakfast. It's an oatmeal-based cereal, and I'm well aware of the fact that it makes me high. I usually combat this by eating a half serving, which, with milk, is about 30g of carbs.
This morning, I was sick of seeing the bottom of the bowl through the cereal. 1/2 cup of cereal really is enough, but the plastic bowls my father buys are very wide, so it doesn't look like much. (I know the solution to this problem--use a plastic cup.)
So this morning I had a full serving, plus maybe a drop extra, plus milk. We're talking something perilously close to 60g of carbs here. Not my usual AT ALL and it's a number of carbs I never, ever eat. With good reason.
About a half hour after finishing breakfast, I was 179. I deserved it, I know. I felt it, though not too much. It was more like an ache behind my eyes that I could ignore if I wanted to, and a slight feeling of dizziness. Was the cereal worth it? Probably.
I didn't sit up high for long at all, and I was coming down within ten minutes or so. My guess is that I came all the way down, since that's how my body usually works on Metformin as long as it isn't time for another dosage change.
Not even an hour later, I made myself a coffee. Since I don't really like coffee itself (just the caffeine and the milk and the fake sugar), I have a very specific coffee recipe that includes a TON of coffee grounds, very little water, a lot of milk, a lot of Splenda, and ice. Occasionally, when I have half and half in the house, a splash of that goes in, too. (It did today.)
Well now wasn't I surprised to see a 147 before I'd even finished the coffee? (Okay, one or two Madelines might've gone in there, too.) Usually, coffee and Madelines aren't enough to bring me above 130. Especially since Madelines are mostly fat and coffee is mostly milk, which doesn't usually bother me.
I'm back to 99 now, which is about 25 minutes after the 147. I feel fine, which is great, but I'm seriously pissed off.
This is a phenomenon that's been bothering me for a while. If I overdo it on the carbs on any given day, it's like my body runs out of insulin for the rest of the day. Sometimes if I'm really unlucky, the repeat highs stick around for a few hours before going back to normal. Today might still be one of those days, since I haven't really tested the waters yet with the repeats.
This is one of the reasons I'm so sure insulin is a better bet for me than Met or any of the oral drugs. It's clear that my body is insulin deficient. I'm clearly pretty insulin-sensitive if I drop so fast after highs. (No, I do not think it's a result of oversecretion, because if it were, I'd probably drop slower, and I'd end up with reactive hypos at the end, which I do if I don't eat for hours and hours after a high. If it were oversecretion, I'd steadily drop until I'm low, not drop to about 120 and hang out for a few hours before going low.) But if I'm experiencing repeat highs like this, it means my body is running out of insulin and it can't make up the deficit fast enough.
Tonight I'm supposed to be going out to dinner. Though I wasn't intending to order an entire plate of pasta, I was intending to go a little more carb-heavy than I usually do. I guess I should've thought about that before I had a nice bowl of cereal this morning, but that's easier said than done.
Emotionally, low-carbing is hard. People like to see lots of food on their plate, even if it's too much. Often enough, people eat more than they should just because their eyes are bigger than their stomachs. In the case of carbs, they're often hungry again 3-4 hours later. I find that the more grain carbs I eat, the hungrier I am. (Except in the case of this cereal, which has awesome powers of filling.) Protein and salt seem to be the key to filling me up.
But even if I know, intellectually, that 1/2 cup of cereal is enough, it looks so sad to have a huge bowl with nothing in it. And eating cereal in a cup isn't as...fun?...as eating it from a bowl. I don't really miss eating all carbs all the time, but I do miss the freedom that it used to afford.
"So you've made a lot of mistakes/ Walked down the road a little sideways...You can do what you think is impossible/ Keep on believin' don't give in/ It'll come and make you whole again" ~Rascal Flatts
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