"Ozgirl", a good friend on the alt.support.diabetes newsgroup, introduced me to "grazing" as a blood glucose management tool some years ago. She developed her own method to combat her pronounced reactive hypoglycemia and I found that the method was very effective.
As a diabetic one of my management goals is to try to keep my BG's as stable and as close to normal as I can. I found that eating the traditional "three square meals" daily caused problems and it became much easier when I broke those meals up into a series of smaller meals and snacks. Dinner is still my biggest meal, but the others are all small. And I rarely feel hungry.
My day goes something like this:
Breakfast, as soon as possible after waking, usually 5-6:30am.
Mid-morning, 10am, a small snack.
Lunch, around noon.
Mid-afternoon, a small snack.
Dinner, about 6pm.
An hour or two after dinner, a small snack
Bedtime supper.
Effectively I rarely go more than three hours without eating something, but the portion I eat is very small. When I say a small snack, that is the equivalent of half an apple, or a cracker with cheese, or a half-cup of yoghurt with berries; that's the sort of portion sizes I mean. Breakfast is equivalent to an egg or two and a slice of ham; lunch an open sandwich, or a soup, or a stir-fry or similar.
The total calories in the day are the same; they are just spread across the time more evenly. By testing after each of these snacks or small meals I've also found that I need to start with a very low carb breakfast but as I approach the evening I can eat higher carbohydrate snacks without spiking. That's why I can have my Psyllium, Fibre, Muesli and Nuts as a bedtime snack.
It works for me. Maybe it could work for you.
Cheers, Alan
I agree with you. I do best with a "breakfast/lunch smoothie."
ReplyDeletePre-diagnosis it was: oatmeal, almond meal, whole soy powder and strawberry milk flavor. Now I use -whole soy powder, almond meal, several types of fresh or cooked vegetables (inc. cactus)linaza (flax & cactus meal), maybe a salt free seasoning, water & ice. I graze on it out of my liter bottle whenever I feel like it for meals brkfst, lunch. My bg numbers are usually great. I am satisfied, not hungry. If I drink it all at once, it sticks with me a looooooong time.
I have invented (untested on bg) a powdered form (no vegie variety) for times when I need to mix and go, or just want something different and/or sweet.
MORRO HORCHATA: morro seeds, whole soy powder, almond meal, linaza (flax/cactus meal), chia seeds, cinnamon, unsweetened chocolate, 3/4 inch of vanilla bean, stevia, a small percentage of store bought morro horchata mix that includes a tiny bit of sugar, peanut flour, rice flour.