Advice on maintaining glucose levels
As the holidays roll around the corner, maintaining steady glucose levels is as important as ever. During the holidays, everybody wants to enjoy themselves and surround themselves with family and food. As plates stack up, you may start to get stressed about maintaining your blood sugar. However, there is no need to worry, because there are many ways to help maintain your blood sugar while enjoying the food of the holidays.
When making your plate, really stock up on foods that don’t contain as many carbs as the other options, whether that’s in protein or in vegetables. By doing this, you don’t need to correct as many carbs. This does not mean you can’t dive into potatoes, bread, or any other culinary delights that contain a lot of carbs. For the foods that do contain lots of carbs, make sure you’re portioning them out or spreading them out over a longer period of time so that your insulin will maintain your blood sugar over a long period of time.
Insulin takes a lot longer to work than it takes for your blood sugar to rise after eating a lot of food. One thing that will help balance this out is making sure you dose about fifteen minutes before you eat. If you’re going to take a large amount of insulin, it’s important that you dose earlier so your body has enough time to stabilize your blood sugar before it is affected by the foods you eat.
Sweets are very tempting at this time of the year, but that doesn’t mean you have to hold back. A large plate of cookies can be especially tempting but it’s important for you to realize how that is going to affect your blood sugar. Unlike most foods that you would eat for a meal, sweets will raise your blood sugar at a much higher rate so dosing before you eat is even more important.
One of the most important things to realize at this time of the year is that you should not keep dosing yourself if your blood sugar won’t go down. That is why it is important to take
insulin early. However, if the insulin is taking a little bit longer to stabilize your blood sugar, do not keep dosing yourself or your blood sugar will drop at a very high rate. Finally, if you are unsure how many carbs are in the food you are going to eat, it is okay to estimate. If you’d prefer to error on the side of caution, take one or two units more than you would normally take, because you may want to go back for seconds. If you do go low, make sure you have those sweets mentioned earlier on hand to make sure your blood sugar doesn’t drop. This time of the year is meant to be enjoyed, and diabetics don’t need to stress too much about it. It may be stressful at times but just remember to keep an eye on your sugars and enjoy yourself. Happy Holidays!