1. PRE-BOLUS!!!! A lot of you reading this probably do this already but I can’t stress how much it helps!! Pre blousing means putting in your fast acting (meal time) insulin before you plan on eating your food. It can range from 5 to 30 minutes before, depending on what you’re eating and how your body reacts to insulin.
Learning how much time it takes for certain foods to start affecting your blood sugar can be a game changer when it comes to diabetes management. Pre-bolusing can help eliminate those annoying high carb food spikes and stabilize your mood as well as your sugar. If you’ve never pre-bloused before then start with baby steps. Try pre-blousing 5 minutes before your meal with a low carb snack to start getting a feel for it. Slowly you’ll find it helps to reduce fast rising blood sugars due to meals. If you’re out at a restaurant, always make sure there’s bread or a sugary juice on the table if you plan on pre-blousing,
(because you never know how long service will take...Lol) or if you don’t feel comfortable pre-bolusing while you’re out, then don’t! Do what’s comfortable for YOU and remember that no matter how small the steps you’re taking to getting better control of you’re blood sugar are, you’re still making a conscious choice to be healthier and more respectful of your body and that is a beautiful and amazing thing.
2. If your blood sugar is high or rising and you're about to have a meal, eat fat and protein first. This will help slow down the absorption of carbs and prevent your from spiking even more. This also work with a leafy green salad, eat it before your pasta and there’s less of a chance for spikage.
3. Try your best to eat regularly. For me personally, I’ve noticed if I forget to eat or go 5 or 6 hours without eating, I’ll start going low, and then when it comes to my meal, ill eat sooooo much food to make up for the day and my sugar level will spike a lot more after then if I were eating a normal sized meal. Eating regularly is good for your mood, metabolism, and energy as well as your blood sugar. If you know you’re going to be out for while, throw an extra snack in your bag just in case.
4. Prepare meals at home. Knowing what you’re actually eating is very empowering. Knowing every ingredient and putting the time in effort into your food will make it so much easier to understand the carb count and how it affects your blood sugar. It’ll also make you appreciate your food more, have better quality ingredients then most restaurants or take out places, and it’ll likely save you a sweet penny. I’m not saying don’t go out for a nice meal!! Trying a new restaurant is one of my favourite things to do, I just try not to do it super often. If you’re someone that buys lunch everyday, maybe try packing it every other day. Start small, expanding your knowledge of food in general is always a positive when it come to diabetes, even if you’re just making a sandwich, it can be a delicious, nutrient dense meal depending on the ingredients you decide to put in it. Side note: learning about different breads and how they react with your blood sugar can be life-changing -for me, sprouted whole grain sourdough is the best!
5. Stay calm. If you’re having a bad high or low, try your best to relax. Added stress will only make it feel worse and could cause you to spiral into an anxiety attack. Also, remind yourself that you know how your body reacts to lows and highs and try your best to treat it accordingly. Lows can be trickier because, personally, I want to devour everything in my house when I’m really low, but something that helps me after I’ve treated my low is to drink something that doesn’t have carbs in it, or eat something that’s mostly fat or protein. Also, I try and distract myself from food once I know I’ve treated accordingly, just by going on my phone or something that takes no brain power haha. As for highs, I used to ALWAYS over correct, but that’s because I was anxious about staying high for too long. It’s important to give the insulin enough time to start working before putting more in. Do your correction and then just chill for a bit, if you need more in a couple hours then do that but over correcting (causing you to go low) can put you at risk for rollercoasting, in turn, taking over your whole day.