It's the protein, dummy

I've been pretty religious about checking my blood sugars for at least the past 18 months or so - and sometimes they are up and sometimes down - but never as low as I would like them to do. At least not since spring of 2009. Back then was when I was trying to eat following the Kwasniewski diet, and I was getting totally normal blood sugar readings down in the 80s. But I slowly drifted off as it was a hard eating plan to follow if you want to have a normal social life and go out and eat. That's because it limits the amount of protein you are allowed to have, ro an amount considered enough to preserve your muscle mass - but not more. It basically means things like no more hamburgers when you go out to eat - you can only eat half the hamburger. No more steaks, you can only eat one third of the steak, or maybe one quarter.

So I slowly began eating more protein again. So did I put two and two together and realize there was a tie-in to my slowly rising blood sugar also? Well maybe at the back of my mind I did, but I enjoyed my protein, so kept thinking there had to be some other way to control my blood sugar, but nothing else worked that well, so I began to think my metabolism was just totally and fatally busted.

But this past week I went back on the Kwasniewski plan. Kwasniewski believes that if you are going to eat carbs you are better off eating the starches, rather than fructose-containing carbs, and I wanted to enjoy some of the starchier fall veggies I was getting from my CSA haul, so I decided to add in some starches and cut back my protein to the Kwasniewski levels.

And within only 2-3 days I suddenly found I was getting blood glucose readings back down in the 80s again! The reading above is what I saw this afternoon two hours after eating lunch. Below is the fasting blood glucose number I saw this morning when I woke up. Last night for dinner I had a 2-egg leek and potato frittata for dinner, with plenty of sour cream added to it to bump up the fat, and topped with some shredded cheddar cheese. My one-hour PP reading after that meal was 114, my 2-hour reading was 101. By bedtime I was back down to 87. Okay, smack me upside the head, dummy. This time I'm sticking with Kwasniewski's protein goals. :-)

And as an added bonus, since going back on Kwasniewski, my weight hit a new low this morning since I began seriously monitoring with daily weighings - which was January 2009.