I had this problem when I married DH. He likes to eat main meal around 3 pm. However, his mother, who lived with us until she died, always liked to eat the main meal at 2 pm. So when she passed away, we started having our main meal at 3 pm. His is more of a medical type thing than anything else.

I was used to eating at what most of us call normal meal times. So it was really hard for me to think of 2 or 3 o'clock as being the last meal of the day for me. When I decided to try IF, I now have breakfast around 11 or 11:30 and then eat with him around 3 or 3:30 and I have a 3rd meal whenever I get hungry in the evening some time before 8 pm.

Changed my exercise time. I did the recumbent bike after breakfast instead of before. I was able to do 3 miles in 25 minutes. So I'm going to work at doing that for 4 or 5 days a week.

I am happy with the way I have things set up on MFP and the 3 miles/25 minutes 4 or 5 days a week. My goal is to make this a lifestyle that I will follow for the rest of my life.

I am still reading the Diabetes Forum. Someone on there posted a link to something about exercise. First of all, it said that if you do some weight lifting after your meal, only for about 5 minutes, it gets the muscles to start to take in the glucose from your blood. Something like lifting some hand held weights. I don't know if I'm explaining that correctly. This is in addition to your regular exercise. And secondly, it said that if you exercise before your meal, it causes the liver to release glucose and that causes your glucose to raise higher from your meal. I usually exercise around 12:30-2PM. Not the whole time. In that time period. The last time I had a high A1c I started walking on my treadmill for 15 min after dinner in addition to my afternoon exercise. That was helping lower my blood sugar, but I didn't stick with it. I have never exercised in the morning because I have heart disease and I heard that morning is the worst time period for heart attacks. I know a lot of people like to get it done early before they get involved in something else.

Cindy, I am going to try to eat a smaller dinner so I won't be overeating by adding a snack in the evening. I might even just keep some of my dinner to finish later on. I had heard of a diet tip of eating half of your sandwich from lunch at 12PM and saving the other half to eat around 1:30, instead of adding more food as a snack. So I might try something similar with dinner. I really think I will see a loss if I start to eat less food. A little hunger pain now and then never hurt anyone.

Carol Sue That is interesting about the exercise after meals. I used to exercise after I ate lunch (main meal) because in the book I have called Reverse Diabetes he said that the best time for a diabetic to exercise was after a meal. Even though I ate a very low carb breakfast this morning, I was surprised that I could do

We ended up going to Golden Coral for lunch today. We set on he opposite side than we usually do... on the side of salads and fruit rather than the desert side. So I decided not to have the carrot cake. I did have one fried fish fillet, one fried chicken thigh and veggies and fruit. I wasn't in the mood for a salad so I had clam chowder which I love but do not eat it at home. I did MFP tonight to see how things went and was thrilled to find that I had only 1601 calories and also within my carb/protein/fat. The sodium count was approx. 270 grams over the 2300 MFP allows.

Watercolor Thank you. I do believe that I have finally figured out a way of eating that I can live with.

PattyGirl
You are brave to enter Golden Corral and hang amongst the carbs and sugar.
And you did awesome! Congrats!

Carol
A friend of mine became type I diabetic at age 9. At diabetic camp, the plan was they would exercise after each meal.

Eating less is doable. I find it easiest to gradually lower my amount of food. And the hunger goes away. You can do it.

Watercolor We eat at Golden Coral a lot since DH loves their fried fish and I think it is better for him to eat theirs rather than Long John Silvers. At least we get veggies with our meals at GC so I'm glad he decided that he likes it.

What helped me do better with my choices was that I did use the CAD RM which I just call a carby meal and I knew that I was already a lb above my ticker and if I ate the usual dessert that I eat that my weight would skyrocket. So I opted for the fruit instead. It paid off as this morning my weight is back in line with the ticker. My FBS was up but I'm sure it was because I had some other carbs when I got home. The fact that I stayed within my 1600 range is probably why the weight was good, but the FBS was not.

Carol Sue I am doing the exercise after breakfast now. I also use weights while riding the recumbent bike because I figure if it was good to use them when doing the Walk Away the Pounds dvd I have then why not use them when riding the bike. That way I would get a few minutes of upper body workout while getting the lower body workout. It is routine now. I wonder how much it would help to do them after the other 2 meals as well. I just might try it.

DH was a band director/music major. He said when he taught band that he it took him 2 weeks teaching and directing band before his arms would stop hurting. I have a Tai Chi video that says band directors are less likely to have heart trouble because they use their arms all the time. I told DH that our band director would allow the boys to come up and direct our band sometime in class and I always wanted to but girls didn't do those things in my day. I think I'm going to start putting music on and practice directing it to help get rid of some of the flab off my upper arms. DH seems to think it would. I think it would be fun for us to do it together. We both love marches that we played when in school that we could use.

I am excited about how good I'm doing on the recumbent bike. I did 3 miles in less than 25 minutes but I did the 25 minutes any way. I realized this morning that I'm not doing moderate bike riding any more. I'm doing vigorous which bumps up my calorie burn. So I was able to change it on MFP to vigorous. I'm doing 9.9 mph on the bike now.

Got my food plan printed out. Funny thing is that I'm actually doing CAD, but I'm using the Slow burn carbs. I hope to see better results. I didn't plan on it, but it just fell that way.

I just got home from my appointment with my PCP. All is well. My lipid profile is still good, even though I don't take all the meds I am prescribed. Awhile back I decided to cut my dose and see what happens. Cholesterol was still good, 145. LDL is good. HDL is low, but it's always low. My cardiologist told me there are not meds to reaise HDL. Only exercise will raise it, and I haven't been exercising. I'm going to change that.

One other thing on my blood work was low. SGOT. I looked it up and it said that if it's high it indicates a problem with the liver, but if it's low it means you are low in Vit B6. I will google and see where I get my B6 and go from there.

p.a. I don't use a lot of table salt, no salty snacks, etc, but when I enter my food in Fit Day it says my sodium intake is high. But on my bloodwork my level is at the low end of normal. I think I mentioned it before, that my brother-in-law ended up in the hospital from seizures from his sodium being too low, so it's good that your doctor is going to check it. One time in the hospital after surgery they said my potassium was low and put me on an IV. That' might have been a result of the surgery, because it's fine now.

I don't understand this. DH always eats hot cereal before he goes to bed, either Cream of Wheat or Oatmeal. Last night he made too much Oatmeal and I ate what was left, a small portion. Before that when I was watching TV I ate 2 full size Hershey bars. He had bought them and I had been doing a good job of avoiding them, but last night I caved. I expected real trouble this AM, but my fasting BG was 162. I know that's too high, but other mornings I have been having them over 200. That doesn't mean I'm going to start doing that all the time, but I just don't get it. Yesterday was the first time in a while that I walked on my treadmill. Maybe that made a difference.

My FBS has been high lately. Of course, I'm not taking the Metformin because of the side effects. I just can't go any where when taking it. I end up taking it only on days I don't go any where.

I checked my FBS about every hour from 6 am to just before I ate breakfast at 10 am. It was over 200 until about 9 when it was 192. After 9 it started going back up. Didn't go back up to 200 but was 196 before I ate anything. I really don't understand that. I have been staying up late and getting up later. I once heard a doctor say that the sleep we get before 2 am is the most import sleep for healing your body. I used to go to bed by midnight so I would sleep at least 2 hrs before 2 am. Although I sleep good, I notice I am having a difficult getting up in the morning. I thought it was because it has been cold, but maybe not.

Carol Sue The more I learn about diabetes the less I know.

We watch the Doctor in the House on Fox. DH records it. They were talking about what insulin does to the body and how sugar works in our cells and how it feeds cancer. They say we need to be eating more of a Meditarranean (sp) diet... eat fruits, vegetables and grains and eat a small amount of protein. :?: Grains he recommends are quinoa, beans, etc.

I ate oatmeal this morning. I just like the benefits of oat meal. I exercised after breakfast while talking to my Dad. I don't think the oat carb meal gives me the energy to exercise that the low carb meal does. I did the vigorous bike ride, but it seemed to be a struggle. However, that could also be caused by the fact that this is my 3rd day of faithfully exercising 3 miles in 25 minutes. I will low carb the rest of the day using MFP to keep things in check.

I have to believe that if I continue doing what I'm doing somewhere this will start getting better. If it doesn't start changing soon, I may have to rethink Atkins type of LC.

http://www.dietdoctor.com/best-of-20...urning-machine

Interesting video with Dr. Eric C Westman on becoming a fat burning machine. He talks about being either a fat burning or a carbohydrate burning machine and how they work.

Trish, I think a lot of people say they can't eat cereal for breakfast, but it doesn't have to be a cereal only meal. When I was first diagnosed in the hospital I had oatmeal every morning but also had an egg (egg beaters), slice of toast, milk and fruit. It sounds like a lot, but the portions were so small and I didn't feel stuffed afterwards. The home nurses that I had when I came home all told me to have some protein with every meal. Sometimes I think I should go back to the food plan they had me on. I had that breakfast every day. For lunch and dinner I had some protein, a salad, fruit and milk. Dinner was bigger than lunch, but I know you eat your bigger meal earlier in the day and your smaller meal later. The only snack I had they brought to me at bedtime. It was either a graham cracker with peanut butter or saltine crackers with a slice of cheese. After I came home and continued to follow that plan I started having sugar free popsicles as a snack in the afternoon. I lost weight on that plan, but eventually went back to eating more like DH does.

EDIT-I just read on the other thread that you did not eat just oatmeal, but had yogurt with it, so that would have been some protein. So disregard my comment above. LOL

Carol Sue I'm wondering if the way you ate in the hospital might be the right way to eat. Might be worth trying. Thanks for sharing it with me.

Edit to say: I'm thinking that if you keep some carbs even good ones like grains in the food plan that you won't have the problems I have with low carb when I do get off. I don't like the idea that if I want to do strict Atkins type of low carb and then I have a carby food at one meal that it will mess everything up and I will gain etc. Not sure that makes sense, but I'm tired of bouncing around with the same lbs because of it.

Trish, I think eating those small portions helped me because I had a variety of food at every meal and didn't feel deprived. Of course, I didn't have any sweets. I could order SF jello if I wanted. There was also some pasta on the menu occasionally but I would choose something else on that day. You could order baked fish every day if you didn't like the entrees they were offering. You could also order a hamburger, but they were the size of a slider. I did that one day when they didn't offer something I liked. The doctor thought it was funny that they were offering a hamburger to a heart patient, but it was so small, and it was probably very low fat meat. When they had potatoes on the menu, it was about 3 cubes of potato. That program made me realize what a portion is really supposed to look like. We got used to much larger portions eating the SAD diet.

I don't think a CAD RM has to contain starchy carbs. People automatically think of white carbs as "carbs." Things like veggies, beans and milk are carbs.

I am going to try to cut my calories back to 1200 per day. I don't know if I can do that. I will need to track to figure out what to cut. I will have to keep "small portions" in mind.

I think the reason my FBG has come down is because I started taking 2 Metformin at bedtime. I previously cut back to 2 per day because I thought the third pill was making me throw up during the night. Now I take 1 in the AM and the other 2 at bedtime. I've done that for 3 days and didn't get sick. I will continue this and if I start to get sick I will stop.

I didn't stick to plan last night. Instead of eating the meal I had planned I decided to have a snack with hummus and Townhouse Pita. My FBG was 154 this morning. It has been really high lately.

I've decided to keep my percentages as they are on MFP, but make some of those carbs grains. Yesterday I sprinkled edamame in my salad and went back to using EVOO and ACV for dressing. I also know from things we have read that legumes, greens and EVOO/ACV lower bs, so it shouldn't be any surprise that my FBG came way down this morning. Plus it doesn't hurt to have the fiber that goes along with it. Since I'm a routine person and DH is too, I'm going to get myself into a routine of meals and just run with it.

I had eggs, bacon and whole grain toast for breakfast this morning. I think I will alternate that with the oatmeal for breakfast. I am working at keeping my calories around 1300 calories or less each day.

sigh
If only we could have someone prepare and bring us the right food in the correct portions, then strap us onto our exercise equipment and entertain us the whole time we're exercising.

Not gonna happen? Rats. Must move forward.

You girls are doing some great work on food portions and types.
You both ROCK!

Cindy, I always said I wanted to be locked in a room and only given the food I should be eating. That was similar to what they did when I was in the hospital. I was free to eat other foods if someone brought them in for me, but I stayed true and only ate my meals. Well, one time DH brought me a little cup of ice cream from the waiting room. It was about 2 mouthfuls. LOL

Trish, the power of suggestion. After reading your post I went to the freezer and got out some frozen edameme I forgot I had. I buy the shelled emameme, frozen. For lunch I had chopped lettuce with some tuna salad in it.

You ladies sound like your back on track,,,, good going!
Today I started exercises called essentrics. They are low impact which I love. I watch them on YouTube. There was lots of popping and cracking going on in my body,yikes! Reminds me of when I did tai chi...some moves were similar.

Wow! I watched an essentrics exercise on Utube, might have been the same one as you, and I can understand the popping and cracking. The only part that looked like I might not be able to do it is the knee bending. I have a hard time doing any bending with my right knee. I don't know if I ever tried it wearing my knee brace. Good job, p.a.

Boy, I don't know how much exercise I ended up getting yesterday, but I learned something good about myself.

My best friend called the other night and talked DH and me into going to the Trump campaign rally. Now I'm that person who does not like going to those things because I do not like standing in line etc and I would rather watch football games etc on television rather tha go through all that. Once we decided to go I had to go to the beauty shop Friday instead of Saturday. The Winthrop Coliseum sits on a steep hill and I had a difficult time walking up that hill and going up and down the steps inside when DGS graduated from high school. So I told DH I was going to take the Hugo walker and use it going in. However, I've been struggling to get my legs stronger because I know I have to do that place in May when he graduates from college. But I wasn't sure I could do it this soon.

I began to think maybe I could use my cane instead of the walker. We were in line for so long before we could park that there were no handicap parking places any more. So we had to walk and not on top of that we had to walk across grass to get to the sidewalk. I can't do that much here at home. Well because we were walking on grass, I decided to take the cane instead of the walker. I did it with no major problems. I did get short winded walking so fast to get in line, but I was able to do it. The hill was difficult at first, but DH let me hang on to him and the line moved up the hill so slow, I had no problem doing it. I was so shocked at how well I did it. I admit I have room to get better, but I am so thrilled that I could do so well. They had places for handicap sitting, but I wanted to sit with DH and friend. I think I could have gone further down to sit if I didn't have a fear of falling.

I have 5 months to get ready for DGS graduation. I hope I will be able to do even better by then. Oh besides doing that, I had done 2 miles in 15 minutes on the recumbent bike and walked a store that morning. After the rally we couldn't find our car and walked even more for about 10 minutes longer than we should have had to. And I was so surprised at how good I felt. :carrot:

I am looking at the DASH diet. It has been named the Best diet for the past 6 yrs according to Newsweek. It is fairly simple. I went to the website and read about it. I saw something on there titled DASH low carb, but didn't look at it. I will be checking it out again. It seems to be similar to the Low carb diet for dummies book I have. I read where some of the people who do it say it is so easy. I will be checking it out a little further.

Trish, the recumbent bike is very good for strengthening your legs. It strengthens the thigh muscles. If you place your hand on the muscle right above your knee while you are cycling, you will feel the muscle contracting. Any exercise that exercises this muscle is recommended for older people (like us). A lot of us (like me) have to have support getting out of a chair, like pushing up on the chair arms. Strengthening that thigh muscle prevents that. Sometimes when I'm sitting watching TV I will raises and lower my legs and can feel it in that muscle. Good job, Trish!

I got a free Kindle book about the Dash Diet but never actually read it. I will look at it and let you know what I think. There's a whole program about it on Public Television.

I think I'm going to make a pot of veggie soup today. A woman on another forum talked about it and made me hungry for it. It's a good day for it since it's raining, and going to change over to snow.

Carol Sue That is interesting about that muscle. My sister has one of those chairs that lifts her out of the chair. I hope I don't ever have to use it. I exercise my arms with dumb bells while riding the bike because I did that with WATP tapes years ago. I told DH that I did learn one thing through walking up that hill and over those grounds and that is that I could use my cane and walk to get walking exercise if he would go to the mall and walk with me some. DH walks fast and my DBF got worried about me when we were walking back to the car because I was hanging on to him and keeping up with him. She was afraid I would fall.

I will use the DASH plan because I can regulate my carbs better. Today will be more of a carb day, but I am able to use it to keep within the amount of carbs and calories I want to stay with in. In fact, even though I'm eating more carbs today my calories are less than 1300 and I am within the percentages that I have set up for myself and the sodium is less than 2300 mg.

I am eating fruit once a day with my oatmeal at breakfast time. I am using the Sarah Lee 45 cal multigrain bread when I have bread. Actually I have a couple of foods that I really want and using MFP I can now have them within the calories, carbs, fat, protein and sodium allowed. I am even looking at the sugar count too. I heard somewhere to start looking at the amount of sugar on the labels. May have read it on DASH. This will work for me because I can work this better with DH.

BTW thank to you for sharing about the kale and hip pain. My hip has started hurting again and I couldn't figure out why. I haven't been eating the kale the last few weeks. I got some more yesterday and bagged some to put in the freezer and some in the fridge.

You soup sounds good. It is going to start getting colder again starting tonight and a good soup or even stew will be good tomorrow.

Edited to add: One site I found on DASH does it in 2 Phases like South Beach. Phase 1 is 2 weeks without fruit and grains to jump start the diet. Phase 2 adds fruits and grains although I didn't read to see exactly how they add it back. Interesting. I read on another site that all these lowfat diets are basically the same. I like the fact that DASH is set up more like the old WW and ADA exchange plans. Since I like to play around with recipes sometime, I can take a grain exchange and mix with veggies etc and keep up with it better.

My soup is done. I didn't taste it yet. I don't add salt until after it's done and I taste it.

I found a great website about the leg lift exercising I was talking about and other exercises recommended for seniors. I know everyone posting here isn't a senior, but it's good for younger people too.

http://eldergym.com/leg-exercises.html

I clicked on HOME and found it's a whole website about exercises for seniors, not just leg exercises!

http://eldergym.com/

Carol Sue Thanks for the exercise links. I bookmarked it to look at more later. I'm interested in the one on balance too.

I looked up the Dash Diet Pyramid and although it is a very healthy diet I see that it's not for me. It calls for 7-8 servings of bread and grains which I know I cannot do and still control my blood sugar. There's no sense in me even trying it because I know what would happen. The best I could do is to keep the grains extremely low and increase the veggies to make up the difference, and that's pretty much what I'm doing now.

I do wish you luck with it, though, Trish. I think your body is able to handle grains better than mine does. Perhaps you can tweak it and make it work for you.

Taking my Metformin the way I am now has dropped my fasting blood glucose by 40-50 points and I think if I make some other lifestyle changes, like exercising, and watching my diet a little closer will drop it even more. Right now I am trying taking my first Metformin as soon as I get up to see if it stops the increase I get in the morning. Maybe I just wasn't using it the way I am supposed to. I was told to take it with my meals. That's not how it works for me. 7 years of doing it wrong.

Carol Sue I'm not doing DASH either. I do use some carbs, but there is no way I am going to eat 7 or 8 servings a day. That is why I never went back to see the nutritionist the doctor sent me to about 30 yrs ago. Back then she wanted us to eat 9 to 11 servings of bread exchange. One website that I saw which may be a nutritionist taking it and making it work her way only allows 3 bread exchanges a day. I feel comfortable with that. I didn't see the one you saw or I never would have even looked at it. Also I am not cutting fat and protein as far back as they say either. I think my plan is a good one as it is and I believe that as I become faithful to the exercise things my health will improve.

I am going to try taking the Metformin again but won't start it until tomorrow night. I am going to try taking it at night before going to bed on an empty stomach and see how it works for me. We are going out tomorrow and I'll have a few days after that not going any where to see how my body reacts to it. I would really like to be able to tolerate it.

I think I found what I needed to hear to get the sugar completely our of my diet. My baby sister and I have done our best to eat healthy so we won't have cancer. I just read yesterday that a study they did with mice that sugar feeds cancer. It wasn't too clear if it causes it, but they said that sugar of any kind feeds it. Suddenly I think of sugar as poison. When I think of sugar I have this image of the skull/cross bone in my mind. Another reason to stick as close to low carb as possible so the desire for it goes away.

WI this morning was right with my ticker so I'm good. Don't know if I'm going to do carb days. Just have 3 to 5 servings in my daily meals rather than having an all day carb day. I think it trips me up.

I don't think an all day carb day is good for diabetics. It's just too much carb. Some people just up their veggies and consider that carb, which it is. I eat very little sugar, but what I don't understand is that all foods except fat turn to sugar in your body in the form of glucose.

I have been having a bit of groin pain. I don't know if I'm getting a UTI. I haven't had one in so long. I don't have any other symptoms. Maybe I should just up my water intake. I started having this after I started taking the 2 Metformin at bedtime. I don't take mine on an empty stomach. I do have something small to eat at bedtime most nights. I'm going to just take 1 tonight the way it is prescribed. I don't want to skip it altogether. I don't get any other tummy symptoms the way other people do but I noticed that I don't have my normal appetite. It's like I want to eat something but nothing appeals to me.

I only took 1 Metfrormin last night and this morning my FBG was 190. It has been running in the 140s and 150s when I take 2. I know that's still not good, but a big drop. The groin pain is gone, but I drank a lot of water last night. In fact, I was up to pee 3 times during the night. I know. TMI LOL I might also try taking the second Metformin with dinner and then the third at bedtime and see how that works.

Totally off plan for 2 or 3 days. Hopefully I'll get my act together and get right back OP Wednesday. I did take the Metformin tonight. It is midnight and I'm headed to bed. Just checking in to commit to a better day tomorrow. Exercise is the only thing I've done well the past week.

Keeping exercise good is great, Trish. It's important!!

I learned a lesson yesterday/this morning. I had a very carby dinner. Lasagna. Normally, I eat 1 serving and a salad or other veggie. Yesterday, it was really good and I ate....well, more than one serving. LOL At bedtime my BS was high but still under 200. I told myself that it was OK because the Metformin would bring it down. Didn't happen. FBG was 202 this morning. So, I learned that the Metformin can only do so much and is meant to work with LC diet and exercise. It's not a magic pill. But that lasagna sure was good. LOL I think in the future, when it's that good, I should scrape the filling out from between the noodles and eat it that way. It's the filling that made it so tasty. When I make it I add some shredded taco blend cheese in with the mozzarella. Gives it a little different flavor that we like.

We finally got a significant snowfall. About 4 inches total. It snowed most of the day yesterday, but lightly. Otherwise, an all-day snowfall would accumulate about a foot. Roads are pretty clean now, but it's still piled up on the grass and deck because of the cold temperature. Winter has finally arrived in PA. It's supposed to warm up into the 40s over the weekend.

Carol Sue I am not sure but I think I once read that Metformin does work better with low carb. I know I'm not going to go extremely low carb, but I am going to try to stay more low carbish. (Is that a word?) Any way, I told the Metformin with my dinner last night around 7:30. No big change but then yesterday was a lot of carbs.

I think I will keep the CAD way of eating carbs, but not go wild with the carbs. I still think it will be better for me to have most of my carbs at one meal only and low carb all the other meals. That way I can have my beans/lentils at the time. I'll see how that goes.

Enjoy the snow. I don't think we got one last year so I hope we will get one this year. Usually get ours sometime in February for a few days and nothing else. So not like y'all do.

I've got my plan for today and already did the 3 miles on my bike for today. Not going to do the 4 miles at this time because I don't like the way it made my hip bones feel the last time I did it. It maybe just that I rode so long I felt them but I think at my age that I just need to be careful. Since we walked stores yesterday, I took a day off from the bike. I will do at least 1 more day to get the 4 days in and decide later if I want to do a 5th one Friday or Saturday. However, Saturday is usually a busy day in the store. I had hoped I wouldn't have to go to the store but Walmart didn't have DH Glimiperide ready so I'll have to pick it up.

I got a beautiful big batch of fresh kale at the store yesterday. I ate some last night and had some in my eggs this morning. I will be adding it to my salad each day at lunch as well.

This morning my FBG was 136. That's the lowest fasting I've had in a very long time. I hope I'm not doing something wrong by taking the 2 Metformin at the same time because it sure is doing it's job! Such a big difference! And I did not have a low carb dinner last night. I had roasted chicken and peas, but DH wanted Stove Top Stuffing with it so I had some of that, too. That was around 4:30 and I didn't eat anything the rest of the evening until my egg at bedtime.

It's been several days since I put my kale in those vacuum seal bags. It looks OK so far. I think I'll open one for lunch today and see if it stayed fresh.

Carol Sue Is your Metformin the 500 mg. If so I don't think it will hurt at all. Glad it is working for you. I'm taking my one Metformin a day with my last meal of the day between 7 to 8 pm. It seems to be working as my FBS was down to 176 this morning. So far I am having no potty problems. I'm not eating a lot of fat either so I think that is keeping down those problems too.

I read about a Harvard test done where they found that low carb is the best way to eat for weight loss and health. They said that keeping carbs around 40 was best for quick weight loss. I've decided to keep mine around 60 to 80 because I don't care to lose fast. I just want to lose it.

I am on 3 groups on FB. I joined the DASH diet, South Beach and I'm also on CAD groups on FB. I have a pending membership on SB Phase 1 group. One DASH site I found online and can't seem to find now was more like SBD so I thought I might get some food ideas from there. Of course, I don't follow those strictly because I eat bacon where they eat Canadian Bacon which I might change to but I drink 2% milk where they use FF or 1%. I don't post on there, I just read and learn from them. And of course, I know there will always be one or two days a week when I will have a carb meal thrown in there. I did get a couple of recipes for no carb cheesecake that I'm going to try. I am basically on SBD Phase 1 starting today.

I've got my 4 days of exercise in for this week and thinking maybe I will throw in a 25 min/3 mile ride today.

Trish, my Metformin is 850. I am prescribed 3 per day which is 2550 per day, the maximum dose. I searched and searched online but could not find anything that referred to taking 1700 in one dose. I don't get any bad side effects from it, but I'm concerned about things that only show up in bloodwork, such as kidney damage.

My test with the kale in the vacuum seal bags failed. It was no longer fresh. I put it in the bags dry and it came with the consistency of frozen spinach after you defrost it. It was ok to eat, but it wasn't what I was trying to achieve. Next time I will vacuum seal it and put it in the freezer and see if that makes a difference. If not, then I will just have to eat it from the bag in just a few days. The big bag was only $3.

I found and bookmarked a section from Bloodsugar 101 that states that it doesn't matter when you take your Metformin as long as you don't take more than the prescribed dose in a 24 hour period. I am still taking part of it during the day. I will be getting bloodwork done April 1, so I will see what effect this is having on my kidney function. I have no obvious symptoms so far.

Carol Sue, missing you at WATP.

Hi Carol! Thanks for reminding me. You see, I haven't been exercising lately and don't think about that thread. Reading it just might be what I need to get myself back there!!

http://blog.myfitnesspal.com/6-non-g...DBLM153N8QXRTg

I hope this works. I got it from MFP newsletter on how to boost our metabolism. Thought I would share it.

Hey everyone looks like you both are finding answers to your high bg readings! Good going! I have another Drs appt in a few weeks and I'm anxious to see how lower carbing has affected my other readings. I know it works great for low bg.
I'm still doing essentrics but now I've added getting off my a$$ every hour and walking 1000 steps on my Fitbit. Much easier to get my 10,000 steps in and funny but I can feel it more in my muscles. I watched a documentary on how we should move during the whole day not just once a day. I feel more energetic to.

p.a. Good to hear from you. I think we all realize the importance of exercise when it comes to being healthy and keeping our bg under control. Took me years to get that right when I had the eating right. Now I've got the exercise down and need to get my eating back under control. I think if I ever get my act together and do both at the same time that I won't have the problems I have now. We can do this girl.

I actually am learning the same thing p.a. that exercise can be moving around and doing my house work. I like the idea on MFP that they count housecleaning as exercise. I started cleaning house yesterday and I plan to do 20 to 30 minutes of housecleaning everyday. I started with my bathroom. In fact, I told DH that if I ever have another house built that it will not have a toilet room as small as mine. I am so sore today from trying to clean the floor behind the toilet. LOL I have one job that I dread tackling and plan to hit it one day next week. Years ago when DH kids moved in everything was put in my closet. When anything had to go somewhere it was thrown in there. I really dread having to clean that thing out, but my goal is to tackle it one day this week. It is hard on my back but I will have to do a little bit at a time. But I am going to do it.

I have actually fallen back into eating SBD. So I've decided to go for it. I am going to keep my 2% milk and will just see how all this goes. After all this was a diet planned for heart patients so it is good. I actually would have gotten off yesterday but thanks to my DH I made it through. He wanted a salad and I was so sick of salads, but I decided that if I had to make him one that I might as well have one too. Thus I made it through. It paid off. My FBS was 152 this morning. YEY!!!:carrot: I know that isn't low, but it has been between 176 to 200 this month. Taking the Metformin at night is working. Thanks Carol Sue.

Got to run if I'm going to be on time at the beauty shop.

For the first time in ages I did well with my food through the whole day. I usually start out good but end up bad. I had around 1000 calories, no starchy carbs, but my carbs from vegetables and fruit came in around 47 gm. I felt a little hungry at bedtime but I fought through it in my mind, and only ate my bedtime egg. When I checked BS at bedtime it was only 113 so I was afraid to take both of the Metformin. I only took one, and my blood sugar was 160 this morning. It probably would have been lower if I had taken both the pills. Like you Trish, I feel that 160 is better than 200. I normally don't eat much fruit but after today I realize that I can have some in small quantities and still have good blood sugar.

p.a. I would like to know how long it takes you to walk 1000 steps. That would be good for me to try to reach more steps, and I agree that spreading them out throughout the day would be more beneficial than doing them all at once.

Carol Sue Here is a website I found naming 10 benefits of Kale. A boy at the store told DH and me it was the best vegetable you can eat. Here is why.

http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-4408/...ting-Kale.html

BBL