Because nicotine is a stimulant. Whenever you take away a stimulant, your metabolic rate falls. When your metabolic rate falls, you gain weight on the same amount of food. That’s why people gain weight when they stop smoking.

So sue me, I’m a slow reader, haven’t gotten back to 2005 yet (grins)

That’s an excellent post, now added to my list of cites for newbie diabetics.

Glad you enjoyed it.

I think the panic is a little overkill. Events like these always remind me of the great quote from H.L. Mencken:

I probably should put up a post about this.

After that all settles down, well I’ve noticed a major improvement in endurance and while I still carry sweets and other carbs as hypostop for emergencies I haven’t needed to hit them for ages now, and my snacking has reduced severely. Occasionally I will need to stuff some carbs after relatively high intensity exercise, but in general my pancreas and liver now work cooperatively.

It’s worth pointing out something you may not realise (I didn’t until it was pointed out to me, so I’m passing it along): the total blood volume only contains around 5g glucose at any one time, so there’s major work going on in the background stashing dietary glucose into store and retrieving it into the blood on demand, one system is the pancreatic beta cells producing insulin, the other is the pancreatic alpha cells generating glucagon. There only needs to be a 5g glucose disparity between these systems for your BG to double.

Food for thought!

I posted on this very subject a long while ago.

I probably never had a proper Phase 1 response since childhood but 50 years later my Phase 2 can still drop my BG like a stone if I let it go high in the first place, and it’s the rate of change that brings on the hypo symptoms.

Agree on the testing, this was my paradigm

http://loraldiabetes.blogspot.com/2009/04/test-test-test.html

except it may help to start 1/2 hour postprandial and go out to three or four hours to see the full peak to peak swing.

I seem to be well able to run on ketones and generate all the glucose I need from protein without the peaks and dips caused by trying to bolus carbs. High protein moderate fat and low carbs for breakfast, and probably higher fat during the rest of the day seems to keep me most even with more energy – and keeps the lipids normalised no matter that it freaks out my GP

Until people started commenting on this, I had never heard of ‘induction flu.’ I don’t think it’s a reaction to any kind of bacterial kill off, in fact, based on work with thousands of patients on low-carb diets, I’m not sure exists.

My rule on fats is that if they can be gotten by pressing the subtsance they come from, i.e., olives, nuts, etc., I don’t mind them in fairly small doses. Coconut oil and palm oil and palm kernal oil, I consume in fairly large quantities as we cook with those. But I avoid all fats that have to be chemically extracted, i.e., corn oil mainly.

I also agree with the suggestion that your sister try using a glucometer to see what is happening with her BG. She should use the test strips liberally for a while to generate enough data to get an accurate picture (graphing is great). That’s what I did, with a lot of help from Jenny’s excellent website Blood Sugar 101.

I’m another normal weight person who has glucose regulation problems if I eat high carb foods with sugar and starch. For a long time (until age 29) I was actually underweight and really wanted to gain some weight, but found it difficult, and I thought I could eat anything I wanted (though I mostly craved carbs). Then all of a sudden, in a year I gained about 20 pounds, 2/3 of which I welcomed (finally had a few curves). I think the gestational diabetes diagnosis should have been a clue, but it wasn’t. I LC’d in the final trimester with great success, but went back to my carbs after the birth, a big mistake. More weight crept on when I bought a bread machine and got into baking pizza, bread, and making homemade pasta! When I hit 140 pounds (5′3″), it hit me that the carbs were the issue. I was back to the low 120s in 5 mos by cuttign carbs, and subbing non-starchy veggies, plus being more generous with protein and fat than before. Now I’m even grain-free and consume very little sugar and I don’t really even miss them much.

One thing I learned what that even though I still have normal Fasting BG (90-100), my BG went really high (140-275) after eating common carb-rich foods (now I stay under 110 almost all the time after eating). The feeling that I needed more carbs (cravings, jitteriness, intense hunger, lack of energy, fatigue) really felt like low BG, but the glucometer told me my BG had already peaked and was on its way down (rapidly), but was actually *still quite high* (perhaps 180-150). So my body was saying, “eat more carbs, BG is low”, when it was very clear from frequent glucose testing that I still had a lot of toxic glucose to clear from my bloodstream. Sugar and starch makes the regulatory system very screwy and the messages it gives us are not always accurate.

It’s clear to me now that my first phase insulin response (which starts secretion of stored insulin at the first bite or even before smelling and anticipating carb-rich foods) is shot or inadequate (unknown reason). So 45 minutes or so after starting to eat, my pancreas starts the second phase insulin – realtime production of insulin. Like the calvary, it rushes in to mop up the toxic excess glucose, but often overshoots the mark and then the roller coaster BG cycle really gets going. It’s awful, for me and anyone else around me, because I get short on patience, etc. I am so glad to be free of that “carb grip” now.

Good luck with your discussions with your sister. I know how resistant people can sometimes be with this issue, until they are ready to make changes and see things differently.

Seeing that advertisement with Ronald Reagan brings to mind how he kicked the smoking habit. Two words: Jelly Belly. Nothing like replacing one bad habit with another…hmmmm!

Until next time,

Jean