Been on insulin for 23 years and was diagnosed in a time when the carbs aren’t the enemy message was in full swing. Did carb counting course when they became widely available and did refresher a couple of years ago. Last five years though have been a struggle. Poor food choices and general diabetes fatigue saw my weight, blood pressure and hb1ac go up and up. Came to a head 3 weeks ago with a bout of cellulitis in my leg. Had a good honest chat with the out of hours GP I saw, which lead to me virtually dropping carbs from my diet. Not gone full Keto as it’s not for me, but in 3 weeks have dropped 5 kilo and my BP is down. Tresiba is down 40% and bolus doses have dropped 60-70%.
Previously, prior to exercise I’d half my bolus dose and have some extra carbs. Tried this a few time since changes and my readings rocket to 16-18 then come down over the course of a few hours as I ride. Don’t want to start lower and then have to snack more over the course of a ride and can’t stand sipping energy drinks all ride. Done some reading and have thought about trying fasted riding for morning rides.

Anyone tried this?

I haven’t as I’m still trying to get a working balance…no 2 rides are the same with my blood levels even if starting at same level, same food before and same change to background and same route…so fasting isn’t on my radar yet.

I am needing to try to cut the carbs though – to try to help shift some weight, so I will be trying that over next few weeks…does mean a bit more snacking on bike rides but that is ok.

Hopefully you’ll have success with fasting and can then share the knowledge.

Cutting the carbs has been fairly life changing. Morning readings before could be 5-14. Now they are steady 7ish.
Easier than I expected, but to be fair it’s only been 3 weeks so far.
No bread, breakfast cereal and very minimal pasta or rice. I’ve only had a spoonful or so of each as I still do cook it for my wee lad and wife. Generally have porridge for breakfast with some berries or nuts, but that’s most of my carbs for the day. Really reduced fruit intake as well, but upped veg.

I can recommend the books by Michael Moseley’s wife, “The blood sugar diet” and “The fast 800”. Some decent ideas in them for carb swaps.

Braw, ta…

Great to see another Diabetic single tracker.

Ive been type 1 for 35 year now.

Generally we are more insulin resistance in the morning, due to the body releasing hormones to get us up and moving.

I have developed a few different strategies, depending on the time of day and the amount of OBI.
Morning Strategies; cover around half my breakfast carbs, and run a 50% Basel reduction for the whole ride. This keeps me pretty level during my 4 hour ride. Any carbs eaten I cover around 50% of my normal ratio.

Evening rides are normal 1hr blast on Zwift, which I’m still trying to get right. Ride before dinner, blood sugar goes through the floor. Ride after dinner and don’t cover any carbs, blood sugar stays good but feel sick from eating.. I guess I’ve got to much OBI from throughout the day. Riding before dinner and remembering to reduce my Basel a few hours before is probably were I’m heading.

The best advice I could offer is to train for an hour, taking notes of how much carbs you’ve had to eat and how you blood glucose has reacted. If you’ve got your ratios nailed then you should be able to reverse calculate it, working out how much you need to reduce your insulin by or how many carbs you need to consume over that hour.. sounds easy doesn’t it😂😂

There’s a website call Runsweet which is worth a look..

Hope this helps and good luck
Cheers Chris

Hi Chris, visited Runsweet over the years but found it pretty useless to be honest.
Also don’t have option of varying my basal during the day as I’m not on a pump.

Good overnight readings last night again. Went to be at 8.7 and currently 7.9. Libre curve is pretty consistent through the night.

Going out for an hour to see how I get on with no preride food. Will take plenty glucotabs and a few porridge bars just in case. Never too far from home on this loop so can easily head back if it doesn’t work out. Will post up later.

We are all really different with different absorption rates, different insulin regimes, different response to nutrients, different immune responses to insulin and different counter regulatory responses to life and exercise along with numerous other factors. Where I ended up, many may not:

1. When I was on a normal diet including carbs. After years of weighing measuring and recording meticulously (and exhaustingly), I pretty much gave up messing around with basal doses and exercise (too many problems post exercise), instead I just had Xg carbs per hour depending on what I was doing, usually 20-30g. For fasted morning exercise I usually had to have a bit of extra insulin, as my cortisol response in the mornings was pretty strong. If I did stuff that scared me, I needed more insulin and less sugar, similar with very high intensity work. Long lower intensity equalled more carbs.
2. Diabetes wore me out with my old approach, I’m now on a low carb diet and have been for quite a while so I am adapted to non carb energy utilisation (which definitely doesn’t happen immediately!). I will have a small dose of insulin (0.3-0.8u) pre an early morning fasted ride. On normal rides, I general don’t worry too much about things anymore. For 3-4 hour rides with lots of climbing, I might have 3 – 6g of carbs in total, sometimes a bit more and sometimes nothing is needed. BG is usually 4.5 – 5.5 and I don’t need to worry if BG is in the 4’s during hard exercise. I have a lot more energy now, especially towards the end of long, hard rides. Lots of protein post big rides helps me refuel without hypo issues.

Diabetes is a personal journey and we just need to find the things that work for us (whatever that entails from a nutrition and insulin perspective), stop lots of BG fluctuations, limit hypos and keep your HbA1C at a good level wherever possible. If things don’t work then don’t be afraid to change strategy, I know I spent far too long trying to make some approaches work for me when I should have just abandoned them. The same goes for insulin, it took me a while to realise that my response to some insulins was much more variable than others. 🙂

That is very interesting…that sounds like the sort of thing I’ve always hoped for, but I’ve never been brave enough to remove the carbs and that is where I’m next thinking it might be needing tested.

Well that was interesting. 1 hour 40 mixed trail ride covering 15 miles. No big climbs, just one steady drag from the start. No food this morning, just a glass of water. Blood sugar started at 8.2, was 8.2 after 40 minutes, 7.9 after 1h10 and 6.9 after an 1h25. Libre meter was indicating falling levels at that point so had a small brunch bar just in case. Was 7.2 when I got home and down to 6 twenty minutes later. Had breakfast when I got back.

First 10 minutes of ride felt plodding but it’s a bit of a drag up to the estate tracks. Once warmed up felt like a normal ride. Did feel a slight drop off at the time of the falling reading which would make sense. Will definitely try again.

Missed the OP – but I’m similar to superman3000 above, and your experience shows a similar trend Clubby.

I’ve tried many strategies over the years and settled somewhere in the middle. If I’m out in the morning I’ll tend to run a slightly higher temporary basal and not have breakfast but start fuelling immediately. The carbs get covered by the basal and I can fuel 30g/h ish without much BG deviation.

When I did low carb I ran the same but dropped basal even further with very little carb intake, I soon got tired when did four or five rides a week though. If you get to that point could you split your basal so you could manage the earlier half of the day differently, ie up it slightly so you can take on fuel?

superman3000 – I suffer the same in the evening, an hour on Zwift and I’m left in a heap. I’ve got to the point where I stop basal 2h before, and assuming ok bg at start add a few dextro in mid ride. Bolus a unit and back to normal basal 15 mins before the end and I’m somewhere near OK. Much harder than riding in the morning though!

Sounds promising.

Yep… I do a lot of rides/runs fasted now… if I’m around 6/7 getting up then I’ll inject 2 units fiasp for a 10 mile run… libre will show bg rising until insulin kicks in, meaning its usually about 6/8 by the time I get back. On a big ride at that level in the morning I’d inject 1 unit and half the ratio of units to carbs on a cafe stop. Been a lot braver since I got libre with skipping breakfast and keeping bg lower on a ride… can’t wait to get a pump but local NHS in no rush to recomence face2face appointments 😒

It’s all very interesting, I’ve often thought it would be easier just to remove carbs and just focus on Basel.
I find I have to cover around 50% proteins, around 2 hours after eating.
Something else which has really help me is fats. If I have cereal (shreadded wheat) for breakfast it would send me rocketing. But a hand full of almonds 5 minutes before and it slows the absorption down and reduces the spike.
And pre Bolusing, try to inject around 20 – 30 minutes before eating depending on curren† BGL and what’s being eaten really helps to stop/slow down after meal spikes..

Sounds like a successful test Clubby 🤟

All good fun 😀😀😀