Evaluation weeks 9 & 10

Hi again



Welcome to another post. It's been a week since I returned from Devon/Cornwall. I think this post should be entitled holiday hangover, not from alcohol I hasten to add but from the holiday I took from my usual eating plan. I hadn't intended to stray into the realms of chip shops and cream tea parlours but stray I did and it's turned out to be a rather interesting excursion.

I'll explain a bit about the type of holiday so get you get the picture first. We have a touring caravan and this time it was just my husband and I (the first holiday on our own without our daughter who will be 18 in a few weeks). We took our walking gear (boots, waterproofs etc) along with cycles and and all our body boarding stuff for the beach.

The way we've always eaten on these holidays has been to have breakfast in the caravan (cereal or cooked) then bugger off out for the day. We never bothered with packed lunches preferring the convenience of eating out. Anyway this time I insisted on going supermarket shopping and for the first 2 days I dutifully made myself a salad dressed with hemp oil for lunch. Evening meals in pubs were a bit tricky but I did my best by ordering things like baked potatoes with cheese and salad.

By day 3 I was fed up making salads and even more fed up with carrying them in my rucksack everyday along with bottles of water and several pieces of fruit. The start of my demise was a vegetable pasty (made with wholemeal flour of course). I then progressed to fish and chips from the chip shop which I have to say were absolutely gorgeous - so much so I went back for another lot later in the week. During the rest of the week I also managed to fit in 3 scones with jam & cream (no butter) and 2 ice creams.

On the plus side I continued to take my hemp oil everyday (I didn't take any flax as I ran out).

Now then here's the thing...............................

you'd think that all those carbs and sugar which I normally avoid like the plague would've sent my BG rocketing. Wrong!! Amazingly I saw spectacular improvements particularly in my fasting levels first thing in the morning. Yes I did increase my insulin before eating fish & chips or scones (overall I was injecting on average between 2 and 4 units more at each injection than usual). But that's not a lot of insulin to bring down fasting blood BG as low as 6.8 the next morning (for me anyway) ! I can't remember ever testing that low in the morning before.

My explanation for this is simply the amount of activity. One day my husband joked we had done a mini triathlon - cycling in the morning, body boarding in the afternoon and walking in the evening. Despite some bad weather we were out of the caravan everyday for several hours. I think that, had I managed to stick to my normal eating plan whilst I was on holiday I would've been hypoing every day (I didn't have a single hypo). But then I believe I also need extra carbs to fuel all that activity.

I consider it an important lesson learned. My problem is now that I'm home how am I going to maintain that level of activity? Actually I can't, all I can do is make a commitment to take exercise as often as I can possibly manage it.

This last week after returning from holiday it took me a few days to adjust back to my normal eating plan but my fasting blood sugars have been ranging between 10 and 12. Very disappointing and that's why I likened it to a hangover. If I could just get the diet and the exercise right and maintain it......

Just a couple of things to mention about food products:

I've noticed that KerryGold are now advertising a spreadable butter without added vegetable oils.

Also low carb chocolate bars by Dr Atkins (available in Boots) state they are trans fat free (but they are expensive).

That's it for this week. If you have any comments please feel free to post it would be nice to hear from people.

Carol