Originally Posted by
Rollfast
I am obese (250 pounds or so). I was told to check my blood glucose level prior to meals and adjust accordingly. While I'm really not eating well enough to always stay in a better range and I've had all kinds of poor sleep patterns and stress while getting my house ready for it's regular inspection this time around, I see sports drinks as little but glorified Kool-Aid and a crutch for the sweet tooth.
You do not need to force calories back into your body. It's psychological. If your reading is 150 mg/dL or more you are bound to force yourself into a yoyo pattern if not curbed properly.
Your body SHOULD be converting both digested food and stored energy (fat, nobody is free of it completely, it is vital), and the digestive process can take 1-2 days to fully process your prior intake.
It is only a craving. What it's doing is telling you are working hard and your stomach expects you to maintain a certain state. It's a primitive reflex from the time when humans had far slimmer pickings and could starve. But as the previous poster said, it's not a requirement necessarily. It's more of a reward and a habit.
Diabetics need to rely less on drinks and candies and keep a proper diet. That will suffice. One of the ironies is that your poor insulin made you crave the sugars and fats that were not being processed correctly in the first place, causing the complications.
If it's hot and you are sweating a lot anyway, you are not losing Gatorade, you are losing water and salt and waste products.
My BMI is 23. It got that way from learning how to eat.
"Fat burns in a carbohydrate fire." You need carbs for good performance.
When you start to feel dizzy during a long hard climb, it's because your BS is in the toilet and you need to eat, particularly high GI carbs. It's not a craving, it's a physical need. Low BS is no joke. One of the problems of low BS is that your decision making also goes in the toilet and you may not feel hungry or want to eat at all. You have to learn to recognize the symptoms and force yourself to act.
The trick of losing weight is simply eating fewer calories than your burn. For purposes of weight loss, it really doesn't matter what those calories are. That said, different people find they can eat fewer calories more easily by eating certain foods and not others, but everyone is different that way. The simplest thing is simply to eat smaller portions of healthy food.
On the bike, it's a whole different story. Your burn can be 10X your resting burn. Those calories have to come from somewhere. The hangup in the system is simply getting those calories across the stomach wall. High GI carbs cross that wall the fastest. You will never have a BS spike as long as you dribble those calories in and don't wait until you're having problems to eat.
Check your BS once an hour and you'll quickly see exactly how much to eat how often. I ride with several Type I riders who've been riding for 30+ years. They know how it's done. They're slim, fast, and you'd never know they were diabetic.