Originally Posted by
Carbonfiberboy
What happened was that your blood sugar dropped out from eating only fast carbs and not much of that. You experienced a hypoglycemic episode. Because you hadn't been exercising regularly, your usual ability to burn fat didn't kick in and so you felt like crap.
3 approaches:
Seattle Forest eats a mix of carbs, protein, and fat, with possibly the fewest calories coming from carbs. Eating like that will hold your blood sugar more even and not let it drop out totally.
2nd approach is caloric. Your liver stores about 400 calories of glycogen, which is mostly depleted during sleep. Thus replace it with breakfast. Eat ~400 calories of mostly carbs, some protein. A bowl of oatmeal (1/2 c. raw oats) with sugar, raisins, and milk will take care of that, assuming that oats or milk doesn't bother your digestion. This approach is very common among cyclists.
3rd approach is minimalist: your blood sugar won't drop out if you don't eat anything. Diabetics know that one's blood sugar will be remarkably stable for the first 2 hours after awakening, so don't eat anything. OTOH most nutritionists believe that breakfast is very important, though if you're trying to lose weight it's worth consideration.
First of all, you don't know what op's blood numbers were to make any claims. Also the symptoms don't match hypoglycemia. And on top of that, exercise does not allow for insulin spikes so even if OP had an insulin spike in the morning, the half life of natural human insulin is so short that it would not have had an effect on the actual ride.
Also, hypoglycemia primarily does not happen to healthy people. It is a disorder usually only known to people who specifically suffer from it due to some imbalance in the glucose metabolism system or who are diabetics. Normal people do not get hypoglycemia from eating fast carbs.
I've explained this on this sub already dozen times but I'll do a short summary. Fast carbs DO NOT CAUSE insulin spikes during exercise. If they did the human race would be extinct. There is a specific system in place in the body to prevent this, mainly the increase of insulin sensitivity in critical tissues and massively decreased insulin excretion which does not react to any amounts of orally ingested carbohydrates.
Your first approach is good for general health. Eat a balanced diet with a good mix of nutritional macros.
Second approach does not have anything to do with potential hypoglycemia since glycogen depletion is different from hypoglycemia. Increasing carb intake to fill glycogen stores helps with glycogen depletion but not with hypoglycemia if the person involved has an inclination to drop blood glucose levels.
The third approach is what I follow and no, diabetics don't know blood glucose levels are stable in the mornings. It's the other way round. Blood sugar levels are extremely volatile in the mornings for many diabetics due to the sunrise effect which lowers insulin sensitivity and makes controlling blood glucose more difficult to control. But sure, it can be understood as stable since blood glucose certainly does not go down in the mornings. This is mainly why I don't eat breakfast or even lunch most days.
I would not without reservations accept that breakfast is important for weight management. It depends on the person and habits. Some people benefit from a breakfast, some don't and it's pretty individual. On the one hand it's added calories which may or may not help with hunger along the day but on the other hand it may help with some people to not become completely ravenous at lunch time.