Now that I’ve breezed through my blood sugar target – hitting 42 mmol/mol (6%) at the beginning of April – I’m beginning to relax a little as far as blood sugar goes.
Hitting 42 mmol/mol (6%) in just 100 days puts me on a clear downward trajectory, averaging about 0.37mmol/mol or 0.034% per day.
Purely by estimation, based on my progress to date, since it’s now two weeks from my last HbA1c test, I should be somewhere around 36 mmol/mol or 5.46% today, which is way beyond where I’d expected to be at this stage.
Blood sugar naturally “bottoms out” somewhere between around 27mmol/mol (4.6%) and 36mmol/mol (5.4%). There are mechanisms in place to prevent you from going any lower, which puts me firmly into the “maintenance” zone for my blood sugar.
As a result I allowed mysel a treat this weekend, as I was visiting my partner up in Newcastle. We shared some Chinese takeout, which was yummy! 😋🤤
Of course, I still selected relatively “good” choices – one of my favourite Chinese dishes is crispy aromatic duck with pancakes. Duck is, of course, an excellent source of protein and healthy fats, and it’s served with thinly sliced cucumber and spring onions. You wrap the duck and greens in pancakes which are wafer-thin, and the “worst” part of the meal is the rich hoisin sauce. Last time I ordered crispy duck I barely put a light scraping of hoisin on my pancakes, just enough to get the taste, but this time I was very liberal! 😋
I also had some dry pork ribs, which, of course, are fine for my keto diet.
However, I also allowed myself two completely non-keto treats. I had three (no more!) deep-fried chicken balls in sweet-and-sour sauce. In this case, the battered coating and sauce are probably equally bad, hence limiting myself to just three. I also had some seaweed. Seaweed, of course, is usually not seaweed at all, but some other leafy green – like cabbage or kale – which is fried, but also usually dusted with brown sugar. Even though it’s just a dusting, it’s something to be aware of if you’re trying to be strictly keto.
It felt very indulgent, but I was able to enjoy it all completely guilt-free. Even though I know it will have kicked my blood sugar quite high after the meal, it’s still just one meal in a sea of keto choices. And after shooting past my blood sugar target, I’m no longer worried about my Type 2 Diabetes at all.
I had intended to get back to my usual 36-hour fast from Sunday night through til Tuesday morning, but I had a long drive back from Newcastle on Monday and decided to go easy on myself. So no fasting on Monday, but I was back to eating keto, and back to my Monday evening swim.
I was feeling very good on Monday night, so I did 2 x 500m plus 1 x 250m for a total of 1.25km.
On Tuesday, I ate normally (i.e., keto) and went for a run. Again, I was feeling pretty good, so I pushed my run sets up to 2.5 minutes with the usual 1-minute rest.
Today I’m back to fasting, and will swim again later.
I took my blood pressure, and that was also pretty good, averaging 130/89 with my final seated test just 125/88.
My diastolic was still a little high, but still very good for me, and the systolic reading was just about as good as I can expect.
But even more important for me is my standing blood pressure, which was 116/83. That’s a drop of just 9 points systolic and 5 points diastolic, which is well within the healthy range for a standing drop. You may recall I have seen drops as high as 30 points and even more of systolic pressure, which comes with a very high risk of fainting!
All in all, I’m very happy with my week so far, and excited to get back to fasting and seeing some more weight loss. Obviously, this weekend’s Chinese meal will have represented a small blip in my weight loss, but one I’m very happy with. I know a couple of 36-hour fasts and my usual keto diet will see me reverse that blip and get back on track in no time!
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