Eat to Your Meter

Eat to Your Meter

“Eat to your meter” means to test pre-meal and post-meal. The idea behind testing at 1 hour and 2 hours is based on the premise that your blood sugar will peak at 1 hour after eating the first bite, and that blood sugar will go back down to normal at 2 hrs.

Anyone with an A1C over 5.1% or a daily average blood glucose over 100 mg/dL or 6.0 mmol/l should be using their glucose meter on a regular basis! Always test your fasting blood glucose (FBG) first thing in the morning before eating, drinking, or doing anything else except going to the bathroom and washing your hands. If you are on insulin or diabetes meds, you should also test at bedtime.

However, if you want to test for a specific food, either a new food (or recipe) or one that you haven’t tested for a while, you may test up to 6 or more times during a single day. Here’s how to test:

  1. Baseline: Test pre-meal to get a fasting baseline. Ideally, you should have a non-diabetic normal of 70-99 mg/dL (or 3.8-5.6 mmol/l). If it’s higher than that, it’s okay–for now. Just write it down.
  2. Blood sugar peak: Test one (1) hour after taking the first bite of your meal because that’s when blood sugar typically peaks. If you are clearly diabetic, it may not peak until 90 minutes after the start of your meal. If your blood sugar raises more than 20-30 mg/dL (or more than 1.4-2.0 mmol/l), that’s a red flag that the food being tested may not be a suitable one to include in your diet.
  3. Blood sugar normalization: Test two (2) to three (3) hours after taking the first bite of your meal as that is when your blood sugar should come back down to close to your pre-meal number. If it does not, keep testing!
  4. Delayed blood sugar peak and normalization: If your meal is high in fiber (such as whole grains and legumes) or if it is high in protein of any kind, test again at four (4), five (5) or even (6) hours after said meal, because high-fiber high-protein meals typically take longer to digest and may cause your blood sugar to remain high for several hours after the meal.
  5. Repeat this testing process for a specific food several times on different days. Make sure the rest of the content of the meal stays consistent. Keep accurate records with dates and test results.

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Adventist Vegetarian Diabetics™ Recipe Book was published in April 2023. It can be found on Amazon at (https://www.amazon.com/Adventist-Vegetarian-DiabeticsTM-Recipe-Book/dp/B0C1JJTGLW/) in both Kindle and paperback formats.

Our classic book, Adventist Vegetarian Diabetics, 2nd Edition, was published in May 2023. It can be found on Amazon at (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C5KNKS8B) in both Kindle and paperback formats.

We encourage you to join our Facebook group for Adventist Vegetarian Diabetics™ in order to ask questions, make comments, and share your own experiences. If you are not a member of the Facebook group for Adventist Vegetarian Diabetics but would like to be, please click the link and request to join. You will be asked 3 questions. Here’s a description of the Facebook group.

If you just want continuing information and don’t want to take part in any discussion, we recommend you peruse our website at https://adventistvegetariandiabetics.com/. We also have a Facebook information page, Adventist Vegetarian Diabetics Resources.

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