Low Carb

Reducing Your Insulin Needs (AND Cost)

How, as a diabetic, can you reduce your overall insulin needs and insulin expense (if in the USA)? By changing the way you eat. Read about Shane’s experience reducing his insulin needs and losing weight after just 4 months of adopting the low carb lifestyle.

REAL LIFE LOW CARB Online Course Launch!

Want to improve your diabetes management? Curious about low carb methods for diabetes? Maybe you're eating LC but not achieving the blood sugar results you'd like. Join our “Real Life Low Carb” online course! You'll get a supportive community, tons of useful, real life information, along with videos, coaching, and an ebook workbook. Join us today!

Low Carb Diabetes Influencers

Low Carb Diabetes Influencers

These people are dedicated to spreading knowledge about low carb for diabetes management. They work tirelessly as doctors, nurses, professors, researchers and community-builders. Thank you to each of these people, and the many more who are not listed here, for your work as a "Low Carb Diabetes Influencer."

An Overview of Dr Bernstein's Plan for Diabetes

There are many recommendations for the management of diabetes but low carb eating, along with modern medicine, is the best treatment to avoid long term diabetic complications. Listed here are at-a glance tips from Dr. Bernstein's Diabetes Solution, to help maintain your best possible health with Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes. 

Low Carb Profile Week 1: Susanne

Low Carb Profile Week 1: Susanne

For each of the next 6 weeks, we'll feature an interview with a person with Type 1 Diabetes who follows Dr. Bernstein's plan for low carb eating and diabetes management.  We're asking their diabetic history, their thoughts/feelings about eating low carb, and what changes they've seen in their lives since switching how they eat. 

The Low Carb Secret Ingredient

For weeks, I suffered from varying degrees of dizziness, body weakness, headache and confusion.  I had trouble finding the right words and concentrating on my writing. I felt absolutely helpless. 

Of course I was thinking my problems were really serious. I was convinced I had a brain tumor or degenerative neurological issue. SOMETHING had to explain the symptoms I'd been experiencing. 

What I Eat - Metrics For A Week

What I Eat - Metrics For A Week

What I eat on a daily basis has been documented both the diaVerge Facebook page, here in the food gallery, and within the post What I Eat- A Typical Day. Until now though, I've never published the exact metrics of my daily food consumption, or a week's average. 

For the past 7 days, I weighed and tracked everything I ate. 

9 Tips for Low Carb in a High Carb World

9 Tips for Low Carb in a High Carb World

We all encounter times when we have no low-carb support: your workplace, a relative's house, a restaurant.... even in your own home. Everywhere we go, we're faced with other people's eating habits. This time of year is particularly bad. Between Halloween and New Year, it's a constant barrage of high-carb foods and the common practice of Celebration = Treats. 

Low Carb is Diabetes Empowerment

Low Carb is Diabetes Empowerment

For several years (during both of my pregnancies and the time in between) I maintained  A1c levels of 5.8% to 6.3% (this falls within the ADA's recommendations of "Tight Control") and my doctors were thrilled. BUT these levels were due to dramatic daily highs and lows, which lead to a lot of danger, uncertainty and stress. I often had no idea what was causing high blood glucose levels and would blame my pump, or my calculations, or myself.

Use Your Words

Use Your Words

I ask my girls to use their words frequently. They might be having trouble expressing their emotions, or telling a story, or trying to figure out what to say to friends in certain situations. Together, we talk about how to talk about things. 

Then about a week ago, I read this beautiful post from Momastery.com about how to help your kids choose the right words to avoid peer pressure.  Because, as she writes, when we're put on the spot, we panic. 

This applies to our low-carb lifestyle, too. As people who eat very differently from the general population, we face pressure every day and need to have responses ready those times we feel pressure.

Treatment of Lows (Hypoglycemia)

Lows are to be respected, not feared.

A great benefit of low-carb eating is that a diabetic will no longer experience crashing lows like they did when they were eating large amounts of carbohydrates and using large amounts of insulin. When eating low-carb, lows tend to be very gradual, and since you are following the Law of Small Numbers, your body only requires a very small correction to get to the ideal blood glucose level of 83 mg/dL. 

The Law of Small Numbers

The primary Diabetes management concept Dr. Bernstein recommends to achieve normal blood glucose numbers is "The Law of Small Numbers." Dr. B explains it like this: 

"Big inputs make big mistakes; small inputs make small mistakes.” Dr. Bernstein's Diabetes Solution (p. 108)

So, what does this mean for your everyday eating plan and blood glucose control? What should you do?