The Ultimate Guide to nutrition for Diabetics - Part 1
Unlocking the Key to Type 1 Success: Navigating Lifestyle Changes and Food Choices
Become a Premium BREED1 Member today for only 19$ per month and Unlock a world of health and biohacks for your Diabetes!
If there is one thing we ALL agree, Type 1 Diabetic or not, changing your lifestyle is the hardest thing we could ever do.
But as we have already pointed out in many of our posts and videos, this will be the main key to your Type 1 success.
When I say success, I simply mean, having a life free of Type 1 Troubles and annoyances.
There is definitely no 1 fit all way of eating, everyone on earth has different gut and mouth biomes, DNA, which means that different foods will do different things for everyone.
You might even be one of those people that are completely resistant to rice and you can eat it without affecting your glucose.
My goal is to give you the necessary tools and knowledge to be able to make your own research based on these opinions and what has worked for me and many others.
Food has three different components that we will go through, each of these components are extremely important to one another.
But if you can break the connection between all three, you will become unstoppable.
Let’s get started!
Nutrition Tuesdays
BREED1 Writer: Kevin Moses, Editor and Founder of BREED1
The Ultimate Guide To Nutrition for Diabetics
The day I became Type 1, I became absolutely obsessed with all nutrition.
I really do believe that is the main reason I am able to have such control over my Glucose.
Here is my last 24 hours for reference, I am using a Dexcom CGM (Constant Glucose Monitor) to track my glucose every 5 minutes.
The limit on my chart is of 6.5 (Which is the minimum limit you can input in the Dexcom settings).
This means that when I get to 6.5 MMOL, I receive a High Glucose alert.
I ALWAYS stay in a range of 5-6, even after eating my one meal in the day, I will talk more about Intermittent Fasting in another post.
The only moment that my glucose goes into crazy ranges is when I run over 15KM or JiuJitsu.
Here is my chart after 7KM of running.
Notice that my glucose goes from my normal range of 5.5 to 8.5 in just a few minutes and then crashes down to 3.
This is because of my running style. I run at 4.5 Minutes per KM, which is a little like sprinting.
So when I start running, my heartbeat and adrenaline start pumping, which causes my body to secrete cortisol (adrenaline) which then uses stored glucose from my liver to create energy.
But once my heart rate stabilizes, after a few kilometers of steady running at the same pace, my cortisol stops being secreted and my body becomes a furnace of energy consumption.
Which makes my glucose go low.
My trick is pretty cool. Before I even start my run, I eat a Mr Big chocolate bar or a Tablerone, chocolate bars have fat, which means that it will take more time to digest and become Glucose, this is good because I don’t want to spike to 10 MMOL before my race, I want to stay at steady ranges.
Then when all the chaos passes, and my glucose goes into dangerously low levels, I simply stop running and walk for about 1-1.5KM, which let’s my body digest the chocolate and bring my Glucose levels to something around 6-7. I then do it all again until I finish the race.
Note that your body is not capable of digesting fats and carbs during hypoxia events, this is VERY important to keep in mind while doing exercise.
Understanding the relationship between your glucose and physical activity is CRUCIAL to level-up your nutrition.
And the next time my Glucose does something crazy is when I do JiuJitsu.
This one is VERY complicated. But it is basically the same thing without the crash.
My glucose goes EXTREMELY high, 10-12 MMOL from 5MMOL in less than 30 seconds when I start “rolling’’, a term for fighting in JiuJitsu.
Now let’s talk about the first component of Nutrition
⚠️ DISCLAIMER: None of this is health advice. Please do your own research. These are my own opinions.
1. The Science of food
If there is one thing I want you to remember is that all sugars are the same. They all behave in the same way. Some will be faster and others slower based on the connected components they are attached to, like fats for example will slow down the process of breaking down carbohydrates.
But at the end, all sugars become glucose, which will therefore require insulin to let inside the cell.
This information is KEY and is not an opinion, this is a fact of science.
Of course, there are some different sugars that are not sugars but sweeteners, either chemical or natural, these sweeteners activate the sweetness in your brain but without having the effect on glucose.
Being able to see food as what it is and what they consist of will save you a lot of health troubles.
We are as a species are extremely addicted to carbohydrates, and I am not going to lie, carbs are so damn good!
But as I will repeat, you are a different breed of human, you are not normal, therefore you need to eat like this new breed that you are.
The body barely needs between 50 to 150g of carbs per day. Anything above this will start affecting your glucose and will need more insulin.
Your goal is to need as less insulin as physically possible.
It’s important to understand that I am talking about a Diet, what I am showing you right now is a way of life. Removing carbohydrates from your food is for life, or as long as you have Diabetes.
Maybe new tech will cure us forever and we can go back to eat Pizza.
But for now, this is what you need to accept.
Once you understand what a carbohydrate is, you will understand that MOST things have it.
Your dietician and endo might give you a list of all good things to eat, and I 100% assure you, this list is full of carbohydrates.
Why you may ask? Why doesn’t our doctor tell us to stop eating rice, to reduce it and to reduce bread, to keep eating bananas, wheat, oranges. WHY?
Because Endocrinologist and dieticians 1 are trying to convince most of their patients to stop eating cake. Do you really think that they can start focusing on making their patients better when these patients are self-destructive? Really hard to do so in my opinion.
This is a conversation that I have with my Endo every 5 months.
Now let’s go through a list of foods and ingredients that you need to 100% eradicate from your life, this is a basic list of things that most ethnicities interact with.
Removing these things will instantly put you in the top 1% of biohackers and healthy humans.
Bread/Wheat
You need to kill bread forever. As you have noticed I am sure, every time you eat bread or wheats, your glucose spikes to crazy numbers.
Bread has over 50 Total carbs per 100g and not enough fibers to be relevant.
This is a huge problem for any human overall, because not only diabetics get a spike from such big amounts of carbs, also healthy people.
David Sinclair research in genetics and aging has revealed that by constantly spiking glucose, you accelerate the aging process of your body.
Aging creates MANY degenerative issues in humans, and you enter a loop of disease that only brings you closer to death quicker.
If you ABSOLUTELY need bread in your lifestyle, there are MANY ‘‘Low Carb’’ brands that I have tried that barely move my glucose.
My favorite one is CARBONAUT and my favorite and most delicious one is the Seeded bread.
Only 2 net carbs per slice.
Most ‘‘Keto Friendly’’ packaged foods that you can find are NOT to be trusted, brands use the word Keto to make money and do not care about Diabetics.
But I promise, you can trust any CARBONAUT product! I have tested them with my Dexcom and so have many others online and around me!
I usually buy this at Costco but a lot of places have started selling this awesome bread.
When trying new foods that claim to be low carb, always take a little bit a check how it affects your Glucose, you might be more sensible to this brand, you might find another one that also claims the same low carbs, try it, test it!
Never be scared of testing, this is the only way you will find what works and what totally does not.
Rice
You need to remove rice from your life, now. Rice has starches that spike your glucose HARD. Which will require so much more insulin. By removing Rice from your diet, you will see an EPIC difference in insulin need INSTANTLY.
Now, I am a chef, and there is simply NOTHING better than rice, it goes with EVERYTHING. It’s literally the best thing in the world.
Now that you know my stance on rice, here is how I replaced it.
Cauliflower Rice!
A lot of people do not like this, but the only reason they don’t like it is because they have no clue how to cook it!
If your cauliflower is still white after cooking it, it will taste like dog water!
Cauliflower is mostly water.
Your goal when cooking this is to make sure you have evaporated ALL it’s water, sauté with Olive Oil in a pan, after about 7-8 minutes of moving, it will start browning, then you can add either salt or Soya Sauce, or anything you would like!
Only like this will you be able to experience the beauty of this rice.
Cooking Cauliflower Rice for 10 Min + will make it become as delicious as normal rice.
Then you make a Tagine, a curry, eat it with steak, HOWEVER you would use rice, you can use Cauliflower Rice if you cook it to the point of light browning.
Some people have also had success by refrigerating normal white rice for more than 24 hours and reheat it with a microwave, supposedly it becomes starch resistant and does not affect your glucose too much, I tried it, did not work for me, maybe it will for you, try it and comment if it worked!
Pastas
I am so sorry to tell you, you are done with pastas and there is no way to replace them. Even talking about replacing pastas is an insult to the dish.
I have tried so many things, like using Tofu noodles, Shirataki noodles (NEVER AGAIN FOR ITALIAN PASTAS, Shirataki noodles ABSOLUTELY replace Ramen noodles in a delicious ramen bowl, but NOT italian pastas). Nothing replaces the mix of flour and yolks, nothing.
If you follow my guidance, once every months you can cheat and have some pastas as a reward to being absolutely amazing and EPIC!
Pastas really do spike your glucose, no one is resistant to it, everyone spikes to dangerous levels or need to take A LOT of insulin to be able to eat them.
Fruits
Like I said before, ALL sugars act the same. Specifically fruits.
Growing up, we were built to KNOW that fruits are healthy. But most fruits have insane amounts of carbohydrates that spikes ANYONES glucose.
If you make a simple google research, you will find that a single banana has aprox 25g of carbs.
You would need to inject yourself with insulin just to eat a single banana.
Here is my list of fruits that eat moderately:
🫐Blueberries (THE BEST) these are delicious and have very low amounts of carbs and are low-glycemic. There are still carbs in blueberries, so make sure to never over eat them, they WILL spike you if you take too many, you can easily test it by yourself see what works for you.
Raspberries. For me, I can eat less raspberries than blueberries before they start affecting my glucose, it might be different for you.
Strawberries, even though these are very sweet if they are picked during the right time, they are still very low-glycemic. Don’t eat too many, maybe 4-5 during the day.
Watermelon - Watermelon is MOSTLY water, above 92%. You can eat about 100g of watermelon in a day, this will be 8g of carbs. Remember, you still need about 50g of carbs during the day to keep your energy up and your body healthy.
Stay tuned for Part 2