I’m carb watching!

Yesterday I had a teleconference with a nurse practitioner. I decided it would be a good idea to work with someone who can help me figure out what and how much I need to eat. After all, I’ve got pre-diabetes hanging over my head. How do I manage that around my cycling activities?

I had seen my primary care physician the day before for a follow-up, and we spoke about the pre-diabetes. He said to limit carbs to 100 grams per day. That seems too restrictive to me.

After all, as soon as I began to look at the carb content of various foods that I eat regularly, it became plain that a 100-gram/day limit would make it next to impossible for me to get enough to eat! That’s all the more true as I don’t eat much of meat, poultry, fish, or eggs.

Taking in lots of low-carb animal foods is a good way to send my cholesterol level soaring. My stomach can hold only so much in the way of low-carb, high-bulk foods, so eating pounds of broccoli isn’t the best solution, either.

The nurse practitioner thinks that 150-200 grams of carb per day is a more realistic goal than 100 grams or less. So do I! It’s a goal that even lets me fit in a little sweet treat.

We haven’t talked much yet about my exercise routine, and how to adjust my diet to it, because we ran out of time. We’ll discuss that at at later meeting.

I’m continuing with my food log, but now of course have added carb watching. As to my Sunday long ride, I probably need extra carbs. I seem to need more calories during those rides! Last Sunday I burned 1357 calories, and took in about 710. No wonder I got tired on the way back home!