The IDS team has now challenged ourselves with honey nut cheerios, pizza, and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. For the ice cream challenge we decided to have one cup each (or more)-about 60g carb (at least). Life always plays a role in things as you’ve probably already begun to notice. Bragging rights for this one go to Annette but again, all of us were quite successful!
Strategy and results are as follows; Jenny, Dana, Gary, Alicia, Annette, Kathryn. Scroll on down to find out what the next challenge is!
We hope you’re able to learn something from these and as always, if you would like help with your diabetes management give us a call.
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Feel free to join in our challenges or make suggestions on what meals you would like to see us do. The point is to have fun and hopefully learn too!
The Results!
“I had a very late ice cream treat”!
I am on a conventional Omnipod right now as my RL went kaput last weekend. So no Loop help for me…
We have no Ben and Jerry’s shop, so off to the grocery store I went. Thankful they had some of the dairy free flavors and so I chose the Mint chocolate
cookie flavor.
Salad, omelette and peach for dinner and then went a bit low after dinner when I took my boys and dog for a walk.
Treated with a glucose tab, back up as I was putting the boys to bed. I pre-bolused for 60% of the carbs at what I expected to be about 15 min for putting
them to bed. Actually it was more like 25 min. I started eating on the downswing in BG about 9:20pm.
Took the rest of the bolus on the upswing and Rising up by 10p and peaked at 161 on CGM by 11p. Then left things alone with a temp basal increase of 20% for 4 hours started at 10pm.
Overnight was good, and had a rise up about 4am into my fasting time – without any overnight corrections I woke up at 118 per fingerstick – so I’m pretty happy given I had no help from Loop and had to do conventional.”
“I took well advantage of the “buy one get one” option and mixed cookie dough and cherry garcia. I may have intentionally dug out all the cookie dough bits for some added bang! I also may have gone for seconds…?.
I took my insulin right when I was eating because of major Loop interruptions. But finally got a bolus going with my last bite. I had well over 40g but only bolused for 30g cause I planned to take a correction later. I was trending around 80 after a dinner of salmon and veggies and had a bit of a lowering arrow.
I went for a long walk with my dogs and family afterwards to help ease the spike. I had a pod change right before bed and I think that caused a bit of a bump overnight.
But, I enjoyed this research tremendously and am willing to keep collecting data in the name of science ??. My dexcom line is set at 140 so did pretty well I think!!”
“The boardwalk in ocean city NJ happens to have a ben & jerry’s shop 2 blocks from the house we’re renting. Hit the shop around 11pm (after Chinese takeout dinner and watching Sixers game).
Chose a “regular” cookie dough, bolused for 60g carb with 5hr absorption and prayed to the diabetes gods. My prayers weren’t answered. Went low 3 hours later (treated w/18g smarties… really! Didn’t overtreat for once in my life!) and faced stubborn highs right through the rest of the night.
In retrospect, should have extended absorption longer (similar to Annette’s conclusion) and raised basal to offset the fat’s delayed effects using a temporary override through the night.
Gotta love hindsight! Let’s see… 5 more days of vacation… that gives me five more opportunities to get it right. Mmmm.”
“Ben and Jerry’s Challenge! We don’t have an actual store here where I live so I got my ice cream from the good old freezer section of the local grocery store. I had some Chubby Hubby, which I’d lovingly bought for my hubby a few weeks ago. Come challenge day I added some “Strawberry Cheesecake” to my grocery pickup order, but when I went to get it they told me it wasn’t available and substituted it for “Everything but the…”not my favorite! Who substitutes delicious strawberry cheesecake for that?!? It was a sad moment for me, but oh well…So I went with the Chubby Hubby.
I got the kids ready for bed and told them and my husband that I had important work to finish, and left them to get into bed while I went outside on the porch and enjoyed my ice cream ?
BG started at 95 at 9:20 when I ate. I bolused for the carbs about 10 minutes before and, using Loop put the absorption at 5 hours. When I went to bed around 10:30 I was right at 100. I ended up going down to around 80 and stayed there most of the night until 3am when I started going up a little. I peaked at 130 around 5:30am as I was getting up to swim. I ended up bolused a little to bring me down, and now after swimming am at 105 and steady.
Looking back, next time I would probably extend the absorption a little more, like 7-8 hours, but overall I’m going to consider this a success!”
“Here is my overnight data. Dinner salad at 630, BnJ at 725. Gave dinner bolus plus part of ice cream bolus 15min ahead of dinner with a 30/70 split over 2 hours. Bolused 30 min ahead of ice cream.
Came down to 70 but had mild hypo symptoms so BGs rose back up a bit. Control IQ on with sleep mode running scheduled at 1am.”
“I had a cortisone shot 3 days ago and still was running a temp basal increase for that this challenge. (Big thanks to Gary for the tips with cortisone).
I bolused up front for 50% of the ice cream just prior and 20% around 9:30 when the rise started and turned on a 30% additional basal increase to what I was running for the cortisone. Sat in the 160s while sleeping for a bit but loop helped me out to get back into range eventually.”
And the next challenge is………………. SUSHI!!!
We’ll be doing this one on Monday, September 14th-results will be on our instagram, facebook, and twitter pages the 15th. Stay tuned and feel free to join in on the challenge and share your results with us!
