I am 34 years old, female, and skinny. There is diabetes in my family, namely my aunt and cousin. I am very healthy, but developed "gestational diabetes" in pregnancy. "Gestational diabetes" meant that an hour after my 50 g glucose drink, my blood sugar surged to 220 mg/ml.
My aunt has diabetes. Hers began in pregnancy as well, and she is also skinny. She kindly lent me her blood testing stuff, and I began to routinely test my blood sugars. My first question was: what is a normal person's blood sugar. That answer is not on the American Diabetes Association website, by the way. My conclusion, based on what I will say later, is that it is about 75 to 95. There can be spikes, but really, there should not be if the insulin is working promptly. Blood sugars above this, consistently, can be determined by a number called the hemoglobin A1C. This number counts the number of damaged cells (due to high blood sugar). See, high blood sugar is like having shellac in the blood stream. It sticks to everything, and messes it up. And the higher the hemoglobin A1C, the more messed up things are. My hA1C number was 5.9, then within two weeks it went down to 5.8. It meant that my average blood sugar was about 120 mg/mL for about 40 days. That is way above 95 mg/mL.
Anyway, I immediately took all flour, rice, and sweets out of my diet. I added nuts, meat, eggs, cheese and green vegetables. My blood sugars were consistently "normal." But I yearned for the day when the baby would arrive and this would magically end.
Well, baby came, everyone told me I was "cured". I didn't check my sugars for a week, and drank orange juice, ate bread... Then, I ate a banana and checked my sugars: 158. Obviously the magic hadn't happened to me. So back to the low-carb.
Baby is almost three months old now. Another two problems have developed for me. My blood sugar now drops too low and I cannot feel it. Yesterday it was 61. This is only bad in that it affects memory and energy because the brain likes its sugar. The other problem is that I am losing too much weight. The low-carb diet causes weight loss, which most people love. But I am skinny to begin with. I don't want to be a waif.
