It's 10pm...do you know where your diabetes snacks are? For many Type 2 diabetics, nighttime hunger pangs are a hair-pulling experience. While your neighbor may be able to raid his cupboard for whatever he fancies at the moment, you're forced to dole out portions and count carbs.
While your diabetes diet doesn't drastically change when Jay Leno comes on, the timing of your meals do. Eat too soon before bed, and you might as well add the pounds to your midsection yourself. Go to bed hungry, and you may wake up with the dreaded dawn phenomenon... the unexpected rise in blood sugar that oftentimes takes place when diabetics go to bed after a significant fast.
These tips will help answer the classic diabetes head-scratcher: "When should I stop eating before bedtime?"
1. Free Foods Don't Matter: So-called free foods, such as celery, diet soda, and sugar-free Jell-O don't count for or against you at night. Because they contain virtually no carbs (or calories), you can eat these before bedtime if you'd like... but be sure not to expect them to count against the dawn phenomenon.
On the other hand, if you've already had a carb or calorie-heavy day, free foods are a perfect way to quench your grumbling belly and avoid a sugar rush.
2. Study History: It's impossible for anyone to hand you an exact minute by minute account of when it's OK to eat before bedtime and when it's off limits. That's why most diabetes experts recommend not just checking your blood sugar levels often... but writing them down.
With this information at hand, you can answer the question: what happened last time I had 2 handfuls of peanuts and an apple 2 hours before bed? This is the only way to actually know whether your bedtime snack gets the green light or not.
It's not a perfect science, but it will give you a much more accurate way of determining things than relying on generic guidelines.
3. Eat If You're Hypo: It doesn't matter what time it is... if your blood sugar levels are low, especially if you're on insulin, eat something. Many diabetics go to bed hungry with hypoglycemia because they were nervous about eating before bed. This isn't wise.
4. About 3 Hours Before Bed, Eat Something: Having a nighttime snack about 2 to 3 hours before bed is as specific as anyone can get. Think about it this way: if you had dinner at 6pm, went to bed at 11pm, and woke up at 7:30Am, that's more than 12 hours without eating a thing!
This will inevitably cause your body to shoot out internal stores of glucose, potentially making you hyperglycemic during the night.
Be sure to account for a small, protein-rich bedtime snack, like chicken and greens or nuts and veggies into your diet.
With these guidelines, bedtime eating should be as simple and straightforward as the rest of the day.
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