In November of 2019, I had a bit of a mishap with some chocolate. I’d been eating the “healthy” dark chocolate for years, as it generally has less sugar that the milk kind (though that’s not always true) and mindlessly ate some from my freezer.
The dark side of chocolate: my bG meter shot up to almost 200!
Uh oh.
I posted about my experience:
November 24, 2019
So posting for accountability…
I accidentally broke my shiny, new bG. Last night, I pulled a dark chocolate bar out of the freezer to eat a few squares before I fixed my salad and then noticed my bG had shot up to nearly 200. It wasn’t the normal dark chocolate I buy, and is now in the trash. This morning, my bG is still at 158.
Someone had posted about making a similar error recently, so you’d think I’d have checked the package, but I didn’t. When I did, it went straight in the garbage (Steve doesn’t eat dark chocolate, only milk chocolate).
No real side effects, in that my weight didn’t go up and I don’t feel physically bad. Also don’t feel emotionally bad, as it was an accident, not a cheat. I do feel a bit foolish though.
Also somewhat irritated, I’d gotten my 7-day average bG down to 107. It’s at 110 now and likely still climbing.
My 90-day average is at 124, and won’t climb as fast, so likely my blood draw on Monday will still show a hugely improved A1c.
I did briefly consider a bit of insulin to knock it down, but remembered… insulin causes insulin resistance. That would be going backwards, not forwards.
So just decided to start my weekly fast a day early to fix this screw-up as fast as possible. Coffee and water today, tomorrow, not sure for how long, we’ll see what the bG does. At least a few days.
As Sarah says, I’m making the next best decision.
In the ensuing comments, someone asked how healthy dark chocolate could be that bad and I pointed out that it had WAY more sugar than the stuff I ordinarily buy. It had been picked up from a discount store on the basis of being “dark chocolate” and when my bG meter freaked out, I checked the nutrition facts and it said 19 g carb, with 2 fiber, for 17 net. I have no idea how many squares that was for, just saw the numbers and dumped the rest of the bar in the trash.
I thought that the next time I wanted chocolate, I could just add some unsweetened cocoa to my coffee, along with the cream and stevia. It’s not like I’ve ever objected to mocha anyway!
I also thought that if I considered this like a GTT, I could clearly see that I was still diabetic.
At this time, my average weekly bG as reported by my Libre had dropped from 120 to 110 to 107.
But after the chocolate fiasco, the following day it was still at 150. Some exercise brought it back down to 113, with a one-week average of 112, so that seemed to be the worst of it. Within 24 hours, I was back down to 102.
Two major lessons here:
Always read the nutrition facts on labels!
Just as I let “dark chocolate” seduce me into thinking it was OK, marketers often use the word “keto” to imply their product is good for us. See how many carbs the serving size you’ll actually eat has before putting it in your mouth!
If you screw up, fix it immediately!
I misquoted Sarah a bit in my post, what she says is: Make the next best choice.
Seeing a bG reading near 200 could have discouraged me, could have led to a binge since my bG was already screwed up.
But I *knew* how to fix it.
Until then, my choice was always between being a diabetic with good control vs. being a diabetic with bad control. Either way, my diabetes was progressing, it was just a matter of whether I was getting sicker faster or more slowly.
But with fasting, I’d discovered a whole new possibility: I might be able to not have diabetes any more.
That made one hell of a difference.
NO chocolate is worth giving up my ability to walk with kitties.
/Over time, I learned about Lily’s chocolate, which is truly keto, being made with stevia instead of sugar.
I tried the chocolate chips, which I keep in a cabinet, and they had a weird texture I didn’t care for. But I tried a bar, which I keep in my freezer, and I freaking love the salted caramel ones.
I’m not sure if my like/dislike of texture has to do with storage though; you may well like the chocolate chips just fine.
A half bar has 2 net carbs, and given I generally only eat a few squares at a time, that’s pretty good. Even a binge of knocking off a whole bar will have minimal impact on my bG (though that’s 340 calories in a whole bar, and I rarely need that many extra calories.)
While the chocolate fiasco was accidental, the holidays were approaching and I was expect to host Canadian Thanksgiving for some of my inlaws. How was I going to stay on the keto wagon while preparing a carbfest?
