I've got a question here that I hope someone can shed some light on. I do all my cardio in the morning and on a empty stomach. I've read that this is best as the insulin levels haven't spiked. My question, I'm an insulin dependent diabetic with an insulin pump and sometimes in the morning my fasting Blood Glocouse levels are high, say 200. My insulin pump wants me to correct this by giving me what is called an insulin "bolous" delivery. This is where my insulin pump wants to inject enough insulin into my blood so that cells can "uptake" the sugar that is in my bloodstream. Should I hold off on the insulin injection until after the cardio is over? My sugar usually drops on its own with an hour of cardio in the past.

I'm thinking that by taking the insulin to cover the high blood sugar level in the morning it is doing the same as if a regular person were to eat a candy bar or something before cardio.

If anyone know, please let me know if it's fine to wait on the insulin injection or if such a small amount of insulin would even make a difference in my morning cardio.

BTW, other than sometimes in the morning, my blood gluecose levels are generally 80-110.

Thanks,
Jeremy

I've got a question here that I hope someone can shed some light on. I do all my cardio in the morning and on a empty stomach. I've read that this is best as the insulin levels haven't spiked. My question, I'm an insulin dependent diabetic with an insulin pump and sometimes in the morning my fasting Blood Glocouse levels are high, say 200. My insulin pump wants me to correct this by giving me what is called an insulin "bolous" delivery. This is where my insulin pump wants to inject enough insulin into my blood so that cells can "uptake" the sugar that is in my bloodstream. Should I hold off on the insulin injection until after the cardio is over? My sugar usually drops on its own with an hour of cardio in the past.

I'm thinking that by taking the insulin to cover the high blood sugar level in the morning it is doing the same as if a regular person were to eat a candy bar or something before cardio.

If anyone know, please let me know if it's fine to wait on the insulin injection or if such a small amount of insulin would even make a difference in my morning cardio.

BTW, other than sometimes in the morning, my blood gluecose levels are generally 80-110.

Thanks,
Jeremy

This sounds like a GREAT question for a qualified medicial professional like your physician. You'll get some opinions here but the answer could be potentially harmful, so why risk it?

The sugars drop down because they are used by their cardio. This is a great example, too, about the "myth" that if you do fasted morning cardio, somehow your bloodstream is magically devoid of carbs and it is "forced to burn fat." That's how it is painted, but obviously with a level of 200, there IS glucose.

So how'd it get there?

You have your liver to thank for that. While you were sleeping, it was maintaining your blood sugar levels and releasing its stores.

Furthermore, until the liver gets replenished, it preferentially restores its own "stock" (and interestingly, fructose seems to do the best job of this) which is a good argument for having a piece of fruit in the morning.

Jeremy

Thanks Jeremy,
You are right. When I go back to my endocranologist in April I will ask her about this. My new Dr. is very young (mid-late 30's) and works out regularly herself (what she said and you don't get a ripped body like her's by setting on the couch and watching TV all day).

She said excatly what you said about the liver. She also said, and I have infact observed, that when mine or any humans (with a properly working liver) gluecose levels fall too low, our liver will start "dumping" gluecose into our blood stream as a suvival thing. She said that mine falls at night sometimes to around 50 and then if it keeps going down the liver fires up and send in the sugar!.

For now I'm just going to keep giving myself that "correction" until my Dr. says otherwise.

I tell you, being diabetic and trying to get fit and lose weight is really, really tough.

Thanks,
Jeremy

Since you are not eating anything else, you are still burning the same amount of calories with the same intake. Just as Jeremy said - the glucose has got to come from somewhere and when you exercise you've got to get the energy from somewhere. If it's not all directly from fat (which it won't be, even for fasted cardio anyway), so what?

So at least to first order, you should end up with the same amount of fat loss.

I do know for someone with mild diabetes (say who is mostly controlling with diet), moderate exercise after eating carbs is potentially a way of helping control blood sugar.

However, I would be very surprised if your doctor says to not give yourself the correction. The only way I could see this being even considered is if you kept going hypo after the exercise and had to eat/drink sugar to compensate. Otherwise why would you keep blood sugar high just because you want to do 'fasted morning cardio'? I know it's popular and some people do really well with it, but it has certainly not even been proved to work better (definitely not necessarily that 'substantially' better) than other forms of cardio.

In addition, as Jeremy pointed out, you are effectively not 'fasted' anyway.

Anyway, I'm no doc, and obviously you should talk and listen to her and take Jeremy's advice and not list to what people might post (I am being serious). But I though I'd just give a perspective on why I think not taking your insulin before the cardio is not going to help much with fat loss anyway.

I don't know what BF% you are, but I heavily suspect that this one 'issue' is not the main problem (or even close) you face in losing fat.