Metformin and CCL

I have been on Atkins for 5 weeks and 500 mg. of metformin for 3 weeks
now. My a.m. blood glucose has dropped from the 130's to the 110's. I
see my primary in a week and I plan to increase the med to 1000 mg.

You'd think my liver would quit shooting out glucose in the morning,
but it is a stubborn thing. Short of riding the exercise bike in my
sleep, I don't know what else to do. Bedtime snacks don't work. My
readings the rest of the day are very good, from 80's before meals to
130's after meals. This is so much better than taking the drugs that
make me hypo.

My weight doesn't seem to be affected by the medication. I'm bouncing
up and down with the same 5 pounds for a week now. My pounds are
hanging on for dear life. It is proving to be a challenge to find my
CCL. I can't rely on the ketosticks and I can't tell if I am losing or
not. I think I'll have to drop back down to near induction levels and
start over unless someone has a better suggestion.

I also think for each pound I lose, my puppy gains. He grew from a 5
lb. ball of cuteness to a 23 lb. ball of energy in 4 months. He takes
after me. ;-)

Looking forward to the return of Sopranos and The Shield next week,

--
Jean M.
348/317/180 - 5'10"
Atkins Since 01/28/04

On Wed, 03 Mar 2004 09:19:05 -0600, Jean M. wrote:

You'd think my liver would quit shooting out glucose in the morning,
but it is a stubborn thing. Short of riding the exercise bike in my
sleep, I don't know what else to do. Bedtime snacks don't work. My
readings the rest of the day are very good, from 80's before meals to
130's after meals. This is so much better than taking the drugs that
make me hypo.

For me, a metformin dose of 1000 mg/day does a much better job of
eliminating the "dawn phenomenon" than a 500-mg dose does. However, that
change only occurred after I had also lost a good chunk of the weight that
I needed to lose.

The "bedtime snack" thing never worked for me, either.

My weight doesn't seem to be affected by the medication.

I found that metformin did make it easier to lose weight (and now makes it
easier to maintain that loss). Again, though, a 1000-mg dose did the trick
for me, where 500 didn't seem to do anything. (I think that the official
"minimum therapeutic dose" is 1500 mg, but 1000 works for me. I imagine
it's a YMMV thing.)

I'm bouncing
up and down with the same 5 pounds for a week now. My pounds are
hanging on for dear life. It is proving to be a challenge to find my
CCL. I can't rely on the ketosticks and I can't tell if I am losing or
not. I think I'll have to drop back down to near induction levels and
start over unless someone has a better suggestion.


I can't really help you there, as I never did induction and never used a
ketostick. I did a sort of "backwards atkins" approach, just gradually
lowering carbs (and along with them, calories) to make sure my weight kept
dropping. If weight loss slowed down, I just lowered carbs/cals a bit
more, until I didn't want to lower them any more (which, fortunately for
me, pretty much coincided with the weight I wanted to be).

Em