WazzuCoug
Member
WARNING: I'm just sharing my experience and not advising anyone to do anything not in line with their beliefs or doctor's recommendations. Do what you feel is right and do not participate in a nutritional study without discussing with your doctor first, especially if you are post-surgery. Some of the foods I'm experimenting with could cause some people dumping syndrome or other issues.
Testing and Nutritional Study: Week 1
I finished up my first week of the nutritional study I began last Friday. Today I started a new round of food experiments that I'll do over the next 7 days.
On the 11th I attached a CGM - Continuous Glucose Monitor. I've been monitoring my glucose 24/7 since then.
Last weekend I mailed off a stool and blood sample. I also ate some specially prepared muffins for some specific meals, both fasting before and after them to monitor how my glucose responds.
I also discovered that I get slightly hypoglycemic at night, at one point getting down to 62. I'm not overly concerned about that, but I have an appointment to chat with my doctor about it. It doesn't happen every night, and it doesn't seem to correlate too much with when my final meal is before bed either. I may get a prescription for a CGM to continue wearing for a while to continue monitoring that for a while.
Below you'll see my CGM daily charts. I've added some notations where I was eating similar foods but changing some ingredients. Everything I've been eating is weighed or measured for consistency.
June 12 (although I attached the CGM on the 11th, it takes a day for it to calibrate)
This is when I first saw the mild hypoglycemia. Again, not too concerned, but interesting. The high point was when I had whole oat pancakes for brunch. These pancakes were made with oat flour I ground myself from whole oats, had no added sugar, but they were sweetened with bananas. I did put 2 tsp of maple syrup on them. The good thing here is my body quickly returned to a normal range without going super low (a dip). If it were to dip down lower, that can cause additional hunger signals, lethargy, etc. A couple snacks during the day didn't do much, and then dinner a slight rise with the veggie meat tacos. I had two tacos with grain free (cassava root) shells. It wasn't a huge rise, but it took a bit longer to come down after, and then I obviously went to bed and that it when it continued to go down.
I wasn't conducting any food experiments this day, just eating as I normally might eat (I don't have the pancakes every day though).
I also collected my stool sample and mailed that off.
June 13, this was the day where breakfast and lunch were the specially designed muffins.
The three big spikes are from the muffins, primarily the morning muffins, then the lunch muffins, and finally that evening I had a beyond burger with fries. I suspected the potatoes caused that spike, although in the grand scheme of things it didn't get all that high, but it was a pretty rapid ascent. Again, with all of these spikes, my body recovered pretty quickly, but you can see if I was eating similar things through the day it would drastically keep blood sugar elevated, which is not good.
June 14, one more set of breakfast muffins and then regular food from here on out
A big spike from the breakfast muffins today. it came down a bit more gradually than some things, which means my blood sugar was elevated for quite a while. Later, you can see what the beyond burger without the fries looked like. It was a bit different. Slower to rise and slower to fall, but the curve is lower overall. Again, I measured everything with regards to the burger that I had the night before to try to keep the days closely aligned.
June 15, today I started an experiments with oats. Plain steel cut oats today, plain whole rolled oats the next day, and then plain instant oats the third day.
Today was actually a pretty low curve. Breakfast didn't do much. You can see the oats went up a bit and then slowly came back down, nothing too dramatic and no dip at the end. The rise at the end of the day was some impossible burger, quinoa and brussels sprouts, but pretty minimal.
June 16, Continuing the oat experiment and start an experiment with chili and rice
Here, breakfast of eggs and brussels sprouts had little effect as expected. The whole rolled oats peaked quickly and came back down. It didn't quite have a dip on the other end, but close. Again, the steel cut oats and whole oats were both plain, no added sugars. For dinner, you can see I had chili and white rice. I think the big takeaway here is the rice took things up quickly, and then it stays pretty elevated for quite some time, which is not particularly good.
June 17, last day of the oat comparison, day two of chili and rice, and day 1 of an ice cream comparison
Breakfast of an egg omelet did nothing much ,as expected. Regular Chobani vanilla yogurt (added sugar) did very little. The instant plain oats shot up but not quite as far as the whole rolled oats, but a very similar curve. As you can see with the chili with brown rice today, a slightly different response. It did not get as elevated. it still remained a elevated for a while, but not overly high. The little bump at the end was 1 serving (3.6 fl oz) of Haggen Daz strawberry ice cream with 19g of sugar. It was pretty uneventful, and I was a little surprised. I'll be comparing that to Halo top strawberry ice cream tonight.
June 18, so far - I started a five day breakfast experiment as guided by the study. 1 plain bagel today, cheese tomorrow, bagel and cheese the next day, bagel followed by 30 minutes of exercise the next day, and on the last day, cheese followed by a bagel 10 minutes later. I'll post the entire string when I'm done.
Look at that plain bagel!! That has been the highest spike so far. Only 6g of sugar compared to the ice cream's 19, but lots of additional refined grain carbs. For lunch I made fried rice with brown rice and a slew of other veggies, it hardly did a thing and didn't go up from there. Tomorrow I'll be doing the same thing with quinoa. This evening I'm doing chili again, this time with quinoa as well, and then later this evening, the strawberry Halo Top to compare to the Haggen Daz.
So that's it. If you actually read through all of this, I hope you found it somewhat interesting. One thing is clear, is that in my "before surgery" life, I can totally see how my blood sugar was staying elevated...so many refined carbs, plus other additional calories, but elevated glucose leads to elevated insulin, inflammation, fat storage and then starts to interfere with hormonal signals causing insulin resistance and leptin resistance.
There aren't too many huge surprises, but I find it incredibly fascinating.
Testing and Nutritional Study: Week 1
I finished up my first week of the nutritional study I began last Friday. Today I started a new round of food experiments that I'll do over the next 7 days.
On the 11th I attached a CGM - Continuous Glucose Monitor. I've been monitoring my glucose 24/7 since then.
Last weekend I mailed off a stool and blood sample. I also ate some specially prepared muffins for some specific meals, both fasting before and after them to monitor how my glucose responds.
I also discovered that I get slightly hypoglycemic at night, at one point getting down to 62. I'm not overly concerned about that, but I have an appointment to chat with my doctor about it. It doesn't happen every night, and it doesn't seem to correlate too much with when my final meal is before bed either. I may get a prescription for a CGM to continue wearing for a while to continue monitoring that for a while.
Below you'll see my CGM daily charts. I've added some notations where I was eating similar foods but changing some ingredients. Everything I've been eating is weighed or measured for consistency.
June 12 (although I attached the CGM on the 11th, it takes a day for it to calibrate)
This is when I first saw the mild hypoglycemia. Again, not too concerned, but interesting. The high point was when I had whole oat pancakes for brunch. These pancakes were made with oat flour I ground myself from whole oats, had no added sugar, but they were sweetened with bananas. I did put 2 tsp of maple syrup on them. The good thing here is my body quickly returned to a normal range without going super low (a dip). If it were to dip down lower, that can cause additional hunger signals, lethargy, etc. A couple snacks during the day didn't do much, and then dinner a slight rise with the veggie meat tacos. I had two tacos with grain free (cassava root) shells. It wasn't a huge rise, but it took a bit longer to come down after, and then I obviously went to bed and that it when it continued to go down.
I wasn't conducting any food experiments this day, just eating as I normally might eat (I don't have the pancakes every day though).
I also collected my stool sample and mailed that off.
June 13, this was the day where breakfast and lunch were the specially designed muffins.
The three big spikes are from the muffins, primarily the morning muffins, then the lunch muffins, and finally that evening I had a beyond burger with fries. I suspected the potatoes caused that spike, although in the grand scheme of things it didn't get all that high, but it was a pretty rapid ascent. Again, with all of these spikes, my body recovered pretty quickly, but you can see if I was eating similar things through the day it would drastically keep blood sugar elevated, which is not good.
June 14, one more set of breakfast muffins and then regular food from here on out
A big spike from the breakfast muffins today. it came down a bit more gradually than some things, which means my blood sugar was elevated for quite a while. Later, you can see what the beyond burger without the fries looked like. It was a bit different. Slower to rise and slower to fall, but the curve is lower overall. Again, I measured everything with regards to the burger that I had the night before to try to keep the days closely aligned.
June 15, today I started an experiments with oats. Plain steel cut oats today, plain whole rolled oats the next day, and then plain instant oats the third day.
Today was actually a pretty low curve. Breakfast didn't do much. You can see the oats went up a bit and then slowly came back down, nothing too dramatic and no dip at the end. The rise at the end of the day was some impossible burger, quinoa and brussels sprouts, but pretty minimal.
June 16, Continuing the oat experiment and start an experiment with chili and rice
Here, breakfast of eggs and brussels sprouts had little effect as expected. The whole rolled oats peaked quickly and came back down. It didn't quite have a dip on the other end, but close. Again, the steel cut oats and whole oats were both plain, no added sugars. For dinner, you can see I had chili and white rice. I think the big takeaway here is the rice took things up quickly, and then it stays pretty elevated for quite some time, which is not particularly good.
June 17, last day of the oat comparison, day two of chili and rice, and day 1 of an ice cream comparison
Breakfast of an egg omelet did nothing much ,as expected. Regular Chobani vanilla yogurt (added sugar) did very little. The instant plain oats shot up but not quite as far as the whole rolled oats, but a very similar curve. As you can see with the chili with brown rice today, a slightly different response. It did not get as elevated. it still remained a elevated for a while, but not overly high. The little bump at the end was 1 serving (3.6 fl oz) of Haggen Daz strawberry ice cream with 19g of sugar. It was pretty uneventful, and I was a little surprised. I'll be comparing that to Halo top strawberry ice cream tonight.
June 18, so far - I started a five day breakfast experiment as guided by the study. 1 plain bagel today, cheese tomorrow, bagel and cheese the next day, bagel followed by 30 minutes of exercise the next day, and on the last day, cheese followed by a bagel 10 minutes later. I'll post the entire string when I'm done.
Look at that plain bagel!! That has been the highest spike so far. Only 6g of sugar compared to the ice cream's 19, but lots of additional refined grain carbs. For lunch I made fried rice with brown rice and a slew of other veggies, it hardly did a thing and didn't go up from there. Tomorrow I'll be doing the same thing with quinoa. This evening I'm doing chili again, this time with quinoa as well, and then later this evening, the strawberry Halo Top to compare to the Haggen Daz.
So that's it. If you actually read through all of this, I hope you found it somewhat interesting. One thing is clear, is that in my "before surgery" life, I can totally see how my blood sugar was staying elevated...so many refined carbs, plus other additional calories, but elevated glucose leads to elevated insulin, inflammation, fat storage and then starts to interfere with hormonal signals causing insulin resistance and leptin resistance.
There aren't too many huge surprises, but I find it incredibly fascinating.
