I like to tell people that the low-carb lifestyle is a constant journey of self-discovery, realizing how the foods you eat and your environment uniquely impact YOUR body, and to act accordingly to what works best for you. It would be nice if there was such a thing as the “magic pill” answer to obesity and health concerns, but the reality is that it just doesn’t exist. Once you come to grips with this, the closer you are to finding the answers to your specific metabolic and physical challenges. That’s where I’m at in my low-carb life right now.
I recently blogged about the “light bulb moment” that has taken place in my personal nutrition in 2010 beginning with my “eggfest” on March 12, 2010 after being disappointed with how I looked and presented myself on The Low-Carb Cruise. Since then I’ve been able to come completely off of diet soda and artificial foods for nearly 60 days, live solely on the highest quality of grass-fed beef, pastured eggs, grass-fed butter, and raw cheese from local farmers I can find, keep my fat intake high, protein moderate, and carbohydrate consumption as low as possible, and in the process take off over 30 pounds and counting (follow my daily progress at my menus blog).
Yesterday I thought it would be fun to see what is happening with my blood sugar readings in light of all the changes I’ve been making in just the past two months alone. I have previously written quite extensively about my bewildering blood sugar levels doing all sorts of strange things after I eat a meal. It turns out I was dealing with something called reactive hypoglycemia as identified by Dr. Keith Berkowitz in my podcast interview with him in 2008. But that was when I was still consuming some low-carb products, including the diet sodas. Now that I’ve been off of all artificial and sweet stuff for 55 days, I wondered what impact it would have on my blood sugar.
I wish I could have measured insulin levels at home, too, but blood sugar gives a lot of information for people wondering what is happening inside their body both before and after meals–so I was excited to see an hourly update of my blood sugar levels from the time I woke up on Tuesday morning until I went to bed. Based on my previous experiences checking blood sugar levels like this one from July 2009, I thought I knew what I was in store for…but I actually got a BIG surprise this time around! A VERY GOOD ONE TOO!
Here were my blood sugar results along with what I ate on May 18, 2010:
8:45AM
Blood sugar–75
9:00AM
4 pastured eggs, 2 Tbs grass-fed butter
10:00AM
Blood sugar–84
11:00AM
Blood sugar–94
12:00PM
Blood sugar–98
1:00PM
Blood sugar–96
1:00PM
1/2 pound grass-fed ground beef with 2 ounces yogurt cultured raw cheese and 1 Tbs mayo
2:00PM
Blood sugar–95
3:00PM
Blood sugar–97
4:00PM
Blood sugar–89
5:00PM
Blood sugar–89
6:00PM
Blood sugar–79
7:00PM
Blood sugar–73
7:15PM
3 pastured eggs, 2 Tbs grass-fed butter
8:00PM
Blood sugar–80
9:00PM
Blood sugar–80
10:00PM
Blood sugar–82
11:00PM
Blood sugar–79
The first indicator that this was gonna be a great experiment came with my overnight fasting blood sugar reading first thing in the morning. When I saw 75 on the glucose monitor, I almost did a backflip (well, in my mind at least). Sweet! Considering my fasting blood sugar levels last year were virtually always in the 90s to start the day, I was stoked about this result. Of course, then it came time to eat and I was fully expecting the typical DROP in my blood sugar over the next few hours (that whole reactive hypoglycemia thing kicking me in the rear again!). But guess what? It didn’t happen. The next four hours saw readings of 84, 94, 98, and 96 after consuming eggs and butter. AWESOME! My blood sugar actually responded like a normal person this time. Imagine that!
My previous blood sugar recordings showed me that my blood sugar tends to go up in the middle of the day and then come back down at night and Tuesday was no exception. Following my lunch meal of a grass-fed burger with cheese and mayo, my blood sugar hit the highest level of the entire day and then began to fall back down to the baseline reading as we entered the late afternoon. I wanted to hold off on eating supper for a little while longer just to see what would happen and predictably my blood sugar levels did dip below fasting baseline six hours after my previous meal. This confirmed to me that my strategy of eating every 4-5 hours is probably best for me. Following my egg and butter dinner, my blood sugar remained remarkably stable at 80, 80, 82, and 79 in the final four hours before I hit the sack–statistically NO change in blood sugar levels.
All in all, with a range of 73-98 blood sugar readings during this experiment, I couldn’t have been happier with the results. That’s just amazing to me how eating an all real, whole foods low-carb diet with no artificial sweeteners or additives of any kind has virtually cured my reactive hypoglycemia and provided me with stellar blood sugar control. I suppose none of this should surprise me in the least since it’s been reported by many other people over my years of studying carbohydrate-restriction.
But there’s something about doing it yourself and seeing results like I did on Tuesday that hammers home the point even more. When you see it, live it, and realize the good you are doing for your body eating this way, that can only motivate you to keep doing those things that got you there. That’s what I’m gonna be doing in the months and years to come and I’m happy to be sharing this journey with you. Thanks to the eggfest and real food low-carb eating, I’m enjoying normalized blood sugar levels again in very short order.
Test your blood glucose on an hourly basis throughout the day sometime to see what’s happening with you and let me know what you discover. Feel free to e-mail your results to livinlowcarbman@charter.net. This is a great strategy to help you identify any culprit foods in your diet that may be hindering and not helping your efforts to shed the pounds and get healthy. Try it, see your results, and adjust your lifestyle accordingly. It’s what makes this low-carb journey into the adventure of a lifetime!
