Blood Glucose Boot Camp - Day 1

It’s now over a week since me having my wobble and my blood glucose levels have continued to slowly creep up and my weight loss has not only stalled but has gone in reverse. Reduction in my diabetes medication did come with a warning that something like this could happen. So it is not completely unexpected, but needs addressing. It looks like a more relaxed approach to eating is not working for me and I need to stick to my original principles a bit more rigidly. To keep myself accountable I’ll be tracking my interventions and detail the impact they are having on me on this blog. Welcome to Day 1 of my 28 day blood glucose boot camp. 🫣

What’s all the the fuss?

There are two things that are bothering me right now that I’d like to address:

• my blood glucose levels have been creeping up and and are now running outside my ideal zone (slightly tightened CGM tight range of 3.9 to 7.0 mmol/l)
• my weight loss has stopped just on the border of healthy BMI range with still some way to go to my target

What’s my baseline?

As can be seen in the screenshot below, my seven day average CGM glucose reading stands 8.3 mmol/l. Ideally I’d like to be a lot closer to my 90 day average of 6.1 mmol/l, but recognise that this might be very hard to achieve if I’m also looking to fully discontinue my diabetes medication. For this boot camp I’m aiming for a 1.5 mmol/l reduction in my seven day average by the end of 28 days. In other words, when I check my seven day average CGM glucose reading on 1st July, I expect it to be no higher than 6.8 mmol/l.

When it comes to my weight, I’m really keen to get to my current target of 80kg and then review next steps (to maintain or not to maintain). Before my progress stalled I was able to comfortably lose around 1kg a week on average. I’m targeting this level of weekly weight loss over the next four weeks. Given my starting point of 83.7kg as last week’s average the aim is to have reached average weekly weight of 80kg in the week ending 30th June.

What’s my plan?

At this point I want to keep it simple and just stick to my first iteration of metabolic health principles to validate that they have the intended impact. The main focus of this week is to get back on track with my eating pattern that combines intermittent fasting with alternate-day fasting and avoiding snacks between the main meals when not fasting. If this alone does not have the desired effect, I’m keen to experiment with the amount of protein in my diet and look at reducing it from 1-1.5g per kg of my body weight to 0.8g per kg of my body weight.

It seems that I don’t generally spike too much with my meals, but that my main challenge is my dawn phenomenon setting my daily starting point increasingly higher each day. As my carb consumption is quite restricted, the next culprit is likely to be the protein intake. Here is what my day looks like, even though I’ve been fasting since last night.

I also need to put a bit more focus on my sleeping pattern and get back to 22:00 - 06:00 sleep schedule. Over the last couple of weeks my days have become longer and longer. This week’s focus is on getting into bed before 23:00.

I’ll try and figure out over the next few days how to track and show impact (or lack of it) of my different interventions.