Hi all
I want to experiment on myself using a CGM to work out which foods are good/bad for me.
Has anyone got a guide on how to do this or some kind of structured instructions. I get the basics but would be useful to have a trusted framework to use.
Thanks in advance
If you want some background then please click my profile to read my previous two posts on high blood sugar but in a nutshell my sugars have stayed high despite weight loss, exercise, muscle gain and low carb diet. So I am trying to unlock the puzzle to understand why my sugars are not coming down.
Hi Wired123
I did the Zoe thing last year and there were some interesting things for me - eg the order of eating carbs/protein/fat etc - makes a massive difference. I learned that eating bread before a meal is the worst thing I could do. Keep a note of everything - you could try different breakfasts on different days, sometimes varying the order in which you eat things. I now know if I'm going to eat carbs or fruit I have to eat them after my protein, fat or non starchy veg's. You can also try exercising after eating, this can help keep your blood sugar level down (although this wasn't as effective for me). It's worth trying different carbs to compare eg pasta, rice - white and brown, pasta, potatoes, bread - with and without added nuts and seeds. I found I can tolerate barley and bulgur wheat much better than bread, rice and pasta. You could also compare eating freshly cooked carbs with cooked, cooled and reheated carbs which creates resistant starch. I now batch cook brown rice and freeze it in portions flat in bags, it doesn't spike my sugar so much and it's quicker to cook second time around. Probably the most important thing is to keep a record of what you eat (and maybe your activity?) so that you can compare it to the glucose level results. I had a conversation with one of the Zoe advisors because my initial results were so disappointing, she said that having Hashimoto's negatively impacts your blood sugar control as well as your gut microbiome. Hope you find some answers.
I’m following with interest as my gut microbiome has gone haywire (endoscopy tomorrow, in fact). So much useful information just in your post, above!
🙏
Have you tried a probiotic like Symprove?
Hi, thanks for your response. I haven’t. Have you tried it? I’ve just ordered BioGaia tablets and kefir grains. Also, wanted to get this blasted endoscopy out of the way first…..
All the best 🙏
I make a coconut yoghurt with the BioGaia Gastrus product, recipe was in the book Supergut. It’s really yummy 😋
I am doing Zoe too. I felt sure my BS would be poor but, surprisingly, it was good. My problem is how my body metabolises fat. In fact my scores were in the 'bad' range! Clearly being hypo doesn't affect everyone the same. My microbiome was poor though. Eating carbs on my plate last and upping the amount of protein and plants on it has led to me being too full up to eat the carbs which is probably useful for weight loss.
Thanks, some very useful tips. I’m going to try all of the things you suggest. Will be interesting to see what does and does not work for me.
Cheers
+1 for doing Zoe though there's waiting list.
If you did Zoe, then make screenshots of your blood sugar response curves and the meals so you have your own record.
As soon as you cancel the Zoe subscription them you lose access to their data like exist for are good/bad for you, which meals. You do keep the initial report which are very useful. Once the CGM has run out you will lose access to the blood sugar curves - that's why I suggest taking screen shots regularly. I didn't take a full set so I'm missing days when I went hypo. Dr isn't worrying about going low. Not an issue as far as he's concerned.
Also, if you do Zoe, you need to fully engage did get best value. I didn't because anything every single ingredient in ever single meal was a PITA. Most of our food is home prepared and shared with the family so entering the data into Zoe is really hard.
I’ve done Zoe and found the CGM enlightening. I cancelled my subscription after a month though the diet and advice didn’t suit my varied and complicated food choices linked to what keeps me well.
My advice if doing it without Zoe would be to make a food diary and record everything you eat and drink in a ‘normal’ week. Be super honest with yourself. Then wear the monitor and record next to meals and snacks what the resulting blood glucose rise and fall looks like on the graph.
Then experiment, eat your equivalent of a super sugary snack and wait 3 hours, record what that does to your BG.
The do the same with the same snack but also pile on good fats (avocado or peanut butter etc) see how the graph is different.
The aim obvs is to flatten the curve. The recipe book by The Glucose Goddess is helpful too.
The monitor I had was libre link the app on your phone is easy to use.
🌱
Hi Wired123 i did the ZOE thing too like others her. It was expensive but they did all the maths. They basically look out for big highs and dips after eating various foods and look at the impact of food combining (adding fats to carbs). I think a lot of it is in the green goddess glucose book. I know some doctors caution it’s unnecessary and can muck up our eating behaviour and if you don’t have diabetes a healthy low gi diet is good for most people. I like the ZOE course in eating well but in the end the advice is to make half your plate low gi veg, a quarter a low gi carb with a bit of good fat to slow absorbtion and a quarter a good quality protein low in saturated fat preferably plant based like beans. Other than that it’s just avoid all ultra processed foods and red meat. Good luck
It's a little more complicated than that I think. I've earned how to combine low scoring foods - sometimes UPFs - with other foods to achieve higher scores.
Hi there, Yep, absolutely agree and hope you are doing well and feeling good with ZOE - my description was the quick and easy version that a ZOE health coach explained to me. What I really found useful aside from ZOE was a diet programme called the 2 day diet from the Manchester Genesis cancer centre. It’s aimed at improving health and reducing risk of various things. I followed it a year or so ago and it gives portion and food combo structure very like my ZOE advice - obviously cheaper costing just the price of a book. On it I lost 12kg, which has stayed off, my triglycerides, cholesterol and blood sugar and blood pressure all came back to the normal range - I was hoping ZOE would give some deeper insights to build on this but to be honest while I enjoy using ZOE to learn about foods a lot of the advice is easily available good nutrition advice. I’m ending my subscription and will use what I’ve learned along with simple and easy to follow advice in the 2 day diet maintenance advice. It was was relatively easy to understand didn’t cost much and reversed my unhealthy metabolic scores. I think what I learned from both was I ate too much refined carb and had to shift to a lifestyle based on mostly wholefood low gi carbs, loads of plants and protein from plants or fish rather than any one off change. Ottolenghi cook books generally hit the mark.
Hi, I'm going to go slightly against the grain here. I've done Zoe too and the CGM part was relatively interesting and good for checking that I wasn't spiking into dangerously high territory (I wasn't). I also found it read as having nocturnal hypoglycaemia which may be completely normal for me - or the monitor is not 100% accurate which is v likely.
I personally would be wary of monitoring it again, when not diagnosed as diabetic or pre-diabetic (I've had HbA1c checked a few times by GP and it's fine) - the reason being that blood sugar response is complex and multi-factorial. My thinking is this - how are you going to interpret the data exactly? It is entirely normal for blood sugar to spike after eating carbohydrate, for example, and what is important is that it comes back down. Fatigue levels, exercise, hormones, illness (and yes thyroid disease) impact levels on a day to day and even hour to hour basis so how do you interpret that? When I was doing Zoe I had really different responses day to day to the same foods...
It's fairly safe to assume that simple sugars such as those in cakes are not good for us - but that complex carbs and wholegrains are - and are essential for brain health, energy and good sleep. I'm not sure I needed the CGM to tell me that! There is a risk of pathologising normal responses to food and getting food anxiety, that's my concern. My approach now is to eat mainly wholegrain carbs and combine them with fibre and healthy fats - I'm feeling pretty good on that.
It is interesting to see those extreme dips when it comes down and experience how it feels though. I also found it interesting to see the speed with which it came down because that tells you something about the effect of the specific food you've just eaten. I started in January and can't quite recall exactly what that was now though. 😳
Self help advice please
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Advice required nodules found & being referred to Endocrinologist 
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