Both the girlfriend and I had some slight deviations in our diets yesterday, and surprise, surprise, our fasting glucose levels were both higher this morning. I will also point out that Aurora has been exercising like a fiend the last couple of days, which certainly can’t help much either. That adrenaline is triggering some glycogen release.
My deviations included having some pancakes with a on old friend that I was seeing off – she’s moving to London on Monday. They were buckwheat pancakes with a few blueberries on top, but I suspect that most of the flour used was refined, and there was probably some vegetable oil and an egg in there with ’em. For dinner I had 1 tiny bite of the 12 pounds of St. Louis style pork ribs that I made for a Monday Night Football gathering (and ass-whoopin’ I might add). That was probably less significant than the bean salad I had, which contained lots of avocado and I think some olive oil – and the Asian slaw I had with lots of sesame oil.
Aurora had barbecue sauce on the ribs – which at least was homemade, but contained tons of honey. She didn’t dip, but there was a pretty sweet and spicy crust on the outside. She had some starchy nuts as well, but not too many.
Anyway, fasting glucose this morning was 87 mg/dl for Sunshine the (mostly) vegan superhero, and 94 for Aurora, the carnivorous Jillian Michaels wannabe. Yesterday, which I haven’t posted yet, was 84 and 85 – Sunshine pulling out a narrow victory.
Stay tuned for more action though as we wrap up this experiment. On day 14 we plan to do postprandial (after a meal) glucose tests on our respective diets. On the final evening we hope to eat an identical meal that combines both animal fat, protein, and starch – and test both postprandial glucose and fasting glucose the next morning. That will reveal general improvements in eating mixed meals that our diets have allowed us – or lack thereof.
So, I'm sorry if I've missed something you've already posted, Matt, but did you do any fasting glucose readings on your regular diet for comparison? If so, what were they? And was that on your usual healthy diet, or the diet with occasional Haagen Daas and pizza?
I'll be interested in what you end up recommending as a long-term approach to keeping that fasting blood sugar low.
Please tell me you're going to put that ribs recipe in the next newsletter! omnomnom…
Helen,
I regret not having tested my normal glucose longer, but test was done after following a healthy diet devoid of refined foods for several weeks prior to the first reading – which was 91.
Gina – I was thinking about a little bit on the ribs in the next eZine. If not, I might hit it up for the December issue, as the vegan thing might be the focus of this next one.
So, with Matt's inspiration and frustration with not losing weight, I got a glucose blood meter too, just to see if I was doing something wrong. It was free with the mail-in rebate, so why not?
Now, right off the bat I should say that my diet isn't as perfectly perfect as it could be. I avoid sugar, fruit & wheat flour like the plague, but I don't watch my carb or fat portion sizes carefully and have lots of milk (even though Melvin Page says a lot of people can't normalize their blood sugar while drinking milk). But on the other hand, I don't overeat (based on feelings of fullness) and only eat good things.
Well, I busted out an 86 mg/dl this morning on the first try. Since Page says that 80-90 is ideal, I guess I'm in the healthy zone. So that's good news.
But now I don't know why I'm not losing weight.
When I started on this diet I was overweight, got the shivers all the time, was addicted to caffeine, and had lousy digestion. Now I throw off heat like a pro, have perfect digestion, have kicked the caffeine, have perfect blood glucose levels, and eat a pretty much ideal 180/Schwarzbein diet. And I feel pretty good. But I'm heavier than when I started – I gained 10 lbs when I first started out with bigger portion sizes, and I've never lost them.
This is just sort of frustrating. I'm not going to do anything drastic (or panic like I did back in June), but I'm sort of at a dead end now. Does anyone have any thoughts?
Right now I'm thinking that it's my desk-job that's killing my progress. 9 hours at the desk + 2 hours on the bus = lots of sitting, not much moving around. I wish I could get a standing desk at work, but that's not in the cards right now.
Oh, this is Brock. I changed my Blogger ID name for reasons that have nothing to do with this blog.
I still believe that if you continue to do what you know is nourishing and healing to your body, you will eventually lose whatever weight that you're carrying around that isn't beneficial. Just hold tight for a bit and keep us posted. You can play around with the milk thing too, seeing if cutting it out makes any difference.