Tracking Your Blood Sugar: Fill & Download for Free

Yes, but arguably more important yet is to track your insulin from year to year. Rising insulin levels are a far earlier sign on future diabetes than poor glycemic control, and the sooner you respond to such signs by changing your diet and/or lifestyle, the more benefit you'll get.

Let’s first zoom in, and then zoom out.The typical dieter is measuring things on a daily level.Look at things on an hourly level, instead.You wake up at 7am. At this point, your energy demands are coming from two places:liver glycogenbody fatInterestingly, often blood sugar will RISE after waking, despite still being in a fasted state.Why?Because hormones, that’s why.Cortisol, adrenaline and glucagon are higher when you are in a fasted state, while insulin is lower, causing your liver to throw glucose into the blood stream faster and raise blood sugar. Fatty acids are also released from your fat cells to meet your energy demands.When you are in a fasted state, most tissues are primarily burning fat, with the major exception being your brain.It’s a bit of a glucose addict.Let’s say you go for a before breakfast jog. Because of this, your energy demands go from perhaps 60 calories per hour to maybe 600 per hour.Where does this energy come from?muscle glycogenbody fatliver glycogenOften, during exercise, your blood sugar will RISE, for the same reasons that it can rise when fasted-hormones. Adrenaline, cortisol and endorphins will cause the liver to spit even MORE glucose into the bloodstream to meet the demands of exercise.The best way to think of your liver is that it’s like a battery. It takes in energy when you have it, and gives it back when you need it. It’s like a physiological insurance policy. I guarantee your liver has stored and released several million calories over your lifetime.It’s an underappreciated superhero.You finish your run and do a few sets of pushups and pullups, then head inside for breakfast. You have sauteed mushrooms, plump sausages, a few shreds of crispy bacon, a bit of ripe tomato, lightly buttered toast drenched in baked beans, an egg or two all polished down with a bit of coffee.Where does this all go?As you eat, your blood sugar will rise and your body will pump out insulin to try to get your blood sugar back down. It doesn’t like high blood sugar, nor does it like low blood sugar. It likes stability, around 80–90mg/dL. Not 50. Not 150. Definitely not 30 or 300.The carbs you eat from that delicious toast and baked beans will go a few places.Liver glycogen, because it’s depleted from keeping your brain alive at night.Muscle glycogen, because you exercised and muscle glycogen is slightly depleted.Body fat. Your body can convert carbs to fat and store them as body fat.This last one it does this as a last resort for a simple reason-your carb stores are a lot smaller than your fat stores, and thus carbs are more precious. Turning carbs into fat is like turning diamonds into coal.You have very few carbs, and they have limited storage-maybe 2,000 calories of carb storage in the body. Carbs are rare and precious. Or at least…they were during most of human history, and thus we evolved to treat them as such.Fat is something you have a lot of and unlimited storage. I have 80,000 calories of fat storage and of course this can be a million in some people.It’s important to note that the above breakfast might have 100g of carbs, and that there is only 4–5g of carbs in the blood stream. That’s like…one bite of toast, in 5 liters of blood. It’s a teaspoon of sugar.A liter of blood has ONE gram of carbohydrate. A liter of coke has more than one HUNDRED.Now do you see why it is so easy to spike blood sugar with carb-dense foods?Pro tip: eat the toast last.Getting in veggies or high fat foods will slow the absorption of the carbs, leading to more steady energy. The solid lines are for a type two diabetic, the dashed is normal. Green is vegetable before carb, while red is that fella who went right for the toast first. The green line is way better for your health, and feels way better, too. Win-win.A simple life hack to control blood sugar with the exact same foods and calories.The fat from the bacon, egg and sausage primarily goes towards:fat storage (by far number one)hormonal productionlipids for your cell wallsFat is absorbed pretty slowly compared to carbs-it requires bile from the gallbladder to be emulsified. You ever see little drops of oil floating on top of water?Water and fat don’t mix well, and thus you need a third party to get them to play nice.That’s bile. The marriage counselor of digestion.The protein in the food-primarily from the meat and eggs, but a bit from the beans and toast-is going to be broken down into amino acids and go to…new muscle tissue (as you did a bit of lifting)bones, cartilage, skin, and blood.neurotransmitter productionconverted to carbs and stored in the liverIf you didn’t workout, more of that protein will get converted to carbs, as the muscles just don’t need it-they didn’t get any stimulus to grow. Hormones, particularly testosterone are also vital.The exact numbers depends on how much you eat in a sitting. Any more than about 40 grams is going straight to glucoseville. Protein is even more precious than carbs, because there is ZERO store of protein in the body. Muscle is not a store of protein, before anyone says that.I’d say that breakfast above is roughly 40–60 grams.Hard to say for sure, as I do not posses the ability to weigh and measure food in a picture.This absorbing and assimilating process of carbs, fats and protien takes several hours in most cases.It’s pretty cool, if you think about it-it’s literally becoming part of you.Every part of your body was once food. You are what you eat.Source: dailytimesAfter a few hours, your body is once again in a fasted state, and your liver goes from taking energy in, to dutifully giving it back. Your fat cells go from taking energy in, to releasing it. These two processes are what determine your fat loss over time.Your body is always counting calories, better than you could ever dream of.I think it’s useful to think about things on an hour or even minute basis, if only to avoid spiking your blood sugar too much. If you are a diabetic, especially if you are a type one, you MUST think about these things. Controlling your diet-particularly carbs-is a minute to minute process.Now, if you zoom back out to a day, it is your energy balance across the entire 24 hours that will determine your weight gain or loss-sort of.It’s entirely possible to be in a caloric deficit for the day and gain weight.This is usually because of water. Your body is 60–80% water, and water doesn’t care about calories. If you’ve ever gained weight after a salty meal, you’ll know what I’m talking about. You might be in a deficit, but if you are retaining water, that 2–3kg swing is going to far, far outweigh any fat loss.The opposite is true, as well.It’s entirely possible to be in a caloric surplus for the day and lose weight.I’ve had clients go on vacation and eat their faces off, and be losing weight and looking leaner. Why?The stress hormone cortisol was making them retain water when they were dieting and training hard. On vacation, they relaxed, didn’t train, ate more, and all that water was set free. Despite being in a caloric surplus, they lost weight.Cool, huh?This is part of the reason why a weekly approach has a lot of benefits-you can check how your weight is trending and get a better picture of WHERE you are actually going.It’s like navigating a ship through the ocean.You need to be focused on those small, fine details that you manipulate by the second or minute, like how much sail to use or how many degrees to turn the steering wheel, but you also have to look up past the ship itself and see where you are going if you want to actually GO anywhere useful.You need to keep focus on the details, but also the bigger picture. At the same time.That’s a lot like dieting. It’s the small choices, each individual meal that determines your progress, but you also need to track things on a long term basis so you can actually know if you are going at the right speed or even in the right direction at all. You just can’t do that on a micro scale, you need to take a macro approach, too.Both viewpoints are essential for navigating the treacherous waters called dieting.Follow me on Instagram for daily diet and training tips!

What does checking blood glucose levels do for diabetics?If you have diabetes, self-testing your blood sugar (blood glucose) can be an important tool in managing your diabetes and preventing complications. You can test your blood sugar at home with a portable electronic device called a blood sugar meter using a small drop of your blood. You can also use a device called a continuous glucose monitor (CGM).Why test your blood sugarBlood sugar testing provides useful information for diabetes management. It can help you:Monitor the effect of diabetes medications on blood sugar levelsIdentify blood sugar levels that are high or lowTrack your progress in reaching your overall treatment goalsLearn how diet and exercise affect blood sugar levelsUnderstand how other factors, such as illness or stress, affect blood sugar levelsWhen to test your blood sugarYour doctor will let you know how often to check your blood sugar levels. The frequency of testing usually depends on the type of diabetes you have and your treatment plan.Treating Low Blood Sugars Quickly and Accurately - Click Here to Read