Day 10: Why I’d recommend Continuous Glucose Monitoring to eating, sleep and exercise better

Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) is becoming the hottest new wearable on the tech market. Here are my 5 top takeaways from wearing one for 2 weeks.

# 1 — Rice cakes are the devil Brown rice cakes were my go-to snack. Low calorie but they seemed to fill me up. I didn’t realise simple carbs would spike my sugar levels causing a crash and ensuing hunger pangs…for more rice cakes! Some ‘healthy’ foods will surprise you.

# 2 — Eating salad before dinner helped Eating greens, salad or other non-starchy vegetables first on the plate before everything else smoothed my glucose curve. The fibre and water content of the foods slowed digestion of the quickly absorbed potatoes or grains in my meal.

# 3 — Spike after exercise but better control throughout the day A 30 minute peloton HIIT session sent me into a diabetic range immediately due to the adrenaline and cortisol boost of exercise and the subsequent conversion of stored muscle and liver glycogen to glucose as fuel. The rest of the day my sugar curves benefited.

# 4 — Sleep deprivation was harmful One broken night of sleep helping my poorly toddler and my glucose levels were much more erratic. Better food choices helped.

# 5 — Walking after eating helped - Having a big meal followed by a walk almost halved my expected spike. Adding post meal exercise has been a nice habit to build in with my family and seemed to stabilise my energy levels during the day.

Whilst evidence of benefit for people without diabetes is still emerging, I certainly found CGM useful to build better habits.

Readings are highly variable between people. The only way to truly know how you react is to test yourself. Have you tried this yet? What were your takeaways?