Hello and welcome back to Week 9 of my journey with Nutrisense! These last couple of weeks have been chaotic, to say the least, with all of the celebrations that my girlfriend and I have attended and the bumps I encountered along the way. I am excited that this week I was able to begin getting back into a truly reliable routine.
To quickly recap the last couple of weeks, I had three birthday parties (one of them being my own), my dog accidentally ripped off my CGM, we went to a wedding, I moved into a new home with my girlfriend, and my parents visited. Needless to say, there have been some stressful days recently.There were many days recently that I had to rush through or make do when it came to meal planning and exercise. Throughout the last couple of weeks, I’ve felt very frustrated because I felt that I wasn’t sticking to the commitment that I had made to this program.
But it turns out that the program was shaping me to deal with challenges like these regarding health. It turns out that recording and analyzing, and understanding all of the data that I’ve collected via my CGM over the last few weeks set me up for success during the most stressful time of my year so far.
For the last two weeks, I haven't had a kitchen set up to prepare meals or cook for myself, and my Peloton was stored away until we had unpacked a lot of our things and decided where we were going to put everything into our new home. Granted, the move ensured that I got a good amount of exercise every single day and kept moving pretty constantly when I wasn’t working. But, it felt weird to be out of schedule from the routine that I have recently settled into.
Small Victories
As I look back on the last couple of weeks, I realize that I continued to make good choices even when I didn’t have my kitchen or home gym set up. I’ve continued to lose weight, and I haven’t seen any drastically harmful spikes in my glucose on my CGM. When my parents visited, they noticed that I lost weight and looked better, but they commented multiple times on how much healthier my decisions are now. I even got the opportunity to share what I’ve learned with my father, who is diabetic and part of the reason for my pursuing this program. All of that felt so so so good. This is the first time in my adult life that I have been at this level of health and commitment to myself.A couple of days ago, I finally got the chance to recap my data with Carlee, the dietitian that I work with at Nutrisense. We noticed that I had a couple of glucose spikes from meals that my body took longer to recover from. This happened with a bleu cheese cheeseburger, a Peruvian roast chicken, and a chicken sandwich. Carlee noted that when a recovery time, a.k.a. glucose recovery, is longer, it can interfere with weight loss efforts because our body is processing the food for longer and using more insulin to do so. Insulin is our storage hormone. This prevents our bodies from tapping into fat stores and focusing on weight loss. So when we improve our recovery times, it helps us lose weight faster.
Carlee’s Tips for Recovery Success:
- Have you gotten in any movement before or after your meal? We have discussed this before in previous vlogs and blogs, but Carlee stressed that this was one of the most important things to pay attention to around meals. It’s possible that because my routine was thrown off and my body couldn’t process the meals as quickly. She advised me to add a quick peloton ride or a walk before and/or after my meals.
- What is the meal made up of? If there are both starches and fats in the meal (which there was), the fat can delay digestion and slow down the recovery. Make sure that the majority of your meal is a vegetable or protein.
- How big is the meal? Portion sizes are essential. I don’t think that we have covered this so far in my journey. We have discussed starting meals off with vegetables and proteins to reduce the amount of starch and carbs in a meal, but reducing the size of your meals can also help your body recover more quickly.
- Are you stressed out or sleep-deprived? This one may seem the most obvious, but changes to your stress or sleep levels can affect your body‘s ability to recover quickly. This is something that I have been struggling with over the last couple of weeks with everything going on in my life. I hope that this is something that will regulate itself as I get back to my routine.
Monday: 1192kCals recorded
On Monday, I skipped breakfast and had lamb and pizza for lunch. I had matzo ball soup for dinner.
Tuesday: 1356kCals
I woke up hungry and had a piece of quiche for breakfast. For lunch, I bought a roast beef sandwich. I made a Mealime bleu cheeseburger for dinner.
Wednesday: 1034kCals recorded
I skipped breakfast on Wednesday. I made another blue cheeseburger for lunch. Dinner consisted of citrus halibut and parmesan asparagus.
Thursday: 1034kCals recorded
I skipped breakfast on Thursday. I made another blue cheeseburger for lunch. Dinner consisted of citrus halibut and parmesan asparagus.
Friday: 1248kCals recorded
On Friday, I made spicy Peruvian roast chicken with sweet potatoes and cilantro feta salsa. I made enough at lunch for two meals and decided to eat it for dinner as well.
Saturday: 0kCals recorded
No meals logged due to a hectic day.
Sunday: 0kCals recorded
No meals logged due to a hectic day.
Returning to “Normal”
I’m thrilled to be getting back into the habits that I built before moving. My kitchen is back up and running, and so is my Peloton. I’ve started cooking again, and I managed to work out twice in the last week while continuing to set up my new home.
If you’d like to see more about my week, check out the link to my video for this week below. Join me on my weight loss journey and save $25 today by clicking this link: https://nutrisense.io?code=LOGANF. I look forward to reporting back next time and hope you have a healthy and happy week!
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to help you discover and reach yourCarlee's training at Western Illinois University and an internship at the Memphis VA Hospital lead her to a career in outpatient counseling and bariatric nutrition therapy. In these positions, Carlee realized many of the disease states (upwards of 80%!) her patients experienced were actually preventable. She knew she had to dig deeper into preventative health and has since been passionate about helping people translate this complex glucose data into actionable changes anyone can implement into their everyday lives.