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Benjamin Langstraat on Meeting his Weight Loss Goals by Making Better Food Choices

Benjamin Langstraat on Meeting his Weight Loss Goals by Making Better Food Choices
“What I ate and when I ate got a better, renewed focus with Nutrisense's CGM program, whereas before, I was just trying to eat less food to lose weight. So I'm down about 80 pounds from December 2021 to June 2022…I feel the best I’ve ever felt, and I've made better lifestyle choices. It's the right way to do it.”
Benjamin Langstraat on Meeting his Weight Loss Goals by Making Better Food Choices

Hi Benjamin, tell us about yourself and how you found Nutrisense. 

I’m in my forties, and I work for a control systems company. I’ve tried different health programs and weight loss techniques to meet my weight loss goals. I’ve been a fan of MyFitness Pal, involved in the CrossFit community… and my Facebook feed was always full of various health and fitness things.

I stumbled across an ad for Nutrisense, so I researched continuous glucose monitors. They seemed interesting to me, and I was looking to reset my health and get back on the wagon, you could say.

What were some attempts at a healthier lifestyle you tried in the past?

In the past, most of my attempts at a healthier lifestyle involved some form of guessing. You have to log your meals in most apps. And you try to be as honest as possible, but you’re not relating it to what works specifically for you. Jumping on the scale was the only way to see results.  

Maybe that helps you from measuring weight loss. Still, it's not necessarily improving or teaching you any positive nutrition habits. That’s why Nutrisense’s CGM program was intriguing. It gives you real-time feedback on what's going on.

You can improve your lifestyle, and then the weighing scale becomes the lagging indicator rather than the leading indicator. I found immediately that it was helping me learn new habits. And the graphs and accountability aspect was so great!

Tell us a bit about that.

Well, I love numbers and data, and I need a graph that looks good. With the Nutrisense app laid out the way it is, there’s so much direct accountability. It’s always there. It’s always watching. So even if you don’t log your food, your blood sugar levels don’t lie.

And that’s where I found the layer of accountability most useful. The reason why I kept using it is it keeps me honest, and it helped me make different food choices. Otherwise, I probably would have, if you're just purely looking at it on a weight loss side of things, made just ‘calories in, calories out’ sort of choices.

It helped me make healthier choices, not just calorie choices regarding macro makeups. And also, I never really spent a lot of time on the timing of when I ate meals. What I ate and when I ate got a better, renewed focus with Nutrisense's CGM program, whereas before, I was just trying to eat less food to lose weight.

And that doesn’t always work… 

Right! And it’s not as efficient. I meant starvation could be a means to the end in some ways, but it’s unhealthy and unsustainable. You’re not learning anything or changing your lifestyle.  

In fact, I've gained and lost more than 100 pounds three times in my life.

And what has that weight loss journey been like with the sensor on?

So I'm down about 80 pounds from December 2021 to June 2022. And I think that this adventure in weight loss is probably... I feel the best I’ve ever felt, and I've made better lifestyle choices. It's the right way to do it.

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So would you say weight loss was one of your primary goals when you started in December 2021?

That was probably my main driver. I was overweight, and I am in my mid-forties. So, I needed a reset.

I started with a three-month commitment at the beginning, but then I switched to a six-month commitment, and I will probably continue with that plan.

I also referred a couple of other people to it too. My spouse was doing it for a while, and my brother and his spouse were doing it too. So we got to riff off each other to figure some things out, shared screenshots, and so on.  

That’s wonderful! And it must be great to have those habits continue into daily life as you build that community.

Yes. And I plan on using it as a check-in even after I meet my weight goals. So the goal ultimately is for me to develop the habit. I want to take a break and make sure I can exist without it and then use it to check in with my habits and make sure I’m leading a healthy lifestyle.

What are some of the things you’ve learned already?

Well, my morning meals changed. I used to drink protein shakes, but that didn’t respond well. Now I’ve added in things like a chia seed pudding as well. I also changed the order that I eat food—I eat my carbs last. But I’ve also adopted a carb-lite lifestyle.

My alcohol consumption has drastically changed. I temper the quantity of alcohol I drink. You can see firsthand the effects of that.

If I think back to when I started it, I had much more volatility in my numbers when trying to figure out consistency. I used to have large blood sugar spikes early in the morning while I was sleeping; sometimes, they would even push me above 140.

I was unaware of that, but I managed to change it with healthier habits.

What were some of these habits?

First, I don’t eat very late, and I try to have my last meal of the day around 6 p.m.

I don’t snack at night, and I try to stop eating anything within four to five hours of when I go to bed for sure. That meal timing seems to work better for me. I took medication for indigestion for years, and partially due to the weight loss and changing habits like what I’m eating and when I’m eating it, has calmed my digestion down.

I’ve learned that the most important thing is consistency. And it’s really neat to see how your body works.  

I often have events and meetings where I entertain clients for my career. And so half my time is spent outside of my home-office routine. It involves a lot of air travel, hotels, and restaurants. And with that lifestyle, it’s always challenging to make good food choices.

I have better luck now. With the CGM, I have help making positive choices in real-time and the accountability aspect of it all helps provide a method to my madness. It’s helped me make better food choices on the go.

Is there anything else you want to tell us about your experience with Nutrisense?

I write software for a living, and I've gone through a couple of different versions of the app, so it’s been really nice to see how it’s being developed and worked on. It’s improved so much over the last six to eight months.

I've embraced the program. Overall, it’s been a positive experience that I've learned a lot from, and I'm pretty happy I signed up.

#joinnutrisense

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