DAY 48 - 2016 WEIGHT LOSS AND BLOOD GLUCOSE CHALLENGE

Christmas Eve 2015

Today is Day 48

Weight goal - 144.4 or lower
Actual weight - 143.4 - NEW LOW

Blood glucose goal - 82 or lower
Actual blood glucose - 72

Today is a Feast Day!



For me, that means a ketogenic diet - high fat, moderate protein and very low carb.  Each day, I will weigh in, check my fasting blood glucose, find out if I will feast or fast that day, update my chart and post it here on the big blog. I'm posting it to motivate myself not to give up, and if I think that anyone is looking at this, it will help to keep me accountable.

If you have been following along, you might notice that my goal numbers and charts have changed a little bit.  I have been talking to Marty Kendall of the FB group Optimising Nutrition about using a 7-day average for blood glucose instead of a static arbitrary number.  I have been using the number 89 as my goal.  I thought that as time went on, I would lower that number.

Marty believes that a person should use their personal 7-day average as a goal to stay below because that number should be tailored to where the person is at in their own health, and as blood glucose starts to fall, so will the 7-day average.  So to set an arbitrary number based on other people's goals would not be appropriate.  However, I know from my past experience that a fasting blood glucose of 75 is not unreasonable for me, so I have set that as my ultimate goal, even as I use the 7-day average as I work toward that goal.

Marty was kind enough to rework my spreadsheet charts to include this average.  But as I worked on it yesterday, I noticed that when my blood glucose was slowly creeping up, so was my 7-day average.  I didn't want my goal to gradually get higher, so I made a change to the chart.

What I did was employ a trailing stop, not unlike the ones I use in my stock market investing.  If you are not familiar with the term "trailing stop", the way it works is this:  Once your 7-day average has hit a new low, you use that number until your actual 7-day average causes that number to drop even lower.  Once it has dropped again, that new low becomes your goal, and so on.

Looking at my chart, I saw that my actual 7-day average for blood glucose was once at 83, then slowly crept back up to 88.  I didn't like being able to "get away with" a reading of 88, knowing that 83 was actually as low as I had gotten.  Not only that, but it is possible to very slowly creep up in readings and drive the 7-day average higher and higher.  The same is true for weight.  So I am using a trailing stop for both weight and blood glucose.

Marty also recommends that you use only blood glucose readings to determine whether to feast or fast on any given day, because weight can fluctuate greatly depending on whether or not you have gone to the bathroom, what time you weigh, etc..  He says that if blood glucose is going down, weight will necessarily follow.  This may be true for some people, but in my personal experience, I have seen my weight increasing even as my blood glucose is decreasing.  So I am still going to use both blood glucose readings and bathroom scale readings when making my daily decision to feast or fast.

Will lowering my goals to the trailing stop of my 7-day average mean that I will be fasting more often?  Possibly.  I have heard of people who have had to fast every other day in order to maintain proper weight and blood glucose.  I hope I will not be one of those people, but if I am, and it is what I have to do to stay at a normal weight and avoid the consequences of diabetes, such as blindness, heart disease, dementia and amputations, I am willing to do it.

Officially, from now until the end of my challenge, I will use these trailing stops to decide whether to feast or fast on any given day.

After my 60-hour fast of the past two days, I am happy to see that my numbers are below what they could be, no matter whether I use my old system or my new system!  I'm very happy!

47 DAYS DOWN AND 44 DAYS TO GO

35 FEAST DAYS AND 13 FAST DAYS - FASTING 27% OF THE DAYS

10.6 POUNDS GONE AND 7.4 POUNDS TO GO

59% OF THE WAY TO MY GOAL AFTER 53% OF THE DAYS

7-DAY AVERAGE WEIGHT - 144.5     7-DAY AVERAGE BLOOD GLUCOSE - 86

I made a few charts to track my progress.  The orange lines are my long term goals. The blue lines are my actual results.  The grey lines are my 7-day average using a trailing stop. The last chart is a little heat map to show at a glance how often I have actually had to fast to achieve the results I am after.

This is a personal challenge just for me, but if anyone reading would like to join me, please talk to your doctor and make sure that it will not conflict with your current medical condition or medications.  If you are taking the challenge, please be sure to let me know how you are doing!  Thanks for reading!

To find out more about this challenge - the rules and how it started - click here.