Finally, we have come to my last two days on the Standard American Diet (SAD)! I went for a final one-two punch to see what I could get my body to do. Check out any of my other blogs to get a history of posts (I’m kind of curious to what will happen if I have less links to myself). Alternatively, I’m sure I’ll list all of my posts on a one last blog discussing my husband’s glucose tolerance test (OGTT) results from the Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) study. It’s hard to comment on his daily responses because I don’t have any of his records on what he ate or his actual data from the CGM. It was enough work keeping track of mine!!
Day 19
I had a repeat breakfast with some added carbohydrates for good measure. I repeated the Chick-fil-a spicy chicken biscuit, hash browns, but also had a small cookies and cream shake (Figure 1). Day 15 and 17 were the same breakfast without the ice cream, consisting of 69g of net carbs, increasing my blood sugar 33mg/dL and 12mg/dL respectively. On Day 19, my blood glucose increased only 25mg/dL, but I increased my net carb consumption by 85g (+67g sugar) to 154g net carbs!!
There was a little blood glucose craziness going on after the fact, which seems to be typical for meals that include ice cream (Figure 2).
My next snack was a bag of jalapeño Cheetos. I realized I hadn’t had any chips during my time on the SAD, so I wanted to have a bag before I was finished. Jalapeño Cheetos have always been my favorite processed food snack. I bought them at a convenience store (these are the “normal” size packages, not the “big” bag) and ate the whole bag, which contains 4 servings, totaling 60g of carbohydrates. My blood glucose went from 122mg/dL to 176mg/dL, increasing 54mg/dL (Figure 3). This was a pretty decent increase, climbing the mountain again.
My final meal on Day 19 was dinner at Torchy’s. I had one of my margarita martinis without sugar, chips and queso, and one taco. My blood sugar went from 167mg/dL to 211mg/dL, increasing 44mg/dL (Figure 4). The problem here is that there was only two hours between the Cheetos and this meal, so my glucose didn’t have an opportunity to recover from the mountain climb (Day 19).
Takeaway #18: Ice-cream does crazy stuff to my blood glucose!
I was stuffed, so I didn’t eat as many meals as I usually would have. That was probably a good thing, as it gave my blood glucose an opportunity to calm down overnight (Figures 5, 6, and 7). It was high and volatile all day and still had a few weird jumps during the night, likely due to the early morning ice cream!
Day 20
I started off Day 20 with a stable blood glucose (measured 99mg/dL from my meter) and my favorite “breakfast” meal – two chocolate chip cookies from McDonalds (Figure 8). My second breakfast was two chorizo and egg tacos with the tortillas (Figure 9). Both of these are repeat breakfasts. I previously had the cookies on Day 13 and two tacos without the tortilla on Days 8 and 10. The cookies increased my blood glucose by 26mg/dL (compared to 34mg/dL on Day 13). The tacos increased my blood glucose 22mg/dL (5mg/dL on Day 8, 14mg/dL on Day 10, but these were low-carb breakfasts, the tortillas added ~40g of carbs). That was hardly a response considering the amount of carbohydrates.
I decided to repeat the Wendy’s combo meal test, but this time, I had a spicy chicken combo meal and skipped the cookie (from Day 15). I only ate half of the fries. Oddly enough, my blood glucose response was higher, like crazy high for no apparent reason. It went from 114mg/dL to 227mg/dL, increasing 113mg/dL (Figure 10)! It was delayed, however, the “peak” coming well after the one-hour mark. The best idea I have for this is that the two breakfasts caught up to me! On Day 15, with the cookie, my increase was only 55mg/dL.
There was a smaller spike after that as I recovered from my morning (Figure 11).
My final dinner was pretty modest: a Hawaiian drink, rice, asparagus, and pepper steak, made by a friend. An hour later, I finished that up with the icing on the cake, literally… an HEB chocolate cupcake and some ice cream. The increase from my dinner was only 26mg/dL, but the ice cream did what ice cream does… increased my glucose from 130mg/dL to 186mg/dL, for an increase of 56mg/dL (Figure 12).
I squeezed that ice cream and cake in shortly before the time I had to start my fast for my final OGTT. My blood glucose did its normal post ice cream insanity during the night (Figures 13, 14, and 15). I don’t know happens during my sleep! But, as always, my body worked it all out and my morning glucose monitor value was 94mg/dL going into the final OGTT.
