How to Assess Your Metabolic Health via Blood Glucose Tracking
Keeping track of your blood sugar is accessible to almost everybody, so I highly recommend doing that, especially if you have health concerns or excess body fat.
Now, to the 2 numbers that you will need to track:
1. The fasting blood glucose before breakfast. ā€ØAmerican Diabetes Association considers anything below 100 mg/dL (5.6 mmol/L) normal, but we know how these ‘average patient’ ranges go. These are where pre diabetes numbers start.
In reality, fasted blood sugar below 89 mg/dL and ideally below 85 mg /dL (4.7 mmol/) is the 1st marker of metabolic health.
2. The second number is post-prandial (post-meal) blood glucose, which needs to be measured in 2 phases:
- 30-60 minutes after a meal the spike compared to pre-meal number should not exceed 30 mg/dL. If before the meal your blood glucose was 90, and when you measure 30-60 minutes after, your blood glucose is over 120, that’s a high spike**.
- 2-3 hours after the meal, blood glucose should be back close to baseline. That will mean that your insulin took care of things nicely.
** NOTE: there are caveats to this - for example, if you’re in ketosis and have a high carbohydrate meal, your post-meal spike will typically be very high. That’s a normal reaction of the body due to a temporary lack of insulin in the pancreas, during a ketogenic state.
I always use the following tools with my clients: a Continuous Glucose Monitor that is wearable - usually for 2 weeks - on the fatty part of your triceps, or a device to make a tiny prick your finger each time you want to check your blood glucose, like KetoMojo (that you can also use to check your ketone levels).
Another helpful marker is HbA1c that can be checked via a blood lab test.
It provides an average of blood sugar levels over 3 months.
Ideally you want your HbA1c under 5.0%. Higher results indicates your body’s proteins are glycated (caramelized) to a degree.
