Samyak Pandya

As one of the core team members of a rapidly growing startup, Samyak found that his nutrition was often on the backburner.

“I currently run finance and business ops for a startup and my job can get stressful,” says Samyak. “As a result of which, my health usually gets neglected. Towards the end of 2017, I started becoming much more conscious about my own health and started reading about things like low carb diets, keto, and how insulin resistance can impact your health in the short and long-term.”

Samyak began his nutritional journey by reading up on popular diets like low-carb and keto. However, being simply aware of how the diets function at a conceptual level still left Samyak’s approach to nutrition lacking.

“On one hand I feel I knew what good nutrition was on a conceptual level,” says Samyak. “But on the other hand, I was clueless about what good nutrition for me personally was. I heard about continuous glucose monitors, but it was impossible to get my hands on one because I’m non-diabetic.”

“Tracking things without a CGM was nearly impossible,” admits Samyak. “I wanted to continuously track my body’s responses to food. We track most things: we use calendars and reminders, we have tools that give us productivity metrics for almost every other aspect of life, and I wanted something for my own physical health.”

Samyak found serendipity in his search to find a way to gain more control over his nutrition within his busy schedule through a 28-day keto challenge hosted by Justin Mares, in which participants use the Levels program to stay within a certain target glucose range.

The challenge provided dual incentives: health and financial. Participants had to commit a financial sum of $800 up front, and would receive $25 of their money back every day they stayed within the target glucose range.

“I was within my range 27 out of the 28 days, and the only day I was out of my limits was because I simply just did not know how the things I was eating would impact me,” says Samyak. “I had some Indian wheat-based flatbread and my glucose levels skyrocketed.”

By the end of the one month challenge, Samyak was 11.6 pounds lighter and a world of personal insights that had long been obscured by lack of data had been discovered.

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Samyak’s weight data over the course of the challenge

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“It was easy for me to lose the weight because I was a bit on the heavier side to begin with,” comments Samyak.

“But, just being aware about how your body responds is more than 50% of the battle won. It really helped me get that discipline to keep going. I could also identify which foods spike my glucose levels and simply just not eat them.”

To Samyak, the battle for control over his nutrition was more than just picking what foods to eat: it was a psychological re-wiring in favor of a stronger accountability mechanism.

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How Samyak turned data into discipline

Like many entrepreneurs in demanding work environments, Samyak often found himself at odds with his health. He was used to committing the bulk of his brainpower to work, and food was merely a means of keeping the engine running regardless of efficiency.

“I noticed that when I’ve had very demanding days, like 12 to 16 hour workdays, my desire to eat sugar is very high,” says Samyak. Having something like Levels that just keeps me disciplined to not eat something that would make me spike has helped me avoid those cravings.”

“There are certain nutrition things we generally accept as true, like sugar or processed carb-heavy foods will make your glucose levels spike, but seeing it visualized in Levels really helps solidify that correlation.”

Seeing Is Believing: The Power Of Visualization

One of Samyak’s favorite features was Meal Scores. He notes how in the beginning of the wearable challenge, he was focused on building that primary awareness of his body’s unique response to various foods.

“The immediate nature of the feedback is really important,” says Samyak. “It’s not like you’re getting it at the beginning or the end of the day when you step on the scale– it’s much faster to correlate how your body reacts to your decisions this way.”

In the latter phases of the challenge, he would use the Meal Scores as a guiding point for his daily nutritional decision making.

“If I do eat something unhealthy, I like being able to confirm my suspicions,” says Samyak. “I like being able to look at Levels and say ‘oh boy!’ and make changes to minimize those extreme spikes.”

Accountability Through Objective Data

With a lack of data and personal insights, people can become masters of justifying nutritional choices they know probably aren’t the best for them. Samyak found that Levels made this nearly impossible for him.

“Having the feedback, metrics, and visualization right in front of me gets rid of all the places to hide away from your food choices,” says Samyak. “You can justify things to yourself all you want, but when you see a graph right in front of you saying your food choice was poor, you can’t argue with that.”

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Final Thoughts

“I spent way less time thinking about my nutrition because Levels was already doing the calculations,” says Samyak. “All I had to do was look at the results and make changes for the better. It really helped minimize some of the cognitive load of having to manage my health.”

The data also helps Samyak have a more healthy and flexible diet, adding an element of mindfulness to his cravings.

“The changes were pretty simple. I still have a sweet tooth,” laughs Samyak. “But now instead of doing the regular Häagen-Dazs I’ll do something like the Enlightened low-sugar ice cream because it doesn’t nearly impact my glucose levels as much. I still give into some cravings, but they’re not too drastic.”

Samyak describes continuous glucose monitors as a tracking mechanism for your own body, and Levels as a necessary coach to help you improve, similar to how an athlete’s team uses data to optimize performance.

“Levels helped me put together a nutritional mental playbook and get my nutrition on autopilot so I can focus more on work and less about stressing about what to eat and worrying about being unhealthy.”

In just one month, Samyak was able to drop over 11 pounds and gain an intimate insight into his own unique metabolic health. Today, Samyak views Levels as an incredible asset that helps him streamline his nutrition and keep him more focused on work. A vague meal plan turned into a mental nutritional playbook, with Levels as an accountability coach.

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More About Samyak:

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Samyak’s blog

The post Weight loss success and improved mindfulness through glucose monitoring: an interview with Samyak Pandya, VP at Ridecell appeared first on Levels.

Humans are complex organisms, each with a unique genetic, biochemical, and microbial blueprint, and the reality is that every bite we consume has an impact on whether our bodies are moving towards a state of optimal health or a state of dysfunction. While a standard guidebook for living would be nice, the truth is that each individual must determine the personalized diet that supports their body’s highest level of functioning. Fortunately, continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) can be a powerful tool in this pursuit. CGM can provide data and feedback to help determine how daily choices affect glucose levels in real-time. We can finally write our own guidebooks, linking the meals we eat with metabolic health, and quickly access quantitative, actionable information that can optimize diet.

Make no mistake, it’s tough out there. We’re surrounded by what feels like unlimited sources of food, plenty of which are marketed as “healthy.” But despite this abundance, our country is sicker than ever. Recent research shows that in 2018, 80% of consumers found conflicting information about food and nutrition, and 59% say that the conflicting information makes them doubt their choices. The beauty of objective data is that it cuts through the noise.

What’s An Optimal Diet? Glucose Levels Can Help Identify It.

Glucose levels, and how they change over both the long and short term, have a great deal to do with health and well-being. These glucose levels are largely determined by diet, and chronically elevated levels and post-meal spikes can lead to serious dysfunction, including increased risk for type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, stroke, liver cirrhosis, obesity, death from cancer, and more.  It follows then that supporting the healthy regulation of glucose is a fundamental building block of an optimal diet.

In the past, there have been a few tools to help understand how food affects glucose levels; a glycemic index chart could offer rough estimates of predicted glucose impact of foods for the general population, and more personalized information was available from daily finger sticks to spot check glucose levels. CGM has changed all this. This powerful tool can track glucose trends 24-hours a day, not only in response to diet, but for lifestyle behaviors including exercise, sleep, and many others that are known to affect glucose.

A diet that optimizes glucose levels should have three main goals:

1. Minimizing spikes in glucose levels after meals
2. Maintaining glucose levels in a fairly narrow and healthy range
3. Keeping fasting glucose (glucose levels measured after consuming no calories for at least 8 hours) in a range that carries the lowest risk

Minimizing Glucose Spikes After A Meal

The term postprandial hyperglycemia refers to larger than normal elevations, or spikes, in glucose levels after eating a meal. Excessive spikes are dangerous for many reasons; among other issues, they’re a risk factor for development of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, thickened carotid artery walls, liver disease, obesity, stroke, retinopathy, renal failure, cognitive dysfunction, cancer, and mortality.

The mechanisms that link glucose spikes with chronic disease are thought to include oxidative stress and inflammation, both of which can contribute to insulin resistance.  Insulin resistance refers to the state when the body’s cells become less responsive — or “numb” — to signals from insulin, a hormone that allows cells to take up glucose. Insulin resistance can be the first step toward full-fledged diabetes.

It’s thought to proceed like this: Insulin resistance leads to loss of post-meal blood glucose control, which is followed by the development of elevated fasting glucose levels, which leads to high glucose levels sustained over time. As a point of reference from the International Diabetes Federation, healthy people should rarely ever exceed glucose levels of 140 mg/dL after a meal, and glucose should revert to pre-meal levels within two to three hours.

However, studies of non-diabetic populations wearing CGMs suggest that we may benefit from keeping an even tighter range after meals. One study showed that young healthy adults spent about 80% of the time at glucose levels <100 mg/dL and less than 1% of the time >140 mg/dL. Another study showed that healthy individuals spend 94.4% of the time at glucose levels <120 mg/dL, and again, less than 1% of the time >140 mg/dL. As such, shooting to just stay below a level of 140 mg/dL after meals is likely too lenient of a benchmark for optimal health; more likely, a healthy individual should be maintaining a glucose level of less than 100 mg/dL for the vast majority of the day, and rarely ever spend time at glucose levels above 120 mg/dL.

The implications are clear. An optimal diet, when seen through the lens of glucose levels, should focus on foods that minimize post-meal spikes. Diets that reduce these spikes can potentially reduce the risk of developing diabetes, heart disease, and some cancers.  Additionally, these diets can improve insulin sensitivity and cholesterol profiles.

The concept of glycemic index was developed with relatively simple parameters; it describes the rise in glucose levels observed after the intake of 50g of carbohydrates of a specific food. Under this paradigm, a food with a higher glycemic index raises glucose levels more than a food with a lower index.  But this measure has limited application in the real world because very few people eat 50g of a particular carbohydrate at a given time. Despite this, some studies have found that a diet’s glycemic index is a good predictor of blood sugar fluctuations and that low glycemic index diets can reduce post-meal glucose elevations (Figure 1).

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While these studies suggest that understanding glycemic index can help, more recent research has shown that two individuals’ glucose response can vary significantly, even after eating the exact same food (Figure 2). This introduces some uncertainty into the idea of standardized scales to predict glycemic response to foods.

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Traditional metrics have shown trends in favor of low-glycemic diets in the general population, but on an individual level, they may not be an accurate predictor of glycemic response. Rather than the notion that a food may have an intrinsic quality that affects glucose levels, it’s more likely that personal genetics, lifestyle, physical activity, body type, and microbiome also play an important role in reducing glucose spikes after a meal.‍

Limit The Variability In Glucose Levels

Glycemic variability refers to large swings in glucose levels. Also known as glycemic excursions, these are potentially more harmful than sustained high glucose levels alone. It’s thought that excessive peaks and dips in glucose can lead to tissue-damaging metabolic byproducts such as free radicals, damage to blood vessels, damage to the nervous system, triggering of inflammation, and activation of the stress hormone cascade (sympathetic nervous system activation).

Glycemic variability increases as people move along the continuum from normal glucose regulation toward diabetes. As a person becomes more insulin resistant, they’ll also tend to show more variability in glucose levels, including in their fasting and post-meal levels. Simply put, poor glycemic regulation isn’t just about having higher glucose levels, it’s also about having increased variability in those levels.

It’s been shown that the average height of glucose spikes and dips–known as “mean amplitude of glycemic excursions” or MAGE–is lowest in those without diabetes or obesity. A normal range of average glycemic excursions for non-diabetic, non-obese individuals has been shown to be between 26-28 mg/dL. In contrast, a non-diabetic morbidly obese individual displays a MAGE value of 48.6 mg/dL. MAGE increases in those who are prediabetic or obese, is higher in those with stable diabetes, and is highest in those with uncontrolled diabetes. Clearly, for best health, we want to eat in a way that produces minimal glycemic excursions. Unfortunately, a hemoglobin a1c test (a standard test which measures approximate glucose levels averaged over 3 months) doesn’t take these spikes and dips into account, so it may miss this important independent risk factor for diabetes and many chronic diseases (see Figure 3).

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Fasting Glucose And “Normal” Ranges

“Fasting glucose” is a measurement of glucose levels after consuming no calories for at least 8 hours. A high number is a strong predictor of developing diabetes down the road, and higher values may even be a risk factor for heart disease and stroke, among other health problems, even when this level is in the non-diabetic “normal” range (Figure 4).

The American Diabetes Association places fasting plasma glucose levels into three categories: “normal” (<100 mg/dL), “prediabetes” (100-125 mg/dL), and “diabetes” ( >126 mg/dL) (Figure 5). It’s thought that up to 70% of individuals at the prediabetes level will eventually develop diabetes, and approximately 90% of those at prediabetic levels aren’t aware of their condition!

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Additional research indicates that even people in the high “normal” range are at an increased risk of developing diabetes. Research in children has shown that having a fasting glucose measurement of 86-99 mg/dL, while still in the “normal” range, increases the risk of developing prediabetes and type 2 diabetes more than two-fold when compared with children with a fasting glucose less than 86 mg/dL. A large study in adults showed that as fasting glucose increases from <81 up to 99 mg/dL, there is an increase in the risk of developing diabetes by as much as three times, despite all of these individuals meeting criteria for “normal” fasting glucose (Figure 6). What’s more, there is a sharp increase in the risk of cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, and thrombotic stroke as fasting glucose increases (Figure 4). This increase in risk begins at ~90 mg/dL fasting glucose, well below the “normal” fasting glucose level cut-off of 100 mg/dL.

The idea of a fasting glucose of <100 mg/dL being a standard threshold for complete safety and risk-avoidance is flawed. Physiology is a spectrum, and it is up to every individual to stay vigilant and aware of where they fall on this spectrum. Unfortunately, traditional tools used for assessing glucose don’t give us this level of granularity. Fortunately, tools like CGM are now accessible, software like Levels can make sense of the data, and glucose levels are highly modifiable with dietary and lifestyle modifications.

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In addition to sustained, elevated fasting glucose levels, variability in these levels between fasting glucose readings may represent a risk factor. Fasting glucose levels that “bounce around” from test to test appear to be correlated with increased risk of heart disease and mortality. Research shows that those with the least variability between tests have a lower risk of future health problems than those with the most variability (Figure 7).

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Considering these findings, it’s clear that an optimal diet should take into account the diet’s effect on keeping fasting glucose on the lower end of the normal range, as well as minimizing variability between test-to-test fasting levels. The good news is that CGM can be a powerful tool to monitor glucose and determine which foods lead to better or worse glycemic function. Consistent use of these devices can support lifestyle changes that lower fasting blood glucose. And these lifestyle changes can work dramatically–even for those who meet the criteria for prediabetes, lifestyle modification can reduce the risk of progressing to diabetes by up to 70%.

Optimal Diet: There’s No “One Size Fits All”

The data makes it clear: there’s no one-size-fits-all diet that will optimize glucose levels. Neither a food’s carbohydrate content nor its glycemic load/index can predict an individual’s exact glucose response to a real-life meal. Standardized scoring systems like the glycemic index simply aren’t personalized enough to be as useful as we’d like (Figures 2). What’s more, metrics like carbohydrate content or glycemic load/index fail to take into account genetics, weight, sleep quality, stress levels, gut microbiome, insulin sensitivity, mixed meals and food combinations, and other factors which all affect glycemic response.

So what’s the best way to determine an optimal diet? It’s simple, but it requires data and analytics. We know that an optimal diet is one that minimizes post-meal glucose spikes, reduces glycemic variability, and maintains fasting blood glucose in an optimal range. CGM can aid in achieving these aims.

Using CGM, coupled with Levels software to interpret the data and parse out the individual dietary and lifestyle drivers of glycemic trends, individuals can track post-meal spikes, glycemic variability, and fasting glucose in a way that’s accurate, individualized, applicable to real-life, and actionable. Reading nutrition labels simply isn’t enough; Levels can reveal an individual’s glycemic reaction to any food or meal, facilitating enhanced control and power in pursuit of optimal health and well-being.  Now is the time to utilize this technology to craft personalized diets that optimize biologic wellness and take the guesswork out of this aspect of eating.

The post Creating an optimal diet by tracking glucose with a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) appeared first on Levels.

Calories In/Calories Out Is A Flawed Model

The process of gaining weight isn’t as simple as one might think. The model of “calories in/calories out” that many of us are familiar with is flawed, and doesn’t take into account the complex hormonal and biochemical pathways involved in energy balance, weight gain, and weight loss in the body.

The flaws of the calorie deficit model of weight loss can be pictured by imagining the human body as a car: The engine is our cells, the fuel tank is our fat stores, and the fuel within the tank is provided by the food we eat. As we drive the car along, the engine (cells) burns fuel (fat) to keep the car moving. By consuming food we “refill” the tank as we go, preventing it from running dry. In this analogy, if we want to deplete our fuel tank (fat stores), we can simply put less fuel in the tank (eat fewer calories) or drive the car faster (exercise more).

That’s all quite straightforward and makes sense on first blush, but is it accurate? Is a car with just three components a reasonable way to represent the complexity of the human body? Moreover, is a car with three components even a reasonable way to represent the complexity of a real car? The answer is no, and here’s why: A real engine does not just require fuel to run – it requires a precise blend of fuel and oxygen, along with a perfectly timed spark, controlled temperature and humidity, lubrication, and more. Furthermore, every engine model might be constructed slightly differently. Tip the balance on any of these mitigating factors and the fuel efficiency of the engine will change dramatically, if it manages to run at all.

The original thought experiment now seems a lot more complex. What happens if we are driving this more realistic car except this time debris has clogged the air filter, preventing oxygen from entering and making conditions impossible for the fuel to burn efficiently? What if the engine oil is depleted and there is excessive friction and wear on the engine parts? This is a more accurate representation of the human body and the hormonal mechanisms of weight and energy balance.

Amazingly, different types of foods eaten at different times of day and in different combinations can lead to completely unique hormonal responses in the body, and it is these hormones–in particular insulin–that determine what happens to the food molecules once broken down by the digestive system, and how efficiently they are processed. What’s more, different individuals can have highly variable glucose responses to the same food, regardless of calorie content.

The Role Of Insulin

Insulin is released in response to glucose in the blood (see Figure 1), and is the primary hormone involved in fat storage and weight gain. Though we often associate insulin with diabetes, it is a big contributor to weight gain for everyone–diabetic or not–and has to be tamed to successfully maintain a healthy weight.

Insulin is our body’s main anabolic hormone, meaning it promotes “building” in the body (e.g. the storage of fat), rather than breaking things down.  Insulin tells our cells to take up glucose from the blood for use, or, if there’s excess, for storage. Because weight loss generally requires us to burn through fat stores, we need to control our insulin so that we signal to the body that it should burn fat, rather than store more of it.

When there is more glucose in the bloodstream than what the body needs to meet energy demands, increased insulin levels signal to the liver and muscles to store glucose in chains of  glycogen. Once the liver and muscles are filled to the brim with glycogen, the excess glucose is turned into fat (triglycerides) and sent out in the blood to be stored in the fat cells around the body. You can think of the liver and muscle as short term, limited storage space for energy in the form of glycogen, and fat cells as long term, essentially unlimited storage space for energy in the form of triglycerides.

When we’re not eating– if we’re between meals, sleeping, or fasting–the lack of dietary glucose causes insulin levels to fall. This signals to our body that we should burn stored energy, starting with glycogen. Once the stores of glycogen run out, we start burning fat (see Figure 2). The goal of weight loss is to burn excess stored fat by mobilizing it and bringing it to parts of the body that can use it for fuel. It’s important to note that the anabolic (storage) signal of insulin prevents the body from tapping into fat for energy as long as insulin levels are high.

This part of the story is simple: we need to lower our insulin levels to burn stored fat. But what if our insulin levels never really fall enough to signal that we should be burning through our stored fat? This is a similar scenario to the car with the clogged air filter – we can push the accelerator all we want but unless the oxygen (insulin) level is optimal, the engine (cells) cannot burn fuel (fat) efficiently. In the body, high insulin both impairs triglyceride breakdown in fat cells, and also inhibits fatty acids from entering into fatty acid oxidation in the mitochondria.

The Importance Of Understanding And Controlling Our Glucose Levels

At Levels, we believe that a key to success is knowing exactly how your body responds to different foods. Fortunately, glucose levels tend to mirror insulin responses. If we know how much a food raises our blood glucose, then we have a more robust understanding of our body’s predicted exposure to insulin, and therefore gain a sense of whether our body is likely to be in a fat-storage or fat-burning mode.

Reading this, you might think that we should just eat very few carbohydrates and stick to high fat foods in order to decrease insulin and lose fat and weight. This may be part of the puzzle, but it’s not the only piece. It’s important to remember that there are many complex carbohydrates and healthy protein sources that can help our bodies function optimally, and which may not generate significant glucose and insulin spikes.

The concept of the “glycemic index” — a ranking of foods based on how they affect blood glucose — is a standardized tool to help understand this process, but it can also be a blunt instrument. A few problems have become increasingly clear regarding standardized glycemic indices:

• Interpersonal variability: Different people who eat the exact same meal might have highly variable glucose responses, due in part to the unique and complex biologic environment of their bodies.
• Intrapersonal variability: Different meals with the exact same amount of carbohydrates can generate highly variable glucose levels in a single person. Carbohydrate content alone is often a poor predictor of personal glycemic response.
• Lifestyle: Glucose levels might change based on factors such as stress and sleep quantity. For example, restricting sleep to 4 hours per night for 6 days has been shown to lead to higher glucose response to specific foods, and 40% lower rate of glucose clearance from the blood.
• Timing variability: The time of day that we eat can have a profound impact on glucose levels in the blood, with a high-glycemic and high calorie meal eaten in the evening causing a significantly greater glucose and insulin response compared to the same meal consumed in the morning.
• Food combinations: The composition of a meal and the order of foods consumed can cause glucose to change differently than if those foods were eaten in isolation (See Figure 3).

Considering all these variables, how could someone possibly know how their day-to-day diet is affecting their glucose levels if they don’t have access to their glucose data? The answer is simple: They can’t.

Why 85% Of Diets Fail

Unfortunately, long term success rates with weight loss are dismal: despite the alarming statistic that 70% of Americans are overweight or obese, and nearly 50% of Americans have tried to lose weight in the past 12 months, only 15-20% of people who successfully lose weight are able to keep it off. As stated by Ochner, et al, “this almost ubiquitous weight regain is witnessed in virtually every clinical weight loss trial, including those specifically aimed at improving weight loss maintenance.”

Why do conventional attempts at weight loss fail? Three things: metabolism, hormones, and the brain.  The reality is that our bodies have evolved to help us survive and hold on to energy in the face of starvation through a variety of complex mechanisms.

Simply eating less (ie, calorie deprivation) is a common approach to weight loss, but thwarts our efforts by reducing our resting metabolic rate. When the body senses an environment of food scarcity, it uses energy more efficiently and also reduces its use of stored energy. This translates to fewer calories expended per day.

The types of foods we eat after losing weight also seem to affect our ability to maintain weight loss. A study showed that people who adhere to low carbohydrate eating plans after weight loss burn ~200 kilocalories more per day than those on higher carbohydrate diets, and for those with the highest insulin secretion at baseline who subsequently adhere to a low carbohydrate diet, that difference widens to 400 kilocalories per day.

The brain is also affected by dieting in ways that promote weight regain. When we are calorie deprived, we see increased activity in areas of the brain that lead to increased attention, reward, and motivation related to food. In other words, calorie deprivation leads us to become hyper-focused on obtaining food.

Hormones, including those beyond insulin, play a major role as well. Leptin is one of our appetite-inhibiting/satiety hormones and is secreted by fat cells in response to eating. Its levels also increase as fat mass increases. It is thought that leptin signals to the brain to inhibit food intake in order to prevent overconsumption of dietary energy, and suppresses insulin production to discourage further fat storage in favor of fat burning.

Paradoxically, obese patients with higher levels of leptin (due to higher levels of fat mass) may suffer from “leptin resistance,” thought to be due to reduced transport of leptin across the blood brain barrier. High insulin levels are also thought to lead to leptin resistance, preventing appetite-inhibition, and leading to a cycle of increased weight gain.‍

How Glucose Tracking Can Inform Our Weight Loss Efforts

It all starts with glucose levels – if they’re elevated, insulin is generally released. Increased insulin levels lead to fat storage and weight gain.  Over time, if glucose is consistently elevated due to diet, and insulin production is therefore constantly active, our cells can become “numb” to insulin, a process called insulin resistance. This means that we need more and more circulating insulin to get glucose into cells, leading to higher baseline levels of insulin. This process directly counters weight loss efforts.

In obese individuals, high insulin levels also lead to impaired leptin signaling and “leptin resistance”, making it harder for us to feel full and more likely to continue consuming calories rather than burn stored fat for energy. On the other hand, decreased glucose levels lead to lower insulin levels, which can lead to weight loss and decreased fat mass.

Real-time glucose measurements give us the power to understand how the foods we eat affect the level of glucose in our blood, and by rough proxy, our insulin levels. Unlike traditional dietary strategies like calorie counting — which have been shown time and again to be ineffective for sustained weight loss — glucose monitoring provides insight into the underlying physiological processes that lead to fat storage.

Closing Thoughts: Why Should We Even Care About Losing Weight? Spoiler, It’s Not Just About Looks.

Being overweight is a risk factor for a host of problems: cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and premature mortality. It can also exacerbate hypertension, arthritis, gallstones, high cholesterol, low back pain, bronchitis, and musculoskeletal problems.

Excess fat also acts as a source of many signaling molecules in the body, and is even thought to be an “endocrine organ” in its own right. Fat can secrete hormones (like those associated with appetite, i.e. leptin), but also pro-inflammatory chemicals called adipocytokines, which are associated with insulin resistance. Visceral fat — the type that surrounds organs and is most dangerous in terms of risk for chronic disease — is also known to harbor a large quantity of immune cells called macrophages, which in turn leads to further production of pro-inflammatory chemicals.

Given the relationship between glucose, insulin, and excess fat, real-time monitoring can provide a valuable tool to help individuals feel more empowered in their weight loss journey. Personal data helps individuals know specifically how their diet affects them, and can inspire behaviors that promote optimal weight and long-term health and wellness.

The post Understanding weight loss: why tracking glucose with a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) may be more insightful than tracking calories appeared first on Levels.