Lesson 3-3: Your First Step Towards Personalized Nutrition

Time to find out exactly which foods are causing your fatigue!

Open your email inbox and download Pg. 26 of your companion guide.

There are three, specific steps you’re going to follow in this section!

Step 1

Identify all the times at which your blood sugar was imbalanced. Remember, use the below rubric to identify whether (or not) your blood sugar is within range:

High blood sugar

• Fasting: Any reading greater than 4.7mmol/L or 85mg/dl indicates that your blood sugar is elevated.
• After eating: Any reading greater than 6.4 mmol/L or 108mg/dl indicates that your blood sugar is elevated

Low blood sugar

• Any reading below 4.2mmol/L or 75mg/dl indicates that your blood sugar is low.
• It does not matter if this reading is fasting or after eating.

Step 2

Begin by transferring your blood sugar readings from Pgs 20-24 of your companion guide to the chart on Pg 26. Copy the time of day your blood sugar was imbalanced as well (fasting, before a meal, after a meal).

Your chart should like something like the example below:

Step 3

Next, I want you to write down the type of food you ate before each blood sugar reading. The catch here is that I want you to break your meal down into specific macronutrients.

If your reading is a fasting reading, write down what you had for dinner the night before. If your reading is before a meal, write down the foods you ate at your last meal.

What’s a macronutrient?

A macronutrient is a fancy word to describe proteins, fats, or carbohydrates. Those are your three macronutrients. Every meal you eat will have some combination of the above.

For most of you, your meal will likely consist primarily of carbohydrates. On pg 27 of your companion guide, I’ve broken down all the categories carbohydrates fall into.

Examples of proteins are:

• Any meat products you consumed.
  • Chicken, beef, pork, fish, turkey, wild game, etc.
  • These are all protein sources.
  • If you put protein powder in your smoothie, list this as a protein.

Examples of carbohydrates are:

• Fruits
• Vegetables
• Grains
• Starches
• Sugars

Fats are what’s left over after you’ve listed your proteins and carbohydrates. Examples of fats include:

• Oils like olive, avocado, canola, coconut vegetable, etc.
• Nuts/seeds,
• Avocados,
• Cheese,
• Butter.

Your revised chart should look something like the below example:

Step 4

Next, I want you to fill out the chart found on page 28 of your companion guide. But be sure to only include the values when your blood sugar was imbalanced!

• High blood sugar
  • Fasting: Any reading greater than 4.7mmol/L or 85mg/dl indicates that your blood sugar is elevated.
  • After eating: Any reading greater than 6.4 mmol/L or 108mg/dl indicates that your blood sugar is elevated
• Low blood sugar
  • Any reading below 4.2mmol/L or 75mg/dl indicates that your blood sugar is low.
  • It does not matter if this reading is fasting or after eating.

Beside each of your irregular blood sugar readings, list all the carbohydrate sources you ate in the meal that affected your blood sugar. If you’re not sure what foods are carbohydrates, look to page 27 of your companion guide. This will give you a detailed list of all the foods that are carbohydrates!

Your final chart should look like:

This is your list of foods that your body is intolerant to. It is these foods that are causing large swings in your blood sugar. These are the foods that cause fatigue in you!

Your anti-fatigue diet will need to remove these carbohydrate sources.

What if there’s more than one carbohydrate in the meal that caused a blood sugar irregularity?

There are a couple options if your blood sugar imbalance came about via a meal with more than one carbohydrate source:

1. Your blood sugar is sensitive to all (or many) of the carbohydrates in the meal.
2. Your blood sugar is sensitive to one of the carbohydrates found in the meal.

It’s most likely that you fall into option 2.

To confirm which carbohydrate(s) are negatively affecting your blood sugar. Repeat the experiment with a meal that contains only one of the suspected carbohydrates.

To keep the experiment even, try to eat a meal very similar. Just with one source of carbohydrates.

A tangible example

Let’s say that a meal of roast chicken, mashed potatoes, and cauliflower resulted in an unwanted blood sugar reading. You can recreate the experiment with a chicken breast and mashed potatoes. Or, chicken wings and cauliflower. Just be sure your chicken wings aren’t coated in a sugary sauce 😉

Both of the above examples isolate the carbohydrate. You may find that mashed potatoes are your trigger. Or, perhaps it’s the cauliflower that triggers blood sugar imbalances. 
Or, it could be both potatoes and cauliflower.

Remember, you’re unique. This course is designed to show you exactly which foods cause fatigue in you. Not in anyone else.

If you want to know how your blood sugar responds to a variety of carbohydrates, you can repeat the testing you did earlier on different carbohydrate sources. Remember, if your blood sugar is going out of range, it’s likely that carbohydrate is making you tired!

Next week, I’m going to send you a worksheet to help you re-test your blood sugar. This will help you isolate exactly which carbohydrates are affecting your blood sugar.