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Most of my patient’s wear a CGM when they’re first starting out with me. This is a continuous glucose monitor. If you’ve never seen one, now that you’ve read this you’ll probably spot one soon! Just look for a small circular disc at the back of the upper arms of people you see. Traditionally used for diabetics, CGMs are now used by many health fanatics and athletes. It allows them to see a 24/7 view of their blood sugar numbers. So you can see in real time what happens when you eat vegetables, have a coffee, a steak or a Jamba Juice. The exact opposite of what you might think, can signal your body to make fat.

Low blood sugar can trigger fat storage. So you need to stop your blood sugar from tanking. When your blood sugar goes too low, your liver gets a signal to dump something called glycogen. It’s the way your liver stores sugar. Everyone has a trigger that causes this dump of sugar into the bloodstream. The more metabolically unhealthy, the larger the dump. As a result, our body releases insulin to compensate for a large surge of sugar. Insulin is a fat storage hormone. So everytime we let our blood sugar go too low, if we are not able to use our fat stores to compensate (only about 1/16 people can do this), the trigger for glycogen happens and we end up spitting out excess sugar, in turn too much insulin – and then the insulin helps to move the excess sugar to the liver, package it as triglycerides and store it in the fat cells. 

To turn off the signal, you need to stop the blood sugar roller coaster. My quick fix – eat within 30 minutes of waking and at least every 4 hours during the day. Getting a CGM will help dial in the specifics for your body. This technology can give great insight into why you might be gaining weight. Knowledge is power!!

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