Using a CGM to dial in carb intake & loading

[workout1234]

I'm trying an experiment, so far on day 4. I am using a Libre 3 CGM to look at real-time glucose and attempting to first do some baselining of how my body is handling carbs currently (insulin sensitivity, glucose disposal, glycogen uptake around workout window, etc...) and then try and optimize from there. I realize that these devices are not 100% accurate, and also that you cannot entirely draw conclusions around insulin sensitivity or glycogen uptake only from real time glucose curves, but I feel it can act as a "good enough" proxy for the level of experimentation I'm looking to do on myself

What I learned on first two days of setting baseline: I only had 1 spike over 140, which was first thing in the morning when I had 2 servings of prunes on an empty stomach to help with my gut, and then that actually wrecked my workout after because of the residual insulin response, so it dulled my pre-workout response (never rose from the baseline of 80 up past like 110) and then my intra shake (30g dextrose) barely was able to keep me in the 100-120 zone during my workout. Btw the time I finished my workout and had a whey isolate shake, then did 30m of steady state 130bpm cardio, I had dropped to around 85 glucose when I got home, priming me for post-workout nutrition. I put down 150g of carbs and barely saw my level reach 115, which means I cleared that glucose incredibly efficiently (combination of left over insulin responses and post-workout glycogen uptake is my guess). And that spike came and went and I was back to 85-95 baseline glucose by the 2hr mark after my meal. Rest of the day I stayed pretty steady between 100-110 through snacks and lunch, etc...

Day 3 I removed the prunes and saw a more reasonable response from my pre-workout, but it still got disposed too efficiently, before my heavy sets at the gym started. I switched to HBCD instead of dextrose on this day and that was not strong enough (in terms of glycemic response) to get my levels up so I did my leg day (hypertrophy day, mostly isolation, not compounds thankfully) at only 80-95 glucose and felt fairly flat. Post workout I tried pushing 175g carbs and cleared them no problem. Clearly still have headroom (I borrowed the carbs from later in the day so my total caloric surplus is the same, just moving more carbs into the window where I clearly seem to absorb them for profit)

Day 4 (today) I added more carbs to the preworkout and took it later, closer to the time I left for the gym. Still had a smallish peak, but lasted into the first 2-3 sets of heavy lifts. Intra barely kept me above 90. Postworkout I pushed 200g carbs today and was still able to clear that without issue. Peak only reached 123, fully cleared back to 85 baseline by 2hr 15m mark.

Tomorrow: will add a bit more fast-acting carbs to pre-workout and maybe a tablespoon of manuka honey to the HBCD in the intra to see if I can keep myself in the sweet spot of 100-120 glucose throughout the workout, so I know I'm never in a glycogen depleted state. I don't know if this is _actually_ helpful or not, but I've somehow convinced myself that it seems like a good target. I am going to do some more research and see if it's actually legit or not. I'm going to hold at 200g post-workout carbs since I seem to be handling that for now. Will try pushing higher once I get the pre/intra sorted. FWIW, after these 2 days I feel not only fuller and harder, but also somehow leaner at the same time :O pretty wild.....

 

[workout1234]

I'm totally willing to accept that this is first class bro science at best and its all probably placebo haha, but as an engineer by trade I like geeking out on numbers and data and feeling like im optimizing something...

 

[941trt]

i support this autism and will continue to follow the thread

 

[workout1234]

Day 5 morning experiment. Learned a valuable lesson today lol

So I increased both protein and carbs in my pre-workout today, with the goal of having a bigger and more sustained glucose spike that would align with my lifts better and carry me through the beginning of the workout, while having the intra later would help keep me steady through the end of the workout. Well, I made a few silly mistakes and the data & my feelz report both reflected it.

I changed my pre-workout shake to be greek yogurt, fairlife milk, 1 scoop whey isolate, 0.5 banana, and 1 cup berries. I also had 1 serving of prunes, which always spike the hell out of my glucose (it's the food I seem to react the absolute most to so far). Well, the issue as I found out later is that these are all very fast acting, high GI carbs with no real slower digesting carbs in the mix.... you can probably guess what happens next LOL.

Got the gym and I'm already peaking glucose (at around 123) and by the time I got on the recumbent bike to warm up for 10m, I had already dropped to 106. By the time I finished warming up (I cut my warm up short to 5m to try and catch some of the peak with my lifts) and then I went and did a few warm up sets for chest, I was crashing _hard_. My glucose dropped to 70. After my warm up sets were done and I was ready to start working sets, I was down to 63 and by the time I finished my first 2 sets, I was starting to feel light headed and my CGM read 55! (in bright red numbers and background, warning me I'm way too low). This was a major sugar rush & hard crash from too much concentrated high GI carbs without anything to slow/dampen that action. I started slamming my intra shake (HBCD + 1 tbsp manuka honey) to hope I could bring it back up. Didn't act fast enough and I went through the first 2 exercises in my routine at sub 60 glucose and feeling a bit lightheaded, but nothing too crazy. Surprisingly I was able to hit all my weight and rep targets. The 30mg tbol PWO may be helping there Anyways, by the end of the workout my glucose had stabilized again in the 85-100 range when the intra kicked in and held me over. But I also cut my post-workout cardio short by 10m because again my glucose was crashing. Pretty roller coaster-y day, but workout still was good and not compromised too much. Got home, took my 7iu hgh and ate my 200g of mixed-carb post-workout meal and feeling good now. Peaked around 123 about 60m after the meal and dropping slowly (on track, still monitoring it) back towards the baseline of 85-100 hopefully before the 2hr or 2.5hr mark to show good glucose disposal and clearance.

Lessons for tomorrow: add some slower digesting carbs to that shake! I think I'll drop the prunes and add a serving of oats to the shake. Will probably drop the honey from the intra. The intra shouldn't have to play emergency savior, it should just be to help sustain the gradual peak. The problem was that the pre- caused too sharp an increase & subsequent crash. That needs to be smoothened out and then I will feel things are dialed pretty good.

 

[941trt]

Yo I have a noob question about carb cycling, am I keeping the protein and fat exactly the same all week and just manipulating the carbs?

 

[workout1234]

Yo I have a noob question about carb cycling, am I keeping the protein and fat exactly the same all week and just manipulating the carbs?

I'm pretty new to carb cycling, actually officially starting next week. So far, I've just been borrowing carbs from other parts of my day to shove as much as I can into the anabolic window around my workouts, based on what the CGM implies I can utilize without spill over. That said, I am planning on starting a carb cycling approach of 2 high days and 1 low day per week, and my plan was to keep protein and fats MOSTLY the same, but maybe drop protein a tiny bit on high carb days, and bump up fats slightly on low carb days. However, not enough to balance calories. I expect on high carb days I will consume an extra 400-500 cals or so, and on low carb day I'll probably consume 300-400 less calories. My current average day is around 400-430g of carbs. I was thinking of targeting 500-525g on high carb days and maybe 200-250g on low carb days. Will probably drop protein from 230-240 down to 200 on high carb days, and maybe bump fats from 65-70g up to maybe 90g on low carb days just for a bit of extra fuel. Like an extra serving of nuts or tbsp of EVOO or something.

 

[941trt]

Okay so we are in similar spots I just started.

I’m cutting down to 10% right now and I’m keeping my protein and fats stable at around 150g and 50g every day of the week.

I have “low days” where I will cut out say 100-150 carbs and then use them on high intensity workout days.

I mostly just am making sure my weekly calorie amount is the same that’s what’s making the most sense to me, while being able to manipulate my metabolism from adapting.

I also throw in a day of a total fast, which isn’t great for gains most ppl say do a “protein sparing fast” but I enjoy the feeling sometimes lol.

I’m cutting from 15->10% body fat and seeing good results so far, I am around 13 now with another month to go.

I also started using Reta and honestly started a bit high at 2mg weekly, but no significant sides. I did eat a massive meal on a high day and felt a little stomach discomfort but it wasn’t terrible.

Im pretty active on discord if you wanna shoot ideas always down to have some knowledge ppl in my dms

 

[nullandvoid]

I tried a CGM and just ended up yanking it off (the CGM) four days early. My glucose was all over the place (within range) making the information near useless for me. Didn't have the motivation or commitment to find any trends or patterns in the seeming chaos. It loosely followed what was expected, but the numbers were never consistent. I eat the same things for the same meals every single day, too. Just ended up confusing me, and no one over 50 has time for that shit. Ok, I actually have lots of time. I just don't care.

 

[workout1234]

I tried a CGM and just ended up yanking it off (the CGM) four days early. My glucose was all over the place (within range) making the information near useless for me. Didn't have the motivation or commitment to find any trends or patterns in the seeming chaos. It loosely followed what was expected, but the numbers were never consistent. I eat the same things for the same meals every single day, too. Just ended up confusing me, and no one over 50 has time for that shit. Ok, I actually have lots of time. I just don't care.

yeah, it's definitely taking a lot of my time and I'm only on day 5. We'll see if I have the patience to make it to day 14 haha.

 

[BBBG]

This isn’t really accurate.

You’re not accounting for the 2,000+ calories that are stored as glycogen in muscle tissue. Your body doesn’t need a steady stream of glucose fresh off the digestive tract. We didn’t evolve that way.

It’s an interesting experiment and cool to look at but you’re not going to be able to dial in an optimal timing.

 

[workout1234]

This isn’t really accurate.

You’re not accounting for the 2,000+ calories that are stored as glycogen in muscle tissue. Your body doesn’t need a steady stream of glucose fresh off the digestive tract. We didn’t evolve that way.

It’s an interesting experiment and cool to look at but you’re not going to be able to dial in an optimal timing.

Yeah I kind of figured I'm chasing ghosts here. Do you think there's any value at all at dialing in a steady state of glucose throughout the workout window (versus peaks and valleys) or none of it matters at all?

 

[rastaman69]

Yeah I kind of figured I'm chasing ghosts here. Do you think there's any value at all at dialing in a steady state of glucose throughout the workout window (versus peaks and valleys) or none of it matters at all?

I'm reminded of tuning the stereo system I put in my car. Crossover frequencies, equalizer settings, sub levels, etc.

Then I actually listen to real music and I'm like "fuck all that, I like it better when it sounds like this" and I change the settings.

 

[workout1234]

Decided not to update this thread daily as it's probably just noise for most people. Here is a quick end of week summary. I have about 4-5 days left on the sensor, but I think I've gotten what I wanted out of it. As mentioned before, it's unclear if any of the "optimization" I did has any real world impact or is even the right thing to do, but it felt good to have a metric that I could somewhat control and optimize and make adjustments until I nailed what I was trying to nail. So even if it's placebo, I feel it did something haha.

Final adjusted protocol:
3:30am wake up. Have coffee and no food. Take 480mg r-ALA at 3:45am. Fasting glucose typically around 82-83
4:30am pre-workout. 500mg berberine. shake consisting of greek yogurt, fairlife milk, oats, whey, citruline malate, taurine, and frozen berries. Slice of whole wheat bread. ~75g Protein, ~86g Carbs
5:00-5:15am arrive at gym and start 5m of warm up cardio on recumbent bike. At this point, my glucose is reaching it's peak from the shake, usually right around a value of 110-115. Start sipping my Intra (homemade mix, contains 30-35g of HBCD, 10g EAA, 5g creatine, 1-2g himalayan salt). It's important to start sipping the intra now, otherwise I crash hard during first exercise of lifting session
5:15-5:30am start lifting. A few warm up sets, continuing to sip intra. Glucose typically down to about 100 by this point
6:30ish done lifting. Glucose typically falls to about 70 briefly around second exercise (depends on how early and hard I start drinking intra to buffer it) and then stays between 75-95 for the remainder of the workout, which was my goal zone to keep it in.
6:30 drink whey shake (~28g Protein) and start light steady state cardio (120-130bpm) for 30m. Glucose typically around mid 80s or low 90s when I start. Briefly drops to about 65-70 by end of cardio session, then naturally rebounds up to about 85-90 again by the time I get home & start post-workout meal
7:30am home, take hgh, 500mg berberine, eat post-workout meal (banana, oats, rice pudding, fairlife milk, rice, eggs, veggies, bread, AG1, prunes). ~55g P, ~200g Carbs
8:30am 60m first peak of glucose around 115-118 usually
9:00am 90m second peak of glucose, around 120 usually
9:30-10:30am return to baseline of 80-90 glucose by the 2-2.5hr mark, showing good glucose disposal/clearing (I interpret to mean glycogen stores in muscles were replenished without spill over, but that could be bogus)
11:30am 480mg r-ALA for insulin sensitivty
12:15pm 500mg berberine, lunch (rice, chicken, veggies) ~50g Pro, ~50g Carbs
3:00pm afternoon snack (eg. jerky, rxbar, etc...) ~15g Pro, ~25g Carbs
6:00pm dinner (cottage cheese, EVOO, slice of bread) ~15g Pro, ~20g Carbs
8:30pm bed

My glucose stays totally within my target range throughout the day with the only spikes & drops being around the workout, but intentional. The remainder of the day is a fairly smooth graph slowly going up and down without much spikyness or crashes, staying between 90-110 for most of the day. I feel this means I have good insulin sensitivity and glucose utilization currently (something I'm keeping an eye on as I stay on hgh longer).

Subjectively, I feel amazing now (probably placebo from feeling like I changed stuff! ). I don't feel bloated despite eating 200g+ carbs post-workout and 430g+ per day and my muscles feel full and strong without me feeling sluggish or watery. No feelings of rushes or crashes. I've been hitting PRs regularly, but that might just be because I'm also on cycle right now.

 

[workout1234]

One last experiment I'm doing in the remaining days is to see how much higher I can push the post-workout carbs and still see a reasonable peak (not too high) and good clearance back to baseline within 120-180m (which I'm interpreting as I could absorb and use it all without spillover for fat). Subjective markers I am using on top of the readings is whether I feel any sleepiness, crashing, flushing, bloating, etc... If I don't and it just feels like the food disappears as it has been then I take that to mean I have more headroom to push food.

The only downside so far to eating so much is my gut is super full. Thankfully between the enzymes I take with each large meal, the prunes, and overall fiber content of my diet, things "move along" efficiently so it's not too bad. I think a GLP-1 that slows my stomach emptying would wreak havoc on this protocol

 

[BBBG]

This was a pretty cool endeavor. I didn’t realize you started a business, along with your weight loss! This has been a pretty epic year for you! Real cool to see!

 

[workout1234]

Thanks man, appreciate it!

 

[Catteni]

Decided not to update this thread daily as it's probably just noise for most people. Here is a quick end of week summary. I have about 4-5 days left on the sensor, but I think I've gotten what I wanted out of it. As mentioned before, it's unclear if any of the "optimization" I did has any real world impact or is even the right thing to do, but it felt good to have a metric that I could somewhat control and optimize and make adjustments until I nailed what I was trying to nail. So even if it's placebo, I feel it did something haha.

Final adjusted protocol:
3:30am wake up. Have coffee and no food. Take 480mg r-ALA at 3:45am. Fasting glucose typically around 82-83
4:30am pre-workout. 500mg berberine. shake consisting of greek yogurt, fairlife milk, oats, whey, citruline malate, taurine, and frozen berries. Slice of whole wheat bread. ~75g Protein, ~86g Carbs
5:00-5:15am arrive at gym and start 5m of warm up cardio on recumbent bike. At this point, my glucose is reaching it's peak from the shake, usually right around a value of 110-115. Start sipping my Intra (homemade mix, contains 30-35g of HBCD, 10g EAA, 5g creatine, 1-2g himalayan salt). It's important to start sipping the intra now, otherwise I crash hard during first exercise of lifting session
5:15-5:30am start lifting. A few warm up sets, continuing to sip intra. Glucose typically down to about 100 by this point
6:30ish done lifting. Glucose typically falls to about 70 briefly around second exercise (depends on how early and hard I start drinking intra to buffer it) and then stays between 75-95 for the remainder of the workout, which was my goal zone to keep it in.
6:30 drink whey shake (~28g Protein) and start light steady state cardio (120-130bpm) for 30m. Glucose typically around mid 80s or low 90s when I start. Briefly drops to about 65-70 by end of cardio session, then naturally rebounds up to about 85-90 again by the time I get home & start post-workout meal
7:30am home, take hgh, 500mg berberine, eat post-workout meal (banana, oats, rice pudding, fairlife milk, rice, eggs, veggies, bread, AG1, prunes). ~55g P, ~200g Carbs
8:30am 60m first peak of glucose around 115-118 usually
9:00am 90m second peak of glucose, around 120 usually
9:30-10:30am return to baseline of 80-90 glucose by the 2-2.5hr mark, showing good glucose disposal/clearing (I interpret to mean glycogen stores in muscles were replenished without spill over, but that could be bogus)
11:30am 480mg r-ALA for insulin sensitivty
12:15pm 500mg berberine, lunch (rice, chicken, veggies) ~50g Pro, ~50g Carbs
3:00pm afternoon snack (eg. jerky, rxbar, etc...) ~15g Pro, ~25g Carbs
6:00pm dinner (cottage cheese, EVOO, slice of bread) ~15g Pro, ~20g Carbs
8:30pm bed

My glucose stays totally within my target range throughout the day with the only spikes & drops being around the workout, but intentional. The remainder of the day is a fairly smooth graph slowly going up and down without much spikyness or crashes, staying between 90-110 for most of the day. I feel this means I have good insulin sensitivity and glucose utilization currently (something I'm keeping an eye on as I stay on hgh longer).

Subjectively, I feel amazing now (probably placebo from feeling like I changed stuff! ). I don't feel bloated despite eating 200g+ carbs post-workout and 430g+ per day and my muscles feel full and strong without me feeling sluggish or watery. No feelings of rushes or crashes. I've been hitting PRs regularly, but that might just be because I'm also on cycle right now.

Love the detail behind this. Motivating. Thanks for sharing. 82-83 is a great fasting BG.