Fibre before fat before carbs - the way to eat.

 The Zoe course runs through a variety of nutrition related topics. There are a lot more to come but I'm mostly through the blood sugar experiments now, although I have a few days left to play with the monitor.  Watching my results and reading through the Zoe lessons has taught me some very interesting stuff and made me think about not only what I eat but how and when.

Apparently in order to have a gently rolling blood sugar profile an excellent  diet would be to just eat butter and drink alcohol both of which suppress sugar spikes! Sod's law sadly intervenes here in that sadly there seem to be other reasons why that might not be altogether a good idea.

So here are the things I didn't know until now

• Carbs eaten on their own are the worst thing.  Never eat carbs naked apparently.
• Carbs eaten with fats do slow down the sugar rush and subsequent crash. So eating bread and butter will last you longer than just bread.  Better still with some cheese.  I suppose it's a good idea to put some butter on your spuds.  Hmm I always felt a bit guilty doing that so that's good.  Certainly in a blood sugar context, fats are not all bad.
• Even better, eat your cheese before your bread. It really does smooth out the curve a bit ( I tried it) and has less of a hunger making plunge two hours later.  An odd thing to do though.
• Best of all, eat some high fibre veg (legumes, greens, nuts, wotever) first, then the fats and lastly the carbs.  So a starter of a bit of salad would be a good thing.  I need some more ideas on that front. Ideally a few minutes between each would be best but if its all on the same plate try not to eat the carbs first.  Also the old idea of a pudding at the end of the meal is at least in the right order.
• Exercise after eating absorbs some of the sugars and so flattens the curve, although when I tried half an hour's brisk walk after a bagel I didn't notice a lot of difference.  Maybe I'm not brisk enough in my old age. Apparently older folk have less good blood sugar control in general. Not much I can do about being old.  It is what it is.

Despite being ancient, looking at my graphs I certainly get less of a sharp up and down spike by following these rules.  Happily my favourite breakfast of greek yoghurt, fruit and bran or oats looks reasonably good  especially when compared with a bagel.  The plain bagel gave by far the worst result.

The guidance suggests trying savoury breakfast. Lower carb if you avoid stuff like hash browns and white toast.  I suppose bacon and eggs and some mushrooms would be good if I could be bothered to cook that early most days. And I know you shouldn't eat cured meats too often.   Peanut butter (if I liked it) on wholemeal toast or rye bread would be good and quick to make..  Mushrooms on wholemeal toast with an egg?  That could be fairly quick to do. I think I'll try to go savoury two or three times a week for a start.  Can anyone suggest cold or uncooked savoury breakfasts?

What is so bad about blood sugar spikes?  Well for one thing, the subsequent crash leads to tiredness and hunger and makes you want to snack or eat the next meal earlier.  Feeling more hungry than you need to be leads to overeating and weight gain.  There's other stuff too. Studies show that people with spiky diets have all round  worse general health and shorter lives.  The mediterranean diet is less spiky despite the Italians love of carby pasta.  That may have something to do with eating habits, long slow lunches round the table with a glass of wine maybe?  Much less highly processed food and more fresh veg with fibre to slow down carb absorbtion.

It's still a week or two before I get my test results from ZOE which should show how my blood and gut microbiome responds to all sorts of foods, but the short lessons continue on the app.  They drip them through each day.  Today's lesson was about the effect of quality of sleep on your blood sugar control next day.  Studies show that people who go to sleep earlier do better in this context.  Stress too has a negative impact.  No surprise there.  Apparently there will be more on these topics later in the course.

Finally today it says "Next up there's a final challenge to put all your learnings together".  Ooh I wonder what that is.