I’ve put on weight and I find the cgm to be a way more objective and practical metric than calorie counting. It’s simply hard to consume enough low GI foods to put on weight.

There are certain foods that my body seems to process poorly. My blood glucose spikes as much from crackers and rice as it does from more traditional sweets. My heuristics for other foods that I assumed were sweet (often fatty foods with mild sweetener) were also wrong. And I’m not weighing everything, counting calories, etc. I just tap my phone onto the device a few times a day.

Other things have also been surprising. I smoke hookah fairly regularly and found that it raises my fasting blood glucose by almost ten points (80 -> 90).

I find it’s an easy North Star metric with a single exception being intense physical activity which releases glycogen stores.

There are other factions within the community that believe that blood glucose spikes are responsible for things like abdominal fat storage and you’ll see that they continually try to game the number with things like nut consumption and drinking vinegar. This seems less useful to me.