This is probably more technical that you need at this point but I felt like documenting what I’ve been doing. Eventually you might want to try it.
Both blood glucose and ketones fluctuate throughout the day. Each food we eat generates a particular response by our bodies. These responses to a particular food are unique to you which is much more valuable than the ‘average’ reported in studies. If you want to check what a particular food or favorite meal does to you in terms of BG and BK, do a N=1 experiment as follows:
- Get a supply of each type of strips perhaps 10 if you are eating a meal, 6 if one particular food.
- Put yourself in a fasted state, say in the morning after not eating since supper the night previous.
- Test yourself to give you a baseline.
- Measure the weight of the food or meal you will be consuming.
- Set a timer for 30 minutes and eat the food.
- When the timer goes off, test yourself again. Record the result. Reset the timer
- Repeat number 6 three times or so. Then increase the timer to 60 minutes.
- Repeat 3 more times or until your BG returns to your baseline.
- Do not eat any other food during this experiment or you will confound the results!
If you plot your test results on a graph (BG over time) You will see how your body deals with that food in terms of Blood Glucose. Now you can do this with different foods (remember to eat the same weight of the food. 50 gm is enough.) and you will be able to compare how a particular food impacts YOUR body.
Stay away from foods that spike your BG and use foods that don’t. If you know how to calculate the area under a curve try that metric too.
I have done this for about 30 different foods and meals now (although just with BG because BK is sooo expensive and, in general, the two are inverse to each other. i.e. If one is high the other will be low) and what I have learned has been valuable for me.
Oh. Obviously, you need to invest in a BG/BK monitor and strips. There is no way around that.
Good luck.