Q: What happens when you use your blood glucose to gamify WHAT and WHEN to eat?
A: Amazing weight loss, fat loss and optimised blood glucose – as you’ll see in this results article!
More than six hundred people joined in the 23rd round of the Data-Driven Fasting Challenge (20 May to 18 June 2023).
The Optimising Nutrition Community has grown into an awesome blend of newbies and seasoned Optimisers who continue their journey and share their wisdom.
What Is Data-Driven Fasting?
In the Data Driven Fasting Challenges, Optimisers use the DDF app, which works like a fuel gauge for your metabolism to give you precise guidance on:
- ‘WHEN to eat’, and
- ‘WHAT to eat?’
As you drain the excess glucose from your system by waiting until your glucose is just below your personalised glucose trigger, your body turns to your stored fat for fuel.
Rather than deprivation and restriction, calibrating your hunger with your glucose gives your survival instincts/lizard brain — aka Lizzy — reassurance that plenty of good food is available.
It’s cool to see Optimisers learn to understand their true hunger signals, eat to satiety and be more satisfied with their meals while losing weight!
The reflection below is from one of our Optimisers who lost 19 lbs in her first four-week challenge.
Weight Loss
The table below shows the weight loss leaderboard (ranked by % weight loss). As you can see, there was tremendous weight loss in just four short weeks!
| name | start (lbs) | finish (lbs) | change (lbs) | % |
| Emily | 165 | 154 | 10.8 | 6.6% |
| Wendy | 144 | 135 | 8.6 | 6.0% |
| Cat | 194 | 183 | 11.0 | 5.7% |
| Sophie | 171 | 162 | 9.7 | 5.7% |
| Alison | 230 | 217 | 13.0 | 5.7% |
| Dahron | 137 | 129 | 7.5 | 5.5% |
| Roger | 206 | 195 | 11.0 | 5.3% |
| Ingrid | 163 | 154 | 8.6 | 5.3% |
| Julie | 189 | 179 | 9.9 | 5.2% |
| Claudia | 151 | 144 | 7.3 | 4.8% |
| Monica | 198 | 189 | 9.2 | 4.6% |
| Sylvia | 215 | 205 | 9.9 | 4.6% |
| Bradley | 259 | 247 | 11.8 | 4.6% |
| Susan | 159 | 152 | 7.2 | 4.5% |
| Stephan | 212 | 202 | 9.5 | 4.5% |
| Rachel | 185 | 177 | 8.2 | 4.4% |
| Brenda | 148 | 142 | 6.5 | 4.4% |
Congrats to Emily, who lost 6.6% of her body weight in the four weeks.
We’re gathering many success stories, particularly from post-menopausal women who didn’t make progress with keto and/or popular fasting methods. But using their glucose to guide what and when to eat gives them the precision and insights to finally get results!
It’s cool to see so many charts like this at the end of each four-week challenge!
Premeal Blood Glucose
While most people focus on their glucose after they eat, managing your glucose before you eat is the best way to guide your weight loss journey. Waiting until your glucose is just a bit lower than normal for you ensures you’re drawing down on your stored glucose and fat.
Many Optimisers saw a massive drop in their pre-meal glucose as they drained the excess glucose and fat from their bodies.
| name | start (mg/dL) | finish (mg/dL) | change (mg/dL) | % |
| Shay | 231 | 121 | 110 | 48% |
| Tim | 153 | 87 | 66 | 43% |
| Annemiek | 155 | 90 | 65 | 42% |
| Lori | 123 | 77 | 46 | 37% |
| Rajesh | 195 | 124 | 71 | 36% |
| Pam | 187 | 119 | 68 | 36% |
| Dahron | 124 | 79 | 45 | 36% |
| Pam | 87 | 57 | 30 | 34% |
| John | 105 | 70 | 35 | 33% |
| Nola | 102 | 70 | 32 | 31% |
| Jan | 112 | 77 | 34 | 31% |
| Caroline | 109 | 76 | 33 | 30% |
| Stephen | 102 | 72 | 30 | 29% |
| Tom | 133 | 95 | 38 | 29% |
Waking Glucose
As Optimisers learn to manage their blood glucose before they eat, their weight, waist:height ratio, post-meal, and waking glucose fall into place. It’s exciting to see so many people move from Type 2 Diabetes or pre-diabetes to normal healthy levels so quickly!
In a world awash with Type-2 Diabetes and metabolic syndrome, this is a critical indicator of insulin resistance and overall metabolic health.
| name | start (mg/dL) | finish (mg/dL) | change (mg/dL) | % |
| Shay | 229 | 148 | 81 | 35% |
| Tammy | 254 | 178 | 76 | 30% |
| Lisa | 94 | 66 | 28 | 30% |
| Tina | 185 | 131 | 54 | 29% |
| Annemarie | 120 | 88 | 32 | 27% |
| Brandalyn | 136 | 100 | 36 | 26% |
| Tammy | 163 | 121 | 42 | 26% |
| Naomi | 86 | 64 | 22 | 26% |
| Melissa | 92 | 68 | 23 | 25% |
| Noa | 103 | 78 | 25 | 24% |
| Natalie | 150 | 114 | 36 | 24% |
| Lorraine | 97 | 74 | 23 | 24% |
| Heather | 121 | 92 | 29 | 24% |
| Kathryn | 130 | 99 | 31 | 24% |
Post-Meal Glucose
Elevated glucose AFTER we eat is partially due to the food we eat – but it’s also a symptom of energy toxicity.
As with everything else, when we learn to chase a lower PREMEAL glucose, we address the root cause, and our glucose AFTER we eat falls into the healthy range!
| name | start (mg/dL) | finish (mg/dL) | change (mg/dL) | % |
| Alison | 149 | 90 | 59 | 40% |
| Bonita | 128 | 79 | 49 | 38% |
| Janette | 164 | 103 | 61 | 37% |
| Grace | 221 | 140 | 81 | 37% |
| Roneta | 182 | 119 | 63 | 35% |
| Mo | 167 | 110 | 57 | 34% |
| Nathan | 125 | 83 | 42 | 34% |
| Stephen | 162 | 108 | 54 | 33% |
| Robert | 125 | 84 | 41 | 33% |
| Claudia | 116 | 78 | 38 | 33% |
| Rajesh | 254 | 171 | 83 | 33% |
| Stephan | 245 | 166 | 79 | 32% |
| Sandra | 414 | 281 | 133 | 32% |
| Tyler | 109 | 74 | 35 | 32% |
| Mirriam | 142 | 97 | 45 | 32% |
In the challenge, we initially guide people to dial back their intake of refined carbohydrates if their blood glucose rises by more than 30 mg/dL (1.6 mmol/L) after meals. This prevents excessive hunger due to reactive hypoglycaemia when blood glucose crashes.
But the majority of our participants already have great post-meal glucose numbers. So once most of your premeal glucose levels are in the normal healthy range, you can get on with chasing your premeal trigger without having to worry about testing your glucose after you eat.
Fat Loss
Finally, the table below shows the change in body fat across the four weeks, again, with some fantastic results. Managing your premeal glucose guides you to draw down the excess glucose and body fat in your system and address the root cause of insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome.
| name | start (lbs) | finish (lbs) | change (lbs) | % |
| DeAnn | 34 | 29 | 5.0 | 15% |
| Roger | 29 | 25 | 3.6 | 13% |
| Bob | 24 | 21 | 2.7 | 11% |
| Theresa | 28 | 25 | 3.0 | 11% |
| Renee | 40 | 36 | 4.2 | 10% |
| Gloubi | 50 | 45 | 4.8 | 10% |
| Trevor | 29 | 27 | 2.5 | 9% |
| Beverly | 34 | 31 | 2.7 | 8% |
| Jim | 43 | 40 | 3.4 | 8% |
| Wendy | 30 | 27 | 2.3 | 8% |
| Jennifer | 27 | 25 | 2.1 | 8% |
| Claudia | 27 | 25 | 2.0 | 8% |
| Ingrid | 31 | 29 | 2.1 | 7% |
Thanks again to all the Optimisers in our 23rd round of the Data-Driven Fasting Challenge. Congratulations on your outstanding results!
If you’re interested in learning more, we’d love you to check out our free DDF101 course. When you’re ready, you can join the next round of the Data Driven-Fasting Challenge here.