What I learned from Robb Wolf’s 7-Day Carb Test in Wired to Eat.

I was super excited to try this test, especially after meeting Robb and getting a signed copy of his new book, Wired to Eat. If you haven’t read this book, you should. Prior to this test, I had been experimenting with a super low carb diet (around 50 grams a day). I wasn’t testing for ketones or anything, just seeing how I felt and how my body responded. My body didn’t respond super well to this. While my body composition was looking leaner, my workouts were sucking, I lost my period for two months, my sleep started to suffer, and my digestion wasn’t working as well as it should.

It was perfect timing to start the carb test to see how I responded to certain carbs so I could see which ones were best to include in my diet. Before I started, I tested my blood glucose after my normal breakfast of eggs and butter to get a standard reading and it was 82. Here’s the results of my blood glucose (taken two hours after consuming 50 grams net carbs of food tested, first thing in the morning):

Day 1: Bananas: 97 (hungry)

Day 2: Plantains: 97 (hungry, brain frog)

Day 3: Grapes 89 (hungry)

Day 4: Corn tortilla chips: 104 (hungry)

Day 5: Sweet potato: 84 (felt good)

Day 6: Oatmeal: 90 (felt like death, hot flashes, starving)

Day 7: Watermelon: 89 (felt good)

Day 8: Apple: 86 (felt good, couldn’t force myself to eat 50 grams of apples!)

Day 9: White rice: 96 (couldn’t keep my eyes open, brain fog, super starving)

What I learned was that I’m pretty darn insulin sensitive! Who knows if that’s because I was coming off of a super low carb diet or not. I also learned that eating that many carbs in the morning, left me starving for lunch (even though I consumed my normal breakfast after I tested my blood) and craving carbs all day. I did have more energy during my workouts which was nice, but moving forward I will consume my carbs at dinnertime to fill up my stores for the next day’s workout, so I don’t have that crash from eating them in the morning. Another super interesting takeaway is that unless you are eating carbs from whole food fruits and vegetables, carbs only taste good with more carbs (sugar) or fat added to them! Who wants to eat white rice or oatmeal with nothing on it? Yuck! Also, I noticed that I only felt good after eating carbs from fruits and vegetables and felt sleepy and/or brain foggy with the grains….surprise, surprise…..

If you’re interested in learning more about how certain carbohydrates affect your body, you should definitely give this a try! It does require that you go strict “paleo” 30 days prior to experimenting so that your blood sugar levels out.

I’m also going to retry some of these foods in normal meals and test my blood sugar at peak levels after about 45-60 minutes.