I talk a lot about listening to the body. In fact, that idea is at the heart of The Awakened Body. Our bodies are constantly communicating with us through energy, hunger, sleep, digestion, mood, cravings, how we feel after we eat, how we recover after exercise, intuition, a gut feel, and dozens of other signals. The challenge is that those signals aren’t always easy to interpret, especially when several things are happening at once.
That’s one of the reasons I wanted to wear a continuous glucose monitor, or CGM. I wasn’t looking for another number to obsess over, and I definitely wasn’t interested in changing the way I ate for two weeks just to produce impressive-looking results. I wanted to see what was happening when I lived normally, so I ate what I typically eat, moved my body as I normally do, slept as I normally sleep, and went about my life.
I was especially curious about my metabolic health. How high was my glucose really spiking after meals? How long was it staying elevated? How quickly was it coming back down? What did “normal” even look like for me? And maybe the question I was most interested in answering: I consider the way I eat and live healthy, but is my healthy actually healthy?
I purchased the CGM and accompanying app through Levels and wore the first of two monitors for 15 days. The app allowed me to see my glucose alongside the things I was doing throughout the day, log meals, sleep and activity, and then ask questions about what I was seeing. What fascinated me most wasn’t simply the numbers themselves. It was where the information supported things I already suspected, where it challenged my assumptions, and how many new questions I had by the time the monitor came off.
First, What Exactly Was I Looking At?
Glucose monitoring is obviously important for people managing diabetes, but I wanted to wear the CGM to see whether what I thought was happening in my body was actually happening. A glucose reading from routine bloodwork or even pricking your own finger to get a glucose or ketone reading gives you a snapshot of one moment. A CGM lets you watch glucose change throughout the day, so you can see what happens around meals, exercise, sleep, fasting, and everything else you happen to be doing.
That movement throughout the day as it related to food, exercise, sleep and everything else was really what I was curious to see. I knew my glucose would rise and fall; it’s supposed to. I wanted to know how much it was rising, how long it stayed elevated, how quickly it returned to my usual range, and what my own baseline actually looked like. Rather than starting with somebody else’s idea of what my numbers “should” be, I wanted to see what my body was actually doing.
I also wanted to see what happened when conditions changed. I don’t eat exactly the same thing every day. I don’t do the exact same workout every day. Some nights I sleep eight hours, and some nights I apparently decide four is enough, as my data rather rudely documented. With the help of the CGM, suddenly what was happening inside my body through all of those changes wasn’t quite so invisible.
My Glucose Was Remarkably Steady
One of the first things that really stood out and surprised me was how consistent my glucose was. During the period analyzed by the app, my daily averages generally fell between about 80 and 97 mg/dL. My morning readings were also fairly consistent despite everything else changing from day to day, and there were only a few lower readings early in the monitoring period.
During the final seven days, the app identified one notable glucose spike related to food. That was especially interesting because those weren’t seven carefully controlled days spent sitting around protecting my glucose curve. I walked, lifted light weights, jumped on my rebounder, rode my e-bike and did yoga. On some days I logged multiple activity sessions. I ate my normal food and lived my normal life.
And then there was that food spike. I knew exactly what I had done. I ate two bananas and nothing else.
Yes, I Ate Two Bananas on Purpose
This may have been my favorite part of the experiment because I deliberately wanted to see what would happen. Based on what I thought I was seeing in the app, it seemed that when I ate fiber, protein and fat first and then ate a higher-glycemic food such as a banana, my glucose didn’t seem to rise as quickly or as high. I wanted to challenge that observation rather than just decide it was true.
So I ate two bananas by themselves, without eating my usual fiber-first foods. And there it was. Hello, glucose spike.
It was the notable food-related spike the app identified during that seven-day period, and it happened shortly before 9:00 in the morning. I wasn’t horrified by it. I had basically invited it to the party. What interested me was being able to deliberately change what I normally did and then watch my body respond.
There’s an important distinction here, though. When I later asked the app to look across my data for the same fiber-first pattern I thought I was seeing, it couldn’t establish a consistent pattern from the information I had logged during that short period. That doesn’t mean my observation was wrong, but it also means I don’t have enough data to declare that I proved anything. I had an interesting personal observation, a deliberate experiment that produced a very different response, and now I have something worth testing again.
And that’s where I think this becomes interesting even if you couldn’t care less what two bananas did to my glucose. What happens when you eat the foods you consider healthy? What happens when you eat them together, in a different order, or at a different time of day? Does the breakfast that keeps your friend satisfied for hours affect you completely differently? We hear so many rules about what we’re supposed to eat, but our bodies don’t necessarily respond exactly the same way. Being able to see your own response gives you another piece of information to work with.
My Workouts Gave Me Another Surprise
Exercise gave me a completely different lesson because I also saw two glucose rises associated with workouts. On one evening my glucose reached about 130 mg/dL after exercise, and following a daytime workout on another day it reached about 120 mg/dL. If I had gone into this thinking every upward movement on the graph was something I needed to prevent, I could easily have misinterpreted what I was seeing.
Instead, those increases made sense in the context of what I was doing. The body may release additional glucose during exercise so working muscles have access to the fuel they need. The food-related spike after two bananas and the two rises associated with exercise all showed up as upward movement on the graph, but the circumstances behind them were completely different. Knowing what I had eaten, how active I had been and what happened afterward gave the numbers context.
That’s worth remembering if you ever wear a CGM yourself. The temptation could be to start judging every rise and fall the minute you see it, but your body isn’t a spreadsheet, and every bump in glucose isn’t a bad grade. The interesting part is figuring out what was happening around it and what happened next. I wasn’t trying to prevent my glucose from ever moving; I wanted to understand what the movement meant.
Sleep Did Not Give Me the Answer I Expected
Sleep may have been my biggest surprise because I thought I already knew what the CGM was going to tell me. During those 15 days, my sleep ranged from around four hours to more than eight. I had noticed that after getting more sleep, I sometimes woke with lower glucose, so I asked the app to look at my sleep and glucose together. I fully expected it to confirm what I thought I was seeing.
It didn’t. My glucose was actually a little higher on average after the nights when I slept longer, and my morning glucose stayed fairly consistent regardless of how many hours I slept. That does not mean I discovered that four hours of sleep is somehow good for me. It means that in these 15 days, my data didn’t support the relationship I thought I was seeing.
And that may have been more useful than having the app agree with me. How often do we decide something is working—or isn’t working—based on a handful of experiences and then keep repeating the story? If you could actually see some of your body’s responses, would they confirm what you believe about your health, or would something surprise you too?
Listening to the body doesn’t mean deciding what we think it’s saying and then hunting for evidence that proves us right. Sometimes paying attention means being willing to discover that the story is more complicated than we thought. I started with a question, the answer wasn’t what I expected, and now I have another question worth exploring the next time.
So, Is My Healthy Actually Healthy?
This was the question sitting underneath the whole experiment, and after nearly two weeks of data I actually asked the app. I felt as though the monitor was mostly confirming what I already believed about my food, movement and lifestyle, but I wanted to know whether that conclusion was reasonable.
The answer was reassuring, with an important caveat. The combination of relatively steady glucose, one notable food-related spike and stability despite a pretty varied activity and sleep schedule was encouraging. But a CGM cannot pronounce someone metabolically healthy, and neither can 15 days of glucose data. Metabolic health is much bigger than glucose, and there are other measurements and factors that matter.
Still, what I saw supported many of the choices I’m already making. For 15 days, I ate the way I normally eat, moved the way I normally move and slept the way I normally sleep. I even intentionally threw two bananas at the system just to see what it would do. Overall, my glucose remained fairly steady while I lived my actual life, and for me, that was reassuring.
But the question doesn’t belong only to me. How much of what you consider “healthy” have you chosen because you’ve actually noticed how your body responds, and how much comes from what you’ve been told is healthy? Maybe your breakfast is labeled healthy. Maybe you exercise every day. Maybe you’ve followed the same eating pattern for years because it seems to work. That doesn’t mean those choices are wrong, but it might be interesting to ask the same question I did: Is my healthy actually healthy for me? That question is bigger than a CGM. The monitor simply gave me another way to explore it.
What the CGM Actually Gave Me
I went into this thinking the CGM might teach me something about glucose, and it certainly did. What I didn’t expect was how much I would enjoy comparing what I felt with something I could actually see. Sometimes the data supported what I thought my body had been telling me. Sometimes it added information I couldn’t possibly feel. And sometimes, as with sleep, it essentially told me, “Not so fast. You might need more information before you decide you know what’s happening.”
That’s also why I don’t see a CGM as a rulebook. I don’t want a device deciding that a food is “good” or “bad” for me based on one glucose response, any more than I want to blindly follow somebody else’s nutrition rules. The value for me was being able to make a choice, see what happened, compare it with everything else I knew about that day, and decide whether it was something worth paying more attention to.
I’m Not Finished Experimenting
My purchase included two monitors, so I still have another one waiting for me. I’m planning to give it a month or two before I wear the second one because now that I know what my normal life looks like, I don’t want to simply repeat the same experiment. I have better questions this time.
The next time I wear it, I want to play more deliberately with some of the things that caught my attention during these 15 days. The fiber-first observation deserves another look. I’d like to explore sleep again rather than assuming this first result tells the whole story. I can also be more intentional about comparing different types and intensities of exercise instead of lumping all movement together.
And because fasting is already part of my lifestyle, I may wear the next CGM during a longer fast. I’m particularly curious to see what my glucose does when food is removed from the equation for an extended period and how my body responds as the fast continues. I’ll still be looking at glucose, not treating the CGM as some magical metabolic decoder ring, but this time I’ll be going into the experiment knowing much more about what I want to investigate. That may be my favorite outcome from the first 15 days: I got some answers, but I came away with better questions.
A Window Into What Your Body Is Telling You
This experience also made me think about how useful this kind of information could be in my coaching work. I can ask someone how a meal made them feel, and we can talk about their energy, hunger, movement, sleep and daily choices. Those conversations matter. A CGM can potentially add another piece of information: what was happening with their glucose while they were living their actual life.
For clients who want that additional information, I use Levels because it doesn’t require a prescription to purchase a CGM, and the accompanying app provides access to the data. I don’t see the monitor as something that should dictate what someone eats or turn food into a collection of good and bad glucose scores. I see it as a tool that can make something happening inside the body visible and give us more information to work with. If you’re curious about using a CGM yourself or have questions about how I incorporate the use of them into my coaching, email me at info@noblealchemy.com.
Your body is always communicating. A CGM offers a window into what it’s been trying to tell you—turning your daily choices into visible feedback so you can stop guessing, see what’s working for you and what’s not, and make better choices that truly support your body. The CGM didn’t tell me what to eat or how to live, and I wouldn’t want it to. It allowed me to see something I normally couldn’t see and compare that information with what I already knew about my food, movement, sleep and how I felt.
And that is exactly what The Awakened Body has always been about: learning to listen closely enough to understand what your body is communicating, while also being willing to learn, question, experiment and sometimes discover that what you thought you knew wasn’t quite the whole story. Then you can use what you learn to make choices that truly support your body because, after all, it is your body, and everyone’s journey is different.