I only read the first page of the egg fast thread (maybe they went crazy with it after that), but I always thought the idea of an egg fast (and similarly, a meat and egg fast) is that it should be self-limiting.

By that I mean what WB said upthread:



On an egg fast, it might take 4 eggs (280 cals) to feel full, but even if you scramble them in 1 Tbsp butter (100 cals), that's still only 380 cals for that meal. You could melt another Tbsp of butter on top, and still be under 500 cals for that meal. (for me, that's a very long lasting meal, I feel full for hours and hours)

A 10 oz rib eye steak has about 850 cals - but that's where you get into the "when I'm done, I'm done" territory. Again, you feel satisfied, and don't feel the need for more. That effect will last for hours and hours.

In my experience it's when you start adding in extraneous carbs (potatoes, bread, dessert) that your stomach can't register fullness properly until you're uncomfortably stuffed. And all that extra carbage spikes glucose, leading to a glucose crash within a couple of hours, so your body says "we're low on glucose - you need more carbage to bring that back up a bit". But it's not satisfying (even though you're also still full of steak), so once again you overdo the carbs, blood sugar spikes again, crashes again, rinse and repeat over and over.

I think if people were able to see those alarming spikes and crashes on a glucose monitor it might mean something to them. But there should be some kind of standard range of "your glucose really shouldn't go any higher than xxx after a meal before it starts to drop". Because as Dodger pointed out:



Without an insulin monitor, knowing what the glucose is doing on a continual basis will be the only way you're going to have any idea just how much your pancreas had to deal with. It still doesn't tell you how much insulin your pancreas put out, but it can certainly tell you if your pancreas had to deal with a ridiculous amount of glucose, meaning that even if you're getting back down to a normal reading within 2 hours, it's only because your pancreas is being overworked to deal with all the glucose.

As an example of what I'm trying say - Let's say a CGM showed that your glucose spiked to 250 or 300 shortly after you finished eating a very high carb meal. [ETA: I honestly don't know if those are considered normal readings after eating, or if they're abnormally high - just go with the idea that you've eaten so much that your blood sugar goes sky high before it drops] But then it dropped back down to 120-140 within 2 hours. In that case I'd say your pancreas has to be pumping out huge amounts of glucose to effectively deal with all that, which even if it doesn't indicate insulin resistance, it certainly shows that you're making your pancreas work extra hard to deal with all that glucose.

And that's not even considering that it may have been doing that for so many years that your cells are very resistant to the insulin, even if your pancreas is still able to keep up with it. So the CGM could be used as a very early warning sign that your diet is truly out of whack, even if it doesn't tell you the whole story.

Which is why this article was written about it in a dismissive way, saying it's a fad. When it's actually science working for us.

It's a confusing and clueless article because it's not about telling the truth, but keeping it hidden. Glucose monitoring is exposing science data they can't handwave away.

DH had grown up with his mother's salisbury steak and mashed potatoes, so that was his favorite frozen meal. But when I showed him on the glucose meter that as far as his pancreas was concerned, he might as well have had a big soda for dinner.

And that really sparked a realization. So I think it IS very valuable information that exposes the paucity of the SAD.

Our carb-heavy overlords HATE that.