Over the past two weeks, I have been taking part in a glucose challenge (Hello Inside) where I measured my blood sugar using a sensor I attached to myself. It has been quite the experimental journey, and honestly, I was surprised by some of the results. I never thought certain foods could spike my blood sugar more than fast food or chocolate! Stay tuned, because I will be diving into my findings and sharing more about this eye-opening experience.

What is Hello Inside?
Hello Inside is a health and wellness platform designed to help individuals track their metabolic health. By using a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) sensor, it provides real-time insights into your blood sugar levels and how your body responds to various foods and activities. The idea is to empower users with personalized data, enabling them to make more informed decisions about their lifestyle and diet. Hello Inside also offers resources and tools to help you understand your data better and optimize your health based on those insights.

How does it work?
When you join the Hello Inside challenge, you are provided with a sensor that you can easily attach to your skin. The sensor is painless to apply and doesn’t require any professional help to set up.

After attaching the sensor, you need to download two apps: Hello Inside and Libre 3. The apps are designed to work together to give you a complete picture of your glucose levels. The Libre 3 app tracks your blood sugar in real time, while Hello Inside complements this with a more user-friendly interface. On Hello Inside, you can log your meals by taking photos, see your glucose score and learn interesting facts about your food choices. The connection between the two apps is seamless and I found the entire process to be very intuitive and user-friendly.

Why did I do this?
A colleague of mine suggested trying out the glucose challenge and I am always up for trying out new experiments (as long as I don’t have to do them alone, haha!). I saw this as a learning opportunity. I never imagined that different foods or drinks could cause such varying blood sugar spikes, or that factors like the order in which you eat or how you combine foods could have such an impact. During these two weeks, I didn’t eat my usual diet. Instead, I purposely experimented with different food choices to see how they affected my glucose levels. The results were fascinating! I had fun with the process, but I was definitely relieved when I could finally remove the sensor after two weeks.

My Insights from the 2-Week Challenge:

Best Day (Score: 69)
I never would have guessed that my best-scoring day would include Red Bull, chocolate, lasagna, instant noodles, bread and passion fruit – HAHA!

Best Food
Aside from water, black coffee and black tea (without sugar or milk), the best-scoring food was definitely my dinner with a score of 8.7, consisting of salad, sausage, cheese, cottage cheese and nuts. To my surprise, milk chocolate consistently scored well, ranging between 8.8 and 8.6, lol (not the white one though)! The best fruit (or maybe I just got lucky with the timing?) was mandarin, which scored an impressive 9.2.

Worst Day (Score: 36)
My saddest day ever. I went out for sushi in the evening, which caused multiple glucose spikes and absolutely wrecked my score. Okay, to be fair, white chocolate and gnocchi weren’t the best choices either that day.

Worst Food
As mentioned, sushi took the crown with a shockingly low score of 1.1 – my goodness! I am still in disbelief. Now I will probably think about glucose spikes every time I indulge in sushi when I am back in Japan – ahhh! The Korean dish Tteokbokki also seems to significantly affect blood sugar levels, rising to the second worst rank with a 2.1 points.

Interesting Findings:

• I never thought McDonald’s would score better than Sushi or Tteokbokki! Apparently, Asian food isn’t ideal for this challenge, haha. After some research, I found out that white rice is notorious for causing major blood sugar spikes.

• But here is something interesting I discovered at the end: I changed the order in which I ate my food. I started with protein and veggies (salmon, tofu, shrimp, vegetables and pickled radish in apple cider vinegar) and saved the rice and leftover tteokbokki for last. And guess what? My score stayed in the green with 7.6 points – no crazy spikes! Wow!

• Bananas were almost always in the green zone, while apples landed in the orange. Dried fruits, however, were a definite no-go.

• Cola Zero (score: 7.5) wasn’t as bad as I expected, but regular Coke performed exactly as I feared; 4.6 points.

Hello Inside App | 2-Week Review

My meal score over the last two weeks came to an average of 6.2 points (max 10). I experienced 14 spikes, and though I didn’t track every single meal, I had well over 100 meals, including drinks, which was an interesting finding.

I haven’t done much activity, just walking (which wasn’t tracked), so let’s skip that part. Yes, I am lazy… The day with the most spikes, about 6, was when I had sushi. I’m still shocked *crying*!

Libre 3 App Review

Conslusion

It was a really interesting experience, but two weeks felt much longer than I expected. One of the biggest surprises was that chocolate, which I thought would cause a massive spike, actually performed quite well – it was almost in the “green zone!” Maybe I should just live on chocolate to stay in the healthy range, haha. The exchange with friends about their experiences was fascinating too. As for whether I would do it again, I am not entirely sure. Toward the end, I felt like I was constantly checking the app to track my blood sugar and that became a bit obsessive (see the statistics below). Plus, as the days went by, the sensor became uncomfortable. I even got caught on a dress once, and it really hurt! And the sensor was really creepy when I took it out. I never thought it would be that long. But overall, it was a great learning experience!

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HELLO INSIDE
helloinside.com

Price (I used a discount code, not sure if it is still active: HI-GLUCOSEHEALTH15)
€127,42 (€149,90)
Test Package for 2 weeks

General Tips before you start:

• Don’t do it alone: It’s much more enjoyable and insightful when you do this in a group. It is fun to exchange experiences and learn from each other.
• Be open to experimenting: This challenge is all about discovering how your body responds to different foods, so don’t be afraid to try new things!
• Sensor placement: I recommend using your “non-dominant” arm for the sensor. I accidentally placed mine on my right arm, which I use a lot, and it was a bit annoying at times. Also, when applying the sensor, be careful not to look directly at the part that contains the needle. It is much larger than expected (though it doesn’t hurt), and I accidentally saw it, which was a bit freaky, haha!
• Stay patient: The data takes some time to load, so be patient while the apps sync and update.