Managing Blood Sugar and CGMs

Blood sugar balance impacts almost every part of how you feel, long before a diagnosis ever happens.

Things like:

• Afternoon energy crashes
• 3 AM wake-ups
• Mood swings
• Cravings you can’t explain
• Struggling with weight despite “doing everything right”

These are all early signs that your blood sugar levels may be fluctuating more than they should.

Blood Sugar Balance
You don’t have to be diagnosed with pre-diabetes or diabetes to be interested in managing your sugar balance. Blood sugar affects mood, weight gain, energy, cognition, sleep, hormones, and appetite, and it can be very, very difficult to fully recover from a chronic disease without balancing blood sugar.

Signs of Blood Sugar Imbalances
If you are experiencing low blood sugar symptoms, you may feel tired before eating, spacey, hangry (angry and hungry), shaky, or a sense of increased anxiety or moodiness between meals. You may notice brain fog or struggle to stay asleep throughout the night. You may have trouble maintaining or gaining weight. You may eat healthy foods, but rely on small meals with frequent snacks throughout the day, or larger meals, and go too long without eating. You will likely feel better after you eat.

Contrastingly, symptoms of high blood sugar include feeling tired or experiencing difficulty concentrating after eating (you know that feeling, the one where you want to take a nap after lunch). You may have symptoms of chronic inflammation, depression, joint pain, hormone imbalances, or thinning hair. You may struggle to get motivated to exercise, but you often feel better after doing so. You may also struggle with weight loss.

Supporting A Normal Blood Sugar Curve
What does it look like when our blood sugar levels are normal?  When we eat something, our blood sugar increases, and over a period of time (about two hours) it comes back down forming rolling hills up and down throughout the day.

If we eat something that spikes our blood sugar, maybe we stop by the coffee shop in the morning and start the day with a coffee and a muffin, we will see our blood sugar spike to a peak and then oftentimes decrease very quickly, leaving us feeling like we need to eat again about two hours later.

Adjusting the protein, fiber, and fat in our meals and meal/snack timing can help us better balance our blood sugar. Generally, whole foods help keep our blood sugar levels more stable than processed foods. If we are sensitive to food, it can cause our blood sugar to increase. And sometimes, even healthy foods can raise our blood sugar if we have too big a serving.

Other factors can impact our blood sugar balance, including our sleep patterns, stress management, exercise habits, and more.

How to Measure Blood Sugar
If you have had routine blood work done lately, they probably checked your blood sugar by measuring your fasting glucose. This is a one-time, in-the-moment measurement. You can ask your doctor to measure your Hemoglobin A1c to get a sense of how your blood sugar has been over the last 3 months. You can also request a fasting insulin blood test, which will indicate how your body responds to glucose. This is a really helpful marker, but not always included in routine blood work.

You can monitor your glucose response at home by wearing a continuous glucose monitor (CGM), a small button you wear on your arm, and using an app on your phone to measure your glucose. You can ask your doctor to prescribe a CGM if you think you are experiencing issues regulating your blood sugar, or buy one through several online companies. You can also go to the drugstore and buy an inexpensive finger-prick test kit and test your own blood sugar at home.

The nice thing about measuring your blood sugar at home is that you can measure your blood sugar right when you get up in the morning, before you eat, right after you eat, and again 1 and 2 hours after you eat, so you can see your fasting glucose level and your individual response to specific foods. Track this data for a few weeks, and you will have some incredible information to help you make better decisions about what to eat and when, and optimize your lifestyle habits.

I am a big fan of using a CGM because it provides an easy way to gain insight into our bodies, enabling us to make changes and see the real-time effects of those changes, and it doesn’t hurt as much as a finger prick. CGMs let us get a glimpse of our blood sugar while we sleep, too.

For women in particular, midlife is associated with a lot of changes in our bodies. Many of my clients come to me worried because, despite a healthy diet, their blood work shows increases in blood sugar to prediabetes levels, their energy is not what it used to be, sleep is more challenging, and they are concerned about long-term health. Using a CGM can help catch these shifts early and support us in making supportive changes to diet and lifestyle when we have the right tools and guidance.

A CGM can provide powerful information—but data alone rarely leads to lasting change. The real value comes from understanding why your blood sugar responds the way it does and how to adjust food, timing, movement, stress, and sleep accordingly.

Through individual nutrition counseling, I help clients get the most out of their CGM by translating glucose patterns into personalized, sustainable strategies—especially important in midlife, when hormones and metabolism are shifting.

For those who want a structured introduction, I also offer a self-paced online class focused on blood sugar balance and CGM use. It’s a practical way to build knowledge and awareness before or alongside deeper work.