Artificial Sweeteners, Fruit and Blood Sugar

I have been reading for awhile the idea that artificial sweeteners can be problematic when trying to reduce body fat.  It seems to be mostly anecdotal evidence, as some studies show using these sweeteners increases hunger, while others show it has no effect.  At least no effect when taken during a meal (i.e. drinking a diet Coke with your lunch).  The studies that show an increase in hunger have generally been those where the sweetener is given without accompanying calories.  The anecdotal evidence seems to be that in some cases when people give up the artificial sweeteners, they start (or resume) weight loss.  There are also some concerns that some (all?) artificial sweeteners my have side effects, especially when used while low carbing.

So I've been cutting back on my use of these things.  Right now I pretty much only get some from sugarless gum that I bought last week, and my hope is once that is gone I won't buy any more.  My goal is to stop using them to curb my desire for excessively sweet things.  We'll see how that goes, but I've definitely noticed a change in my tastes in just this last week.

I've been eating a little bit of fruit the last few days and I'm not quite sure how I am adapting to it.  I feel a little more hunger during the day which is not a good sign, and weight loss has stalled.  There are some possible confounders though, as I haven't slept as much lately, being up until after 1am, which I know from the past affects the scale readings in the morning.  There has also been a radical change in temperature over the last couple of days going from the upper 80s/low 90s on Wed and Thur to in the 60s this weekend.  That could also have an impact.

I've been checking my glucose levels the last few days as well.  Usually I am just checking my fasting level when I first wake up and then my level 1 hour after breakfast.  The first day I also checked before and after each meal.  On that day I saw the familiar pattern that I had seen 8 months ago, which is that my glucose level was usually progressively higher as the day went on, though almost always below 100 for 1 hour postprandial.  This time around, my levels are running a bit higher with fasting levels being about 10% higher, around 81, which is still good.  I am not sure why the readings are even that much higher than last October, though it could be that my exercise pattern is quite different now than it was then. Still, my levels are good, with the highest I've seen which was 1 hour after a dinner meal at 102 (+/- the error level of the meter).

One interesting thing is that it appears that the small amount of fruit causes a much larger jump in glucose levels than a roughly equal amount of carbs from vegetable sources.  In the few days I've been checking, I had 2 days when I was consuming about 40g of blackberries or raspberries with 15g of heavy cream along with bacon and eggs for breakfast.  This gave about 4-5g of effective carbs.  On those days my glucose jumped about 12-14 points between pre meal and 1 hour post meal. Today I had ground beef cooked with a bit of coconut oil as well as some salsa, 3oz of cauliflower and two dill pickle spears, which gives about 6g of effective carbs.  Today, my glucose level dropped 2 points between pre meal and post meal readings.

Now a lot of that could be just variations in the meter, as it is a fairly inexpensive one (though the strips are not, at least to me.)  I am inclined to believe that on days when I'm not getting good sleep, even that much fruit may be an issue, at least for now.  I will periodically try again with the fruit, but for now I am backing off from it and see how I feel compared to the last few days.

I've also started reading Rob Wolf's "The Paleo Solution" which is a pretty good read.  I especially like the, rather quick, walkthrough he gives about digestion and what happens in different feeding states.  That was information that I kind-of knew already but it was good to have it restated in a different and accesible way.  In general, though I have not finished the book yet, it appears (not surprisingly I think) similar to Mark Sisson's "The Primal Blueprint".  I haven't got to specific recommendations for carb levels and the like, but so far they track pretty well.