I should learn never to say that I will do more writing tomorrow when I know writing is not my first priority.
I have been using Lumen for a little over a week now, learning as I go. It is also learning me, which is interesting. It is 95% ready to give me my first flex score, which will give me an idea how adept my body is at switching fuels when needed.
It took two days on a low carbohydrate plan to get my system to switch to burning fats. When I was pretty consistently using fat as the major fuel, I was awarded a carb boost day to see how easily I would switch back. The goal is to move back and forth easily, as needed, which is why it's called a flex score.
One aim each day is to wake up in a fat burning mode after a night time fast, in which any carbs eaten for dinner are used up. The carbs are always going to get used first because they are the body's preferred fuel. Preferred because they are the easiest fuel available, but not the cleanest burning.
The Lumen device showed me that I succeeded in being in fat burning mode every day, even after the boost day when I had more carbohydrates.
This is the graph I see when I check in each morning.
1, 2, and 3 are fat burning modes. 4 and 5 are predominantly carb.
How do I feel about the program thus far? There are some revelations that it is showing me. The first one, and one I kind of expected, is that I was a bit addicted to carbs. I always want more bread, cereal, and sweet fruit and berries. It's not exactly a craving, because I do forget about it during the day, and am not exactly hungry. But I do miss the taste and textures of these foods.
Another problem I'm having is how to get all the protein the plan suggests. I can't seem to meet the requirement without going over the limit on fat, carbs or both. There just aren't too many proteins that don't come combined with other macro nutrients.
On the plus side, logging what I eat is much easier than it was with Noom. Any thing I buy with a barcode is read easily - the app takes a picture of the barcode and records all the nutrients for me. I only have to put in the amount I eat. If the app doesn't recognize the food by name, I can log the food by putting in the macro nutrients (protein, carbohydrate or fat) myself.
Using the device is not hard, as I can still inhale for 4 seconds, hold my breath for 10 seconds, and exhale for 10 seconds. It's a sleek, small, and somewhat expensive, piece of technology. I'm trying to be very careful with it but did drop it once (eek!). It sits on the charging station most of the time and has a little bag to shield it when I take it somewhere with me. It's kind of fun to see it work. Results show up on the app within seconds.
I don't think I've lost much weight yet, but I don't weigh in very often either. As I said, I'm not feeling hungry very often, and if I do, I can have a lot of vegetables that don't count in the carb column. So the plan is very vegetable friendly because it allows complex carbs. I'm kind of sad about desserts, and the occasional soda which are discouraged because they DON'T HAVE NUTRITIONAL VALUE. I knew that.
So we shall see what another week brings in the weight loss category. I'll post results here but I'm not saying I'll do it tomorrow, because I'm smarter now. (Maybe my mind is getting better, since better focus is one of the promised results of the Lumen program.)
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