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Carbohydrate Tolerance Test

Health | January 31, 2015

Hi guys,

Some of you have been asking after reading the Body Types article, how to assess your carbohydrate tolerance. If you want something more accurate, you can ask your doctor to do a glucose tolerance test, a fasting insulin level, or a hemoglobin A1C test. There’s also a pretty good method you can try at home called TWT which requires you to track your diet for a month and see which carbs your body reacts to negatively. There’s a lot that goes into this assessment method, so I will make sure to cover it soon in another post. For now you can take this simple quiz that will give you at least a basic idea of where you stand in terms of your sensitivity to carbs.

  1. Do you feel sleepy or foggy 2 hours or less after eating a meal or snack that contains sugars or starches? Especially in the mid-afternoon?
     Yes
  2. Do you tend to gain weight around your middle, instead of in your hips and thighs?
     Yes
  3. Does your weight fluctuate a lot?
     Yes
  4. Do you feel hungry when you shouldn’t need any more food?
     Yes
  5. Do you frequently crave sweets, starches, or dairy products?
     Yes
  6. Do you wake up in the middle of the night and have a hard time getting back to sleep unless you eat something sweet or starchy?
     Yes
  7. Do you get irritable, restless, tense, or anxious in the early evening before dinner?
     Yes
  8. Do you have a hard time controlling how much sugar or starch you eat?
     Yes
  9. Do you have symptoms of “hypoglycemia” if you don’t eat every 2-3 hours? Typical hypoglycemic symptoms include feeling shaky, panicky, irritable, anxious, or lightheaded when you’re hungry.
     Yes
  10. Are you an “emotional eater?”
     Yes
  11. Do you gain weight easily? Did you gain weight easily even as a child?
     Yes
  12. Do any of the following diseases run in your immediate family?
  13. Do you often binge on sweets, starches, or dairy products?
     Yes
  14. Are you obsessed with food?
     Yes
  15. Do you prefer sweets and starches over all other types of food?
     Yes
  16. Do sweets and starches make you feel temporarily less depressed or less anxious? Oh yeah 🙂 I can name a few that can do that for me.
     Yes
  17. Do you feel you need to carry food with you wherever you go, because you’re afraid you’ll get hungry?
     Yes
  18. Are you very hungry first thing in the morning?
     Yes
  19. Do you tend to get panicky or hungry while exercising? That’s a funny question. I can only imagine how I stop in the middle of the workout, run into the kitchen and then continue leading you through it with breadcrumbs on my face.
     Yes
  20. Women only: Do you feel much more emotional in the days prior to your period? In another words are you a raging b*tch during your PMS, like me?
     Yes

 

The more YES answers you have the more likely you’re sensitive to carbs, and should really consider cutting down on carbs. My controlled carb diet is quite simple, and all I do is separate my meals in to two categories FM and WEM which I have further explained in one of my recent articles.

You answered YES 1 – 5 times  = Good carbohydrate tolerance

You answered YES 6 – 12 times = Moderate carbohydrate tolerance

You answered YES 13 times and more = Poor carbohydrate tolerance

 

You can find in my Body Types post how to adjust your diet according to your carb tolerance so make sure to check it out. Let me know how many times you have answered YES in the comments and what do you struggle with the most.

Comments Add Comment

  1. private avatar image

    Private Member  | 

    Oh well, 15 x yes! Thanks for opening my eyes to this, I’ve been in denial or actually started believing that my body is just built to need carbs… Ugh, this is not going to be fun for a while, but I believe it will pay off. Also explains why my 7 days fasting made me feel amazing. My biggest problem is that I am vegetarian, actually vegan, so I need to be sure to get enough food into myself… 😉 I don’t really believe that veggies are a problem (fruit yes!), but I’ll have to read into it and experiment. I’m a little sad that Zuzkas Vegetarianism-experiment didn’t turn her over, too, but let’s not start that discussion…

  2. private avatar image

    Private Member  | 
    nürnberg, germany

    Could you maybe tell a little bit more about the relating of dairy products and carbohydrates? Because I don’t eat bread and things like that any more. But since then I have got huge huge cravings for dairy products…

  3. private avatar image

    Private Member  | 

    I got 4. I think I’m doing okay. I thought I’d say yes more but I guess I have a higher tolerance than I thought.

  4. private avatar image

    Private Member  | 

    Zuzka! I answered yes to 18! I should never ever eat carbs! I die!

  5. private avatar image

    Private Member  | 

    Well guess I have moderate carb tolerance (8 yeses) 🙂 I’m not cutting on them, though, as you already know 😀 Just being more wise on the type of carbs I’m eating according times of the day / activity. But good to know that I’m not alone on the PMSing issue! And yep, I found question 19 awkward too (and your description of it made me laugh, Z :p). Workout actually usually inhibits hunger, so 😎 🙂

  6. private avatar image

    Private Member  | 

    I answered yes to more than 12 questions. I have an addiction to carbs, breads and pastries are my favorite.
    Knowing that I have to cut them out of my eating regime and actually doing it are 2 different things. lol But I know I have to for my own health. I’m new here and certainly need your help to follow through. I used to be a follower of yours several years ago on your other site. It’s time to get back to loving my body and feeding it right as well as daily exercise.
    My goal is to loose 50 lbs. God that seems like a huge amount of fat. Gross! Anyway I’m back at beginner level and did the first beginner workout today, and will continue with them.
    Thanks for this site.

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