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?
    • Obesity?
       Yes
    • High cholesterol?
       Yes
    • Type 2 Diabetes?
       Yes
    • Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome?
       Yes
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.