The Blood Sugar Diet: A Control Approach

Here is a quote from ‘Get the Gloss’,

High blood sugar levels - millions of us have it, but many of us don’t know it and it’s led to not just a type 2 diabetes epidemic, but also a rise in prediabetes, the condition that precedes it. Could calorie restriction help? It worked for medical journalist, Dr Michael Mosley and in his book, The 8-Week Blood Sugar Diet, he shares the science behind it.

This website offers a specific diet which, it seems, you should repeat for each day of the 8 weeks. That is one approach but I would get bored very quickly. I guess my likelihood of success under these circumstances would be small.

My wife and I wanted controlled variety, but for that we needed to know the calorie content of a wide variety of foods and to measure them out for each meal. I also needed “proof” that I had adhered to the regime throughout the 8 weeks. Hopefully, it would demonstrate how I was moving away from the type 2 diabetes risk zone.

This spreadsheet based system is designed to record your diet and demonstrate how well you maintained the regime both in detail (showing each meal) and in summarized form.(For a partially completed example, see download.) 

For many of us, losing weight is a key component for proving the success of the diet. There is space to include daily weight measurements. These are similarly summarised over the 8 weeks. Nevertheless, these measurements are an add-on rather than a fundamental component.

Download the excel template called “Weight Control 800.xltx”. 

A Skeleton Outline

·         Download template
·         Create your workbook
·         Key data: name and start date
·         The diet record sheets
·         Summaries for the week
·         Summaries for the 8-week diet period

Getting Started

If you down load this file from the internet, it will be as an Excel Template with the file name “Weight Control 800.xltx”. A Microsoft Windows operating system will load it into a folder marked >This PC >Documents >Custom Office Templates. For the old fashioned among you, the directory address ‘C:\Users\[User]\Documents\Custom Office Templates’ gets you to the same place.

Automatic Template Location

If you are working with a lap top or PC with this template pre-loaded, then the template will be available from the opening screen on the Personal tab.

When you open a template for use as an Excel Workbook you be invited to rename to something like “Weight Control 8001.xlsx”. This is an automatic process but you should choose a more suitable name and directory to save it in. You may wish to set up the Front Page of the Workbook before doing that.

The Front Page

The opening worksheet invites you to enter your name and when you want to start.

The Workbook suggests a file name that might be suitable, once you have entered your own name.

The only other field is your date of starting. When blank, the validation cell has a pink background. The worksheet must offer a valid date beginning on a Monday. The validation cell turns green when a Monday start date is offered. The individual weeks of your diet record are automatically marked up from this one entry.

The remainder of this worksheet is devoted to summarizing the entries from your weekly diet control worksheets. There are 12 of them. Most authorities recommend an 8 week course. The extra weeks are included for flexibility. You may go on holiday for two weeks and come back to your diet.

There are hyperlinks to each weekly Diet Control worksheet.

The Diet Control worksheets

The kernel of the record are the weekly diet control sheets. There are 12 such worksheets and they each look almost identical. 

You must complete the cells with the green background. All the others are calculated based on the values you have posted in the 4 green columns. Here is a detail of the green input fields.

The fields headed ‘Weekday’, ‘Meal’, ‘Food’ and 'Measure' are each controlled by drop down lists, where you must select the correct entry. Once you have selected the ‘Food’ element the system knows the basic calorie value of the item. All it needs now is the ‘Measure’ from you – in the correct units.

The next two columns (‘Unit’ and ‘Multiple’) are extracted from the Food Table. They tell you the units (grams, teaspoon, bottle etc.) in which the system expects the measurement and how the calculation will be evaluated. The remaining columns are reserved for calculation processes.

The upper portion of the worksheet is devoted to summarizing your inputs.

The most important element is the daily summary, since this identifies whether you keeping to the 800 calories per day target. It also provides an indication of the meals which are the most expensive.

The spreadsheet is designed to provide coloured backgrounds when you are close to or significantly exceeding the 800 calorie limit.

There is also a review of the whole week.

Both the daily stats and the weekly summary stats are carried forward to the front page, so that you can review progress at a single glance.