Whats range do I want to keep my blood glucose levels in to loose fat?

[BronzedGoddess]

If there is one. My hubby tells me that a normal blood glucose reading in between 70-120, but when you are trying to loose body fat do you want it to be less than 70? At what point do you get into ketosis (not that I want to do that, just wondering). I have been checking my glucose levels with my hubby's glucometer and I'm not sure how to make sense of the readings.
BTW I took 200g of ALA (not R-ala-- just ordered some of that tonight) before I ate dinner then I waited 20 minutes after eating and it read 149, it was 97 before I ate. Oh well, forgive my rambling just trying to figure all this out.

Edited to say that it read 97 after doing an hour of cardio. I didn't check it before hand (wish i did). Also I didn't eat for 3 hours before I went to the gym. So another question i have is, since my blood glucose levels did not drop very low could my body have been using fat to fuel my workout. I've read that women are more efficent at burning fat during workouts becuase of the amount of estogen that we have as opposed to men. Any truth in this?

 

[wilson6]

Unless you are a diabetic, don't waste your time trying to make sense out of blood glucose concentrations and their potential interaction with fat burning because there is considerable variability.

Insulin is the key regulatory hormone in the process of fat burning and while it responds to blood glucose elevations, there are many confounding variables.

The latest studies by Mettendorfer et al., Steffensen et al., and Romijn et al., don't support the contention or evidence from early studies that suggest that women burn more fat than men during aerobic exercise. There may be some differences during the luteal phase and/or at low exercise intensities in untrained women, but overall the differences in terms of body composition control are moot. Furthermore, differences are wiped out with carbohydrate consumption, even during the luteal phase or with OC use because endogenous E and P are suppressed. In fact, women will glycogen load the same as men during either the follicular phase or luteal phase if they are on OCs. There is some argument as to what stores of triglycerides are used (men vs women). Mittendorfer suggests the women use more adipose tissue and Steffensen suggests more intramuscular triglycerides, but overall fat use was the same between men and women and independent of training status. Both studies employed exercise intensities of between 50 – 60 % VO2 max for 90 min.

"since my blood glucose levels did not drop very low could my body have been using fat to fuel my workout."

What you burn during your workout depends on exercise intensity and/or prior meal or consumption of carbohydrate during the exercise bout.

Blood glucose during exercise is a function of Ra (rate of appearance) and Rd (rate of disappearance. Ra is dictated by uptake from the gut or release from the liver. Carbohydrate intake will almost completely suppress hepatic glucose production. The higher the exercise intensity, the greater the reliance on muscle glycogen and blood glucose and less burning of fat.

W6

 

[nikkita]

W6,
I always like your posts because I learn a lot from them!

 

[BronzedGoddess]

Thanks W6!!!! I appreciate your quick replies to all my "dumb" questions So was ordering that r-ala a waste of money? I've just been checking my glucose levels because my poor hubby has to check his 4 times a day and I want to be sympathetic. We even check my 2 year old sons once in a while I'm making this all to complicated.
-train hard
-eat clean
-rest
repeat...................................