ZOE app - can I drink tea when I eat the muffins?

[MrsKypp]

I can't find the answer to this anywhere in the ZOE information and am doing the muffin eating day tomorrow!

Can I have a cup of tea with milk with the muffins?

I understand the 8 hours fasting before the breakfast muffins then 4 hours till the lunch muffins, then 2 hours after that. Just not whether we are allowed to drink tea with a tiny bit of milk with them or not.

Thanks to anyone who can help me out with this! I am probably being a bit dim, but best to check now rather than do it wrong 😆

Thank you to the person who sent me a PM with the answer 😀

I also found out this morning when Zoe sent me an instruction list, which contained info about drinks during the muffin meals. I was planning ahead yesterday and wanted to know in advance because the muffins looked like a lot of dry food to manage. Lucky we're allowed black tea with them! Just about managed to eat the 3 muffins within the 15 min time limit.

glad you got it figured! The muffins taste vile, don't they? Mine had a really odd texture too

I did this as part of the Twins UK study about 4 years ago.
I couldn't eat them ☹️ as soon as they hit my stomach 🤮🤮
Had to give up in the end and haven't been able to touch another muffin since, despite a lemon and poppy seed being my absolute favourite 😭

Hi @TicTac80

Thanks 😃

I was beginning to get really worried I wouldn't manage to eat all 3 within 15 minutes! They're so dry and heavy, but with some black tea I managed it, just about. It was the texture I found hard to eat.

The lunch ones look different although the ingredients seem to overlap. At least there's only 2 for lunch instead of 3.

How are you getting on with the programme?

I just started a thread looking at our glucose monitoring results.

@cryinglaughing

Oh that's awful it put you off muffins like that. Are you able to eat other types of cakes?

I'm wondering whether you'd enjoy a lighter and less dried out piece of lemon cake. I love lemon cake with the sweet and sour topping.

Maybe in future Zoe will ask a good chef to create more edible test muffins because it's such a struggle to eat the ones as they are now.

I found the muffins tasted very strongly of olive oil, which put me off it for several weeks afterwards. Fascinating experience to see all the changes in my blood sugar in response to different foods and combinations. Still waiting for the other results (poo test etc)

@Couchpotato3

I could taste the olive oil in them too. I think they tried to drown that out with vanilla flavouring 😂didn't quite work.

Great to hear you found the blood sugar respone interesting - I'm getting into that too and scan quite often to see what it's doing.

Did yours ever drop below the normal range? Mine did 3 times during the night.

Good luck with your poo and other test results!

Yes, I did have a few hypo episode, one at night like you. I also found that my blood sugar dropped quite noticeably with exercise. I have a very sweet tooth and probably have quite high blood sugar normally. Wearing the device was a bit of a wake-up call for me, and I had a few hypos while exercising after trying to get my blood sugar down deliberately. Horrid sensation - lightheaded, dizzy, sweaty etc. remarkably similar to a panic attack, enough to make me wonder whether I'd had some hypos in the past and mislabelled them!

@MrsKypp the researchers seemed to think I might have had a reaction to the egg white stabiliser that is in them.

I chopped mine into small pieces and swallowed them with water 🤣, so gross did I find the texture. I should have known it wasn't going to go well when I couldn't even eat the blue ones in time 🙄

I really struggled with the first muffins, definitely took longer than 15 minutes to get them down as the texture was just so vile. Black tea helped. I eventually found it helped to cut them up and microwave quarters or eighths for slightly longer than recommended so the pieces were warm and soft at the time I came to eat them. I remember determinedly stabbing my finger for the fat test because I didn't mind pricking my fingers but I didn't want to have to redo it because that would mean more muffins!

I also had quite a few night hypos - which I now realise lead to me waking ravenously hungry in the middle of the night. Over time I found the best way to avoid these was, surprisingly, not to have a bedtime snack (or if I needed to have one, make it high protein) and making sure my dinner was good for my blood sugar.

@Couchpotato3

How interesting - I get like that when I'm hungry usually before lunch if I don't eat it early enough. I did think it could be low blood sugar so I'll see if that turns out to be the case.

I've only ever had 1 panic attack, and for me that felt different, but some of the same things eg bashing heart.

I'll also see what mine does with exercise then!

@cryinglaughing

Ah, there weren't any blue ones in my pack, just two packs in transparent cellophane containing muffins the colour of a victoria sponge cake, the yellowy sponge. I read an article from March this year online and they mentioned different days of muffins, so I am beginning to wonder whether they've reduced the contents...

I wonder how they knew which ingredient you reacted to. Maybe it fitted an allergy profile? I felt my mouth sting while eating the lunch muffins, and my lips swelled a tiny bit for a few minutes too. The sting was unpleasant and the taste was revolting, so chemical. Lunch was easier to get through though, being only 2 muffins.

How did your twin get on?

@UnaOfStormhold

Haha, EXACTLY! I also went for my blood test in the most determined way possible also to avoid another muffin day 😆Luckily, big blobs of blood poured out of my finger and filled the square in 2, then I gave it a 3rd drop to make 100% sure it was enough.

Bit worried now it's a bank holiday weekend, so no post collection till Tuesday! I should have thought of that, but then so should Zoe - they don't say anywhere I read about avoiding certain days when there's no post. Fingers crossed the samples are still useable when they finally arrive.

That's interesting about your nighttime hypos and snack at night. We ate a small evening meal yesterday, and I was hungry before bed so had a piece of toast with butter and jam. I normally don't eat again after the meal, so I'll see what the blood sugar does on a normal day.

@MrsKypp I started the study at St Thomas's hospital. We had blue muffins that day to gauge our rate of digestion. The rest of the muffins we took home.
She managed to eat them, so got some meaningful feedback, mine wasn't so meaningful. I still kept a diary of what I ate and when.

The day we went to St Thomas's there were 3 other sets of twins and all of us were feeling pretty ropey by the end of the day. I had a migraine, one if the other twins was throwing up.

It was a great day 🙄

@cryinglaughing

Oh no, that doesn't sound like much fun at all that day 😬I wonder if that's why there aren't any blue ones any more...

I wish they'd provide an overview of the entire thing rather than only give you the info on the day each day. I love a good overview... not this step by step info that you can't prepare for in advance (mentally or practically eg shopping).

I like the glucose monitor, I keep checking it.

Sorry for delay in replying @MrsKypp . I completed the two week thing with the blood sugar monitor (I loved that!! Really interesting to watch how different foods affected the results) by the second weekend in August, then ate carefully for the following week. I got the results of all the tests on Tuesday last week (but I was away camping with the kids, and signal was crap, so I only properly looked at it when we got home on Friday). Very comprehensive results, which they sent in two PDFs in an email.

I must admit that I didn't track what I was eating or anything whilst I was away camping, but I did have a nod at "stay healthy" by cooking and freezing healthy meals that we took away with us on the camp trip (saved us some money too). I started the "phase two" part yesterday. I familiarised myself with the foods I could eat before Sunday and made sure I got plenty of the "high scoring foods" in ready to start properly (I'd deliberately ran down what food we had in the house before we went away). The app gives some lovely food/meal suggestions to keep to the foods that score above 50. I've not felt hungry either. I'd be interested to see how much things improve with respect to lethargy, energy levels, weight loss etc.

A couple of the results surprised me: my blood sugar control was bad (score of 19), as was my microbiome score (30). I rarely eat sugary things, and I tend to eat mainly veggie food. When I had the monitor on, the level would shoot up by maybe 3-4 points but then shoot back down, all normally within about 30mins to 1hr after I ate the muffins. The poor microbiome score could also be a reason that over the past 4yrs, my weight has shot up (but my diet hadn't particularly changed a huge amount). I'd put it all down to peri (as I've been having symptoms of that over past 4 yrs too), but I want to see if this trial helps to address any of the issues. And this is what this is all about (for me) I guess: looking at where I am health wise, and then looking to improve things. The blood sugar result scared the crap out of me as I have a family history of diabetes.

My diet assessment and blood fat control scores were both good (59 and 68 respectively). I'm a bit puzzled that the other scores were bad despite having a good diet score, but hey ho. I think it could be because a lot of the veggie foods I eat (Quorn and similar) are quite processed, which I guess would have an effect on microbiome etc. I hope that Zoe can give the option of a recheck of the blood and stool tests a few months down the line, as I'd love to see how/if things have improved.

My friend is following a different diet plan but we will both be accountable to each other.

How long do you have the monitor on for? I think it's a really interesting app/course/trial. :) I also think that for me, the trying to keep my food score high would be quite fun!!

@TicTac80

Thanks for your brilliantly helpful and informative reply! I hope it helps you with the issues you described eg weight etc, that would be great wouldn't it.

I've got the glucose monitor for total 2 weeks and agree with you that it's fascinating.

I'm getting really annoyed with Zoe though, it's just really amateur for the money it cost. For example, it tells you to eat 58g white rice and monitor your glucose response. Then it asks whether it showed a big / moderate / slight / no spike. I asked the Zoe chat person what does that mean, in mmol how much of an increase means big vs moderate etc. They answered with completely unrelated answers, then when I asked again, they disappeared. Very disappointing.

But I am enjoying the glucose monitor, although I could have saved a bucket load of money by just doing that instead of Zoe.

Wish I could edit my previous post!

Zoe chat are actually very helpful and did answer my questions.