Can a Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) Help You Lose Weight?
Aug 14, 2025
At Family Nutrition Solutions, when we start working with patients who are struggling to lose weight, there’s one question we always want to answer first, and that is…
WHY?
If you’ve been exercising, eating healthy, and still not seeing progress, it’s easy to think you just need to “try harder.” But in many cases, stalled weight loss isn’t the real problem. It’s actually a symptom of something deeper that needs our attention.
And when we’re looking at symptoms from a functional medicine perspective, we’re always asking “why?” until we get to the true root cause!
One of the most common underlying causes of stalled weight loss is…
Blood sugar imbalances.
When your blood sugar levels spike and crash throughout the day, your body spends more time in “fat storage” mode and less time in “fat burning” mode. This can make it incredibly difficult to lose weight, no matter how disciplined you are with your food and workouts.
Blood sugar spikes can trigger carb cravings and disrupt appetite regulation, often leading to unintentional overeating.
That’s where tools like a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) can come in.
What is a CGM, and How Can It Help?
A CGM is a small device worn on your skin that measures your blood sugar levels in real time. It allows you to see exactly how your body responds to different foods, workouts, stress, and sleep patterns.
While CGMs were originally created for people with diabetes, they’ve become more popular in recent years as a tool for improving metabolic health and supporting weight loss.
For weight management, CGMs can help you:
- Identify foods that cause big blood sugar spikes
- Test different meal combinations to keep your glucose stable
- Determine how lifestyle factors like stress and exercise are affecting your blood sugar levels.
Why Blood Sugar Matters for Weight Loss
When you eat a meal containing carbohydrates, your body breaks them down into glucose, which enters your bloodstream. Think of your cells as rooms with locked doors, and insulin as the key. When your blood sugar rises, your body releases insulin, which “unlocks” the doors so glucose can move out of your blood and into your cells to be used for energy.
When blood sugar levels are consistently spiking and therefore requiring insulin to be produced frequently, it can lead to insulin resistance.
The key (insulin) is still there, but it doesn’t fit as smoothly anymore. Your body has to produce more and more keys to get the doors to budge, which can lead to chronically high insulin levels.
Credit: Saint Luke’s Health System
Insulin resistance makes it harder for your cells to use glucose for energy, which often means:
- More energy stored as fat
- Increased hunger and cravings
- More difficulty losing weight
Keeping your blood sugar stable helps your body burn fat more efficiently, supports steady energy levels, and can make weight loss feel a lot easier.
Case Study: CGM for Weight Loss in Perimenopause
Naomi, a Pilates instructor in her early 50s, was frustrated with her weight. She ate a balanced diet, exercised daily, and still noticed the scale creeping up - even though she was eating the same foods she had been having for years!
Brigitta, one of our licensed nutritionists at Family Nutrition Solutions, suggested trying a CGM to see how her body was responding to the carbs in her meals.
The results were eye-opening…
- Rice, which she ate daily with vegetables and protein, was causing a large glucose spike.
- Dessert after dinner at restaurants led to blood sugar staying elevated all night.
With this information, Naomi made a few strategic changes:
- Eating protein and high-fiber veggies before carbs (meal order can impact the blood sugar response)
- Swapping in higher-fiber carb sources like legumes instead of always having rice as her main carb source
- Adding short walks after meals - another simple “hack” for balanced blood sugar
- Eating just a few bites of dessert when out at restaurants
The CGM allowed Naomi to test her unique response to different foods and portion sizes, because everyone’s body and blood sugar responds differently!
As soon as her blood sugar started to stay in range most of the time, she started losing weight again. She now knows what foods and portions to choose to stay in range, even when going out to eat. And she is reaching her weight goal without depriving herself!
Blood Glucose & Perimenopause
Naomi’s story is typical of what we often see happening during perimenopause. As estrogen drops during this life stage, blood sugar levels become a lot more unstable. This means perimenopausal women can easily become insulin resistant and experience higher glucose spikes when eating the same foods they have tolerated for years without weight gain. This, in part, explains why women tend to gain weight during this time without changing their diet.
But, this doesn’t mean that weight loss is impossible! By making specific changes to manage blood sugar, it is completely possible to break through a weight loss plateau and get back to feeling your best.
Personalized Support in Wilmington, NC, and Beyond
A CGM is one of the tools in our toolkit when it comes to weight loss that can help give you personalized information, but we have tons of other resources if CGM doesn’t feel like the route for you.
If you’ve been taking some of the steps above to balance your blood sugar and the weight still isn’t coming off, or your bloodwork has shown you’re dealing with pre-diabetes, it might be time to dig deeper.
The Family Nutrition Solutions team is here to help - offering both in-person nutrition counseling in Wilmington, NC, and virtual appointments across the US. Plus, we accept insurance, making it easier than ever to get expert support for weight management and hormonal health.
You can learn more about our counseling services here or…