This is part of a four-week series on the Metabolic Quartet, the four things I check first in every Root Cause appointment. They tend to move together, so this month we’re taking them one at a time. First up: blood sugar.
Do things differently. Rather than reaching for a cake or cheesecake, bring out this watermelon pizza to share with friends and family. No cooking, ready in minutes.
Method
- Cut the watermelon slice into 4 quarters, like a pizza.
- If using the vanilla extract, fold it through the whipped cream, then spread over all 4 quarters.
- Top with your fruit of choice, mixing colours to make it look as good as it tastes.
- Grate the dark chocolate over the top to finish.
Multiply everything up for a crowd. This scales easily for a summer gathering. Best assembled just before serving, as watermelon releases juice once cut and doesn’t hold well overnight.
Why this works
This is a whole-food dessert: fruit, dairy fat and a little chocolate, with the fibre and fat helping to keep blood glucose much steadier than a standard cake slice, which relies on refined flour and added sugar with little to slow it down. Steadier blood glucose, built through habits like this, is one of the levers behind metabolic health, visceral fat management and easier menopause symptoms.
Approx. per quarter (whole recipe cut into 4): 56kcal, 0.7g protein, 3.3g fat, 6.0g carbs, 0.7g fibre. Figures calculated using McCance and Widdowson’s Composition of Foods Integrated Dataset (CoFID); values are approximate and will vary with exact ingredient quantities and the fruit you choose.
Contains dairy. Swap the whipped cream for a dairy-free or coconut alternative if needed.
Blood sugar can look different from one woman to the next. The interactive symptom map walks through a full day, morning to night, and shows how it connects to energy, sleep and mood along the way.
Next week: visceral fat, the second driver in the Metabolic Quartet, and what it reveals beyond the number on the scales.
