In this article, I will Review Lumen. This is a detailed Lumen Review that will help you to make a decision about whether you should buy it or not. Lumen is a Metabolic Device that is advertised as a “Nutritionist In My Pocket”. It claims to know if your body is using fats or carbs for fuel and helps you optimize your nutrition and fitness.

 

By the way, if you don’t know who I am, I’m a nutritionist and a health coach, who’s all about providing you with the best science-based health and weight loss advice. And I thought it would be useful if I reviewed this device. This Lumen Review discusses the claims Lumen makes, discusses the usefulness of this metabolic tracking device, talks about the price, and compares it to a nutritionist.

 

 

Let’s Start the Lumen Review By Looking at How Does Lumen Work?

 

Lumen aims to give people more information about how they process food in order to achieve fitness and weight loss goals by “hacking” their metabolism. Each time you breathe into it, the device analyses your breath, giving you a score on a scale of 1 to 5 to tell you whether your body is running on energy from your fat or carbs.

 

Lumen Scores

 

The scores indicating that you are in a fat-burning state are 1 and 2. Then, it says that you run on the carbohydrates you’ve consumed if your scores are between 4 or 5, or that you’re using a combination of both if your score is 3.

 

 

And it follows with a recommended meal plan that tells you how many carbs, fat, and protein servings you should have, with the ultimate goal of it being to improve your metabolism.

 

So How Does Lumen Know All This?

 

Lumen uses a CO2 sensor and flow meter to determine the CO2 concentration in a single breath. This indicates the type of fuel your body is using to produce energy. If you run on carbs, it’s gonna show a higher CO2 concentration. And if you run of fat, it will show you lower CO2 concentration.

 

 

CO2 is Carbon dioxide by the way. It’s what we breathe out. Since carbs are richer in oxygen than fat, they consume less water in their metabolism and release more carbon dioxide.

 

 

How Does Lumen Help You to Achieve Your Health and Fitness Goals?

 

“Lumen measures your metabolism in a single breath and helps you lose weight and optimize your workouts. From metabolic tracking to personalized nutrition plans, Lumen is an effortless metabolic tracking and wellness coach all in the palm of your hand!” Each morning, Lumen determines the source of your body’s fuel — carbs or fats.

 

 

So Now, As A Health Professional, What Is My View On Lumen?

 

I’m a nutritionist and I’ll have to disagree that this product is equivalent to what I do. This device gives you some sort of health advice from your breath, I do an in-depth analysis of a person’s diet, activity levels, symptoms, food preferences, food intolerances, various struggles they’re facing, and I create personalised coaching programs.

 

 

I create beautiful meal plans, with easy to follow, detailed recipes, that keep you full and satisfied and help you to achieve your goals. Where I’m there to answer all the questions, track progress, make sure you are not bored with your food and you always have variety. We have two-way communication to make sure both sides are happy and the plan is going as expected.

 

 

I offer a lot of care, flexibility, and friendly human interaction, to provide the best experience possible. Lumen is just an app with some little device that provides you with questionable dietary advice and offers no flexibility or proper friendly support. Lumen doesn’t do any of that.

 

This device tells you what fuel are you running on. While you actually know this yourself. If you use carbs as your main source of fuel, you have elevated blood glucose and insulin, you burn carbs and you inhibit fat burning. Insulin is the main fat-storage hormone. It regulates whether you bun your carbs or stored body fat. So, if you run on carbs and you exercise a lot, you’re burning your food energy and glycogen for energy and have a very minimal fat loss if any at all.

 

 

And on the other hand, if you follow a low carbohydrate ketogenic diet, you run on ketones. Ketones are created by breaking down the fat that you eat and your own body fat. Your blood glucose and insulin are low, which allows you to easily burn body fat. Now, I’m not sure what is this device all about, but it doesn’t seem to take this into account. It claims to do something magical, while in reality, it tells you something you already know.

 

 

Is Lumen Suitable For Everyone?

 

I believe it’s made for the younger generation that is not insulin resistant yet and doesn’t gain weight by eating carbs. But for the rest of people, let’s say by the age of 30-40, most people are insulin resistant, they get stubborn fat that doesn’t come off easily, especially if you keep eating carbs that cause you insulin resistance. Having high carb days will not help you to reverse insulin resistance and lose that stubborn fat.

 

Keep in mind, that only 10-30% of people are insulin sensitive, and the rest are insulin resistant. Easy way to find out: do you have excess fat around your belly? If the answer is yes, you are insulin resistant. And this means you need a more serious approach than playing around with Lumen Metabolism Tracking Device. The best diet to reverse insulin resistance is the low-carb high-fat ketogenic diet. And the best diet for weight loss is also a low carb high fat ketogenic diet.

 

Just look at the combined results from several weight loss studies, only the results from randomised controlled trials, with a correctly defined keto diet. You can see the results comparing the low-fat high carb diet with the low carb keto diet. People who follow the keto diet always lose more weight. That’s my Master’s dissertation results, by the way, I did a systematic review comparing keto vs low-fat diets for weight loss.

 

 

I will leave the links to several systematic reviews and meta-analyses (which is the highest quality type of evidence), proving that keto is the most effective diet for weight loss, and improving your health, in the reference section for you to read after. And you can also read my blog post about insulin resistance, or the one about 11 weight loss myths that prevent you from losing weight.

 

 

The Disadvantages of Using Lumen

 

Even on the low carb days, lumen tells you to follow a low-carb low-fat diet. That’s not going to keep you full and not going to help you to enter ketosis. And as mentioned earlier, ketosis is where you burn the highest amount of body fat. You need to consume no more than 50g of carbs a day, to get into ketosis.

 

 

Then, in some cases, Lumen tells you before your workout -“Don’t exercise right now, your energy is too low, go have a snack before your workout.” What this will do, make you burn your snack during your workout and prevent you from burning any body fat. Exercising on an empty stomach is what helps you to burn the most fat during your workout. For some reason, Lumen will encourage you to avoid it.

 

Why is work out on an empty stomach more effective? When you work out while fasted, your body uses your stored body fat for energy. When you snack before your workout, it uses the energy from the snack and your glycogen stores.

 

 

What Would Be this Lumen Review Without Answering How Much Does Lumen Cost?

 

The current price, at the time of writing this blog post, is $299 dollars or £279 in the UK.

 

And How Much Does a Nutritionist or a Health Coach Cost You? It depends, but I personally charge £50 for a health evaluation, a 7-day meal plan with health advice, and a follow-up. And for someone who needs more help, I also offer more intense coaching, where I provide health evaluation, personalised meal plan for a month, email support to have all of your questions answered, plus, weekly follow-ups, for £450 a month. I also have an online weight loss coaching program for a price of £199, which includes a 3-week personalised meal plan. Alternatively, contact me via email: advancednutritionandhealth@gmail.com 

 

 

So, can you call lumen a pocket nutritionist? I don’t think so. And I don’t think it’s suitable for everyone.

 

That was my honest Lumen Review. I personally don’t need any device to tell me if I’m burning fat or carbs, because I’m on keto. And when you’re on keto, you have much more energy, more mental clarity, you’re in great shape, you’re full and satisfied after your meals, you lose weight easily. So, personally, I would recommend anyone interested in some serious weight loss and health improvements to try keto.

 

Thanks for reading this Lumen Review!

 

And as promised, this lumen review includes a list of references!

 

 

Lumen Review References:

Dietary carbohydrate restriction as the first approach in diabetes management: Critical review and evidence base 

Return of hunger following a relatively high carbohydrate breakfast is associated with earlier recorded glucose peak and nadir 

Problems associated with glucose toxicity: Role of hyperglycemia-induced oxidative stress 

Dietary carbohydrates: role of quality and quantity in chronic disease 

Mechanisms of nutritional and hormonal regulation of lipogenesis 

Genetic Evidence That Carbohydrate-Stimulated Insulin Secretion Leads to Obesity 

Effects of Dietary Composition on Energy Expenditure During Weight-Loss Maintenance 

Very-low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet vs low-fat diet for long-term weight loss: a meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials

An Isoenergetic Very Low Carbohydrate Diet Improves Serum HDL Cholesterol and Triacylglycerol Concentrations 

High-Carbohydrate Diets and Food Patterns and Their Associations with Metabolic Disease in the Korean Population

My Master’s dissertation, Keto vs Low fat for weight loss

 

 

Thanks for reading this Lumen Review, let me know in the comments below if you have tried it and what are your thoughts?