Why Scott Hickle tried to wreck his gut health–and ruined his blood sugar instead

Who: Scott Hickle, 31
Where: Austin, Texas
Levels Member: 1 month
Biggest Takeaway: Years of healthy eating before this challenge likely helped keep Scott’s microbiome resilient–no matter what he put into it.

Before we get into your 30-day challenge, what has your health been like?

For the past four years, I’ve been very health-focused. But that’s not the way it’s always been. About seven years ago, I was roughly 20lbs overweight. My brother was a bodybuilder. Having a younger sibling who is stage-ready when you are not is pretty motivating for change. Very few people see their best physical selves looking at them like that. I began eating low-carb, focusing on whole foods and exercising, with a focus on lifting four to five days a week, practicing restorative yoga, and clocking 15K steps per day, on average.

What made you want to take on a challenge that could negatively impact your health?

In 2023, I co-founded Throne, a company building a device that allows you to monitor your gut health and hydration from your toilet. Wanting to be the ultimate guinea pig, my goal was to see if I could intentionally wreck my gut health by eating ultra-processed foods for an entire month.

I’m pretty blessed with good gut health, on average. And I started the challenge expecting it to be an exercise in purposefully causing myself gut distress. There’s a lot of research about ultra-processed foods and their links to poor gut health outcomes. I wanted to use Throne to log my bowel movements and hydration and see what would happen if I changed from my above-average healthy diet to a universally recognized unhealthy diet.

What rules did you set up for the challenge?

I focused totally on changing the food I eat, restricting myself 100% to highly processed foods. Throughout the month, I maintained the same amount of calories as before because I wanted to keep my weight. This was important: We can easily guess the outcome if I increased my calorie consumption by eating unhealthy foods. I would have gained weight, and that’s not that interesting. 

In addition, I kept my sleep and exercise habits the same. I don’t drink alcohol, and that didn’t change during the experiment. I also wore a CGM to check out what my blood sugar was doing at this time. 

What were you eating before the Wreck My Gut challenge?

I’m typically very low-carb and try to avoid simple carbs and sugars. For breakfast, I’d eat grilled salmon, eggs, and sourdough toast. I’d eat a Sweetgreen salad for lunch and head to the Whole Foods hot bar for some pulled pork or chicken and veggies for dinner. 

Tell us about your diet during the challenge. Were there any rules?

For the first 1.5 weeks, I ate anything convenient. It was a lot of pastries, waffles, pancakes, and honey butter chicken biscuits. Prepackaged food, fast food, and many deep-fried foods were also included in my diet–anything that counted as ultra-processed.

After that, I started doing theme days. One day, I ate only doughnuts. Another day, spicy foods. There was a canned foods day, foods from a gas station day, French fry day, and protein bars and “healthy cookies” day.

What did you learn from the experiment?

Surprisingly, my gut health was pretty unfazed. It turns out my gut is shockingly resilient. Still, there were three memorable days that almost wrecked me. Those were donut day, spicy day, and GU day. After donut day, in which I ate 15 Krispy Kreme Glazed donuts, I was not regular for two days. Spicy day was the closest I’ve ever been to having a bathroom accident. GU day became too dangerous–I had a hypoglycemic moment and almost passed out–so I had to quit in the middle of that challenge.

But I got a total crash course in metabolic health. Before this challenge, I never considered myself sensitive to blood sugar swings. My sugar consumption was up 60 to 70 percent from baseline. And that wasn’t from fruit–it was all from processed sugars like desserts.

I learned that my blood sugar totally governs my mood when it spikes and crashes. When that happened, I was prone to intrusive thoughts and not pleasant to be around–or to be, for that matter. This also impacted my motivation to do other healthy things in my routine, like exercise, when before, I had no problem sticking to these health behaviors.

In addition, I subjectively tracked my mood, energy, focus, and stress. Energy, focus, and mood all started super high, which is normal for me. Towards the end of the challenge, a colleague told me that I usually have powerful energy but was walking into rooms looking rundown and defeated. 

One of the craziest outcomes of the experiment was how my body composition changed. I did DEXA scans before and after my month of ultra-processed foods. Here’s the outcome:

• I lost two pounds during the month. (It turns out that when I planned my calorie intake, I based it on months I had been eating slightly isocaloric food. I adjusted my calorie goal mid-way through to fix this.) 
• I lost fat overall.
• My body fat redistributed. My arms and legs were lower in fat, but I gained one pound of visceral fat (the type of fat deep in your belly that surrounds your organs and can lead to insulin resistance). When I compared my DEXA scans before and after the 30-day experiment, my visceral fat increased by more than 5-fold. 

Did you go back to your previously healthy lifestyle?

I was so ready for it to be over in the end. By day 24, I wanted to quit but stuck it out. I never want to see a pastry again. I don’t want to touch waffles. I missed salads. And being born and raised in Texas, I didn’t have steak for the entire month, which was hard. This experiment threw me off my routine, dragged down my mood, worsened my blood pressure, and my blood sugar was all over the map. 

Although I was able to throw my gut health off-kilter for a day or two, my experiment confirmed the research that short-term dietary changes can affect your gut health, but really, changing the long-term composition of my microbiome could realistically take months or years. Years of healthy eating before this challenge likely helped keep my microbiome resilient.