Reddit mentions of EasyTouch Glucose Test Strips - (50 per Box)

So for the record, I didn’t use this one specifically, it’s just the first one I saw: link

From the photo, the bright blue things are lancets - they’re basically the needles that go into your fingers. You’ll want to alternative fingers when testing - that helps prevent scarring (if you reuse them too much, it’ll get dull which causes the scarring). New lancet per blood draw. You’ll want to take the blood from the sides of the finger (though idk why) - too far to the side though and it’ll hurt more than necessary.

The test strips (here’s a closer look) are what reads your blood after pricking your finger. The side with the arrow goes into the machine and you’ll want the strip in the machine before you draw the blood (other side of strip, in the middle). Not sure if it was my machine being finicky, but I had to angle it a certain way so the blood wasn’t drawn up too quickly or the machine would throw up an error - you’ll have to play around with that. The strips are really the most expensive part in all of this (there’s bits of gold in it) but it’s also the bit you can’t reuse.

The silver pen looking thing is what holds the lancet. You basically open it like a pen and put a lancet in before recapping. You’ll probably have numbers - the lower the number, the less the lancet comes out (shallower prick), the higher the number, the more the needle comes out (deeper prick / if you develop calluses).

Ideal, by the books method of using it is alcohol swab the finger/area you will prick. Put a new lancet into the pen thing. Turn on machine and put the strip in. Immediately prick, squeeze blood out, dip the strip into the puddle of blood and wait the 1-2 seconds for your result (or notification of error...in which case you repeat the dipping with a new test strip). Clean and bandage your finger.

You’ll want most tests under 140. Occasional blips are ok (ie your baby shower and gender reveal are ok) but don’t make it a daily thing.

The meals don’t have to be full sit down meals - 3 normal meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner) + 3 snacks in between...which is a lot easier said than done in the beginning. After like a week, I found myself constantly starving so that made eating a lot easier (ofc then I found myself staring longingly at my food and waiting for the next meal to come).

For tracking purposes, I found glucose buddy to be great. I jotted down what I ate in the notes section and at the end of the week, you can download a report with your numbers and your meals come up as little footnotes.

Edit: as an aside, the monitor comes with a pouch for you to put everything into. There’s a mesh zipper pocket on one side (for bandaids, alcohol pads, lancets) and elastic bands on the other. Both the pen and monitor goes alongside the spine, the test strips stay in the container it comes in and goes perpendicular to the spine.