hi and welcome. Was there any particular reason you've been asked to monitor your blood glucose?
The system I used when I began testing was to take a reading first thing in the morning, and to test before and after eating.
The morning reading was usually my highest of the day and was certainly the last to come down. That's because it usually has very little to do with your food, and is more about your liver adding glucose it makes itself to the bloodstream to get you going. This is a natural process. Unfortunately livers become accustomed to higher BG levels and it took mine ages to learn that I was running on lower glucose levels.
Testing around food is not, in my opinion, to find out "how high you go". Everyone's BGs will rise (diabetics and non-diabetics) after eating carbohydrate. The issue is how quickly your system manages to bring higher levels back down, by dealing with the glucose. So the test directly before eating establishes a baseline.
The test two hours after eating should see you back at or near the starting level. The recommendation is that you are both below 8.5 (if diabetic) and not more than 2mmol/l above the first reading. Obviously between the two readings it's almost certain that your blood glucose will have been much higher, but your system has dealt with it in the two hour period.
If you are not below 8.5 and/or more than 2 mmol/l higher than the original reading, it shows your system isn't currently capable of managing that sort of glucose load. You may then want to reduce or eliminate the food (which will be carbohydrate or sugar) to lessen the load on your system. The issue is that high blood glucose over time does physical damage to nerves and capillaries, as well as other unwanted effects, so you want to avoid that if possible.
Please ask if anything isn't clear. Best of luck!
