Insulin & Insulin Resistance

The insulin hormone regulates how your body uses fuel from your food. Insulin directs your muscle, liver, and fat cells to remove glucose from your blood and store it. A fundamental solution to lasting weight loss and optimal health is to maintain normal insulin levels.

Once you eat something that breaks down to sugar – glucose -the pancreas secretes insulin, which has the primary job of moving that glucose into your cells, thereby lowering the glucose in your blood. Excess weight, too many of the wrong carbs, and lack of exercise can lead to high insulin levels. Cells that get too much insulin can become resistant. As a result, you have blood sugar highs and lows, and you store fat because your glucose regulator is broken.

What is Insulin Resistance?

You hear this phrase thrown around a lot. So what does that mean? It's a pre-diabetic state. Most of the time, it means that you have been eating too many processed carbohydrates for too long. Too many processed carbohydrates can create insulin resistance in your body.

Insulin resistance means you require higher and higher insulin levels for the same result—that is, to drive glucose into cells as fuel. It's the law of diminishing returns: over time, insulin becomes less effective at lowering blood glucose because the cell becomes numb. Eventually, you have high insulin and high glucose. High levels of insulin and insulin resistance are some of the significant causes of polycystic ovary syndrome or PCOS.

Biochemically, this is what happens when you're insulin resistant:

Here's the breakdown - literally:

1. Let's say you eat a simple carbohydrate such as a cookie.

2. The cookie breaks down to sugar in your bloodstream. Over time, excess sugar from processed carbohydrates creates a coating on the outside of your cells. This coating becomes thicker the more you eat sugar and processed carbohydrates. The coating makes your cells unable to absorb sugar or glucose, so the excess sugar in your body gets stored as body fat, ultimately leading to insulin resistance.

How do you know if you're insulin resistant?

Are you gaining weight around the middle? Or maybe you haven't made any changes in your eating habits, but you are starting to gain weight? These are both indications of insulin resistance. The bad news is that insulin resistance is slowing your metabolism and affecting your health. The good news is that it is reversible.

One way to assess your vulnerability for insulin resistance is to measure your waist to hip ratio. Using a measuring tape, check the measurement around your belly button divided by the measurement around your hips. If that number is greater than 0.8, you most likely have insulin resistance.

How can I stop insulin resistance in my body?

It all starts with your fork. By eating real foods (protein, fat, and carbohydrates) in balance, you can control your blood sugar and reverse insulin resistance.

Insulin resistance doesn't break down overnight, just as it doesn't build up overnight. If you take the balanced eating, low glycemic, non-inflammatory approach, you will be removing the insulin resistance from your body and restoring your metabolism.

Action plan to reset your insulin:

Eliminate added sugar in your diet, and, especially if you're insulin resistant be mindful of higher-sugar whole foods like bananas and grapes. Focus instead on lean protein, healthy fats, and high-fiber foods like leafy greens, lower-glycemic fruits (berries, kiwi), and legumes. Eating protein and fat with your good quality carbs will keep your insulin and glucose steady.

Remove all sweeteners, including artificial ones. One study in the journal Diabetes Care found sucralose (Splenda) could raise glucose and insulin levels. Give up sugar and stevia, aspartame, sucralose, sugar alcohols like xylitol and maltitol, and all of the other heavily used and marketed sweeteners unless you want to slow down your metabolism, gain weight, and increase insulin resistance. Many of us have lost touch with what constitutes "sweet," and we have to retrain our taste buds to appreciate natural sweetness.

Bump up your protein: Higher protein intake helps keep your blood sugar and insulin balanced.

Drink Apple cider vinegar: A recent study found that drinking two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar with filtered water helped reduce blood sugar levels in people with insulin resistance. I think there's no harm in trying it!

Eat plenty of soluble fiber with each meal

Try Intermittent Fasting: IF is an eating pattern that cycles between periods of fasting and eating. It doesn't specify which foods you should eat but rather when you should eat them.

Sit Less: Several recent studies confirm the wisdom of reducing sedentary time and suggest it might be better than a vigorous workout.

Exercise: Burst training - this form of exercise has been shown to lower insulin!

Avoid inflammation: Concentrate on eating an anti-inflammatory diet: high in antioxidants, and low in refined carbs and unhealthy oils.