If you had to guess what the key to your health, energy, and hormonal balance is, what would you guess? Wait for it – it’s balancing Your Blood Sugar!
Why should I care about balanced blood sugar? And how do I get it balanced?
What happens to your body when your blood sugar is high? Does it really matter… or is blood sugar something only diabetics and pre-diabetics need to care about?
Let’s start with how blood sugar works.
When you eat a meal or snack, your blood sugar (aka blood glucose) increases, which signals your pancreas to release insulin. Insulin then works like a key that unlocks the door to each of your cells to let glucose in. Once in the cells, glucose then fuels the cells of your body.
With insulin resistance, your cells become overloaded with sugar and no longer respond to insulin. It’s as if the lock to the door has been changed and the key no longer works.
Essentially, insulin (the key) no longer fits in the keyhole and sugar gets locked out of your cells leaving the sugar circulating in your bloodstream.
Excess glucose then builds up in your bloodstream, causing high blood sugar levels. What’s worse, the excess sugar gets stored as fat.
In the meantime, your brain, muscles, and cells are starving because glucose is their main fuel source, and it is not being processed properly.
As a result, your brain drives cravings for sweets because it needs quick fuel. What does this lead to? Grabbing a quick, junky snack that is usually full of sugar.
And the cycle continues – this is known as insulin resistance. Such blood sugar fluctuations result in persistent fatigue or exhaustion, hormonal imbalances, cravings, weight gain, and metabolic dysfunction.
The good news? Insulin resistance is both preventable and reversible through diet and exercise! In fact, losing 5 to 7% of your body weight and walking for 30 minutes each day have been shown to reverse insulin resistance.
Once insulin resistance deteriorates to diabetes, however, it becomes a much more difficult condition to reverse through diet and lifestyle choices. When possible, the key is to fix the problem before it gets the upper hand.
Your food is naturally made of 3 macronutrients: proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. All macronutrients are broken down by the body at slightly different rates of time.
Sugary, refined carbohydrates breakdown extremely fast compared to foods with fiber, proteins, and fat. Because of this, when you consume sugary foods or refined carbohydrates by themselves, you are susceptible to big spike in your glucose and insulin levels followed by a CRASH.
Think of your metabolism like a campfire. If you only made the campfire with kindling, the fire would burn out quickly and you would have to keep putting more kindling on to keep the fire going. Think of carbohydrates as kindling.
To get a campfire up and roaring, you need big logs as well as kindling. The big logs are akin to protein. Each day, you want to have protein for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Think of protein as the big logs that keep your fire burning all day.
How can you avoid spikes and crashes in your blood glucose levels?
Great news! Avoiding the blood sugar spike and crash cycle really is not that tough.
Start by choosing whole foods that are:
- Close to their natural state
- Minimally processed
- Nutrient- and mineral-rich
- Contain protein
- Contain healthy fats
- Contain fiber
By including protein, healthy fats, and fiber, you are slowing down the rate that food is being broken down by your digestive system and how fast glucose will enter your bloodstream.
A slower breakdown makes for a more steady release of glucose over a longer duration of time. This steady release of glucose helps to:
✨ Significantly boost your energy levels throughout the day
✨ Balance your hormones
✨ Eliminate cravings
✨ Keep you feeling fuller, longer
✨ Kick that “hangry feeling”!
✨ Keep your immune system strong
What about fruit and starchy vegetables?
Maybe you have been told that there’s too much sugar in fruit and starchy vegetables. Should you cut them out of your diet?
Fruit and starchy veggies are a terrific source of nutritious carbohydrates and prebiotics (not to be confused with probiotics). Let’s take a step back and talk about carbs.
Remember, SIMPLE carbohydrates are “white” foods made with sugar, white flour, and highly refined ingredients. We want to avoid these foods. Except for the occasional celebration or holiday.
BUT whole grains, fruits and starchy veggies are made of COMPLEX carbohydrates and are generally good sources of fiber.
Some of my favorite complex carbohydrates are sweet potatoes, brown rice, quinoa, organic oats, root vegetables, and berries.
In order to keep your blood sugar stable, the trick is to enjoy complex carbohydrates along with fats and/or proteins. And to make sure that you’re keeping your carb portion size to ½ cup.
For example, rather than having a large sweet potato topped with butter, walnuts, and Craisins ALONE for dinner, instead have a palm sized portion of protein, half your plate full of non-starchy vegetables, and a half a cup of sweet potato. And, you still get to enjoy the butter, walnuts and sprinkle of Craisins, if you’d like!
Ok, so we’re getting the hang of this and it definitely seems manageable! Let’s explore some additional aspects of blood sugar balance.
Have you heard about glycemic index or glycemic load?
What is the Glycemic Index?
The Glycemic Index (GI) is a tool that’s often used to promote better blood sugar balance.
The Glycemic Index is a way to measure how 50 grams of carbohydrate of a certain food will cause your blood sugar levels to rise. Foods are measured according to how quickly they raise your blood sugar. The higher the GI, the more it contributes to blood sugar imbalances.
We know that rapid glucose conversion is something you want to avoid, as your body performs best when sugar levels stay steady. Although your brain and your body need glucose for fuel, too much too fast is not healthy.
Several factors influence the GI of a food including its nutrient composition, cooking method, ripeness, and amount of processing it has undergone. Fat, fiber, and acid (such as lemon juice or vinegar) will reduce the GI of foods. The longer you cook starches like pasta, the higher their GI will be.
Combining foods at the same time can bring down the overall glycemic index of a meal too. For example, by combining a high-glycemic index food with low-glycemic index foods. Additionally, your age, how active you are, and how fast you digest food also affect how your body reacts to carbs.
The GI not only helps you increase your awareness of what you’re putting on your plate but also allows you to further consider the impact of a food on your blood glucose levels.
This is how GI ratings are measured:
Low: 55 or less
Medium: 56 – 69
High: 70 and above
Pure Glucose: 100
Foods high in refined carbohydrates and sugar are digested more quickly and often have high GI, while foods higher in protein, fat, or fiber typically have lower GIs.
Foods without carbohydrates are not assigned a GI. These include meat, fish, poultry, nuts, seeds, herbs, spices, and oils.
Keep in mind that Glycemic Index is different from Glycemic Load.
Glycemic Index vs. Glycemic Load
To avoid blood sugar spikes and crashes, your diet should include more low GI foods—foods with a value between 0 and 55 on the GI scale—such as nuts, most vegetables, whole organic oats, and berries.
You can also include some medium GI foods (those between 56 and 70 on the GI scale) like brown rice, whole wheat bread (preferably sprouted), and most fruits.
Foods on the high end of the GI scale— over 71+, are typically heavy in refined carbohydrates and should be consumed only in small amounts such as white bread, white potatoes, and sugar-sweetened foods.
Frequently eating foods that cause your blood sugar levels to rise quickly will cause your body to store more fat!
What is Glycemic Load?
Glycemic Load is a measure that takes into account the quality AND quantity of carbohydrates in specific foods – how high the food will raise your blood sugar along with how many carbohydrates are in the food you are eating.
The GI indicates how quickly a food will raise your blood sugar after eating it. But the GI isn’t the only thing to consider when making choices about what to eat.
Having low GI doesn’t mean a food is healthy, or that you should eat a lot of it. Vitamins, minerals, fiber, and other nutrients are still important.
Glycemic Load (GL) measures the rise in blood sugar based on the number of carbohydrates the food contains in an average serving.
GL helps you to know how much the carbs you’re eating are likely to raise your blood sugar. Less than 10 is a low GL; more than 20 is a high GL.
Highest Glycemic Load foods include: white bread, bagels, pasta, white rice, white potatoes, pancakes, waffles, candies, baked goods, sweetened drinks
Lower Glycemic Load foods include: whole grains, nuts, legumes, berries, non-starchy vegetables
When using the Glycemic Load as a reference for your food, keep in mind that foods between 10 and 20 on the glycemic load are considered moderate and will not keep your blood glucose levels elevated for long periods of time.
Foods with a glycemic load higher than 20, however, should be eaten only from time to time, as they will spike blood sugar levels and keep them elevated for longer. Having rapid blood sugar spikes and crashes will cause you to feel exhausted and hangry.
The Bottom Line:
The Glycemic Index ranks foods from 1-100 based on how quickly they are digested and raise your blood sugar levels.
The Glycemic Load, on the other hand, takes the amount of carbohydrates (in grams) in a single serving into account.
By including the amount of carbs, you’ll have a better sense of how your body is processing a serving. Glycemic Load is more accurate than the Glycemic Index in predicting how your body will process sugar.
What about Fructose?
Believe it or not, fructose is considered to be a low Glycemic Index food, with a value of 19, meaning it causes less insulin secretion than glucose.
In fact, naturally occurring fructose is actually ranked lowest on the GI scale of all natural sugars.
This is because fructose does not raise blood glucose levels, but rather blood fructose levels. At first, that may sound like a good thing.
High levels of fructose in your body, however, can cause cell damage. Surprisingly, excess fructose in your body causes 7x more cell damage than excess glucose, and it releases 100 times the number of oxygen radicals! It’s much more damaging to your body than glucose.
This is another reason why you have to be careful when judging foods solely by their Glycemic Index value. Excess fructose consumption isn’t good for you, even though its Glycemic Value is only 19.
You’ve heard the controversy about High Fructose Corn Syrup – this is even more damaging to your health than regular fructose.
According to Dr. Mark Hyman, even “when used in moderation, HFCS is a major cause of heart disease, obesity, cancer, dementia, liver failure, tooth decay, and more.”
For more in-depth reading on HFCS, check out Dr. Hyman’s article “5 Reasons High Fructose Corn Syrup Will Kill You”.