Balancing Blood Sugar to Curb Cravings

Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. How's everybody doing? I am a little while into having moved to a suburb of Chicago. We are absolutely loving where we've moved. For those of you that are newer to me, I have a four year old son and where we're living right now. I have never been in a position where we're in walking distance of multiple parks. It's literally magical. So there are so many trails and young families around us.

I've just not ever been in a neighborhood like this, so I'm really enjoying it. I think we also picked a good time to move. Not that that was intentional, but, but with it being summer right now, a lot of people are outdoors and it's just feeling like a really. Magical times. So I'm definitely enjoying that. And then on a funny note, I don't know if a lot of you are familiar, but the time zone difference between Indianapolis versus Chicago, Indianapolis is Eastern time. Chicago is central.

So I have always seen patience in both Indiana and Illinois. So I'm used to that one hour difference. However, I entirely changed and so I tried to change over. Within the clinic, all the different scheduling systems and everything that we use to the new time zone. Of course, one thing got missed, so Monday I dealt with that. But I think now we've worked out all those kinks, so now I have to get used to being on the opposite SI side of the time zone.

So anyway, it's just working through little things like that, you know, kind of getting a house, getting things in it, stuff like that. All right, so let's switch gears and talk about today's topic. And I want to talk about. Why balancing your blood sugar is so important to decreasing food urges and cravings, and also has a big influence on your weight set point today. This is gonna be a super brief look into this.

If you are someone that enjoys this type of stuff, you like to learn this, you like the way in which I do it, I would highly encourage that you get on my email list. We'll have the link in the show notes. Or you can go to rentier clinic.com and you can click on podcast, and right on the right hand side is the email list.

The reason being, I think in a few months from now, I might, and again, I haven't a hundred percent committed to this, but I think that that's what I might do with, with the group in either September or October, where I'm really gonna deep dive into understanding this much more and how to practically implement it.

So today, Is a super two second high level overview, but if you like to deep dive into this and you wanna actually be walked through this, I'm really seeing that the group that I'm doing right now, the Metabolic and Mindset Mastermind, we're doing a lot of this and I'm seeing that there can be so much there can, we can go so much deeper on this topic. So definitely get on that email list if you like this kind of stuff.

Okay, so first of all, why do we care about this? You do not need to be diabetic or pre-diabetic for this to be a concern for you. And one of the things I wanna say that's just super interesting about this area is that we're seeing that blood sugar management has a huge impact as far as things developing like dementia in the future. So, Caring about these type of things.

It's not only about your weight, you know, it's not only about not passing away at an early age, it's about brain health and other things like that. And a lot of the reason when people come to work with me as a patient or a coaching client, they really are so distressed by. Having food urges and cravings all the time, meaning they're not hungry, but they want specific foods and it's a really strong calling to that. The other name that you could give, this is a, a brain chatter or food noise.

It's this constant, what am I gonna eat? When am I going to eat? How am I going to eat? What are they gonna have there? It's this preoccupation with it, and it ends up not only people's weight is not where they want it to be, which is almost secondary, but it's just so much energy that's going into managing this. And

one of the best ways that I know to help people with this is to help them more toward an unprocessed diet. And I'll talk about what that means, less ultra processed food, because when you do that, your insulin levels are not up as much and we're seeing that insulin. Is really greatly tied. Number one, to being able to know your satiety, hormone signaling, meaning if you're hungry or, or you've had enough. But the other big thing is it usually dictates where your weight set point is.

Now, part of this is complicated to understand because if you're overweight, most people have insulin resistance. Uh, again, majority of people you could have labs checked. It's only a small percentage that won't be affected by this. So even if your three month average blood sugar, which is called hemoglobin a1c, Even if that's normal. Even if your morning fasting blood sugar is normal, there are labs you can have checked, right? Let's say all of that is normal.

If we were to check a fasting insulin level, that would be up years before those other lab abnormalities ever show up. So the way I like to say, it's like a dam that eventually breaks, right? Like there's only so much water that the dam can hold before it's just like, right, that's the sugar spilling over when you're seeing pre-diabetes or diabetes. So how do we. In someone that's overweight, where their insulin is up, there's a resistance there.

You've got a ton around, but you're not answering to it. How is it that we can help bring down some of these levels? So of course weight loss helps. It's like, but thanks, captain. Obvious. You know, okay, great. If I lose weight, insulin comes down. But on a practical day-to-day level, the way that you can help kind of break this cycle, there are many ways. You know, one of it is movement, exercise.

Another really practical way that you can do this is to decrease the ultra processed food consumption that you have. So those are things like chips and candy and bread and pasta. Now, I am in no way saying that those are bad foods and other foods are good foods, but I'd just like you to physic physiologically understand what they're doing to your body. So every time you have, again, it's that manmade food. Let's just take.

Chips, for example, every time you have that, or like a cracker, you are jacking up your blood sugar and so it's normal that your body needs to produce more insulin to bring it down so that you don't have pre-diabetes or diabetes. Well, every time you do that, The insulin is constantly spiking because people are usually having processed food with every single meal they're having snacks.

It's really in every single aspect of our, of our culture because, I really think that the food industry's made it very normalized that everything needs to be in a package. Things like that. People are not really eating fruits and veggies and. Sort of, plant or, or animal based proteins. It's not really how people are living nowadays. And so the problem is that throughout the day, the insulin is much higher than it always needs to be.

And your blood, it's having to work overtime, so your blood sugar's going up and down. That blood sugar going up and down really leads.

You also usually to have a certain emotional response, meaning you'll be sort of more fatigued during some parts of the day and you feel really good after you have a candy bar and then you have a crash and you don't really know why you're irritable, but it's been a little while since you've had food and then you feel shaky and it's just this like up and down and up and down. And a lot of this, again, it's because

I. We are this ancient brain and body, but we're in this really modern world. It's like we didn't have time to catch up with what's happening in our environment. And so your, your brain, your body, your gut, your hormones, none of it has really caught up to this ultra processed food. Now, the challenges, it's absolutely everywhere. And a lot of people, you know, we've really been kind of, I don't know if we wanna say brainwashed, but we like a lot of these things, right?

They're, they're modern conveniences. We like the taste of it, things like that. And so what I always say is this, if it's working for you, no problem. Nothing. I'm gonna say from here on out matters for you. So if your weight is where you want and your metabolic health is where you want, you just keep going.

But if you are someone that you're struggling with, You want certain types of food all day long that you know don't support you the best, and you just feel tired and exhausted and you don't feel good and your weight is up and you can't release weight, all of those kind of things. Moving more toward an unprocessed diet would likely be super beneficial because your insulin levels would be down. And again, I get way more into this within programs when I work with people.

It's just too much to put on the podcast, but your insulin levels are down. And most people are able to start to release weight and it's easier for them. It's not this constant struggle, but how do you go from where you're at right now more toward that, right? Like that is the main struggle. So I think that. There are two ways to eat less processed food, and I want to recommend that you go about it in this way and I'll explain why with each of these.

So the first strategy that I recommend, it's add, don't subtract. So if you are someone that you're having like, like I'm always gonna give you an example so we can just kind of think specifically. Let's say that you're someone at night. Where you really like to have crackers and that's all you're having. You're just having like a big bowl of crackers, but you're not hungry in any way, but it's almost like this compulsion that you want to go eat that.

What I would say is first add, don't subtract. So let's balance that out instead of having a hundred percent something ultra processed where you're having a ton of car ball at once. Let's give a little bit of protein and fiber first. So you will hear me talk a lot about this. I feel like every episode I mentioned this, but if you can do maybe a little bit of, if you can do a little bit of Greek yogurt with some ranch powder you, maybe you can dip it in there again, you get some protein.

Could you do a few carrots with that before? Could you do, a little bit of cheese, sub nuts? What else can we do? Even if it's just a bite or two, or maybe some veggies. Before you do that, what we know, and I'll say the book specifically, where it goes over this.

If you start with veggies first, if you start with savory first, if you balance with protein and fiber first, and then you have those other things, even if it's the same amount of crackers. You end up decreasing that the spike that happens with blood sugar, and again, this matters because you're starting to metabolically heal things. And so some of you might look at it and say, well, I'm getting more calories if I do that, but here's what I wanna say.

If I go to you and I say, do not have those crackers at night, it tends to feel very restrictive. People feel like they can't stick with it. They say, you know, everything I love is being taken away. But if we start with balancing things, here's what I typically see at first. You're adding in that extra stuff and what ends up happening is because overall, later that evening, the next morning, the next day or two, you're feeling so much better.

You don't feel that you need so many of those crackers. So maybe the amount of crackers goes down cuz you feel more even with the other stuff, or you just in general. You are not being run so much by those urges and cravings cuz things are being balanced. So I would always say add, don't subtract. The second thing I always say is add a friend. So if you're having, and again, it's the same concept, right? So whichever, whichever one resonates more with you.

But when I say add a friend, it would be, again, if you are gonna have. With dinner, you're like, I'm just thinking of mac and cheese again. Can we add, some salad first? Can we add some veggies and some protein so we don't have these ultra processed carbs, unopposed without other things? Again, it's always about blood sugar doesn't get jacked up as much urges and cravings are down and you feel so much better.

I think the simplest, best book to go over this, it's the Glucose Goddess Method, and I will go ahead and link it. She actually wrote a book, the Glucose Revolution a while back, but this book really simply breaks it down into kind of like four steps that you could try if this is something that really resonates with you. She has a lot of studies in there as well that I think are really amazing. You know, I wanna try to get her on the podcast.

I don't, I don't know if that's possible, but I know she's doing a lot of book tour things right now. She's really, has a big social media presence, but I think she's really someone good to look at. If you want inspiration for how to do this, now, you hear me say this all the time. You take what works and you drop the rest. So read through it, see what makes intuitive sense to you. See what would be realistic in your world.

But what I wanna encourage you is that, No matter where you fall on the spectrum, you always start with, this is what I'm doing. Working. Yes. Then forget everything. If it's not, then my first recommendation would be if you're either trying to have less urges and cravings, have a more healthy relationship with food, you want to release weight and keep it off, things like that, then I would say, let's try to first support your physiology. With add, don't subtract and add a friend.

Let's, let's balance things out. Don't be eliminating everything to start out with. Everyone has this urge to do radical overhauls. It's al, it's almost, it's almost just the way that the human brain thinks. It's like everything's gotta change all at once. It never sticks around. It never accounts for your taste preferences, all the things that are going into the way in which you're eating, how you're eating, how you enjoy to eat. It doesn't take any of that into account.

Start with doing this balancing approach and then see after two, three weeks, maybe a month, am I willing to maybe get rid of a snack if I'm not hungry? Then you can say, look, you are feeling so much more balanced overall. Are you willing to then, is that the next upgrade where you get rid of it? But most people, If I tell you in the beginning, go ahead and just eliminate it. You know, I say, well, you're not, you're not physically hungry.

We've talked before about emotional versus physical hunger. The way you know the difference is, would a hard boiled egg or something. I have zero desire for a cheese stick. An apple would, that's all this hunger. If yes, you go ahead and eat, if not, Then, and I'm still wanting to eat, right? So it's emotional hunger, but I'm still wanting to eat. Okay, fine. But can we balance it? Trust me when I say your physiology will start to be supported. More blood sugar's not going up as much.

Insulin levels are down and you're gonna feel a whole lot better. Okay, this was just a little, a little starter into this. So I think the Glucose Goddess Method can be a really great book to start with. The other one that's just an absolute. Original in this space, if you really like much more scientific approach, it's reading the Obesity Code by Dr. Jason Fung. Really great book.

He's even come out with a second one now, but that really explains a lot of the different hunger hormones, where the research comes from. I think it is fascinating and again, you always take what works and drop the rest because you don't need to be doing intermittent fasting and all of this other stuff if you're already doing a lot of emotional eating. Please don't set yourself up for yet another fad diet.

So the way in which I work with people, it's always really being very aware and realistic of where people are at. Really helping them feel safe and calm with how they're going about these changes and not doing radical overhauls that we just know from behavior science. It does not work. All right, I'm gonna go ahead and leave it there.

I just wanna remind you, if you love this kind of stuff, get on my email list because I think I can never guarantee, but I think that is sort of the direction that I would love to explore more with the group coming up in the fall time here. So if that sounds like fun to you, go ahead and make sure that you're on that list. Otherwise, I hope you all have a great rest of the week and we'll talk soon.