How to Balance Blood Sugar
For a lot of my patients it’s been a while since they’ve felt a sense of peace in their life and a sense of peace with food. Many of them are struggling with food sensitivities, fatigue, digestive issues, brain fog, weight gain, skin breakouts and the blood sugar roller coaster. They feel constant hunger, yo yo energy levels and have mood and food cravings that make them feel like victims of their eating schedules.
Do you
If you have some of these same challenges and struggle with your relationship with food, then know that you’re not alone. There are certain aspects of our modern lifestyles — like high-sugar foods, long workdays, lack of exercise, and our snacking culture — that can mess with our hunger signals and our common sense about what to eat, when, and how much.
Let’s also add in the high stress, too much screen time and burnout from the past 2 years into the mix and we have a recipe for Constant Carb Cravings. It is a cycle that can be hard to break.
This increasingly common struggle with Mood and Food that I am seeing in my virtual and in person natural functional medicine clinic is one of the reasons I decided to write this blog.
Do you ever feel hungry and irritable if you go a few hours without eating? Or feel like you need consistent hits of sugar, caffeine, and carbs to get you through the day? These are some not-so-subtle signs that your metabolism has become inflexible, which means it’s lost some of its ability to maintain consistent energy levels regardless of the type of food you’re eating.
Constant Stress from your lifestyle and mindset choices causes inflammation, which causes an increase in bacteria in the GI tract and those guys want sugar… Remember also that there is a GUT-BRAIN axis… got brain fog? Look at the Gut connection. Sugar also temporarily calms us down…I know you can all relate to that, which is why we should always consider our feelings and emotions when we deal with our relationship with food. On a side note: Sugar feeds bacteria, yeast and viruses!!
Think of it like this: Your body is a fire, and sugar is kindling. Sugar as fuel provides short, effective bursts of flames to get the fire started, but it’s quick to burn out and you have to constantly replenish it to keep the fire going. In contrast, fat is like a log of firewood. You can put a log in the fire and know that for hours you’ll have a slow and steady fire burning. When your body is desperate for sugar because it can’t rely on burning fat for fuel, you’ll be “hangry” every few hours, no matter how much you eat.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that by making a few key lifestyle changes, you can help restore metabolic flexibility, which means you can keep your fire burning strong and steady so you have consistent energy throughout the day.
As we already learned, metabolic flexibility is your body’s ability to supply your brain and body with energy using either glucose or fat for fuel. When you’re metabolically flexible, you’ll be able to draw on these two fuel sources at will and it will give you a sense of freedom over food. Why? Because it will help you fend off fatigue, brain fog, cravings, crankiness, and blood sugar dips that you experience when you are metabolically inflexible.
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The easiest way to start exploring intermittent fasting is you simply extend the time between dinner and breakfast the next day. You don’t focus on eating less or counting calories — you simply shorten your daily eating window to give your metabolism and gut health a longer break overnight. This — combined with eating fewer simple carbs and more protein and fat — can help your metabolism reset and recharge to be more adaptable. I have to say that the quality of what you eat matters. It should be whole foods, found in nature and not packaged, processed foods with a bunch of chemicals in it.
If you follow the above then you have taken major steps to support your metabolism and hormones so that hunger signals and cravings FINALLY feel under control. And that, allows you to start finding peace of mind with food and changing the relationship you have with it.
It can take a while to Curb those Crazy Sugar cravings and have more energy, lose weight and feel like you are more stable emotionally.
Be kind to yourself and if you need support or are doing all the things I mentioned and still struggling then I am available in clinic in Cedar Park/Leander and virtually via Zoom. I have a mission to help as many people as I can be healthy.
It is the perfect time to hit the renew and refresh button. Good health is our most important asset!!
Have a healthy week
Dr Pia