We know about controlling inflammation for health and weight loss. But fighting inflammation is only half the battle. The second piece of the puzzle is managing the hormone insulin. You must make friends with this hormone before long-term health and weight loss can occur.
All You Need To Know About Insulin
Insulin is a hormone that helps your body store fat. But before you give insulin a piece of your mind, know that fat storage is essential for your survival. If you didn’t store fat, you wouldn’t be able to take breaks from eating to sleep. You wouldn’t have any body insulation in the winter. You would have toxins free floating throughout your body. And your hormones would be completely out of control.
So you see, insulin is pretty cool.
But insulin can quickly become uncool. This happens when outside factors cause your pancreas to produce insulin like a racehorse, increasing your body’s ability to store fat. And with prolonged elevated insulin, your brain eventually stops recognizing that the hormone is in your body. This is kind of like when someone nags you so much that you stop hearing or listening. So your brain asks your pancreas to produce even more of the hormone, not recognizing that it is already there. And what does this do? It puts so much of the hormone into your body that you become a fat-storing machine.
So you need to make friends with your insulin. This will allow you to reduce hormone levels and store less fat.
5 Tips To Balance Your Insulin
1. Differentiate Between Low- And High-Glycemic Carbs
High-glycemic carbohydrates are those that put your body’s insulin production into overdrive. So, the more of these foods you eat, the more your body will become an expert fat accumulator. Low-glycemic carbohydrates are much kinder to your waistline because they elicit a smaller insulin response.
High-glycemic carbohydrates are foods like bread, pasta, bagels, cookies, brownies, and cakes. You can still eat these foods but only in moderation.
2. Avoid Artificial Sweeteners
Artificial sweeteners play a significant role in inflammation. I’ve some more bad news. The brain perceives artificial sweeteners as actual sugar. And this will cause the brain to signal the same production of insulin as when you eat sugar. What does that do? It puts the body in fat-storing mode even though you didn’t consume any calories.
3. Include Helpful Spices
There are certain spices that are helpful in balancing your blood sugar. And as just mentioned, excess sugar in the blood causes an insulin problem. Some helpful spices to eat are cinnamon, ginger, turmeric, and garlic extract.
4. Manage Your Stress
So lots of not-so-great things happen to your body when you’re stressed. One of the side effects of stress is that sugar gets released by your body into your blood. And as has been mentioned a few times, high sugar in the blood puts insulin into overdrive. So you aren’t just gaining weight because you’re stress eating. You’re gaining weight because stress has put your body into fat-storing mode.
5. Add Fats To Your Carbs
I just talked about how high-glycemic carbohydrates disrupt blood sugar. Here’s a quick tip. Add healthy fat to your carbohydrates. The fat will slow the rate of your digestion, meaning less of a blood sugar spike, less of an insulin response, and slower fat storage. Healthy fats don’t make these carbohydrates healthy, but they help lessen their damage. So make sure to butter your bread, but of course, only in moderation.
What You Should Not Do
- Don’t worry about counting calories.
- Don’t feel that you have to eat foods from an entirely different time period.
- Don’t think that you have to completely eliminate carbohydrates.
Focus on two things: fighting inflammation and balancing insulin. Only then will you find yourself with a lasting transformation!
