Blood Sugar and Weight Loss- Critical Link You Need to Know
What does blood sugar and weight loss have to do with each other? While these two aspects of health might not be obviously related, they actually have EVERYTHING to do with each other. Keep reading to know what you might be doing that is sabotaging your weight loss efforts and what you can start doing TODAY.
The Most Common Weight Loss Tactics That Don’t Last
If you’re like most of my clients, then you’ve probably tried these common weight loss tactics over and over again. You:
drop your calories lower and lower until it’s just too uncomfortable or maybe even stops resulting in weight loss, and so you feel totally stumped and at your whit’s end.
commit for a few weeks at a time through sheer “willpower”, but inevitably that initial spark of willpower-focused motivation inevitably falls away.
skip meals to try to reduce calorie intake and save room for later, only to find yourself craving way more food later at night. This overeating cycle feels hard to break.
So did any of these tactics ultimately work for you over the long term? Are you able to comfortably maintain a healthier weight now? Are you confident in how to eat for healthy weight management?
Again, if you’re like most of my clients, then the answer is probably a resounding NO!
The Missing Piece that Leads to Successful, Sustainable Weight Loss
What if I told you that blood sugar imbalances are sabotaging your weight loss efforts?
Blood sugar imbalances do the following:
Drive up cravings, which willpower cannot override.
Lead to low energy, which makes you want more sugar to get a quick hit of energy. And low energy is a motivation nightmare.
Block body fat burn. Yep, even if you are reducing your calories, if your blood sugar is all over the place, your body cannot access your body fat as a source of energy. This means that your body will crave more food, especially more carbs and sugar, because it can’t get what it needs from your body fat storage. So, if you actually reduce calories before you get your blood sugar balanced, you can create a vicious cycle of no weight loss, low energy, and more cravings. Hello stalled weight loss!
Hopefully I have intrigued you to want to know HOW you can balance your blood sugar better so that you can FINALLY achieve the sustainable weight loss you are dying to get. Because you can’t lose weight unless we start to support blood sugar balance. Balanced blood sugar and weight loss go together. This is essential for EVERYONE, not just people who already have prediabetes or diabetes.
Finding this balance is also the most fundamental need in addressing PCOS, which is much more a metabolic health problem at the root that has reproductive hormone side effects, rather than a reproductive hormone issue as a root cause.
So what is going on in your body when blood sugar is out of balance? How does blood sugar imbalance stall weight loss? Keep reading to learn more!
What is Blood Sugar?
Every cell in our body requires glucose, which is another word that is interchangeable with blood sugar. Our body is always transporting glucose throughout our blood vessels transporting it to whatever cell is calling for it.
Foods that raise blood sugar
Where does this glucose come from? It comes from the food that we eat in the form of carbohydrates. Carbohydrates (carbs) = components of food that get broken down into sugar in our bodies. Foods that are made up of mostly carbs include: sugar, sweeteners, grains, fruit, pastries, sweet treats, pasta, bagels, pretzels, crackers, beans, and milk too.
If not used for energy immediately, your body turns that sugar into stored energy. Some of that stored energy is glycogen, a quick energy source in the liver and muscles. However, when sugar is in excess to what the body needs at the moment, the body stores excess sugar as body fat.
A very important point: it’s both the dose of sugar AND how quickly that sugar gets absorbed into the bloodstream that matter. A large dose will dump a lot of sugar into the bloodstream. A quickly absorbed dose, even if somewhat small, will dump a lot of sugar into the bloodstream at one time. And then once in the bloodstream, the sugar signals to the body to release the hormone insulin.
What is Insulin Resistance?
Insulin is the hormone behind the fat storage process described above. In a well-functioning body, occasional spikes in blood sugar aren’t a big deal. The body should be able to appropriately respond to higher blood sugar levels by increasing insulin levels in order to get excess sugar out of the bloodstream. Insulin is like the key that opens the doors to cells so that sugar in the blood can rush inside. This helps keep the body in homeostasis, or balance. The body desires to keep a tight range of sugar levels in the blood to feel its best and work optimally. However, it’s not healthy to create these increased levels often.
High Insulin Levels (Hyperinsulinemia) and its damaging effects
Frequent spikes in blood sugar will lead to frequently high levels of insulin in the blood. This is known as hyperinsulinemia (“high insulin in the blood”). The increased levels of both blood sugar and insulin are problematic, leading to dysfunction such as cellular damage, hormone imbalances, gut disturbances, weight gain, and inflammation. These types of dysfunction can eventually cause insulin resistance.
So what is insulin resistance?
It’s when the body (cells, organs, etc) stop responding as efficiently to the insulin hormone. It’s a vicious cycle:
high blood sugar –> high insulin –> metabolic dysfunction creating high blood sugar & insulin –> compounding effects leading to insulin resistance.
Recall that the body wants to maintain a tight range of blood sugar. So if the “key” (insulin) isn’t working well, the body will make more keys (more insulin) to get this job done. Thus, blood sugar levels may appear in normal range during routine bloodwork, but insulin levels are on the rise. Unfortunately, insulin levels are so infrequently checked, so this phenomenon is often missed.
**It is important to note that a person with frequently high levels of insulin may not yet have “insulin resistance” according to calculations of insulin resistance levels. However, do this long enough and the dysfunction accumulates, leading to eventual insulin resistance.**
Conditions associated with Insulin Resistance
Insulin resistance is associated with numerous conditions, such as:
PCOS
Weight gain and weight loss resistance
High cholesterol
High blood pressure
Hypothyroidism
Type 2 Diabetes
Alzheimer’s disease
The Shocking Truth About Blood Sugar Labs
For those who have been told, “You’re blood sugar is “normal” “
You might be saying, “Victoria, my doctor told me that my blood sugar was normal the last time I had a test done”. Or, “my doctor told me my results were fine!” But there is actually more to the story. Here is what you need to know about the common labs that doctors order.
All too often clients tell me that they were told everything was “fine” and that all their labs looked “normal” in the past by the doctors. But when I actually comb through their lab results, there are often several issues that arise.
2 most critical errors with bloodwork tests
Minimal lab markers were tested
Conventional reference ranges for what is “normal” are wildly broad and therefore don’t catch problems before they’re an emergency
This is incredibly common with blood sugar regulation testing. I need you to ask for more!
Blood Sugar and Weight Loss Uncovered: Case Study Example
A client’s recent fasting blood glucose was 92 mg/dL. Her doctor told her this was “fine” because the normal range most labs use for “norma” blood sugar is under 100.
However, optimal blood sugar levels should actually be 75-90 mg/dL!
But because that was all that her doctor decided to test, my client never got encouragement to make changes to support blood sugar balance because “all was well”.
However, my client came to work with me and we decided to test for additional markers, including HbA1c and insulin. The results?
HbA1c: 5.7%
Fasting Insulin: 10.5
A HbA1c (Hemoglobin A1c) of 5.7% is already prediabetic! So that was an easy discovery of blood sugar imbalance. The optimal range for HbA1c is less than 5.3%.
Additionally, we tested her fasting insulin, which is not a common test doctors order but one that I encourage all my clients to get (I can help you with getting those labs too if needed – click here). We found that her fasting insulin was 10.5! The optimal range for fasting insulin is less than 8. With this additional lab marker, it became very clear that this woman actually had insulin resistance even though her doctor shared with her that everything was “fine”.
The Essential Need to Test Fasting Insulin to Support Blood Sugar and Weight Loss
Your bloodwork may look “normal”, but you can still have blood sugar imbalances impacting your weight. AND, from an optimal range perspective, really anything over 90-95 for fasting blood sugar is already too high!
Let’s then look at fasting insulin. While the standard lab range did not flag my client’s 10.5 number was as “high”, when we used the RIGHT methods to interpret the WHOLE picture (like using the HOMA-IR calculation), we saw that she was ALREADY insulin resistant!
Of course, her HbA1C (hemoglobin A1C) is already showing 5.7% which is pre-diabetic. But for many people, this marker might not yet be high even though insulin resistance is already occurring.
NONE of this would have been caught if just the typical fasting blood sugar was tested for. And of course, she doesn’t feel “fine”! She had been struggling with weight loss resistance and low energy for a long time. That’s why she sought my help with an integrative & functional medicine approach. This now helps us direct her nutrition treatment plan to really support reducing insulin resistance.
Takeaways of Blood Sugar and Weight Loss:
There is more to the story!
We need comprehensive testing.
We need to be strategic with interpreting results to support OPTIMAL health, not wait till emergencies happen.
Request to have your fasting insulin checked along with the other typical labs!
Better testing → more accurate results → better outcomes
How Do You Balance Your Blood Sugar for Weight Loss?
The easy thought is to cut all carbs, right? And perhaps you have been on this weight loss journey already and have tried this with no big results or because it became impossible to sustain.
Blood sugar balance is more than just cutting out the sugar.
Here’s why:
Sweets and other sugary foods and drinks CAN: raise blood sugar → increase insulin levels → cause weight gain
But only focusing on avoiding these foods often leaves women still struggling with weight. Why? You have to understand the more complex nature of how your metabolism functions to regulate your blood sugar. It’s not just a matter of pulling out sugar or just the carbs. Carbs may need to be reduced overall, BUT… you need to ADD foods that stabilize blood sugar to prevent the spikes and the lows. Pairing protein, fat, and fiber (PFF) is the first step to help prevent big swings in blood sugar.
Download your FREE Protein, Fat & Fiber Guide to get started on this FIRST essential step and prerequisite to get balanced blood sugar and weight loss you can sustain.
How to Control Your Sugar Cravings to Get Balanced Blood Sugar and Weight Loss
This graph below shows big spikes in blood sugar that occur when you eat a meal that is high in overall carbohydrates AND does not have a balance of protein, fat, and fiber. This led to high blood sugar shortly after the meal, followed by a rapid decline in blood sugar.
High blood sugar → increased insulin → body fat gain
which makes you…DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN — all in the same day!
Do you ever feel this? The rollercoaster of low energy, cravings, irritability, and reaching for a quick pick-me-up? And gaining weight or stuck in a weight rut, on repeat? Even if you work out and try to eat less calories, this rollercoaster has you LOCKED IN!
But in this graph below, you can see the effects of a meal including protein, fat, and fiber with a more moderate portion of carbohydrates. This led to stable blood sugar after the meal.
Stable blood sugar → normal insulin → enables weight loss or weight stability
This leads to…
good mood, great energy, no cravings, and normal hunger cues.
This, makes you feel AMAZING, your effort works, and you’re successful at weight loss! Aiming for blood sugar balance is for EVERYONE!
Bottom Line
Balanced blood sugar and weight loss go hand in hand. We cannot achieve weight loss without balanced blood sugar.
If cutting carbs has been your only tactic to support blood sugar and weight loss, then you are in for a treat! Instead of focusing on what to CUT out of your diet, start focusing on what to get ENOUGH of in your diet (protein, fat, and fiber). This simple perspective shift is what makes hundreds of my clients successful in achieving balanced blood sugar and weight loss.
Easily start to balance your blood sugar TODAY for sustainable weight loss
Download your FREE Protein, Fat & Fiber Guide to get started on this FIRST essential step and prerequisite to sustainable weight loss.
