Insulin Resistance And Why You Aren’t Losing Weight
December 12, 2022Insulin Resistance And Why You Aren't Losing Weight: Insulin is a hormone. We make it. That’s normal. For people who don’t, that’s called type I diabetes.
Insulin’s job is to open your cells to absorb the sugar and nutrients you just ate. You can then use these for fuel. That is why having insulin is so important-we need fuel to live. Insulin is released when we eat and rises in our bloodstream. It is particularly sensitive to carbohydrate intake. If we eat a lot of carbs, we release a lot of insulin. When we stop eating, insulin levels in the bloodstream fall back to baseline. At that point, after we have absorbed the fuel we ate, we can begin to use our own fat for fuel.
As we evolved, the food available was fairly low in carbohydrate compared to what we are offered today. Insulin went up just enough to drive the nutrients into our cells so we could use this energy and then it went back down as we waited for the next meal. That system works well. We eat to release the right amount of insulin and then stop eating so it can drop back to normal levels.
We Currently Live In An Environment That Creates Obesity
We currently live in an environment that is obesogenic-an environment that creates obesity. We eat multiple carbohydrate heavy meals a day, plus snacks, which causes insulin to be released too much and too often. It never has a chance to drop so we never have a chance to access our own fat for fuel. We are always in storage mode, never in release mode. Insulin is not meant to go up as high as our current diet drives it and it is not meant to stay up as high as we keep it with how frequently we eat. The maximum amount of insulin we can generate at any one time can only handle so much carbohydrate. If we consume more than that, what happens to the excess carbohydrate? It is converted to fat and stored. So you have more fat than when you started-each time you eat more carbohydrates than your body can use. Not good, you say? Actually, that’s not even close to the truly bad part.
When we eat more carbohydrate in one go than our insulin stores can keep up with, our bodies try to keep up. We make more insulin. When we eat again, we make even more insulin. If you eat multiple times a day with carbohydrates featuring prominently, you will have a high and steady release of insulin. This is a real problem. This is where insulin resistance starts. Do you know someone who takes their hearing aid out when they don’t want to hear you anymore? They are just done and don’t want to hear what’s going on anymore. Our cells are like that.They can’t continue to “hear” all that insulin. It’s just too much-the cells get overwhelmed. They can’t absorb all the sugar that's being forced into them. They are already overfilled-no more room. So they stop listening. They become resistant to insulin. This leads to the sugar just floating around your body looking for a home. This is the stepping stone to diabetes, a high concentration of sugar in your blood.
Ultimately, your fat cells -always so accommodating - say to all that sugar floating around “C’mon in! ” and the sugar is turned into fat.
Elevated blood sugar is toxic to your organs from eye to toe so your body does try even harder to get that sugar out of the bloodstream and into your cells. The only way to do that is to make more insulin so more insulin is made. And again your body-muscles and liver and organs say “Too much! I cannot handle this!“ and turns down its sensitivity. And again your fat says “We have room! C’mon in!””
You can see where this is going. You become a bigger and bigger storage shed for all that carbohydrate while your insulin goes up and up and up but cannot do the job it was designed to do because your cells are now resistant. Your blood sugar remains up which is diabetes. Now you have obesity, insulin resistance and diabetes.
The good news is that most of this can be reversed. As you can probably guess, getting that insulin level down is the first step. Eating lower carbohydrate foods helps decrease the release of insulin. Eating less frequently allows the insulin level to drop. Getting your insulin level as low as possible for as long as possible is the way out.
My Top 5 Tips For Lowering Insulin Levels:
- Give your insulin a break. Intermittent Fasting means eating all your calories in a defined window of time each day. For example, eat from noon to 8 pm and allow your insulin levels to fall from 8 pm to noon the next day.
- Eat fewer carbohydrate boluses. Keep the amount of carbohydrate in any one serving of a food you eat less than 20 grams. For example, a large iced coffee with cream has almost no carbohydrate. Even if you add a tablespoon of sugar or honey, the whole drink will still have fewer than 20 grams of carbohydrate. (Do not use artificial sweeteners. That’s a topic for another blog post, but for now, just trust me on this one. Don’t do it.)
- Choose foods that keep insulin lower over foods that spike insulin. Eggs instead of a bagel. Sandwich-toss the bread. Cottage cheese instead of chips. Dark chocolate bar instead of cookies. You get the idea. It’s all a matter of choices.
- Don’t go into diet mode. If you view this as restrictive, you won’t follow it for life, but - no exaggeration - your life depends on it. Make it work for you. Figure out how to eat what you want while still keeping your carbohydrate intake to a manageable level. Don’t diet. Don’t think of it as doing without. If it feels like you are doing without, then start intermittent fasting. Eat the thing you want, just eat it in your window.
- Practice “get to” not “have to”. You get to lose fat. You get to improve your health. You get to avoid diabetes. You may even get to throw some medicines in the trash after you drop your blood sugar. Many people did not get the opportunity you have right now, to make things right. You don’t “have to” feel better. You get to.
Cecily FitzGerald, MD, offers online health coaching and weight loss programs at CecilyFitzGeraldMD.com
 | ABOUT THE AUTHOR Cecily FitzGerald, MD, is a board-certified physician in practice for over 30 years. She is a graduate of Cornell University and Eastern Virginia Medical School. Residency trained in Emergency Medicine, she also has fellowship training in Genetics and Clinical Research. She now offers online health coaching and weight loss programs: science based, science backed. CecilyFitzGeraldMD.com |
