How I Reversed Insulin Resistance and Finally Lost Weight For Good (and kept it off for 12 years and counting...)
I remember standing in front of my closet just about in tears, a pile of clothes strewn across my bed. The outfit I had planned to wear to go out with my then boyfriend did NOT look the same on as it did when I pictured it in my head. I scrambled trying to find something else that would work - I really wanted to look cute, but by this point I had given up on that and was just trying to find an outfit that made me look less fat and hid the rolls around my belly and bra strap…
I was so frustrated and disgusted with myself that I didn’t even want to go out anymore…and now I had a big pile of clothes that I had to put away too…ARGH!…
I swear I had been so good… eating those giant, sad salads (dressing on the side to “save calories”, trying to choke down my usual dinner of dried out baked chicken breast and plain steamed broccoli (I still kinda gag thinking about that), working out an hour and half to 2 hours a day, chugging water like it was my job, but the scale? It was stuck and refused to budge…
That was my life. I was convinced I was broken, or my body hated me, or maybe both.
I felt like I had tried everything. I was eating healthy…doing what we’re always told to do. I’d switched out all my breads and pastas to the whole grain versions. Choosing the sugar free fat free yogurt. Eating the oatmeal, drinking the water, getting my steps in…I pushed through the hunger and cravings…
Food combining, Atkins, South Beach, eating only 1200 calories, the cabbage soup diet, low fat…I think I owned every BeachBody workout program that came out (back when they were on dvd)...I was always looking for the next latest greatest diet - each time hoping this would be the one that “worked”.
I might lose a few pounds here or there - but it never stuck. Any time I lost 10 lbs I gain back 15.
I remember one particularly frustrating week. I tracked every single calorie, every single step, every single sip of water. I even skipped dessert at my friend’s birthday party. The scale? Nothing. Not even a tiny flicker. I looked at myself in the mirror and thought, ‘What’s the point?’ I felt like a hamster on a wheel, running as fast as I could, but going nowhere. I’d started to wonder if I was just destined to be overweight forever.
Then, my doctor mentioned insulin resistance. I’d heard the term, but didn’t really know what it meant. My doctor wasn’t much help; she just told me to eat less sugar and lose some weight - which was so helpful since that was the reason I’d gone to see her - I was struggling to lose weight and nothing was working!
But I’m a researcher at heart so I went home and read, watched and listened to everything I could about insulin resistance. And you know what? It actually gave me hope - yes really!
Because it seemed to explain why I had been struggling so much - now I felt like I had some direction on how to fix it. Out of everything I read and heard, the most important thing was that insulin resistance can be reversed. So I got to work… determined to do just that!
Understanding what insulin is and how I became insulin resistant was my first step.
Insulin is a hormone secreted by the pancreas its most famous job (though it has many) is to help keep your blood sugar in a healthy range. Your body can only handle about a teaspoon of sugar in the blood at one time so if you eat sugar or a high carb meal where more than that teaspoon is present in your bloodstream - that extra can be toxic to your body. So insulin has a pretty important job of getting that blood sugar back down.
Insulin shuttles the glucose to the cells that need it or can store it - we have very limited glucose storage in your muscles and liver so any excess needs to be stored somewhere - fortunately or unfortunately we have an almost unlimited ability to store fat. So any excess glucose gets converted to triglycerides and stored in the fat cells.
If your blood sugar and insulin are too high too often your cells can become kind of numb or resistant to insulin - those cells stop responding when insulin shows up and tries to get the glucose in. As I mentioned, if you have high blood sugar it's really important that your body gets that down asap so it releases more insulin to try to get the blood sugar into the cells - but the cells are still ignoring insulin's knock - so now you have high blood sugar and high insulin.
That's when insulin resistance develops.
How does that affect weight loss?
Insulin is a storage hormone - so when your insulin levels are high you’re in “storage mode” meaning you’re gonna store more fat.
And because you can’t be in “storage mode” and “burning mode” at the same time. When insulin is high that means that the body fat that you already have is gonna stay locked up and your body won’t be able to easily access it (the way it should be able to) when you need energy or when you’re trying to get it off your thighs ;P.
Not only does that make fat loss really difficult in and of itself. It adds another added complication when you’re trying to lose weight because if your body can’t access your body fat for energy between meals that means it's going to have to rely on you having a steady stream of food to keep your energy up - that means more hunger and cravings for you.
Can you see how this becomes a vicious circle?
Knowing what was happening was half the battle. Now, I needed to fix it. Here’s what I did, and it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be.
First, the key to improving your insulin sensitivity is to lower your insulin levels. One of the simplest ways to do that is to manage your blood sugar - because if your blood sugar is high, insulin will follow.
So this is where I started:
Goodbye, Sad Salads, Hello Blood Sugar Balancing Meals: Instead of those rabbit-food salads that left me hungry an hour later, I started building meals around protein (steak, ground beef, chicken, salmon, eggs etc), healthy fats (butter,avocado, coconut, olive oils), and non-starchy veggies (broccoli, spinach, peppers). It was amazing how much longer this kept me feeling full and satisfied. It makes weight loss a lot easier when you’re not hungry all the time and trying to rely on willpower to stay on track.
Breaking Up with Snacking: I used to snack every two hours, thinking it was keeping my metabolism “firing” - that's what I was always told. But what that actually did was it kept my blood sugar and insulin elevated all day long - meaning I was also in “storage mode” all day long too. Every time you eat your blood sugar and insulin rise. So just about the time they would start to come back down to baseline, I would eat again and back up they’d go…this happened essentially all day long - no wonder I couldn’t lose weight! Instead I switched to having protein-focused meals that kept me full for several hours rather than snacking and grazing all day.
Protein Power Breakfasts: I used to always have a bowl of cereal, a banana, and a glass of o.j. for breakfast - it was plenty of food - so I couldn’t figure out why I always started to get hungry again an hour later. But turns out, in my body this was basically sugar, sugar, and more sugar. It was spiking my blood sugar and then when insulin did its job and it dropped back down that's when the hunger hit. I was starting each day off on the blood sugar roller coaster. Now, I start my day with something like eggs, bacon and some avocado. That keeps me full until lunch, and I don’t get that mid-morning slump.
Walks After Meals: A great way to help lower your blood sugar naturally after you eat is to go for a walk. It doesn’t even have to be a long walk or a power walk - a 10-15 minute walk after lunch or dinner makes a huge difference. I just go for a short walk around the neighborhood. Not only is this great for lowering my blood sugar but it adds some extra movement to my day (less time being sedentary). I get some fresh air and vitamin D and always feel so much better afterwards - it's a great way to improve your mood and energy.
From Cardio Queen to Building Muscle: I used to spend hours on the treadmill, or doing high impact cardio thinking I was burning tons of calories. I grew up in the 90’s when it was all about the cardio - the more the better…or so we thought. But in actuality you get more bang for your buck metabolically speaking by strength training and building muscle. Not only does building muscle help you to feel strong and empowered but it also takes more energy to maintain muscle so you’re gonna “burn more calories” even when you’re lounging on the couch watching netflix. Having more muscle also helps to manage blood sugar because the more muscle you have the more glucose (glycogen) storage you have. You can think of your muscles like little glucose sponges.
It wasn’t a magic wand, it did take diet and lifestyle change which isn’t always easy - especially at first. But it worked! Now I’ve reversed my insulin resistance and have actually lost the weight that I struggled with for almost 20 years - and I’ve kept the weight off for 12 years and counting - something that felt impossible before. But even better than that I got rid of a lot of health issues, got my energy back, and I feel better now in my 50’s than I ever did in my 20’s and 30’s.
If you’ve been feeling like you’re stuck on that hamster wheel too. If you’re tired of feeling like your body is betraying you, know that there’s hope. You’re not alone. I’ve created a guide that will help you to get started. You can grab your FREE copy here.