How Insulin Resistance Makes Weight Loss Harder
If you’re not diabetic you probably don’t give much thought to what’s going on with your insulin – but for many of us that are struggling to lose weight this important hormone may be the reason weight loss feels so hard.
Lets start from the beginning – don’t worry I will try to make this brief – but I think this part is important to understand, because insulin resistance is fixable!
When we eat carbs, they get broken down into glucose in the body – this is all carbs, whether from a snickers bar, pasta, or fruit. This glucose hits your bloodstream and your blood sugar rises. Insulin is then released to shuttle that glucose to the cells and to get your blood sugar back down to normal.
Insulin resistance is when some of your cells stop responding to insulin the way they’re supposed to. This means the glucose can’t get into the cells to be used as energy and your blood sugar remains high. When this happens your body thinks more insulin must be needed and more gets released.
Now you have high blood sugar AND high insulin…
What does this have to do with weight loss?
Insulin is our fat storage hormone. When its elevated that means our bodies are in storage mode – you can’t be in storage mode and burning mode at the same time.
When you are insulin resistant that means you are in storage mode more often and your body literally can’t use your body fat for energy like it’s supposed to.
This is the trifecta for weight loss struggles, because this means you’re not only more likely to store more fat, but your body is also unable to use the fat you already have stored, but this also makes you hungrier…
Since your body can’t use your body fat when it needs energy, it relies on a constant supply of incoming food to get the fuel it needs, which means you will be hungry more often
This is why its so important to get your insulin levels back in check if weight loss is your goal.
If you want to get your blood sugar and insulin levels back on track check out my free Fat Burning Basics Guide here