How To Lose Your First 10 lbs With Insulin Resistance
"Feeling tired all the time? Craving sugary snacks? Struggling to lose weight, no matter what you try? If this sounds familiar, you might be dealing with insulin resistance.
Insulin resistance can make it difficult to manage your weight and energy levels. The good news is that with the right approach, you can take control of your health, boost your energy levels, and get the scale moving in the right direction again.
Let’s explore some practical tips and strategies that can help you lose your first 10 pounds, get your energy back, and feel better overall. Let’s get started!
Understanding Insulin Resistance
When you eat carbs - any carbs - whether it's a banana, a granola bar, or a piece of cake - it gets broken down into glucose in your body. As that happens your blood sugar rises. A hormone called insulin gets released to shuttle that glucose to the cells that need it. When you are insulin resistant some of the cells of your body stop responding to insulin the way they’re supposed to so the glucose can’t get in and your blood sugar remains high.
Since it's important for your body to keep your blood glucose tightly regulated (too much can be toxic) your pancreas releases more insulin to try to get the glucose into the cells. Now you have high blood sugar and high insulin.
How Does This Affect Weight Loss?
Insulin is a “storage” hormone. When it's high you’re in storage mode. You can’t be in storage mode and burning mode at the same time. This means when insulin is high you’re going to store more fat and the body fat that you already have stored stays locked up.This can make it difficult to lose weight, even with diet and exercise.
But that's not the only way that high insulin levels can make weight loss more difficult - when your body isn’t able to tap into your body fat for energy (like it should be able to) that means your body has to rely on a steady stream of food to get the energy it needs. This means more hunger and cravings for you. That’s why you often have to rely on willpower to stay on track.
So, how do we break this cycle and start losing those extra pounds? Let's dive into some practical tips that can help you achieve your weight loss goals.
The key to reversing insulin resistance is to keep insulin low. Now let's be clear insulin is not the bad guy - we actually can’t live without it. It just becomes a problem when it's too high too often. One of the simplest ways to lower insulin is to manage your blood sugar.
Keep Carbs In Check
Since carbs have the biggest impact on your blood sugar (of the 3 food macros - fat, protein, carbs) keeping your carbs in check is a great place to start.
Again it's important to note that carbs are not the devil either, but many of us eat more than our bodies need or can use. Or maybe better put, we’re eating too many of the wrong types of carbs too often - in the form of ultra processed foods.
Because of their processed nature these foods get broken down quickly so tend to have a bigger, faster impact on your blood sugar. They are also specifically designed to make you want to eat more and crave them more, making them very easy to overeat.
When following a typical standard American type diet it's really easy to eat upwards of 300g of carbs per day. Check out the carb curve below to see where that can lead you.
You can usually see a pretty significant difference by lowering your carb intake to 100g or less/day. That's a lot easier to do when you focus on eating real whole food carbs like non-starchy veggies, low sugar fruits (like berries), nuts, seeds, and dairy.
Another helpful tip is don’t eat naked carbs - as in carbs by themselves. When you pair carbs with protein or fat for example you have some apple slices with some almond butter or cheese - it can help to slow the impact on your blood sugar.
Have a high protein breakfast
When you start your day with things like cereal, bagels, muffins etc you start your day off on the blood sugar rollercoaster - which is going to cause more hunger, cravings, and energy crashes. Then you spend your whole day trying to get off that ride - it's miserable.
I used to have a big bowl of cereal, a banana and a glass of orange juice for breakfast. It sounds like plenty of food right? That's why I couldn’t figure out why I always started to get hungry again like an hour later. By an hour and half or 2 hours later - I was STARVING! I’d have to whiteknuckle for another hour or 2 til I could have my snack and by then I was ravenous - it didn’t make sense.
Except it did. Because according to my body my breakfast basically consisted of sugar, sugar and more sugar so it caused my blood sugar to elevate quite quickly and the drop down just as fast which was when the hunger would set in.
When I started having a high protein breakfast instead I was able to stay off that roller coaster. Because protein takes longer to break down and digest it had a much more gradual impact on my blood sugar and it helped to keep me fuller longer. I was shocked when I found that I could easily go 5-6 hours before I got hungry again.
Blood Sugar Balancing Meals
When you have PFF meals - meaning building them around Protein, (healthy) Fat, and Fiber. This will also help to keep your blood sugar stable and that protein-fat-fiber combo is a gamechanger for helping to keep you feeling satisfied for longer.
I can tell you that losing weight is a lot easier when you’re not hungry and thinking about food all the time!
All you have to do is choose a protein. Animal proteins are going to be the most satiating and bioavailable. Then choose a healthy fat to cook it in and to add some flavor. Pretty simple so far right? Then just choose a non-starchy veggie or two to add that fiber and variety. Veggies are another great vehicle for some healthy fats - add some butter to your steamed veggies. Make a dressing using olive or avocado oils to add to your salad. Saute some veggies in some bacon fat. Get creative!
Have Meals vs Snacking and Grazing All Day
Have you heard that you should eat every couple hours or do that meal-snack-meal-snack thing to keep your metabolism “firing”? I did that for years and can’t help but think that that contributed both to my difficulty losing weight and my ever increasing insulin resistance.
That doesn’t actually boost your metabolism, what it does do is keep your blood sugar and insulin elevated all day. Just when your blood sugar and insulin start to come back down to baseline, you eat again and back up they go.
Remember what we talked about insulin being high means that you’re in storage mode - yeah eating every couple hours is the last thing you want to do if you’re trying to lose weight or reverse insulin resistance.
So instead focus on having meals that will keep you full for several hours instead. When you build blood sugar balancing meals like we discussed before this should be easy.
If you’re new to eating this way you may find it hard to go meal to meal at first - that's because your body is still used to relying on glucose as your primary fuel source. If that's the case for you, instead of snacking have mini meals instead - a smaller version of the PFF meals we talked about earlier.
This will help train your body to not need snacks and soon you’ll find it easy to go from meal to meal without needing to snack in between.
Walk After Your Meals
This does double, maybe even triple duty. 1.) When you go for a walk after you eat it helps to lower your blood sugar. Even just 10-15 minutes can make a difference. 2.) It's a great way to add more movement to your day 3.) You’re able to get outside, get some fresh air, some vitamin D, and get your blood pumping.
If going for even a short walk after every meal isn’t realistic for you, make a plan to go after your biggest meal of the day if you can.
Remember, taking control of your health is a journey, not a sprint. By understanding insulin resistance and implementing these lifestyle changes, you can improve your overall well-being and achieve your weight loss goals. Don’t be discouraged by setbacks – small steps lead to big changes.
Do you need more help getting started? You can grab my Weight Loss Unstuck Guide HERE.