Is your hunger the problem or the symptom?
What if your hunger and cravings aren’t the problem - what if they're actually the symptom?
When you’re overweight it's easy to think that the fact that you’re hungry all the time is the reason WHY you’re overweight - but what if the reason you’re overweight and the hunger and come from the same place…
That's what happened to me - I WAS HUNGRY ALL THE TIME! I thought THAT was why I was overweight - makes sense right?
But it turns out those were both symptoms of the same root problem - one wasn’t causing the other…at least not in the beginning.
For me, that was insulin resistance. That was the root cause of why I was gaining weight and really struggling to get it off, and also WHY I was hungry all the dang time.
Sure, my constant hunger wasn’t making it easier but it wasn’t really the problem - the insulin resistance was.
I was so busy chasing calories trying to lose weight but because my blood sugar and insulin were out of whack it wasn't doing much good. Then to top it off a lot of the foods I was eating were hijacking my brain chemicals and messing with my satiety and hunger hormones and sending my blood sugar off the charts…
It was a recipe for disaster.
So what is Insulin resistance anyways?
When you eat a meal with carbs, those carbs get digested down into glucose which gets sent out into your bloodstream and your blood sugar rises.
When that happens insulin is released. Its job is to deliver the glucose to the cells that need it and lower your blood sugar. This is a good thing!
The problem is over time your cells can stop responding to insulin the way they’re supposed to - this usually happens when you eat more carbs than you need or eat too often - which a lot of us are used to doing.
This means the glucose (energy) can’t get into the cells and your blood sugar remains high. Your body's answer to this is to send out more insulin to try to lower your blood sugar.
So now you have high blood sugar AND high insulin.
How does that affect my weight and hunger?
Insulin is your fat storage hormone. When it is high you are in storage mode - you can’t be in storage mode and burning mode at the same time. So that means you can’t access your fat stores for energy like you’re meant to - that's what body fat is - stored energy.
We are supposed to be able to use that stored energy when we need it so that we don’t have to rely on eating all the time to fuel our bodies. But when insulin is always high, your body fat stays locked up.
That means your body has to rely on you eating often to get the energy it needs - this despite the fact that you’re actually carrying around plenty of stored energy.
So you experience increased hunger and cravings - often for sugar/carbs - this is your body's attempt to get you some of that quick and easy energy.
Symptoms of Insulin resistance.
Your doctor will usually use this set of criteria to diagnose you:
A waistline over 40 inches in men and 35 inches in women.
Blood pressure readings of 130/80 or higher.
A fasting glucose level over 100 mg/dL.
A fasting triglyceride level over 150 mg/dL.
A HDL cholesterol level under 40 mg/dL in men and 50 mg/dL in women.
Skin tags.
Dark patches of skin usually around your neck, underarms and groin area
Some symptoms you may notice are:
Frequent hunger
Intense cravings especially for sugar/carbs
Difficulty losing weight
Can’t go more than a couple of hours without hunger
You get hangry instead of just hungry
Belly fat
Energy crashes
Poor energy etc..
Is there anything I can do to reverse this?
Luckily for most people you can reverse or reduce the symptoms when caught early enough. And this is a good thing because Insulin Resistance can lead to:
Heart Disease
Diabetes
Alzheimers
PCOS
High Blood Pressure
Cancer
Stroke etc…
You can start to improve your insulin sensitivity by:
Controlling your carbs - for many of us who have followed a typical standard American diet (SAD) it's really easy to eat upwards of 300 grams of carbs a day - that's far more than most of us need - especially if you lead a relatively sedentary life.
If you can drop your carbs to 100g or less a day you can often see some pretty quick improvements. We all have different carb tolerances though, so some may do better staying under 50g and others find 20g or less works best for them. You can always aim for 100g to start and adjust according to how you feel and your results.
Getting enough sleep - For many of us sleep feels a little bit like a wild card because even with the best of intentions sleep can be hard to come by at times. But really making the effort to make sure you get enough good quality sleep (between 7-10 hours for most people) is really important for improving insulin sensitivity.
When you don’t get enough sleep it's a huge stressor on your body. You will see increased stress hormones which will then also raise your blood sugar and insulin. Studies have shown that just one night of poor sleep can make you more insulin resistant the next day.
Managing stress - another one that can feel out of our hands some (most!) days. It's not realistic for most of us to completely get rid of stress but you can learn to manage it so that you can minimize the impact it has on your body.
Even short periods of time that you can get your body out of that stress mode can help. This will be different for everyone - what one finds relaxing another may find stress inducing - so find what works for you. Whether it's a walk, a long hot bath, reading a good book, a hobby, meditation, breath work - whatever it is that works for you lean into that to give your body a break from being in that constant state of stress.
Being active can be particularly helpful to help move those stress hormones through and out of your body.
Strength Train - Building lean muscle mass can help to improve insulin sensitivity. Your muscles are one of the main storage depots for glucose so the more you have the more storage space you have. And the more you use your muscle the more glucose you can use up - it's a win-win.
So just know that even though being insulin resistant can make weight loss harder - it's not a lost cause. You can fix it and get that scale moving in the right direction again with the added bonus of knowing that you are also helping to improve your overall health.