236-SYNCPodcast_BloodSugarHacks

[00:00:00] Jenny Swisher: Welcome friends to this episode of the Sync Your Life podcast. Today we’re talking about insulin resistance. We’re talking about how to stabilize your blood sugar through different biohacking tricks so that you can really maximize your energy as a woman. Now here’s the deal. 72 percent of women will deal with a hormone imbalance at some point in their lives.

[00:01:16] Jenny Swisher: If not before perimenopause, then during perimenopause. And I hate to say it, but the vast majority of the time, blood sugar tends to be at the root of what’s going on. , we’re going to talk today about the connections between blood sugar and cortisol. We’re also going to make sure that we give you some tools and tips that you can use and implement into your life today to really biohack your way to a stable blood sugar.

[00:01:36] Jenny Swisher: But I want to make sure that you understand exactly what we’re even talking about here. A lot of people don’t realize that our bodies utilize glucose for energy, right? At the end of the day, we’re utilizing glucose for energy. And so when we can really stabilize that glucose throughout the day without creating spikes and drops, that’s when we can really stabilize our endocrine system and our blood sugar leg of the chair.

[00:01:57] Jenny Swisher: So in case you’ve not heard me talk about the four legged hormone chair before, let’s go ahead and have a little recap of it. So the four legged hormone chair, if you picture like a steady kitchen chair, right? With four solid legs. That’s an analogy to our endocrine system. One leg of the chair is your blood sugar, one is your thyroid, one is your cortisol, and one is your sex hormones.

[00:02:16] Jenny Swisher: And I always like to ask the question, if I were to take a saw, and saw off just an inch of one of the legs of the chair, what would happen to the whole chair? Well, you might be picturing it in your mind, and you might be picturing exactly what would happen, which is the chair would begin to wobble. That is analogous to what happens in our endocrine system when something’s out of whack, including our blood sugar.

[00:02:35] Jenny Swisher: If the blood sugar leg of the chair is unstable, it causes the whole chair to be unstable. We might see ramifications in our menstrual cycles. We might see ramifications with our thyroid or especially with our cortisol, but this is why it matters, right? Especially as women enter perimenopause, we can actually become more insulin resistant.

[00:02:53] Jenny Swisher: So paying more attention to our energy throughout the day and stabilizing that with proper food and nutrition. We talk a lot on this podcast about. Eating enough protein and healthy fats to really satiate ourselves, we can avoid that blood sugar roller coaster. Now the other thing I want to call attention to here is sort of a baseline piece to this, is understanding how blood sugar and cortisol work together.

[00:03:15] Jenny Swisher: Blood sugar and cortisol oppose each other. So anytime one is at play, the other is at play. I like to bring this into story time with a story about a woman who exercises, right? A woman who exercises in the morning in a fasted state, meaning she’s not had anything to eat since maybe the night before.

[00:03:31] Jenny Swisher: She wakes up in the morning and she goes to do her home workout or she goes to the gym and she’s getting ready to do her HIIT class. She hasn’t had any food in the tank. This is what we call a fasted workout, and this is not conducive for a lot of training women. Why? Because their blood sugar is in a very, very low state, which is triggering their cortisol to, in fact, be high.

[00:03:50] Jenny Swisher: It’s triggering them to have an even stronger stress response to the already stress inducing workout. Now, what we want to do instead is we want to focus on fed workouts. Right. By having a fed workout, you’re eating something, typically something high in protein before you work out so that you’re stabilizing the blood sugar.

[00:04:07] Jenny Swisher: You’re putting your body in this, Oh my goodness, I’m finally safe mentality. And that way, when you do something high intensity, like a HIIT workout or your basement gym workout, your body is ready and primed for it. It’s accepting the stress as something that can help it change in the right ways as opposed to seeing it as a stressor on the body.

[00:04:25] Jenny Swisher: So I hope you understand that. It’s so important to understand that. Anytime we are restricting food or we’re depleting food or depleting carbohydrates, or we’re on that blood sugar rollercoaster throughout the day, it’s affecting our stress levels. It’s affecting specifically our cortisol. And that’s when we see women say things like, I don’t know what happened.

[00:04:43] Jenny Swisher: The things I was doing in my twenties is no longer working for me. Where did this belly fat come from? Right? All of a sudden I have this belly fat and it won’t go away no matter what I do. This is exactly what’s happening. Your body is on a blood sugar rollercoaster and your cortisol is spiking throughout the day just as your blood sugar is spiking throughout the day causing this instability in your four legged hormone chair.

[00:05:04] Jenny Swisher: So, I want to share with you guys today on this short episode some biohacking tips from the glucose goddess. Now, if you don’t follow the glucose goddess on Instagram, I highly recommend doing so. She’s got some fantastic content. She’s got an amazing book out there, so make sure that you grab it. I will link it up in the show notes for you.

[00:05:20] Jenny Swisher: But she has four primary hacks, um, for really making sure that you’re biohacking your blood sugar in the right ways. Now I’m not going to say that these are sexy or exciting, but this is something that I’ve been implementing myself and I have seen a drastic, drastic change for the better. So the first one is to eat a green starter.

[00:05:38] Jenny Swisher: She says greens first means fiber first, right? So when you’re looking at your plate at breakfast, lunch and dinner, make sure that you’re starting with your green vegetable first. Number two is to drink vinegar first. She says in one study vinegar before meals helped people on a weight loss diet lose twice the amount of weight as people who didn’t have vinegar before their meal.

[00:05:59] Jenny Swisher: Now this could be apple cider vinegar, it could be just like a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar is the example she gives before meals or even before desserts. It’s a way to stabilize your blood sugar. Now, I know when I first heard this I was like, oh my gosh, if I drink a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar, I’m not even gonna want the meal because I don’t know about you, but apple cider vinegar does not taste good.

[00:06:18] Jenny Swisher: But at the same time, it is a little trick that you can use before meals to help stabilize the blood sugar. Her third tip is to start the day savory. Now, this is something I find a lot of women don’t like to do. A lot of us have sweet tooths, right? Like we want to have the cinnamon roll or the granola bar or the yogurt parfait with berries, right?

[00:06:38] Jenny Swisher: We want the sweet, sweet breakfast. But actually that’s doing us a disservice because when we eat something that’s high in sugar, we’re spiking that blood sugar like we just talked about and then guess what happens? What goes up must come down. So at some point within a couple hours after eating, your blood sugar then crashes down.

[00:06:54] Jenny Swisher: Picture a roller coaster, my friends, and that’s what’s happening. So when we start the day with a savory breakfast, maybe that’s scrambled eggs, turkey sausage or chicken sausage with vegetables, lots of fiber. When we’re starting the day with that high protein meal, that savory breakfast, we’re actually setting ourselves up for success.

[00:07:11] Jenny Swisher: We’re putting fuel into our tank to keep us going longer throughout the day. It’s called satiation. And then number four, her fourth tip is to move after eating. And this is something that I have really enjoyed doing in the last few months. In fact, I feel like walking has become part of my daily regimen.

[00:07:26] Jenny Swisher: Now I like to walk in the mornings if I can, and definitely at night after dinner. Walking after dinner is especially known to help digestion before a good night’s sleep. So if you’re looking to improve your sleep, you’re looking to improve digestion, you’re looking to improve circadian rhythm, going for a nice gentle walk in the evenings after dinner can be a really great way of doing that.

[00:07:47] Jenny Swisher: So let’s recap. Eat a green starter first. So green vegetables first, that’s your fiber first. Next, drink vinegar. If you want to offset a dessert spike, if you want to offset a big meal, start with vinegar. Number three, start the day savory. No sweet desserts for breakfast, no cinnamon rolls or donuts.

[00:08:04] Jenny Swisher: Instead, go for the savory eggs and sausage. And number four, move after eating. Go for that evening walk. Now I talk a lot on this podcast about making sure that we’re eating enough protein every day. One gram of protein per pound of body weight. We know that muscle is the key to longevity and in order to build muscle, we’ve got to eat enough protein, right?

[00:08:22] Jenny Swisher: As we get older, the reason for most people suffering is because of a lack of muscle. The number one reason that people go into the nursing home is because of muscular atrophy. They literally can’t get themselves up and down off the floor. So we, we know that by exercising, of course, and strength training, but also by taking in enough adequate protein, we can actually help our bodies age.

[00:08:43] Jenny Swisher: And that’s what it’s all about. It’s about longevity. So as we embrace this idea of stabilizing our blood sugar, we’ve got to embrace a high protein diet. We’ve got to make sure that we’re doing these little tricks. And we’re eating enough fiber in our diet, enough protein in our diet to really help satiate us throughout the day.

[00:08:59] Jenny Swisher: When we don’t sit down for meals, when we grab and go, when we do all these different things that kind of put us on that blood sugar roller coaster, that’s when we cause our stress response to react, which then in turn results in the belly fat and the weight loss resistance that we don’t want.

[00:09:13] Jenny Swisher: So I hope this is educational to you. I hope you’ve learned something in this short little episode. If you did share it out, but that’s it for today, my friends until next time, we’ll talk soon.