One Key to Weight Loss

Laura explains a very important aspect not just of weight loss, but a healthy body, period… one that has lots of energy, steady moods, and a clear mind.

Listen on Apple Podcasts: Click here
Listen on Spotify: Click here

Links Mentioned

New Mama Energy Guide

Transcript

You’re listening to the Love and Lettuce Podcast, episode 34. Today we’re talking about one key to weight loss. This may be something that you’ve heard a little bit about or you have never heard of it before. So stick around and let’s see.

Hey, this is Laura Lima, holistic nutritionist and founder of New Mama Nation, and host of the Love and Lettuce Podcast. I am here to help mamas know what to eat to give them energy and help them feel fantastic. So they can better enjoy life with their littles. And remember, this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only, and does not replace medical advice from your healthcare provider, and is not intended to diagnose or treat any medical condition. As always, please consult your health care provider to find out what is right for you. With that said, let’s get to the show.

Could you use more energy Mama, I mean, who couldn’t right?

Get my free new mama energy guide, where I’ll give you 10 tips to increase your energy Step. Go to http://bit.ly/newmamas to get your free copy.

So we’re talking about one key to weight loss.

And let me tell you, my friend, there are so many different things that we have to think about when it comes to weight loss. And it’s not just about losing weight. This is another part of the conversation. It’s not just about the weight, it’s about feeling healthy, it’s about having more energy, it’s about feeling more focus in your brain. And having less stress. Weight loss can often be a simple side effect, like a fun little side effect of getting healthy. That’s the way I do like to approach it.

But how do I lose weight?

How do I lose the last 10 pounds? How do I do this? And if I did, I would feel “x”, I would feel lighter, I would feel more competent, I would feel finally like I’ve accomplished this goal that I’ve had for so long. So whatever your reason is for wanting to get healthy or perhaps wanting to lose weight, listen in because I want to give you one of those keys. And like I said, there are so many things to consider. Yes. And we’ll be talking about more on the podcast. So stay tuned, my friends to all the upcoming episodes.

One key to weight loss

But today we’re talking about one specific key. Are you ready to hear what it is?

It is insulin. Have you heard of insulin? And specifically, have you heard of insulin resistance? Because this has everything I would go so far as to say to do with our ability to maintain our healthy weight for our body or not? First of all, what is insulin? Insulin is a hormone that is secreted by our pancreas. Every time we eat carbohydrates, aka sugar, whether that sugar is in the form of fruit, or potatoes or potato chips, or bread or candy, chocolate, it doesn’t matter. Whenever we have carbohydrates in our body, our blood sugar level rises in response.

And that higher blood sugar level, so glucose sugar in the blood. Whenever that goes higher, our pancreas says, Okay, we need to secrete insulin. In order to get rid of this extra glucose in the bloodstream, we have to do something with this sugar in the bloodstream. Otherwise, literally, we would die eventually, if our blood sugar level kept going higher and higher and higher. So we have to get the blood sugar level to stay at a relatively even rate, especially for not just our survival but for how we feel mentally and physically.

If our blood sugar level drops too low, so Okay, here’s the thing. When we eat a lot of sugar, we have an insulin response. And a lot of times what happens is our blood sugar level rise is so high and so quickly that our body says oh my gosh, all the insulin is needed. Let’s get that blood sugar level low, low low. And it doesn’t actually say that, it says let’s get this blood sugar regulated. But because there’s so much insulin, our blood sugar level can skyrocket down. That’s not the right word, but it can crash back down so it skyrockets up, and the higher and faster goes up the lower and faster it can crash back down.

How do we feel when we have these extremes physically?

We can be first of all energized because at first after you have a chocolate bar you might feel a little burst of energy. But after that, when it drops back down, you feel tired. You might have fatigue, obviously, you might have mood swings. So it’s not just physical, but it’s also how do you feel mentally and emotionally? Certainly when our blood sugar level is up and down, and up and down, mood swings are very common and almost inevitable. Specifically feeling really annoyed and short tempered.

This is what can happen when our blood sugar level goes crazy. So we need to regulate our blood sugar level, which means we need to regulate our insulin. And by the way, when our blood sugar level goes so low, what do you think we crave? Of course, we crave sugar. Our body says, Listen, now my blood sugar level is so low, I need something right now to get it back up as quick as possible. So give me something. So what do we turn to in our modern age?

Well, we have candy, and we have chocolate. What are the things that we’re craving? The ice cream, the cookies, the cake. The things that will bring our blood sugar level back up really quickly? Yes, but will perpetuate the problem. So it’s this constant cycle. And also, how do we feel energetically? As I’ve said, we feel tired, but we feel really low energy. We can’t properly get our energy from our food if we have this constant cycle.

Insulin resistance

Today, we’re talking about insulin resistance, meaning our cells are actually not responding to the insulin that our pancreas is secreting. What the heck does that mean? Okay. In simple terms, when we have glucose, sugar in our bloodstream, we have to get it out of the bloodstream and into our cells to be burned off as energy. Our body cannot get energy from our glucose, from our food in our bloodstream alone, it has to be inside the cell.

The key to get glucose from the bloodstream into the cell is called insulin. So what happens when there’s this thing called insulin resistance? Our cell is literally resistant to insulin, it has lost its sensitivity to insulin. Why does this happen? So what happens is we have so much insulin all the time that our cells stop responding to the insulin. It says, Listen, I am full, or I am not listening to you. Sorry, you’re gonna have to put your sugar elsewhere. So what happens when our cells reject? Essentially, the sugar in our bloodstream? The sugar has to go somewhere. Insulin says, Listen, the cell is saying no.

Where else can I put the sugar? Well, the first place is storage, I should say the second place after it’s not going to be burned off as energy in the cell. Okay, I’m going to store the sugar. And how does it store this sugar? Well, it could store it in the liver as fuel for the future. Yes, because that’s important too. But we’re eating so much fuel all the time, typically, that we don’t actually need that much storage. But where else does it go? It literally gets turned into fat. The glucose gets turned into fat, and it gets stored typically around our abdomen.

Insulin meter

We can think of our abdomen as our insulin meter. This is what I have learned from Janet Jax. She is the founder of Goodness Me! Natural Food Market, where I worked for 10 years. Janet is amazing. She teaches like no other. And she is just so full of knowledge. She always calls our abdomen the insulin meter. It tells us how well our body uses insulin. And listen, we need insulin, it is a very essential hormone. But the problem is that we have way too much of it. And I can speak for most of us, most of us in North America with the diet with the foods that we have readily available. We tend to have too much of the bad stuff, or even too much of the good stuff. Nevermind.

So we’re always producing insulin. And so our bodies are responding or our cells are responding less and less to it, which is leading to this thing called insulin resistance. Type Two Diabetes is insulin resistance with a diagnosis basically. So most of us have some form of insulin resistance. The question is, how do we reduce insulin?

How the heck do I reduce it? Okay, there are two steps.

1. Eat foods that don’t secrete insulin

Number one is we have to eat foods that don’t secrete insulin so much or that don’t want to cause insulin to respond so readily. So what are those foods?

Well, let’s talk about the foods that do increase insulin.

I mentioned carbs. So yeah, that is a lot of food. That includes our fruit. It includes the vegetables, although there’s not much glucose in vegetables. So we can say vegetables are pretty “safe” when it comes to insulin. Starchy vegetables – potatoes, sweet potatoes, etc, do have a higher insulin response. I still think they’re safe, typically, but what other foods are carbohydrate sources that are more of the should we say, bad guys? Bread, pasta, white rice, potatoes, that kind of thing.

Now, I know I mentioned but it was before. But anyways, I’m mostly talking about potato chips. When I say potatoes. They’re not in their whole form anymore. And bread is flour, its grain that is not in its whole form anymore. It’s whole food form. White rice is brown rice that has lost the extra fiber. And fiber helps to slow down the release of glucose into the bloodstream. So brown rice is better than white rice and that way, brown rice is still a high carb.

But anyway, there are lots of nuances, but I just want to give you the general so when we’re looking at what foods increase insulin, all carbs do. We’re also looking at legumes like chickpeas, beans, and lentils. Those also have a blood sugar increase which equals insulin. Anything that raises our blood sugar, in turn, raises insulin.

Then, of course, we have our refined carb foods or highly refined carb foods like ice cream, cookies, cake, Halloween candy, ahem, this episode is being released on Halloween. Just thought I’d mention that one. So what are the foods like Laura? Oh, my gosh, that’s all the goodies I know.

But what are the foods that don’t cause an insulin response?

There was only one group of foods that do not cause an insulin response. Do you know what they are? My favorite kind? Fats? Yes, fats are the only food component that doesn’t have an insulin rise when you eat them. Protein has a little bit of an insulin rise, although protein is really good for blood sugar. So just know that it has a little bit of insulin rise, but it’s actually really good for our blood sugar, usually. But fat is our friend. I’m always talking about fat in the best way as long as we have the right kind of fat. And we need both saturated and unsaturated fats. So fat is our friend.

When we have fat with a meal, it slows down the release of glucose in that meal. So if you have a meal that contains carbs, which most of us do, I’m not suggesting we have a low carb or no carb diet. Lower carb, sure, but no carb. That’s not for me personally. But when you have a meal that contains carbs, which it likely will, when you also have that fat in that meal, it slows down the release of sugar into the bloodstream. Which causes a lot less insulin to be needed. So there you go. That’s number one, eat the foods that don’t have that high insulin response.

So protein is good. Fat is amazing. And carbs, we have to moderate those a little bit when it comes to insulin resistance.

2. Eat less often

The other thing when it comes to how else can we become less insulin resistant, is actually eating less often.

I’ve talked about this before, not snacking that is so just having your three solid meals a day. You have probably heard of intermittent fasting, which is simply not eating for an extended period of time. We all do this as we sleep. So you fast for at least eight to 12 hours. Regardless, some people extend that into the late morning or early afternoon. For me, I still eat three meals a day. I feel good that way. But the not snacking thing is huge, too.

So I have mentioned that before, but I know it’s tough because you might be saying like Laura, I have a newborn. I have toddlers, I legit don’t have time to cook right now. I have to rely on snacks and to that, I say I totally get you mama. You do you. Only you know where you’re at right now in this stage of life. And if you have to snack, do it. I’ve definitely gone through my stages where I’ve needed a snack and I run with it and I love it for proper insulin response by ourselves. We actually want to give our bodies time to digest and utilize those nutrients from each meal.

That means through three solid meals a day. And if you’re hungry, I want you to snack. The idea here is not to go hungry. That is not fun, and it’s not recommended. But if you do go hungry before your next meal, you can say, what was my breakfast missing that is making me hungry before lunch? Maybe it needed more protein, maybe it needed more fat. And the next time you have that same breakfast, I want you to add more protein and or fat and see how you feel. Because by doing that you should have that lasts longer for you.

So let’s say you had two eggs with toast. Maybe you need to have three eggs. So now you’re adding protein and fat. Maybe you need to add some avocado, mash up some avocado, throw it on that toast. So notice that I’m not saying maybe you don’t need the toast, because I mean, maybe that’s true, maybe you don’t, but maybe it’s okay. By adding any extra protein and fat. So try that first and see how you feel.

When we give our bodies time to digest and process those nutrients. Our insulin works way more effectively because our cells are not always bombarded by insulin. If we’re eating constantly – think about it every single time you eat, you have a blood sugar response, which means you have an insulin surge. Every single time you eat, you have insulin. The cells are therefore a lot more resistant to that insulin. Whereas if you only eat your three solid meals a day, and those meals contain the right components, which we’ll talk about, but I’ve already talked about them, I’ve already given it away. Protein, fat, fiber. If those three meals have those proper components in them, there’s a lot less of an insulin response. And it’s only happening three times a day versus 10 times a day.

Think about it

If you graze all day, you could be having 10 insulin responses. That’s not good for ourselves. Our cells say whoa, way too much of you know, thank you, I’m not going to accept your glucose, you’re gonna have to find a space for it elsewhere. The body says okay, well, the liver storage is full, shoot, well, I’m going to have to turn this into fat. Okay, I’m just going to store it as fat for future use – perfect.

And so now you have to burn that fat off later. But here’s something else to consider. Our bodies can only be in fat storage mode, or fat burning mode, at any one time. It can never be doing both. You can only be burning fat or storing it. This has everything to do with insulin. Insulin is a fat storage hormone. So you’re storing fat when you have a lot of insulin.

When you’re eating a lot throughout the day, a lot of times I should say throughout the day. So you’re always getting a hit of insulin, which gives you more of a likelihood of having insulin resistance, which means being in fat storage mode. And how do we feel during that time you don’t have energy? It is not likely that you’re going to be in fat storage mode and have so much abundant energy. But if you’re in fat burning mode, and your body is using insulin properly the way that it was meant to you and it’s able to work properly, you’re getting energy from your food.

Glucose

Because here’s something else to consider. I know I have all these things to consider. When you don’t get glucose into the cell number. Insulin is the key that opens the door to the cell for glucose. Glucose cannot be burned for energy outside of the cell. So if it’s not getting into the cell, it is not being burned as energy. Therefore you’re not getting energy from that food.

Hello, you just ate a whole meal. You’re saying why am I still hungry? Why do we not have energy? This is crazy. That could be why, again, lots of other factors too, that could be considered. This is a huge key player. So I want you to think about what foods raise your insulin. How often am I eating throughout the day, no matter what you’re eating, because every time you eat, there’s an insulin response. You want to get those responses less and less.

So for me, my ideal is three meals a day, making sure those meals have protein, fat, and fiber.

So what are some examples of those meals?

Well, it is what you would consider a healthy meal very likely. Think about a piece of steak or a piece of chicken or a piece of salmon. Those are your examples of the protein part of the meal. Then think about a side vegetable in a salad. Those are more of your fiber, your vegetable part of the meal. Then go a step further and think about butter melted on top of those vegetables. Yum. That is how we should be enjoying them because that adds even more good fat.

Now think about the homemade salad dressing that you’ve put on your salad with olive oil as a base, a healthy fat. Now you’ve got extra good fats. So you’ve got your protein in your piece of meat, or fish or eggs. And yes, you can get plant-based protein. Keeping in mind, those are typically higher carb. So if you’re thinking about beans or lentils, great, but they are a source of carbs as well. And they’re not usually as high in protein. So think about that. And make sure you’ve got enough protein.

Then you’ve got your fiber/vegetable as well. Your vegetable and your salad, that is your source of fiber/vegetable. And then you’ve got your fat in the melted butter on your deliciously warm vegetables, whether you’ve sauteed them or roasted them. And then you have your beautiful olive oil in your salad dressing that you’ve made yourself. That is the example of a healthy meal. There are so many combinations that you can have.

But try to keep in mind protein, fat, and fiber that is what will help you have less of an insulin response. First of all, let’s have a blood sugar rush, therefore less of an insulin response is needed. Therefore, your cells become more sensitive to insulin, therefore everything works better. You’re in fat burning mode, you feel fantastic. You’ve got energy from your food, you’re not always hungry throughout the day, and your body is just feeling really good. And yes, you can lose weight as a healthy side effect of that.

Food cravings

There’s one other piece, a huge piece. And for me and many other people, it’s probably the biggest piece, which is the desire for food cravings for specific foods. And I want to get into this topic in other podcast episodes because it’s so important. We cannot talk about weight loss or we can’t even talk about healthy eating period and healthy bodies period, without talking about cravings and food addictions. Specifically sugar addiction and desire for food.

It’s like Laura. Yeah, I get it. Okay, insulin great, but I actually want those chips.

Can you stop me? Can you help me stop this craving for chips? How about all that Halloween candy? Laura, have you eaten 10 candy bars today?

Yeah, probably because the cravings for food, that desire for certain food is there. And that is huge. That is a huge piece. When we address the insulin, that can help a lot. That can really help with our cravings. But when it comes to our brains, yeah, those cravings can still be there even when insulin is reduced and working properly.

So there are two sides to it. It’s the insulin piece for weight loss and healthy weight and healthy bodies, period. It’s the insulin piece. But then it’s also the desire for food piece. The cravings, the food addiction. So I really want to get into that topic. And let me know if that’s something that you’re interested in as well, because I love it. I love learning about it, and trying things for myself and reporting back. So I can’t wait to get into that stuff. Let me know if that’s something you’re interested in.

I hope that you’ve gotten something from this today. And I hope it’s not too confusing when it comes to insulin. I think that I’ve put it into a fairly simple-to-understand way today. So let me know about that too. And hey, if you have questions or if you want to tell me more about what your specific issues are and concerns are when it comes to maybe food cravings, or your diet in general, losing weight and so on, please send me a DM on Instagram. Send me a DM I will be happy to chat with you. And to get your ideas and to give you ideas.

I will talk to you soon mama, have an amazing day. Bye! And don’t forget to get your free copy of my new mama energy guide. Just go to http://bit.ly/newmamas for instant access. Thanks for listening to the Love and Lettuce Podcast to find out how to work with me and for more great info check out newmamanation.com. This is Laura. Until next time, love and lettuce.