Ok, I'm super jazzed to teach you this.
Whether you’re trying to lose inches or manage symptoms of pre/diabetes or insulin resistance, what I’m about to share today is for you.
I’ve been helping women take back their health by balancing their blood sugar and hormones—specifically insulin—since 2013.
The next 3 parts in this series are about resetting your metabolism, blood sugar, and hormones to help manage chronic conditions.
This is the first of three parts where I’m going to be teaching you about one of the best diets to get your health under control for good and the key to this is understanding hormones.
So here’s the thing. I wasn’t always in this place with my body and health. When I first started dieting, I was actually 30 years old. Because 30 is when my body changed, and this is true for most women. From one day to the next, you can’t eat the same things you used to because the food automatically sticks to your belly, butt, and thighs.
No longer did I look forward to seeing friends and family members, because I’d gained weight. I looked different when I saw myself in the mirror and started to feel ashamed.
As a nutritionist, what I really wanted was to better understand why this was happening and after a ton of research, I discovered it had to do with blood sugar and insulin (hormones!). I thought this was just for people with diabetes but I was wrong. It’s simple biology and I’ll explain more on this later.
The goal of this lesson is to show you the critical things you need to know to speed up your metabolism permanently, reduce inflammation, and feel 10 times better in your skin.
So let’s get to it!
In this first lesson, we’re going to focus on why you need a diet that works to increase your metabolism instead of decreasing calories, so you don’t need to count calories or points forever.
How and why you should revv up your metabolism instead of reducing caloric intake
This topic is really important to me because it has shaped my core beliefs as a nutritionist. It’s also something that makes me quite different from many in the diet and weight loss field.
Here’s what you need to know:
- A calorie is not a calorie – a 100 calorie apple is not equal to a 100 calorie chocolate brownie bite. Our bodies process fat, protein, and carbs completely differently. And hydrogenated oils, saturated/ unsaturated fat, fiber, and sugar all metabolized in different ways. One food gives your body the signal to burn fat and the other signals your body to store fat. Through the release of the hormone, insulin.
- Doesn’t take into account real food. We have to eat real, whole foods that our body needs so that we can support our metabolism. Real, whole food is the fuel our body needs to burn fat and give us energy. The beauty? You don’t have to restrict and count calories for this to work.
- Restricting calories is not sustainable. It’s not possible to stay in a calorie deficit your entire life. And when you count calories, and lose weight, 95% of people gain the weight back within one year. When you restrict calories, you send a signal to your body stating you are in a situation where food is not available, so your metabolism slows way down and burns less fat (very slowly until you eat again)—you’d think it was the opposite.
- Hormones are the key. Hormones are what regulate our hunger and satiety. Every time we eat an excess of refined carbohydrates like white bread, pasta, and processed foods, a rush of sugar enters our blood stream. This extra sugar has to go somewhere, so our body releases the fat-storing hormone, insulin, to store that extra sugar as fat.
- Eat healthy protein, healthy fat, and healthy carbs (fiber). Eating healthy carbs (fiber-rich foods) and healthy fats will slow down the rush of sugar that comes from the carbs you eat. This reduces the insulin response and causes less sugar to be stored as fat in the body. Protein helps keeps you fuller longer, and supports lean muscle tissue, which switches on fat burning. It’s important to know that healthy fat and healthy protein are low glycemic by nature and do not trigger an insulin response.
This is a lot of information for you to digest, and I hope it gives you a really good idea of why it’s more important to think about how foods affect your hormones than how many calories a food has.
At this point, the big question is what exactly does this diet include, and will it work for you?
The short answer is yes because this way of eating is based on how the human body works. The better answer is, yes, and you need to try it to experience the benefits, to have a better life than trying every diet under the sun, to stable your blood sugar, and to heal symptoms so they don’t have a life-long impact.
But there’s more to this that you need to know.
In the next part of this series, we’re going to cover the practical and inclusive Low GI diet (or what I like to call Whole GI) and what foods (and there’s a ton!) you eat. Foods you likely already have and already love. This will make it so much easier to transition to this lifestyle, it really is simple.
I’m also going to teach you how you can confidently make balanced low GI meals whether you’re eating out or grabbing a snack at that gas station and this is really important because sometimes you just need a snack that won’t plummet your blood sugar and a gas station might seem like the last place to find something healthy. There are good foods even in these places, I promise.
Since you've been reading this far, I want to know a little more about you... what does being able to lose weight once and for all and to stop the cycle of “dieting” mean to you?
Submit your thoughts in the message box below!
And of course, if you're liking this series and find it useful, I would love it if you shared it with your friends and family. They can sign up at wellandeasy.com!
kindly,
I’d seriously like to hear from you! Send a message letting me know what this diet would mean for you.
