SIMPLE STEPS TO KEEP YOUR BODY IN BALANCE TO PREVENT WEIGHT GAIN
There are two reasons why it is important to keep your blood sugar levels stabilized. Firstly, the presence of insulin in the blood prevents you from burning fat. The second reason is that it causes you to crave more sugar and carbohydrates. It is clear that this is a major role player in your weight management.
5 simple steps to keep your body balanced to prevent weight gain
1. Remove all refined sugar and carbohydrates from your diet, as this put your blood sugar levels on a roller coaster.
2. Support your system with a lot of green veggies and green superfoods to balance your blood. Barley Green is fantastic.
3. Eat a lot of whole grains, sweet potatoes and squashes to help curb the sweet tooth.
4. Add a tablespoon of ground linseeds, chia and hemp seed to your salads, smoothies or porridge.
5. Eat more protein. When you eat a lot of protein, you feel satisfied during the day. This sets you up for success because your blood sugar won’t fall and then you try to eat whatever is closest to your hand (which many times is a slice of bread or chocolate).
The science bit: Want to know how the body stabilises blood sugar levels?
To balance blood sugar levels it is essential to choose food that keep blood sugar levels stable. As mentioned, all refined sugar, flour and processed food should be removed from the diet because they cause your blood sugar levels to go on a hike.
When food is consumed, it first goes into the stomach and then the small intestine break the food down into glucose. Glucose is what the body need as fuel, but glucose cannot be used unless the pancreas releases the hormone called insulin.
The main purpose of insulin is to transport the glucose to the cells and to open up the cells so that glucose can be stored. The energy that is provided by the glucose is burned as fuel until the next time you eat. This process is repeated several times during the day.
If too many refined carbohydrates, in the form of bread, cookies, muffins, potatoes, rice and pasta are consumed, it causes our blood sugar to fluctuate too much between meals. The way our bodies deal with this problem is by releasing too much insulin. The danger is that if this happens over several times a day, you are in danger of getting Diabetes.
What can happen over time, is that your body become resistant to the insulin, and instead of converting excess glucose into glycogen, it turns into fat… which is not ideal for weight loss.
Check the symptoms: Are you insulin resistant?
- Excessive sweating
- Excessive thirst
- Difficulty in concentrating
- Excessive consumption of caffeine, chocolate or cigarettes
- Extreme difficulty in getting out of bed
- Falling asleep in the middle of the day and feeling really drowsy
- Inability to get going without a caffeine / nicotine fix
- Irritability without frequent meals
- Need far more than 8 hours’s sleep a night
If your answer is yes to more that 3 of these symptoms, you need to stabilise your blood sugar levels before it can lead to Diabetes or any other serious disease linked with unstable blood sugar levels.
