When I created the Glucose Goddess Method, I had never envisioned it as a weight loss diet.
As a biochemist, I was fascinated by the discovery that a few simple – and sometimes surprising – “hacks” could flatten the rollercoaster of peaks and troughs that our blood sugar goes through throughout the day. And I was very focused on the positive impact of this leveling on our mental and physical health.
But when I ran a pilot experiment last year with almost 3,000 people trying the method for a month, more than a third of the participants who wanted to lose weight did so and, incredibly, ate more than usual, without counting calories or cutting out everything. food, even dessert.
In yesterday’s Daily Mail, I explained how important it is to start the day with a tasty breakfast to keep blood sugar levels constant from the start.
Today, in the second excerpt from my new book, I’ll explain the science behind how eating more food can improve your health and lead to fat loss.
The key is to consider two of my other “tips”: eat a bowl of salad or a plate of vegetables before lunch or dinner; and adding some protein, fat, or fiber to any “naked” carbs. Later I will show you how. But first, let’s talk about why.
Our blood sugar levels (also called glucose levels) are designed to naturally rise after eating sugary and starchy foods and to drop once the body’s cells have taken up the glucose from these foods for fuel. But if we eat lots of sugary and starchy foods at once, glucose levels can spike too high too fast. This can trigger a damaging inflammatory response in the body as it struggles to bring glucose levels back to normal.
One response is to pump the hormone insulin to pull glucose out of the blood and divert it into fat stores. Often this insulin surge works so efficiently that it leaves blood glucose levels rather low, which is why you may experience a low energy a few hours after a fast food meal or snack, triggering powerful cravings for something sweet as your body struggles to build. those blood sugar levels go back up again.
Many people live with glucose levels that fluctuate erratically throughout the day, big spikes and crashes, and an increase in the overall amount of glucose in the body. In the long term, this unstable condition places the body in a state of stress that increases the risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, certain cancers and Alzheimer’s disease.
It’s hardly surprising that people who want to lose fat find it difficult to do so when the food they eat is funneled into fat stores and the inability to resist cravings pushes them to eat unhealthy. Taking steps to flatten these glucose peaks and troughs helps break this vicious cycle.
And the result, as my experience has shown, is weight loss, although you might end up eating more food than before, without restrictions and certainly without calorie counting.
That’s because when we flatten those glucose curves, cravings dissipate, allowing us to regain control of what and when we eat.
Hormones rebalance themselves, and with less insulin washout, our bodies can switch from fat storing mode to a more natural fat burning mode more frequently and for longer periods of time. Of the 2,700 participants in my study, 38% of those who wanted to lose weight did so – without any restrictions and certainly without counting calories. Throughout the power of my glucose hacks.
Other scientific studies support this finding with evidence showing that people who focus on flattening their blood sugar curves can eat more calories and lose fat more easily than people who eat fewer calories but don’t. not flatten their blood sugar curves. For example, a 2017 study from the University of Michigan showed that when people focused on flattening their glucose curves (even though they ate more calories than the other group), they lost more fat. weight (17 lbs versus 4 lbs) than those who ate fewer calories. and didn’t care about their blood sugar levels.
The action of insulin is essential. When blood glucose levels are stable, insulin levels decrease. A 2021 review that analyzed 60 weight loss studies proved that reducing insulin always precedes weight loss.
Feedback from my 1.8 million Instagram followers is also pretty universal: if you’re careful not to spike your blood sugar, you can eat until you feel full, without counting calories, and it will improve not only your health but also often naturally results in fat loss as a result. The key is to add the right calories to your meals – calories that fill you up and reduce cravings, insulin release and inflammation.
One of my favorite – and most impactful – hacks is to eat a vegetable or salad dish as a starter for your lunch or dinner. You will find that anything you eat after this entry is much less likely to cause your blood sugar to spike.
This is because when you eat fibrous foods like salad or vegetables on a relatively empty stomach, the fiber unfurls against the walls of your gut, forming a viscous protective net that stays in place for a few hours. This mesh makes it difficult for glucose molecules from the rest of the meal to pass through the lining of the intestine and into the bloodstream. Thus, the rate at which glucose enters the blood is reduced, making glucose spikes less likely.
As long as you have a salad or a vegetable entree, you can eat whatever you usually have, safe in the knowledge that there will be less of a glucose spike in your meal thanks to the protective fiber mesh.
To give you an idea of the effect, a study that simply reversed the order in which foods were eaten during a meal showed that by putting vegetables first (and carbs last), peak meal glucose was reduced by up to 75 percent. hundred. This has been achieved without changing the contents of the meal, simply by putting vegetables first and harnessing the power of the fiber they contain. It’s quite remarkable.
So if your meal normally contains a lot of vegetables, you can turn it into a vegetarian entree by eating the greens first before eating anything else.
But for this trick to work best, make a vegetable “starter” that is 30% the size of the next meal. Lentils and legumes count as vegetables, and chunky vegetable soup is a great stomach protector. (A smooth blended soup won’t be as effective because the fiber particles are pulverized by blending, making them less effective at creating that protective mesh.)
Snacking on carrot sticks while you prepare your meal is just as effective. Your vegetable entrée can be as simple as ten olives.
If you toss your salad in a vinegar-based dressing, you’ll do two tricks in one. (In tomorrow’s Daily Mail, I’ll explain how the acetic acid in vinegar slows the rate at which glucose is released.)
All vegetables work, – cooked, raw, dressed or plain. When dining out, ask for a side salad at the start of your meal or choose a vegetable dish from the “sides” section of the menu. If you’re away, pack a bag of baby carrots, cherry tomatoes, or cucumber sticks to snack on before you eat your next meal.