Your high blood sugar level can ruin your weight loss – easy tips on how you avoid it.
Understanding why high levels of blood sugar can ruin your weight loss efforts will give you the incentives to change your diet.
Your blood sugar levels are affected by the food you eat, especially food with a high glycemic index.
Changing your eating habits and switching over to foods with a lower glycemic index is relatively easy and you’ll soon see the numbers on the scales go down.
But let’s start by taking a look at:
A High Blood Sugar Level and Insulin
Your body doesn’t want blood sugar levels that are too high; your whole system is badly affected by it. Your body, and especially your brain, needs a certain amount of glucose/sugar (which it gets from the carbohydrates you eat), but too much gives you dangerous high levels.
When the levels get too high, insulin is released to remove some of the sugar from the blood and lower the blood sugar down to acceptable levels again.
If too much glucose gets into your blood stream too fast, a large amount of insulin is produced. This makes the blood glucose level drop fast. You’ll experience the so called Rebound Effect.
Sometimes you can get such a big blood sugar drop that the sugar level is lower after your meal than before. This will cause your brain to send you a signal to quickly eat something sweet (the brain feeds on sugar, right?). You’ll get “sugar cravings”, which, as you know are hard to resist. You may also feel you lack energy and you’re at risk of feeling hungry again before you normally should.
Food with a low glycemic index releases glucose into the blood stream more steadily over several hours and keeps the blood sugar at a lower, stable level.
This is what we want on a diet; the fewer reasons to eat more, the better. (See these free glycemic index diet tips for ideas of what you can easily change.)
A High Blood Sugar Level Can Cause Weight Gain
The most important reason why you should look more into the glycemic index to help you lose weight is that too much insulin in the blood can make you gain weight.
Image courtesy of killerwig
What? Yes, even if you’ve learned that “We lose weight while eating fewer calories than we burn, and a calorie is a calorie is a calorie”…
… there’s a lot more to it than that. The fat burning process is a complicated and time consuming process for the body.
Let me try to explain it:
Fat is stored in the fat cells but burned in the muscles and energy consuming organs like the liver.
The fat has to be released from the fat cells, allowed into the blood stream in the form of free fatty acids to finally reach the muscles and the organs, where the fat burning process takes place.
If no free fatty acids are released into the blood stream, the body is unable to burn fat.
The result? No weight loss.
In this essential step insulin plays an important role. It controls if the fat cells will release or absorb fat. When too much insulin is released into the blood stream the fat cells start absorbing instead of releasing fat and the result for you is…
… No Weight Loss, But Weight Gain!
The best way to avoid a high blood sugar level is by learning more about the glycemic index and choosing food with a low GI. That will keep your insulin levels low, allowing fat to be released and burned in the body. So when applying your knowledge about how insulin works in your body, you will soon see some amazing results on the scale.
With you on the weigh,
Eva
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