Here’s one dietary fact you’ll find no argument about. When you eat a carbohydrate, your blood sugar shoots up. It peaks in about an hour and returns to baseline in three or four hours.
Here’s another fact you’ll find no argument about. When your blood sugar shoots up, your insulin level shoots up. It shoots up even more than your blood sugar shoots up.
Insulin is secreted into your bloodstream by tiny cells in your pancreas called beta cells. Their top priority is to keep your blood sugar down. The higher your blood sugar goes after eating a carbohydrate, the more insulin your beta cells pump into your blood to get it back down.
How high your blood sugar rises after eating a carbohydrate is reflected by a measurement called the glycemic load. The higher the glycemic load of a carbohydrate, the more insulin your beta cells secrete when you eat it.
Scientists have measured the glycemic load of several hundred different carbohydrates. The table, Glycemic Loads of Common Foods, lists the glycemic loads of several of the more common ones. Looking at this list, you can see that even though all carbohydrates raise blood sugar, there is large variation in the amount they raise it. Most of the insulin we produce is secreted in response to eating only a handful of high glycemic load foods, the so called refined carbohydrates–flour products, potatoes, rice and sugar-containing beverages.
Insulin Resistance
The glycemic load is not the only thing that determines how much insulin your beta cells secrete when you eat a carbohydrate. Even more important is how effective your insulin is at lowering your blood sugar. Your muscles are the main consumers of glucose and the targets of most of the insulin you produce. If they don’t respond normally to insulin–if your muscles are insulin resistant–you have to secrete several times the normal amount of insulin to get your blood sugar down.
If excess insulin is giving you belly fat, the problem is always twofold: the glycemic load of your diet is too high and your muscles are resistant to insulin. To lower your insulin levels you need to reduce the glycemic load of your diet at the same time you restore your muscles sensitivity to insulin. You can’t just do one; you must do both. If you reduce your glycemic load without restoring your muscles’ sensitivity to insulin, even small amounts of carbohydrate will drive up your insulin levels . If you try to increase your muscles’ responsiveness to insulin without reducing your glycemic load, your muscles will fill up with glucose and quickly become insulin resistant again.
Here’s the good news. If you reduce your glycemic load at the same time you restore your muscles’ sensitivity to insulin, you will arrive at a sweet spot. With seemingly little effort, your insulin levels will drop and fat will start leaving your fat cells, especially the ones in your abdomen.
Eliminating hyperinsulinemia is different from most people’s idea of dieting and exercising. It’s much easier. Lowering your glycemic load is usually a matter of reducing–not eliminating–one or two carbohydrates and replacing them with tastier and more satisfying foods. To eliminate insulin resistance, you need your muscles to do what Mother Nature intended them to do, which as you will see, has nothing to do with huffing and puffing.
But remember, you have to take a two-pronged approach. You need to reduce your glycemic load at the same time you restore your muscles sensitivity to insulin. You can’t succeed by doing one; you must do both.
How to restore your muscles’ responsiveness to insulin.
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