Fun fact: that not-so-fun experience can be directly tied to your blood sugar being too low.

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Low blood sugar triggers us to seek food and increases our blood sugar. During times of low blood sugar, we often don't make the best choices in what we eat and how we live.   

Our hunger cues can only be trusted when we have balanced blood sugars between meals and we feel full and satisfied without needing to snack for a quick fix.

Now, let's talk about what can cause our body to miscue hunger.   There are two main culprits that miscue our hunger drive:

1. Highly Processed Carbs and Food. These foods set us up for the hunger-crave-snack cycle throughout the day that leads to poor health. 
2. Insulin Resistance. Over time, poor health habits can result in our bodies becoming less sensitive to the insulin hormone that is critical to how we process and store sugar in the body. Insulin resistance drives hunger cravings, even when we just ate an hour or two prior, because our cells are not getting properly fueled to create energy, so they are triggering the body to seek out more food. This cycle can lead to a myriad of health issues and unwanted weight gain. 

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The goal is to eat meals made of foods that turn on fullness and satiety. Eating meals with the right foods can help us balance blood sugar and sustain energy between meals for ideally 4 hours and stop the drive to continuously snack. 

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Food’s Effect on Blood Sugar:

Let’s break down how our body responds to the foods we eat. Everything we eat has a blood sugar response.   

When we feel hungry, most people will crave foods they have eaten most of their life and have correlated the feeling of being delicious, feeling full, and satisfied. But when we eat, how does our body respond to the foods we choose? Understanding that concept is so important. 

Ultimately, we're eating to crush the feeling of hunger and to feel satisfied and what I call "post-meal peace" with no cravings and mid-meal slumps in energy that require pick-me-up snacks or caffeine between meals. 

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The Blood Sugar Response Bell Curve 

A bell curve shows us how our blood sugar levels respond in time to the foods we eat.

Blood sugar that holds in the 80 to 99 mg/dL range for most of the day is what we call the "happy zone," where our mood is best and our cravings are crushed. When we keep our blood sugars in this range most of the day, we are living our best life in the best mood and with the most energy.

But if your body doesn’t protect you from dropping below 80mg/dL, you may find yourself feeling fatigue, hunger, and cravings. Most people will respond to this with regular snacking throughout the day to feed their never-ending hunger drive.

The normal body will respond to blood sugars as they trend low and protect the body from running too low by turning on gluconeogenesis, which is when the body breaks down stored fuel called glycogen in the muscle, converting protein and glycolysis to convert fat into energy.   This is how the body can fast and still maintain adequate blood sugar to keep us fueled.  When this happens, we will feel hunger and cravings, but we will not experience low blood sugar below 80 mg/dL.

I call 80 and below the “hunger zone.” This zone is when I often joke that even your kids might not like you. I often say this is not the time to win friends and influence enemies -- when our blood sugar is below 80.    

This is the zone when we are not our best versions of ourselves.   I like to make a note here this can happen from a very young age for some children, and I find identifying those that tend to get "hangry,” tired between meals, always hungry, and lacking energy yet still feel hungry may not have a body that compensates as efficiently to maintain and prevent low blood sugar levels.

Ultimately, our goal is to stay in the happy zone with our blood sugar.

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Blood Sugar Response Bell Curve Graph

When we eat a meal, our blood sugar begins to rise, and we see a bell-shaped curve.

The top of the curve represents blood sugar level peaks that a standard meal might reach.    If we start our meal at a blood sugar of 80mg/dL before the first bite, we can see an immediate increase in blood sugar levels responding to the food we eat -- and this is totally normal.    

But the goal is to slow the blood sugar response and not peak from an entire meal greater than 50mg/dL in one to two hours after eating and to have blood sugar return to normal in 4 hours without the need to snack and without feeling hungry. I call this the “Max 50 Blood Glucose Response.”  

This is our goal for the food combinations that make up a perfect plate: eating foods that also trigger healing.

But, the timing of the blood sugar response depends on the foods and food combinations we eat at our meals. 

Take apples, for example. If we eat whole carbs fully packaged with fiber, like an apple with nuts and all the components of a hunger-crushing healing plate, we will slow and delay the blood sugar response from that meal and enjoy the sweetness of the apple because we are eating mostly unprocessed plant foods.    

However, when we make apple juice, we need 3-4 whole apples to create enough juice to make 1 cup. If we were to eat four whole apples, we would feel super full and probably not have room to eat much more at that meal.  However, we can strip the fiber from the apple removing the insoluble fiber in the skin and the soluble pectin fibers and resistant starches, and simply be left with the simple fructose sugars I call fast carbs.     

Fast carbs, even from apple juice, can spike our blood sugar response, and these excess sugars at one meal can boost insulin response. The excess sugars we don't need for fuel will be stored as fat.

When we take sugar cane and make table sugar, we need almost three feet of whole sugar cane to make one teaspoon of table sugar. Again, whenever we process plant foods, we eat more fast carbs than our body can burn at one time, and excess sugars are stored as fat with the support of our fat-storing hormone, insulin.

Food combinations matter as well.   If we simply drink 100% apple juice for a snack with no other foods, we will see a sudden surge in our blood sugar response within 15 minutes of drinking the juice.  And within one hour, we’ll see a sudden drop in blood sugar that can lead us to want more processed sugar to balance our blood sugar and stop the energy slump most people feel from sudden surges and drops in blood sugar levels.  

However, if we want to enjoy four ounces of fruit juice, we can drink this while eating a mostly unprocessed, whole-plant meal. These additional foods help slow and delay the blood sugar response from the meal and help us shut off hunger and cravings between meals.   

So, meal combos matter when we look at blood sugar response from meals. The hunger-crushing, healing plates help us build meals that meet the Max 50 Blood Glucose response goals.

Meals with unprocessed whole plant foods like whole fruits and veggies, nuts, seeds, and beans help us balance blood sugar and keep us feeling full for 4 hours.     

The more unprocessed whole carbs like whole fruits and vegetables and whole grains we add to each meal, along with the plant protein in beans and nuts, and whole, healthy plant fats like seeds, avocado, and olives, the more our meal will shut down hunger and balance our blood sugar with a perfect bell curve for our Max 50 blood sugar response.

We are aiming for a “reduce and delay” blood sugar response. We want to feel good while we eat AND after we eat. 

Our ultimate goal regarding blood sugar is to have a Max 50 Blood Sugar Response to our meals with a nice bell curve that shows a slow raise in blood sugar response from the meals due to the fiber, whole carbs, whole plant proteins, and whole plant fats that all support slowing the blood sugar response.

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The Hidden Culprit to Health: Insulin Resistance

We know we want to slow and delay the response of blood sugar. But where does the blood sugar go after we digest our meals?

Blood sugar is moved into our cells, and insulin triggers those cells to be fueled by sugar.

Insulin is the gatekeeper to the cell and helps the cell be sensitive to absorbing sugar. This is how our blood sugar levels return to baseline.

The body must carefully titrate our blood sugar levels to keep a constant supply of blood sugar to fuel the brain. When we have excess blood sugar, the insulin hormone is triggered to tell the body to store excess blood sugar as body fat, which is our body's natural energy reservoir to fuel our body on days we don't eat.

The keto diet triggers a pathologic state where the body is deprived of carbohydrates and drives the body into a ketotic state so we burn these excess body fat reservoirs and allow those most resistant to weight loss to lose weight. So, during fasting, our body has the ability to burn fat for energy using these stored fat reserves from the days when we ate excess carbs and calories. 

I call this the ‘hibernation’ state, where we can burn fat as energy and survive with all the fuel our brain needs to function even when we fast for several days.

Our body is now trying to take glucose to the cell; that's the endpoint.

If we can't get it from our body to the blood to the cell, we will continue to feel hungry because the cell will eventually trigger the brain to say, “I'm still starving. You don't have any energy. This body is in trouble.”

And this is where insulin comes into the picture.

Insulin drives sugar into the cell and also stores all excess carbs and calories as stored body fat for future fuel reserves. 

When our body is working well, we can trust our hunger cues; this is when our body is insulin sensitive and our cells correctly absorb blood sugar for fuel. 

But over time, when we eat high amounts of processed sugars and processed foods, we can overwork our pancreas that produces the insulin, and in time our cells can start to become resistant to the insulin.

Research shows that young adults between 18-44 are increasingly becoming insulin resistant. What does that mean? That's when all of a sudden, this insulin that drives this sugar into the cell develops a block in the gate, and we can't quite get that sugar into the cell. 

This means that it takes more and more insulin to drive smaller amounts of blood sugar into the cells. So, the body needs to make more insulin to compensate and keep our blood sugars from being too high and too low so we can survive.    

As we make more insulin (an anabolic fat-storing hormone), we find that waist circumference and overall body fat increase as we use more and more insulin to fuel our cells.   

As the cells become more insulin-resistant, the nice bell curve that shows our post-meal blood sugar response begins to rise higher, indicating higher blood sugar levels, and the curve flattens, meaning it takes longer and longer to bring the blood sugar down since the cells are resisting absorbing the blood sugar and the body is forced to store the excess blood sugar as fat.  

The problem is the cell is still starving for fuel.  So the cell is triggering the brain to tell us to eat -- hence the hunger drive continues even when we just ate one hour ago.  The cell hasn't been fueled because it is resistant to absorbing the sugar into the cell, yet the blood sugar is trapped in the blood. Over time with insulin resistance, we find disease risk increases, body weight increases, and the risk of diabetes, heart disease, and even cancer rapidly rises.

This is a big problem because when insulin is running high in the blood to try to fuel the cell, we can never break down fat or lose weight. 

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You will never lose weight when insulin levels are high in the blood. This is why low-carb diets like Atkins and keto are successful for weight loss. If we stop eating carbs, we can stop needing insulin, and when insulin is lowered, we can start to lose weight.    

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We talked about the healthiest diet in another Masterclass and broke down the benefits and health challenges of these weight loss diets.

If you are craving food all day and want to keep snacking, you are keeping your body's insulin elevated and you will not burn fat.  

When you eat meals that keep your blood sugar response at Max 50 with unprocessed whole carbs and proteins and healthy plant fat, you can naturally improve insulin resistance and crush hunger. 

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The Magic of a Well-designed Plate

The goal of this bell-shaped curve is for us to experience no more than a 50-point increase in blood sugar from the meal combos we eat. The best way to do that is by following the hunger-crushing healing plate. You are eating mostly unprocessed foods that will give you the right foods that are high in fiber, protein, and fat to crush hunger and balance blood sugar and meet the goal of Max 50 on the blood sugar response bell curve.

So, for example, when I eat an apple, I don’t just eat an apple.  I'm going to have whole grains with it, or I'm going to have nuts with it, or I'll have a healthy fat with it like flaxseed or almond butter. 

And now I get this nice bell-shaped curve even after a snack so that everything's working most efficiently. 

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The “Max 50” Rule 

The typical American diet has about 90% processed foods and only 10% whole foods. This dangerous formula is what quickly spikes our blood sugar and spikes our insulin levels. Eating meals with highly processed foods causes spikes in blood sugar and requires more insulin to fuel the cell.  And remember, all excess carbs and calories, including protein and fat, are stored as fat.

I apply the “Max 50” rule to my Hunger Crushing Meals that Heal Plate and each one of my recipes. Every meal or snack recipe I create is designed from foods that will keep your body’s blood sugar response below a 50-point increase. I’ve even tested this with my patients with diabetes with very positive results in weight loss, blood sugar response after meals, and fasting insulin reduction in just 10 days of eating meals with this formula.

This formula works so that the maximum your blood sugar will go up is 50 points between the first bite and 1-2 hours after your meal.

Then you’re back to baseline in 4 hours, and in between, you will feel full and satisfied without the need to snack and without the mid-meal energy slumps.

If you are highly insulin resistant when you get started, it may take 5 to 7 days with some weight loss to start seeing the insulin drop and start being able to lose weight physiologically. Hunger cues are turned on only when your body really needs calories, and hunger is turned off when you eat your meals every four hours.  Now you can start trusting your hunger cues again when your insulin sensitivity improves and insulin levels reduce.

And when the cell is satisfied, your cues are correct. And that's really the most important part of what the Max 50 Blood Glucose Response to meals is all about.

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The Power of Exercise

Now let's talk about healthy habits that can help to improve insulin sensitivity to help the body fuel the cell even in those highly insulin resistant. Exercise can act like insulin and drive blood sugar into the cell with little or no insulin. This is how you can add the 10-minute "Oxygen Cocktail" walks combined with eating meals designed with the Max 50 Blood Sugar Response formula - The Plate.

Our body’s flight or fight response during exercise is to directly receive blood sugar without the need for insulin. So, during exercise, blood sugar goes directly to our cells. 

So exercise can work hand in hand with this diet change. Your Wellness Score includes a health habit for exercise.

We're not talking about a fast walk, but rather a two-mile-an-hour walk. You're walking and talking.

Ultimately, your goal should be to exercise between 150-300 minutes per week. 

I look at exercise like medicine, just like food. Your Max 50 Blood Sugar Response can be reduced by 20 more points of blood sugar after meals from just a 10-minute “Oxygen Cocktail” walk.  Now we can start turning your health around in days with measurable risk reduction like lowering waist circumference and lowering fasting insulin levels.

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Finally See the Change You Long For

So, between a plate of food designed to work with your body’s systems and consistent exercise, we can achieve the Max 50 Blood Glucose Meal Response and feel a real change in our health. 

In our next (and last) lesson, we’ll tackle habits that are helpful or hurtful to your health journey. See you there. 

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