Monday, June 28, 2021

Wrapping up June's Challenge, Insulin

Cool, refreshing summer drink

To wrap up these last several days of June and begin heading into July I thought I would give you some more ideas of foods that will help keep your insulin stable, deeply nourish your body to celebrate this 4th of July! Are you excited to celebrate America's Birthday?!!!!

Food you can bring and not be the weird one bringing healthy food to a party, is meat. Beef, chicken, pork, fish, lamb, goat, maybe you are the odd one for lamb and goat. The point remains, by bringing meat to a party you have food you can eat that is satisfying, satiating, deeply nourishes your body, doesn't cause much ruckus with your insulin levels, will give you energy to party the night away. Most parties have meat anyway. American food, hamburgers and hot dogs, we are celebrating America after all! Eat an extra hamburger patty and hold the bun and chips.

Fruit. The great thing about fruit is the water and vitamins, minerals in fruit. This will help replenish the water you are loosing from sweating, plus the electrolytes being lost. It isn't only about drinking your water, eating your water brings more nutrients to the party and helps this water get into your cells as well. Watermelon and your other melons are great options. Have you ever been so thirsty but water just didn't quench your thirst? Then you eat some watermelon and your thirst is quenched. That is the benefit of eating your water, you are getting the water plus vitamins and minerals your body needs to rehydrate. Put some salt on it for better results. Who doesn't love seeing a large bowl of watermelon on a hot summer day at a party?! Instead of being the crazy healthy eater, you will be everyone's favorite for bringing cold melon.

Veggies, the thing to be mindful of with veggies is what you are putting on them. Be sure to avoid dressing that have hydrogenated oils, vegetable seed oils. You can slice cucumber and tomatoes and put them in olive oil and vinegar with salt. Grill veggies and put butter, salt and fresh herbs on them. 

There are healthy options for deserts, berries and fresh whipped cream with dark chocolate shavings. Frozen fruit sickles. I will link a few desert recipes for you.

Fresh, cold cantaloupe and full fat yogurt 

Primal Brownies

Keto angel food cake

Real Fruit Popsicles

Alcohol if you are choosing to drink, don't drive after drinking. Drink responsibly. If you are a beer drinker, go for the micro beers, beers that have been fermented. Use carbonated waters without sugar as a mixer instead of the sugar laden mixers. Freeze fruit and put that in drinks to keep them cold and add flavor. Blend frozen fruit into drinks for a cool treat, these can be alcohol free. Sangrias are another great option. Use fresh fruits and teas made from flowers in place of the sugary juices. Sparkling wine is a thing, use these for the fizz instead of sodas or top off with a spritzer.  

Just because you are eating healthy and minding your insulin doesn't mean you have to sacrifice everything or be the crazy one eating "healthy". You can enjoy, nourish your body, lead others to healthier eating and celebrate.

Obesity is a disease of malnourishment.
Happy 4th of July!
Love you guys
Jenn

Wednesday, June 23, 2021

A Different Way to Look at Stabilizing Insulin


 With all this talk about insulin and what it does in our bodies, the good and not so good, what can we do? Is there anything we can do to correct the issues? 

Why yes there is! We are not helpless and bound to be stuck in a raging ocean of insulin levels. 

Here are several simple and effective steps you can take. I did say simple, not necessarily easy. It is worth it:

  • become fat adapted 
  • stop eating so many carbs, they shouldn't make up the largest majority of your food intake
  • eat more protein
  • move frequently at a slow pace
  • lift heavy things
  • sprint once in awhile
  • supplement smartly, there are some great supplements to help the body through this to better deal with carbs. 
How do you become a fat burning beast? We have to remind the body how to burn fat for fuel again. Remember this is our natural setting as human. The best way to do this is taking the 21 Day Primal Challenge. For 21 days you are going to eat like our ancestors, deeply nourishing fats, proteins and some carbs from seasonal berries and veggies. You want your carb load below 100 grams but probably not far below 50 grams. The majority of your food intake is going to come from animal proteins and fats. Avoid all processed foods. 

Tuesday, June 15, 2021

Insulin and Our Mitochondria

Inside our cells

We couldn't have a series on insulin without talking about the mighty mitochondria and roles it plays in insulin. Go google this and you will be reading per reviewed medical journals. 

Our mitochondria are absolutely vital to our health. Without them, well we wouldn't be able to survive. They are pretty important. 

What are mitochondria? Simply put they are our energy source, our power plants in our cells. They take nutrients we eat and convert them into ATP, adenosine triphosphate, energy. ATP generates energy for cellular function. We need the energy from ATP for thinking, brain function, sprinting, walking, lifting heavy things, pumping blood through out our bodies, reading this post you are using ATP. We need ATP for pretty much everything. Without this process of our mitochondria producing ATP from our food, we wouldn't be alive. A good reason to be fascinated with them.

Tuesday, June 8, 2021

Why Insulin is Important for Nutrient Absorption


A recap from last week, when insulin levels are high or low, we are stressing the body, causing it to be in fight or flight. High insulin is fat storage signal to the body. More specifically, when we are consuming more sources of sugar from carbohydrates or other sugar forms than we are able to burn and use in the cells, the excess is converted to fat and stored on the body. Locked and trapped away by these high levels. When insulin is low, our bodies send signals of distress needing to raise those insulin levels causing a host of issues. These are not good times for the body. Who wants to live in a raging ocean all the time?

Today we are going to discuss another role of insulin, signaling the cell to intake nutrients.

Insulin signals our cells to intake amino acids, the basics building blocks of protein, and fat into the liver and muscle cells. These are needed in the cell to do the work of creating you, your body, muscles, organs, energy and so much more. Absolutely important for these nutrients to enter the cell and insulin helps facilitate this. Like I said in last weeks post, we need insulin, can't live without it. It is the excess we have flowing throughout the body because of glucose causing the issues.  

As you can imagine, if one way our nutrients are brought into our cells and our cells cannot hear insulin's signal from our cells being full of glucose or an over whelming amount of insulin constantly knocking on the door of the cells, our cells can't function like they should. You could be hitting your protein goals of eating your body weight in ounces or more every day. If that protein cannot get into the cell and be used for growth and repair your diligence in hitting the protein numbers is diminished. Not waisted but doesn't have the full impact it could have by being insulin sensitive, your cells can hear and respond to insulin's call. Insulin resistance is a source of  cell malnourishment. 

Wednesday, June 2, 2021

June's Challenge, All About Insulin

Elk burger

For the month of June we are going to spend time learning about some of the roles insulin plays in the body and why having stable insulin and being insulin sensitive is important to our over all health.

Usually when we hear about insulin is it is in regards to diabetes. However, insulin is responsible for many other roles within the body. It is an important hormone that plays a major role in storing or using body fat, nutrients entering the cell, inflammation, and so much more. Insulin is vital for life. Insulin is produced by the pancreas in response to our eating carbohydrates, these turn into sugar in the body referred to as glucose. Insulin's role is to whisk this glucose out of the blood stream because if left in the blood stream, glucose becomes extremely toxic to the body. Let's talk about insulin's other roles.

We are going to discuss insulin's role in the body in regards to energy and fat burning today.

When we follow the norm today, we are told carbs are our primary source of fuel, the body prefers to burn carbs. In my opinion this has had devastating impacts on our health and I disagree. Does this mean you have to agree with me, no. I do hope you are willing to see another side of health and be open to different thoughts and learning.

I prefer to be fat adapted, metabolically flexible. Meaning my body is able to use the glucose it is given through my food and once this is dealt with, it can begin to burn fat for fuel, either from food or my stored body fat. This is the natural setting of the animal, human and otherwise. When we look to our ancestors, animal protein and fat were their main food sources. Think about it, they did not have mass food production facilities, acres of planted crops, no grocery store to pick up all this processed food, grains, fruit and veggies available year round. They ate what they could hunt, gather and preserve. If you need to eat every 2-4 hours to maintain your energy levels you wouldn't last long in the wild. This makes carbs as the main energy source not likely.