Is Your Weight Gain Caused by Insulin Resistance…Surprising Truths
Today I want to remind you that when you set your goals to improve your health, clarity on what steps to take is absolutely crucial to doing so. Why? Because when in confusion, you will not persist through the inevitable resistance that comes up when we stretch to create a health transformation.
You need to understand what factors are causing your weight gain, and then take intentional steps to address the root cause of your body’s imbalance. And when you feel clear and empowered you will do what it takes.
If you’re trying to release weight through exercise and diet alone without taking into account whether or not your body is experiencing insulin resistance, then you’re in for a surprise.
While there is a definite relationship between insulin resistance and weight gain, which one comes first is often unclear.
What is insulin?
Insulin is an important hormone in our body that helps us to regulate our blood sugar. Sugar is necessary as it is the basic unit of energy that our cells use for fuel. Just like a car needs gasoline, our cells need sugar.
However, if our blood sugar and insulin levels are chronically elevated, we can begin to develop changes that increase the risk of weight gain and type two diabetes.
How does insulin work?
When our body is in balance, the following occurs:
When we eat food, our body breaks it down and it is absorbed into our bloodstream as blood sugar.
Our body notices the increase in blood sugar and signals the pancreas to release insulin.
The hormone insulin is released from the pancreas and acts as an escort to help shuttle sugar from the bloodstream through the cell receptors into the cells.
This enables the cells to utilize sugar for fuel.
Insulin also signals to the liver to store blood sugar for later.
Once the blood sugar travels into the cells, the amount of sugar in your bloodstream decreases signaling insulin to decrease as well.
What happens in the case of insulin resistance:
A large amount of sugar enters the bloodstream.
Our body responds by signaling our pancreas to release a larger amount of insulin.
Insulin travels to our cells to signal to them to open the receptors and take in sugar.
Instead of opening the cell receptors, our cells ignore or resist the insulin.
Our pancreas reacts by producing more insulin to attempt to get our cells to respond.
If our cells are not taking in sugar, they become starved for fuel and the sugar remains in the bloodstream.
How does elevated insulin contribute to weight gain?
When there is a lot of excess insulin and blood sugar in our bloodstream, it signals our body to put the excess sugar in storage. This is because sustained elevated blood sugar is toxic to nearly all tissues in the body.
The surprising truth is that our body is actually trying to protect itself from the damage that excess blood sugar causes by storing the excess as fat.
This storage of excess sugar is turned into fat is what causes weight gain.
Surprising cause of blood sugar increase
When we think of things that increase our blood sugar the obvious is eating foods that are high in sugar and refined carbohydrates.
However, many women are surprised to discover that challenges with low blood sugar, or hypoglycemia, are problematic as well.
This is because when your body has low blood sugar it will often cause a spike in cortisol levels and start to break down muscle and other protein in order to release sugar into the bloodstream.
How to determine if insulin resistance is contributing to your weight gain
Unfortunately, most physicians still rely on fasting glucose to indicate when a person has a problem with blood sugar management. Unfortunately, fasting glucose levels elevated outside the typical reference range happens after insulin resistance has been entrenched for some time.
Fasting glucose is only a one-time market that can be easily affected by short-term events like a rushed morning or stressful car ride to the blood draw. It is highly influenced by cortisol awakening response - which can hide or amplify the real status of ongoing fasting glucose.
Some physicians check HbA1C which is a much more useful marker to indicate the typical, ongoing blood sugar level. This measures the impact of blood sugar on hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying component of red blood cells. Hba1C is a much more useful marker to indicate ongoing blood sugar level because red blood cells live in the body for 3-4 months.
However, AbA1C has the same limitations as fasting glucose in that an elevated level is showing the downstream impact of insulin resistance that has been going on for some time. This marker is also less reliable for women that have some level of anemia due to suboptimal iron. Ideal HbA1c is typically 5.0% or less. Levels of 5.3% usually indicate some level of insulin resistance and 5.7% or higher is usually diagnostic for pre-diabetes.
The best practical lab gauge of insulin health is fasting insulin. Typical fasting insulin lab reference ranges are 0-25 mIU/L. However, as we know, a reference range is not an optimal target, or even a healthy range. The consensus is around 5 is optimal fasting insulin.
3 Ways to Support Insulin Resistance
Get more sleep - Several studies have linked poor sleep to reduced insulin sensitivity (or insulin resistance). Your routine 45-60 minutes before going to sleep play a big impact on your sleep quality. Be sure to prioritize this time to prepare for rest.
Magnesium is an important mineral that plays several important roles in both proper glucose utilization and insulin signaling. The most common form of magnesium for insulin resistance I recommend is magnesium glycinate.
Berberine is an herbal supplement that has been studied to help regulate blood sugar levels. This plant phytonutrient is an alkaloid and has also been used to fight microbial infections such as bacteria, yeast, and parasites. In peer reviewed studies in medical journals, this ‘powerhouse’ was found to lower both fasting blood sugar and insulin equally as well as metformin (a common diabetes medication). In addition, berberine also reduced participants' triglycerides by an average of 35% and their LDL cholesterol by an average of 21%.
Ok, so now it’s your turn. Do you suspect that insulin resistance may be playing a factor in your weight gain?
Take this free Hormone Assessment in our Hormone Health Kit today.
Discover if you are currently experiencing symptoms of insulin resistance so you can take control of your health and start utilizing targeted solutions for your unique body.
Are you not sure how you’d create a step-by-step plan to improve this hormone imbalance or what’s next? This is exactly what we do in our programs we help women to balance their hormones naturally.
Our support is why they get to increase their energy 3 hours every day and release weight so they can have their confidence back.
Are you curious about what that would be like for you?
It starts here by taking the hormone assessment today.