You Want to Balance Blood Sugar for Belly Fat Reduction

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What are you waiting for? Good night. If you've got a belly fat issue, you potentially also have a need to balance your blood sugar. In this episode, I answer a Community member question. The question is, I'm struggling with keeping my blood sugar balanced. I'm wearing the CGM— that's a continuous glucose monitor— and it is showing my blood sugar going below 70 many times during the night and 2 to 3 times during the day. Trying to figure this all out. Balanced meals don't seem to be doing much help. Tonight I'm having a protein shake with 40 grams of protein and 30 grams of fiber, hoping this keeps things more steady overnight and I can get some restful sleep. Not asking for medical advice here, just moral support. Also, one of our coaches noted she is just recovering from an illness. So I'm Debra Atkinson. You're listening to Flipping 50, where I address your top struggles and concerns. I share what to eat, how to move, and how to change your mindset So you can have the energy and the vitality that you want, need, and to serve in this second and better half. So today, obviously diving into community members' question, and by the way, you could be the next community question that I answer if you leave that for us at facebook.com/groups/Flipping50Insiders, Flipping 5-0 Insiders. That group is open to the public. You're welcome to join it. And that is where we do a roundup periodically of podcast questions. What would you like answered? And when I can't have the bandwidth to answer everybody one-on-one inside of that group, we will use questions that really probably target a whole lot of us right here on the podcast. So look forward to hearing from you. Okay, so I want to recap first. While there isn't anything necessarily something wrong with a 70 or lower blood glucose number at night, if you feel fine, crashing that low during the day definitely raises some questions if you're doing it repeatedly, and especially if you don't feel good. So average waking glucose level's about 85. Might be plus, might be minus, but most of us will ride there. So let's say you're typically at 105. It's a little high. If you're typically waking up and it's 60, considerably low, right? And generally alarms will go off, or if you're using the glucose monitor that I prefer to use now with clients, it'll go off at about 55 because that's really a low blood sugar. But you can see that 70 is not that low. And at night you may go lower. I do, I do on a regular basis, and I feel good and have stable energy during the day and sleep really well most of the time outside of having a new puppy. All right, let's just say that. So clarify, clarifying with the individual that it was drops, not spikes, but It's clear that that's happening 2 to 3 times during the day, and that's not ideal because I'm guessing that your energy level also crashes, like, "I could take a nap," or maybe cravings for sugar. So let's talk a little bit about how to use a continuous glucose monitor to balance blood sugar. So number 1, the first thing you want to do when you have one is observe first. And my questions would be, did you, did you do that? Did you take a week to just live normally, your normal sleep, your normal stress, your normal workload, your normal exercise, your normal eating patterns. If you have, now you know, okay, here's my data, here's how I respond normally, these are my numbers. And then you're writing down anything that already is just, this is an odd thing for me, but normally X is true. Now you've got a baseline. Then you want to look at things like energy, food, activity, stress, and sleep. They all matter. And say you're under stress or you didn't sleep well, that's going to impact the foods that you're eating differently than if you had— say, um, if you had a poor night's sleep, you're going to respond differently to a food, probably negatively, compared to if you had a really great night's sleep. Likewise, if you're under a lot of stress, you're not going to respond as positively to a food as you might if you had been, you know, kind of very calm and, and/or employing all of your stress toolbox tools, right? So think about, did you simply record what is normal for you right now? That's really all you want to do without changing it for that first week. What is your stable energy all day long? Or that's a loaded question— is it stable? And otherwise, what is it? And I often will have somebody go in and do this micro while, say, on an hourly basis. But if generally somebody has pretty good energy, we might just do it at 6 AM, 9 AM, noon, 3 PM, 6 PM, 9 PM. If you're a little less stable than that and you are experiencing crashes, we might do that at, you know, 6 AM, 7 7:30 AM, 9:00, and 10:30 AM, and so on. You get the idea. But you want to look at what's my energy level and when during that period am I eating, as well as why you're eating. Continuous glucose monitors may need also to be adjusted or recalibrated. So they're not all perfect, and it may be that you, you ride a little lower or you ride a little higher than someone else. Similarly, your heart rate. So nobody should be saying to you, well, here's where you need to be based on your age, because unless we've tested you on a treadmill during your exercise, we don't know that's the way you respond to exercise. So there's lots of variables there for any one of us. None of us is really truly average. So don't, don't let arbitrary numbers dictate what's true for you. So what I really want to know is those numbers go low, how do you feel? What is happening with your energy level? Now, it does sound like maybe crashing at night is waking you up. So it says, hopefully I can get some restful sleep, because it sounds like you're not. So I'm going to tie that into your question. So if you're feeling highs and lows, then we definitely want adjustments. Are you monitoring stress levels and your sequence of food? That's also important. Sequence can change the impact of a meal by 75%, meaning let's say you eat your carbohydrates first, you're probably going to spike. It'll, it'll be a 75% higher spike than it would be if you ate carbohydrates last in your meal. Any meal eaten under stress or sleep deprived will spike blood sugar more than it would otherwise. Try comparing it to I would try comparing eating that smoothie or having that smoothie to a mixed meal. You know, dine on real food and compare. And I think this is really important for women at night. I'm often asked if we're doing some kind of a challenge and there might be a smoothie that we're doing for breakfast and for lunch, short period of time, we might do that and part of the reason is a reset, just lightening up the liver on your load, your digestive system, because blended food is easier to process. Your body doesn't have to do the breakdown because you've already started that process for you. But what is important is that, you know, at night, your body, if you give it something to chew on, it has to take a longer time to break that down that food down. So it's more like a time-release capsule, if you will. Muscle protein synthesis works that way. We actually want, at certain times, we want pre or post-exercise the liquid protein because we want it to get to the muscles to help replenish and rebuild as quickly as we can. However, we also want to look very closely at what happens with the increase of Um, say animal protein. Let's say you have a steak. I was searching for what would be a good example. Let's say you have a steak and you're not going to rapidly absorb that because your body has to— at first it's a, it's a hard piece of food. Your body has to digest the pieces and the particles down and go to work much more. So over time, that food actually is in the process of digesting in your body. So it may be that having a full belly of food for dinner, whether you eat at 5 PM or 6 PM or 7 PM, at least 2 to 3 hours before you go to bed, is actually going to sustain you through the night with greater energy levels because your body will still be breaking that down. I don't love a liquid meal at night. Not— I mean, say you're gonna have soup, but ideally if it has some, some chicken or shrimp or crab or some kind of protein in it, maybe in beans or vegetables, that still is a little solid. You're getting a lot of liquid, but not only liquid as you would be in a smoothie. So I would definitely have regular food and, and see what the difference might be. Try comparing it to just a mixed meal, dine on real food and compare. You're, you know, mixing in a protein shake and may not be working, but testing so that you know would be key. A liquid meal, again, it may not support stable levels as much as a solid meal might because solid meal takes longer to digest. There is definitely an appropriate time to do smoothies, but there's also a time when you're better off doing solid food that take hours to break down and then acts like a time-release drip for more balanced blood sugar. So you've tried X, right? So whatever it is that you personally are listening to and you've tried, How can you have the same food stuff, like the same macro breakdown, or very similar, and make one change to see if there's a difference? So that one change might be that you increase the amount of fiber, or you increase the amount of protein, or you move the carbohydrates to last. So document your sleep, your stress, and your exercise status because they're also impacting you. Chances are that poor sleep is impacting your responses. And I would not suggest a shake at dinner if you want to sleep better. Give your gut some whole food. You've already given it a release or relaxation, you know, a little lighter on the job the first two meals of the day if you're doing, say, some kind of a detox with us. But I would try giving yourself just the whole food alternative. And if you are somebody just who prefers to eat lighter at night, I totally understand that, try moving it to earlier in the, in the day and see what a difference that makes. So sometimes you can finish your dinner by 4 or 5 and still get the same result, you know, although having a solid meal is still gonna help. So experiment in the protein shake you had, you know, write down what did you have. You have X amount of protein, X amount of carbohydrate, X amount of fat. What happens if you adjusted the protein, the fiber, carb, or the fat, but not all at once? Changing one thing at a time will change the ratio. So here's how to test blood sugar levels. What happens if you have a plate of whole food? So salmon, maybe carbohydrates in a legume soup or a bean salad, and then added fiber to reach the same level that you might have had in your smoothie. But I do think you will find that if you're having carbohydrates in solid food like beans or, um, legumes— sweet potatoes will have some— even if you have a little less fiber because it's actually whole food, again, it's going to take a little bit longer and it still may support your blood sugar levels. Better or more optimally. So then try again. Try the same meal, exactly the same meal, in a different order, like carbohydrates last. What happens when you do it that way? Testing means that you change just one variable at a time. Keep in mind, one should be recording— week one should just be recording what is your usual habit. Don't jump in and make changes yet because you want to know what's usual. What's my usual energy level, my sleep habits, my eating habits? Other factors in monitoring your blood sugar balance with CGM— it's, are you taking high doses of vitamin C? This is kind of an off-the-wall question, but that can actually create false reports of blood sugar if you're using some continuous blood glucose monitors. So you might want to look at that. I've got a couple things that I use for as a part of health skin that are fairly high in vitamin C, and so I have to push them aside if I'm using the CGM. So does this feel right? I think you also want to ask. The monitor may not be functioning properly or require some calibration on your part. So just because they sent them doesn't mean they're all up to factory standards, or that's your standard. And, you know, we tend to— humans tend to default to having done something wrong, like we did it. And maybe it's not you, maybe it's just the continuous blood glucose monitor that's not functioning quite well. So I hope that was helpful. We kept this one nice and short. If you're interested in tracking your continuous blood glucose levels because of belly fat or because of sleep needs or because you're just highs and lows during the day. You're up and down. Totally get it. Nobody wants that. That is absolutely no fun. What I'd love for you to do is to come to the show notes, and that'll be at flipping50.com/balance-blood-sugar, and I will put the link for the CGM of my choice, and that'll be in the show notes. Occasionally, periodically through the year, we do 3 or 4 different months out of the year where we do a group and the group is going to the use of the continuous blood glucose monitor together, talking through what's happening, what results you're getting, what are your testing ideas for, what might you test next, and troubleshooting is all, all a part of that. So you have a great deal of knowledge even if you just do a month, take a month off, or to and apply what you've learned and changing the habits. That's the hardest part of all. I hope that's been helpful. Again, show notes today will be at living50.com/balance-blood-sugar.