Food Insulin Demand: Going Beyond the Glycemic Index with Dr. Fiona McCulloch

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Welcome to the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show with celebrity nutrition expert, fitness hall of Famer and four time New York Times best selling author, JJ Virgin. JJ is a warrior mom whose knowledge and expertise have helped change hundreds of thousands of lives with over 3.5 million podcast downloads and appearances on Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, the Today Show, Rachael Ray, Larry King Love Whoa, whoa, whoa.

This show is about you, not about me. I want to help you find practical, real world ways to dial in your health and mindset so you can finally lose that weight and feel strong and energized. Stop settling for less than your personal best. It's time to find out how to look and feel better than ever. And I'll be right here with you the whole way. Hey, it's jj. Welcome to the podcast. So, you know, I'm kind of bit nuts about getting the sugar out of the diet and so much so that I've always said you've been looking at sugar all wrong. And one of the reasons was we never took insulin into account. Well, I have such an awesome guest today because we are going to be talking about a new way to look at carbs at food called the insulin demand chart. And it is going to help you if you've been eating and you go, gosh, I just ate totally healthy but I'm like tired right now. You're gonna know why after today's talk. And also you're gonna know what you need to do simple, little easy things. You know how much I love simple, actionable steps so you can lower your insulin demand, which is going to help you burn that fat, have great energy and not be hungry in between meals. Sound good? All right, let me tell you a little bit about our guest today. She is a member of my mindshare community. She's from Toronto. Is she from Toronto, Canada? Yes, she's from Toronto, Canada and she is a licensed naturopathic doctor. She's been one for 17 years. She's the founder and owner of White Lotus Integrative Medicine. It's one of the longest established integrative medicine clinics in Toronto. She's written the book, the best selling book, 8 Steps to Reverse your PCOS. She teaches a ton out there in the practitioner level. She's also a medical advisor and developed a nutrition program for Myeva, an advanced women's technology platform. And it uses state of the art genetic and molecular science, technology and integrated medicine to transform women's healthcare on an international level. I love it when people are out there doing great big work out into the world. And you'll definitely want to grab that book because whether you have PCOS or not, this is really about improving insulin sensitivity. When you've got better insulin sensitivity, as you're going to hear today again, it's massive. That plus blood sugar balance and that means great energy and easy fat burning. And who doesn't want that? So we're going to give you the insulin demand chart she talks about today. You'll be able to get that@www.jjvirgin.com. insulin, insulin demand, easy to grab. Alrighty. Dr. Fiona McCullough, welcome to the show. I'm so glad you're here with me today.

Thank you, jj. It's so exciting to be on your show. Thanks for inviting me.

Well, come on. I am so fired up about this topic because, you know, I always talk about how we've been looking at sugar all wrong. So when I got a little sniff of you doing this whole new way of looking at insulin, carbs, food, which I'm not going to steal your thunder, like, how could I not have you on as quickly as possible? So I'm really excited about that. But before we get into it, let's, let's get a little bit more about you. Like, how did you get interested in metabolism and hormones and women's health?

Yeah. So throughout my whole life I've had these issues myself and, you know, I always had weight gain around my middle. I always noticed, like my other friends, they wouldn't gain.

You're a teeny person. Like, you're a teeny person.

I am very short. I am a wee person. But I do gain weight right around my tummy. And it's always been really hard for me to lose weight. And, you know, I always noticed my friends didn't have to try so hard and I was pretty athletic as a teenager and I think probably that, you know, reversed a lot of it. But once I went into university and I started going to the cafeteria and just eating carbs all the time, I just gained weight immediately, like around 20 pounds. And it was just really hard for it to come off. And Then I had a whole bunch of other hormonal issues too, like acne, irregular periods. So a whole bunch of problems throughout, throughout my life.

How did that transition into all of this? Like, there you are, now you're here as a doc. And what, what's the transition?

So, yeah, so as I was going through school, I was looking at different kinds, options for medical school, and I decided to, you know, I became really interested in holistic health. My mom was, was quite interested in it, and so I decided to become a naturopathic doctor. And as I went through that program, I just changed my diet as a result of learning a lot, and I started exercising a lot more, you know, eating really healthfully. And a lot of those problems started to go away, except for some of the issues like the acne and my irregular cycles. And over time, I started to get some ideas as to what might be the cause of. So I ordered some blood work finally, once I had graduated. And it did confirm that I have a condition called polycystic ovary syndrome, which is a condition which is really characterized by insulin resistance. And so a lot of things started to make sense to me and I sort of became really obsessed with learning about women's hormones, but also how they relate to our metabolism. And so I've been in practice 17 years and I'm still, I'm getting more and more interested in it every year, so I don't think I'll ever get tired of it.

So, you know what's so crazy, Fiona? Here you are, you're in medical school, you've had these issues for years, and yet, you know, you went all the way through medical school without this getting diagnosed. Finally figured it out yourself. And I just, I, I know we were talking offline about how many women struggle, and obviously PCOS is one piece of it, but just even with any kind of insulin problems or hormonal problems that they just, they think it's just them. Maybe it's what I'm eating, it's my genes, or when it's not that at all.

Yeah, absolutely. Like, I mean, I even remember going to the doctor and nobody ever really asked me about whether I had irregular cycles or really even looked into any of these issues. And it's really common. You know, a lot of women actually, they get tests done for diabetes and they're normal, but that's not, that's, that's not going to pick up insulin resistance. And so a lot of women, they end up with these issues for many, many years until they really reach a point where it's almost, you know, it's so, so hard to lose. Or they get diabetes, and a lot of that is preventable if it could be intervened with much earlier.

Yeah, that's such a key thing because no one wakes up diabetic. This is something that happens for decades. And you can see it if you know what you're looking for. You can see all the early markers. So you already had some of them early on with the weight gain around the middle, you know, and then you started trying to do things like eat healthy, exercise, and still never truly fixed it till you dug in and figured it out. What else are you seeing, like, women trying so hard like that coming into your practice who are probably frustrated, like, what are you seeing as some of the pitfalls that are, are getting in the way of their success?

Yeah, so these are the same exact things that I used to have, used to try, and they wouldn't work for me either. And I think in particular, women who have, you know, either real, you know, sensitivities to carbs or insulin resistance when they try these low calorie diets or low fat diets, I mean, what happens is that causes your blood sugar to crash and your brain to go right into starvation mode. And women who have these issues, they already have, it's very hard to overcome. You know, the brain really wants to bring your blood sugar back up. It's. It's like a primal urge so that we can stay alive. And so your body will. Will really do anything in order to do that. And that includes creating overpowering, you know, cravings for sugar and carbs. And then you just end up back in the cycle and worse, and you end up feeling bad about yourself, too.

I know.

That's the worst part. You end up feeling like you have no willpower. You can just hear it, you know, I'm terrible.

Yeah.

And I. I never have met one person who has managed to really make any great changes in their health by following a low calorie diet.

Like, never.

Like, name one. None.

It is.

It will always set you up to fail. It slows down your metabolism, and it just destroys your ego.

Totally. Yeah, it's the worst. And starving is a horrible place to be. It makes you really cranky, really angry. You know, your whole family ends up mad at you. It's just not an answer.

Yeah. So stop it. If you're thinking about doing that, just stop that. So we're going to talk today about insulin because I know that's a big issue here. And believe it or not, we Actually haven't talked a whole lot about it. We talk a lot about adrenals and thyroid. So let's kind of dig into insulin. What does it do? Why the heck is it so important to our health, you know, and what should we be looking for to know if we're actually okay there or okay.

So insulin, like, we all know that insulin is super important. So type 1 diabetics, they don't make any insulin. And if they don't take insulin, they're. They will. They will die. So they get. They lose weight. And the reason that happens is that when we eat, our insulin levels go up and that helps us store the sugar in our cells. So without insulin, we can't store energy. So that's one of the functions of insulin that's really, really important. It helps us store sugar as fat. So that's one thing that it does because it's also only supposed to go up after we eat. Really, another of the functions that it performs is it stops us from burning fat because our bodies are really made to conserve energy. And, you know, our bodies are made to survive times when there's not enough food. And so if we've just eaten, we're not going to go through all that extra work of burning fat right at that time. So insulin, that's. That's when it's working properly. That's what it does, and it's a really important hormone.

And so what about how does insulin relate then to the foods that you're eating?

So, yeah, so whenever we eat, you know, especially sugar or carbohydrates, our blood sugar goes up. And whenever our blood sugar goes up, we release insulin. So that's a trigger for insulin release in our bodies. Interestingly enough, we ha. There's something called the glycemic index, which we all know about. It's basically how much your blood sugar goes up after you eat carbs or sugars. But what they were finding at the University of Sydney, where they developed all the research on the glycemic index, was that they were not able to really figure out there were certain foods that were low in the glycemic index. But type 1 diabetics were having to inject a whole bunch of insulin to deal with that. And so they were like, what's up with that? Because it's not raising your blood sugar, but it takes a lot of insulin to deal with that, or else your blood sugar raises later. So what they found was that there are certain foods that don't raise your blood sugar when you eat them, but your insulin goes up fairly quickly. And so this. There's a new metric which is called the food insulin demand, which basically covers this, you know, basically how much a food raises your insulin when you eat. And when we gain a lot of weight or if we happen to be the type of person that genetically makes a lot of insulin, what happens is our body, body gets really flooded with insulin at all the wrong times. So either when we eat, you know, we make a lot of insulin and it stays high for a really long time. And then in some people, it stays high all the time, even when you're sleeping. And our cells actually start taking the receptors away so that they don't let too much sugar in. And then your body has to secrete more insulin. And when your body gets flooded with insulin like that all the time, firstly what happens is you're not going to be burning any fat because insulin blocks us from burning fat, and we're going to be storing more fat as well. So.

And it's around your waist, guys, that's even the worst parts. Like, you're hungry. You can't burn off fat. You're hungry and you're storing fat around your waist. It's like the total trifecta of not fair.

It's totally not fair. And then it makes your blood sugar crash too, so it makes you feel horrible.

Yeah. So it's really interesting because when I started to look at what you were doing, I'm like, oh, my gosh. I remember years ago finding this research search, and back then it was called the insulin index, and it was only a couple foods, but they were showing that foods that wasn't correlating, you know, like, it should have, like, what they thought with the glycemic index, that there were certain foods that were wonky.

Yeah.

Like milk was one of them. And. And that you thought, oh, okay, since it looks okay here. But. But it was the same thing. I actually Learned it from. Dr. Diana Schwartzbein, an endocrinologist in Santa Barbara was the one first told me about this. I'm like, oh, my gosh. That's. That's why I started looking at sugar differently. That was whole. The whole foundation of looking at the sugar impact diet was like, you can't just look at the glycemic index because things like agave are going to seem like they're fine too. Yeah. So now what I don't want to do is have everyone listen going, oh, my gosh, now I don't know what to eat again. You know, what do I do now.

It's so true.

I know.

Just for everybody listening, breathe. Because we're going to actually give you a chart which is going to give you the insulin demand of foods. But what I want to explain, Fiona, is so, so now that you'll, they're going to get a chart, they're going to see which foods have a higher insulin demand, which ones have a lower. But what do you do with this? Like, how do you use this? How do you, like now what do we eat? Which is the biggest question, of course. We always get asked.

Yeah. Oh, for sure. And you know what, this is actually not really that different when you're, you know, when you're considering something like the sugar impact diet. It's, it's actually very similar. And I think the main difference would be, you know, from what they would traditionally recommend for diabetics in that we look at different kinds of proteins as having different influences on our insulin levels. And in particular the branched chain amino acids, those are in dairy protein. So that's the big one really, that stimulates a lot of insulin release. So milk and yogurt, and Greek yogurt, those types of proteins are definitely going to cause a lot of insulin release. But generally it's a very simple, you know, way of eating in that. We do recommend that you have protein because that, you know, keeps you satisfied. So I always recommend a meal that's a really nice balance of a healthy protein, you know, with a really good quality meat or legumes or fish or eggs and then or a protein powder is great too, especially, you know, for breakfast in a smoothie and then adding in a non starchy vegetable, like a large amount of that, maybe two cups with each meal. So that would be any kind of vegetable that's, you know, not like a potato or a sweet potato, but like anything crunchy, any of them at all, they're all great. And then a healthy fat. And I usually recommend that if you can get your fat from food rather than oil, that's always so avocados, guacamole, nuts and seeds or nut butter. Olive oil also is good, and coconut oil. And then the last category is the carbs. And the carbs include everything from fruits, grains and root vegetables. We usually recommend most people, you know, gluten free because it's anti inflammatory. And that amount of carbs that, that people need is really different from person to person. It depends on how active they are, how much exercise they do. So those are really the four pillars. And just understanding that different kinds of proteins are Actually a little different. So you would just sort of adjust the amount per meal. You know, if you're having something that's a bit of a higher, like red meat is higher on the food insulin demand, so you would just have a smaller serving or, you know, fish would be lower. So it's just sort of adjusting the amounts, but always going for balancing your blood sugar with proteins, healthy fats, and lots and lots of fiber, which is.

What anyone who's been around on this podcast has heard me say over and over and over. So I'm so glad you said that. It's the fat, fiber, protein trifecta. It just keeps blood sugar balanced so that insulin doesn't just have to get cranked up and create problems. So again, we just come down to. I love having this chart because it just gives you more information just in case. Just like with the Sneaky Sugar Inventory with the Sugar Impact diet, there's just certain things you go, oh, I didn't know that. And so there might be things sneaking into your diet. It's why making a food journal so important? Because if you go, why do I feel so rotten? Why did I crash? It could be because one of the foods you just ate had a high insulin demand. And so this is just more information that's going to help you, again, really get to know your body, connect the dots and make the best decisions so that you can easily burn off stored fat for fuel and keep your blood sugar balanced. Which is the name of the game for so many things, right?

Oh, yes. Like, I find when your blood sugar is balanced, your. Your whole life just feels better. Like, you feel more energetic, you're a.

Nicer person.

Nicer, smarter, happier, everything's better.

It is so someone listening right now, and they're going, God, but, you know, I, I am tired and I do have some fat around my midsection, so how do I know if I have an issue? What test would someone do or what are their signs they can look for, first of all, to say, all right, am I insulin resistant or do I have some issues here with maybe some blood sugar and insulin dysregulation? How would they know?

So there is, there are quite a few ways to know, and the, the one way that you will not know is by doing blood tests for diabetes, because those don't show up until you've already got diabetes. One of the most simple, which is way too late. Wait, it's like, like 30 years too late. So. So yeah, one of the super, you know, just the most easy way that you can you can tell is by measuring your waist at its smallest point and then doing a ratio between your waist and your height. And if it's 50% or more of your height, you're, you're pretty insulin resistant. If that's the case, that's how much our waist is correlated with insulin resistance. So that's one thing you can just do at home. And then if you're looking at blood test, there are some ways that you can tell. So one of the ways is by looking at a fasting blood insulin level. So that's in the morning after fasting. Now, if you're significantly insulin resistant, it will show up as typically something like over seven or eight in the US units. And I'm in Canada, so the Canadian units would be something like over 50 in people who are not as significantly insulin resistant. So if they're are moderate, they might actually just be under that level. But there's another test that you can do which is called the insulin glucose challenge. It's just like the glucose tolerance test where you drink that terrible drink the sugar drink, and they measure your glucose for two hours at intervals. But there's a test where they measure your insulin too. And what we find is that some people, they make like five times the amount of insulin, you know, as other people. And their insulin stays really high for a long time. It might come down to normal by the morning, but most of the day their insulin is kind of sky high. So that is really a very sensitive test that can give you more information on that.

And beyond the diet, which of course is super critical to dial in. Are there a couple other things if you find that you are insulin resistant that you can do to start turning those things around? What do you recommend?

Yeah, for sure. So definitely exercise is, you know, one of the most important things, anything to do with strength training. The more muscle you have, the more insulin sensitive, sensitive you'll be. So getting that into your, you know, into your schedule is super important. Or hit training is great too. Just that really high intensity training for a short period of time, like even 15 or 20 minutes can really, you know, make a big difference, which is.

Great because now you have no excuses.

No excuses. I mean, I do that all the time because I'm busy, but I can, I can't, I'm busy.

And you're a doc with kids, so, you know, it's like, come on, we can all fit it in.

Exactly. You just have to find one that you like doing and it's, it doesn't take long. And the other Thing is like getting enough sleep and then there's definitely some supplements that can help too.

Awesome. I know vitamin D is one that I. But vitamin D and fish oil are the big ones that I. I make sure that I've got people having on board. If they're insulin resistant, of course I have them do it anyway. I just basically everyone vitamin D with K and fish oil, so.

Oh, yeah.

But even more so here. You just named my. My top hits there of exercise, especially hiit training, because that's the fastest way to start to restore insulin sensitivity that in the sleep. So I'm so happy you said those things. Yay.

Oh, yeah. Like, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, you know, be able to keep my metabolism healthy without doing those things. I mean, for me, exercise is huge.

Yeah. Well, it's also keeps us from, you know, going crazy.

That's true. Yeah.

There's that piece of it. It's that I'm not going to go crazy.

Exactly. And then green tea is helpful too. Like it's, it's beneficial for insulin sensitivity. So you can take that in like a supplement or even just drinking green tea can do that too.

Awesome. So what about you, Fiona? What's one thing that you do every day that you feel like makes sense a big difference in your life?

So I would say for sure it's exercise. I feel like when I feel like exercise, it gives you like a long. It's like a launchpad. So you're investing in yourself to do that exercise. And because you've done that, I feel like when I do that, I'm going to make healthy choices all day because I want to keep going with that. It gives you energy, it makes you, you feel, you feel happy and stronger. And so for me, I try, you know, never to miss my exercise. Even if it's a day where I'm resting or recovering, I'll try to do some yog or just something at least for 15 or 20 minutes. Get moving.

Awesome.

That's perfect. I just went to the gym today and I'm the same thing. I have, I have a gym in my house. I go to the gym. I have like my exisr. I actually pulled it out of the garage and put it in the bedroom where I'll trip over it. Now it's in the living room. I have my stealth trainer. It's like the house has got stuff scattered around just so that you just don't forget to do it. It makes it so easy. So now I kind of teased everybody about your insulin demand. Chart. So tell them what it is, and then I'll tell everybody how they're going to get it.

Yeah, sure. So it's basically a chart that is organized according to proteins, vegetables, healthy fats and carbs, and it gives you the insulin demand of each food for the amount of that food. And so when you're kind of selecting your meal, you know, you would choose one from each of the four categories and just create a meal that way. And it's actually really simple. It's not. It's not very complicated or difficult, but it just gives you that data. Like, for example, if you were wondering, okay, you know, how, how, you know, what does that fruit look like? There are some fruits that are really high in food insulin demand compared to others. So it's pretty eyeball.

Ooh.

Name them. Tell us a couple of those fruits that we would be like, what?

Yeah, so bananas, mangoes, all the tropical fruits, they tend to be pretty high.

You know those fruits that taste really sweet, like dessert. Those ones.

Those ones, they taste like candy. They kind of are there.

Guess what. Yeah, yeah. And they're not free food. All right, so you'll be able to get this chart, which is great, because again, this is just more information to make sure you're feeding into that perfect plate of healthy fats and fiber and protein. And so you'll be able to grab that. This is super simple. Just go to jjvirgin.com forward/insulindemand, and I'm going to post that along with the show notes. So we always have awesome show notes, so if you're listening, you're going, oh, my gosh, I can't remember. Don't worry, we got it all done for you. And you'll be able to download that insulin demand chart so that you'll be able to add this in to your diet so that if things are sneaking in right now and you're going, wow, I kind of feel tired. You'll now know why and what to do about it, which is even more important.

Yeah.

So again, yeah. Jjvirgin.com Insulindeman and Dr. Fiona McCullough. It has been awesome. You're fantastic. I super appreciate you taking out time to spend with us today.

Oh, thank you, jj. I'm so excited to be on your show. I'm such. I've been such a fan for a long time, so it's really, really awesome to be here.

All right, now, everybody hang with me. After the break, we're going to be answering a listener's question.

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Welcome back. This is the time where I answer a listener's question. Today's question comes from Joan and this was a post on Instagram and she says, jj, this was under one of my smoothie recipes. Why not? No way. What she's referring to is quite often I'll say two things about different protein powders. No joy in soy and no whey, meaning no w h e y for no whey protein. And if you've been around my community at all, you know, with the virgin diet, I pull out about eggs, dairy, soy, corn, peanuts, gluten, sugar and artificial sweeteners. Because of the high likelihood of a food intolerance, I have you pull them out for a couple weeks and then re challenge to see which foods work for you and which foods don't. But I advocate you keeping soy out because it can lower thyroid function amongst some other things besides being a very genetically modified crop for the, for the long haul. Also gluten and also dairy. And, and I used to be a big fan of whey protein until I discovered how many people were reacting to dairy and also the insulinogenic responses to dairy. So there are two issues. I pull whey out of the diet and I don't want you using it as part of your protein powder. So whether it's milk protein powder or whey protein, this isn't something I advocate because of two reasons. Number one, because one of the highest food intolerance foods that I saw when I was doing food sensitivity testing was dairy. Dairy and eggs. I saw about 70% of people reacting to and it's the casein in the dairy that they're reacting to. And even though whey protein is mainly whey, it's got a little casein in it and it only takes a little bit to create that reaction. Now, most of the time you're not gonna get any lactose in there. We've got 30% of the world's population lactose intolerant, but that Generally isn't an issue here. It's the casein that's creating that that issue and making you feel bloated and achy and mucousy. And that's one piece of the puzzle. The other piece is that insulin demand that Dr. Fiona was talking about. INS dairy raises insulin. And when you raise insulin, you basically shut the doors of the fat cells. You can't burn off stored fat. It's very inflammatory, so produces inflammation. And I'm assuming that if you're starting the day with a smoothie, you're doing it to be healthy. So these are not the outcomes that you're looking for. So what I advocate for a protein shake is, first of all, I want to make sure there's no artificial sweeteners or colorings. There's 5 grams of carbs or less in it, lower, better, especially in terms of sweeteners like 1 gram of of sugar or less in it. Ideally, it's got some vitamins, nutri vitamins and minerals and nutrients, plant nutrients and fiber in it. But the protein sources that I look for, I either use concentrated bone broth protein or I use vegan protein from either pea or potato or chia or mushroom. The ones that I'm not as big of a fan of, they're obviously not soy. And I'm not really a big fan of rice because you've got naturally occurring arsenic and rice. So I look at things that you'd be able to do every single day without the tendency to develop an intolerance to. And that's why I tend to look at pea, potato, mushroom and concentrated bone broth. And I prefer the concentrated bone broth protein from beef. And you want to look at beef, you want to make sure that you've got beef where it's been organic and not injected up with hormones and antibiotics. All right, hope that helps there. If you want to leave a question again, we pick them up off our social channels. So Instagram, JJ Virgin or Facebook JJ version official on my Facebook page. And the other thing that we're always grabbing each week, as you know, is we do the review of the week. This review is 5 star. What a great tribe by ah, Just Breathe and ah, Just Breathe says just found out about your podcast and very happy to see you doing this. This, you have an incredible team of support. All right, thank you. Just Breathe and Big ask in advance. These reviews help a ton. There's a lot noise and traffic. There's some amazing podcasts out there, but it's hard to sift through which one's best for you. So great way for people to be able to tell if this is something for them to listen to is because they see your review. So I super appreciate your review, you sharing it with your friends and of course course subscribe so you never miss an episode. All right, thanks so much. See you next week.

That's all for this episode of the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show, which marks another step towards a healthier body and mind. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the show and we'll talk to you next week.

Hello listeners, this is Anne Bogle, author, blogger and creator of the podcast what Should I Read now? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week I check all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately, and I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years, and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything, you'll learn something about yourself as a reader and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read, with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and Visit our website whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com to find out more.