How Long Does It Take to Stabilize Blood Sugar?
15 Dec 2025 · 6 min
JJ Virgin answers how long it takes to stabilize blood sugar. She covers the sugar impact plate (protein, healthy fats, non-starchy vegetables, slow carbs), plus sleep, resistance training, stress management, vitamin D testing, and why these changes compound over weeks and months.
Questions this episode answers
25-hydroxy vitamin D test
50–80 ng/mL
Within one week
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Chapters
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How Long does it Take to Stabilize Blood Sugar? This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times Best selling author, celebrity nutrition expert and Fitness hall of Famer. I've been on a lifelong long quest for answers to the toughest health questions and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the health expert. Deep24 from Instagram asks how long does it take to stabilize blood sugar? Days?
Weeks?
I've been eating by the plate and stretching time between meals help. I'll be right back to answer that question.
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So how long does it take to stabilize blood sugar? Well, you're going to love this answer. It depends. I know, but it does depend and depends on a variety of things. So the first things we want to do is focus on all the things that we can control. First off, as you said, you were eaten by the plate. Yay. That's a great first start. And when we talk about eating by the plate, here's what we mean. It's either eating by the virgin diet or the sugar impact diet plate. If you are working on your blood sugar, the one I really recommend is the sugar impact diet and eating by that plate, which means that at every meal you're getting some clean lean protein. That could be some of my protein powder. It could be grass fed beef, wild salmon, pastured chicken, some healthy fats, things like avocado or olive oil or raw nuts and seeds, and then fiber from non starchy vegetables, lots and lots of those and little bits of slow, low carbs, things like squash or wild rice or sweet potato. All right, so that's step one. Why do we tell you step one to eat that way? Why am I saying that? Because that helps balance your blood sugar naturally, especially the fiber, which is going to reduce that blood sugar curve. But all those things together, the protein, the fat and the fiber, help you have a steady, slow release of blood sugar rather than a big spike and drop. So that's step one. Next up, you want to start looking at things that can make you more insulin resistant or make you more glucose intolerant so that your blood sugar is not as stable. So one of the key important things here is vitamin D. Vitamin D is super important for having good insulin sensitivity. So make sure that you are optimizing your vitamin D levels. Take a vitamin D3 test, that's a 25 hydroxy vitamin D test and you want to optimize your levels between 50 and 80 ngs per ML per nl. And you, unless you're on a blood thinner, going to want to take that with vitamin K1 and 2. So you take T3 with vitamins K1 and 2. So that's number one, optimize your vitamin D levels. And ideally we want to be making vitamin D from sunshine, but depending on where we live or our genetics or our skin color, we probably are going to need to supplement with it. So that's step one. Step two is make sure that you get really really good sleep because just one poor night of sleep and you're more insulin resistant. So sleep is super critical to getting to having a good blood sugar response. So this is where you really want to track your sleep and focus on making sure you're getting quality sleep, not just quantity sleep that you're getting the right amount of both deep sleep and REM sleep. Next is to do some resistance training. One of the first places you can become more insulin sensitive, which then means you have better blood sugar response is in your muscles. So resistance training is super important to having a good blood sugar response. Next one, stress. Stress is key here because stress can raise blood sugar. So make sure that you're doing what you need to do to manage your stress. Can't often fix the situation, especially if you're listening to this during COVID 19, but we can re change our responses to it. Some of the things that I really like to manage stress are either high intensity interval training, tapping. Shout out to my buddy Nick Ortner from the tapping solution, they created an app that you can find on the app store for free. And then meditation. Shout out there to my girl, Emily Fletcher of Ziva meditation. Amazing. So there's another key important one. Now here's one you probably don't hear about very often and it is your gut microbiome. And this is really fascinating. What they found was that people who are using an artificial sweetener, and I believe the one was Splenda, that within one week of using an artificial sweetener, you actually changed your gut microbiome, the bacteria in your gut, to be more glucose intolerant, which means you're going to have a worse poor blood sugar response. So lose the artificial sweeteners. There is no planet that the artificial sweeteners, you know, not on our planet. They were a bad science experiment. That doesn't mean you can't use the natural ones, which would be things like stevia, monk fruit allulose. But avoid those artificial sweeteners out there because they disrupt your gut microbiome and they can make you more glucose intolerant. So those are some of the key things that you want to do. Start with that food. But then let's start to look at the things like stress, sleep, exercise, vitamin D optimization, losing artificial sweeteners, that can really help too. And two more little hacks that can help. Number one is lemon juice. Having a couple tablespoons of lemon juice before your meal so you can do my, my cravings crusher fat burning lemonade, which is a couple tablespoons of lemon juice, little bit of stevia or monk fruit or my virgin sprinkles and then a little bit of glutamine. It can be fantastic. Lemon juice can lower your blood sugar response to a meal. So can cinnamon, and who doesn't love cinnamon? So throw some cinnamon on your sweet potato, have a little half of the sweet potato and that can help as well. This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert. I do this five times a week, so make sure you never miss a show by going to subscribetojay.com.
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