Is Insulin Resistance Blocking Your Fat Loss? (Do This to Fix It)

If you're eating less, moving more, and it feels like the weight just won't come off, insulin resistance might be the reason. In this video, I'll show you what insulin resistance is, how to tell if you have it, and the simple changes that can fix it in 30 days, helping you to work on your fat loss goals without such a struggle. If you're struggling with stubborn belly fat, fatigue, or cravings, it may be due to insulin resistance. Now, here's what That actually means and how to find out if you have it. So when you eat, your blood sugar rises. Then your pancreas releases insulin, which tells your muscle and fat cells to pull glucose out of your bloodstream. It also tells your liver to stop releasing more glucose. But when you become insulin resistant, your cells stop responding as well to that message. Think of it as insulin is knocking on the door, but your cells just aren't answering. So your pancreas starts knocking louder and louder by producing even more insulin. Now, here's the surprising part. That extra insulin may keep your blood sugar normal for years. That means you can be insulin resistant even when your fasting glucose still looks fine. But eventually, your pancreas may struggle to keep up. And that's when glucose begins moving into the prediabetes and then potentially the diabetes range. So how do you know whether this is you? First, symptoms alone can't diagnose it. Fatigue, cravings, sleepiness after meals, difficulty losing weight. Well, those can have a lot of different causes, but there are some clues that are worth investigating. Here they are. Your waist gets bigger or you've got more visceral fat. Your triglycerides are high, your HDL is low, or your blood pressure's going up. You've got fatty liver, PCOS, or a history of gestational diabetes, or you've got a family history of type 2 diabetes. Now, Lab tests. Your starting lab tests should include a hemoglobin A1C, a fasting glucose, and most importantly, a fasting insulin. You want your A1C below 5, really below 5.5. But if it's between 5.7 and 6.4, or your fasting glucose is between 100 and 125, you're in prediabetes range. Now, fasting insulin can identify issues before they show up on those 2 tests. So ideally, you really want that between 2 and 5. Another thing you can look at is a 3-hour glucose and insulin oral tolerance test. This can identify things sometimes those other tests can miss. And while a continuous glucose monitor can teach you a lot about your individual responses to food, it doesn't officially diagnose insulin resistance. Now, if you're hearing all this and you have insulin resistance, here's how you can turn it around in 30 days, especially and hopefully if you've identified it early. First off, you're going to up your NEAT. What is NEAT? NEAT is your non-exercise Exercise activity thermogenesis, how much you move all throughout the day. So NEAT's really important to get your steps up. And the bell-shaped curve shows that 7,000 is the sweet spot. Of course, more is always better, but make sure you're getting at least 7,000. But here's what's really important, to do this, especially after you eat. In fact, if you can do what James Clear talks about called habit stacking, he talks about this in Atomic Habits, where you attach a walk after your meals, especially your biggest meal. We have dogs. So every night after dinner, we walk the dogs. It's a perfect habit stack. But if you could do it after every meal, even better. Or at least do something like some air squats. The reason being, it's going to lower your blood sugar response to that meal. And I'm going to explain why. Your muscle is what I like to call your sugar sponge. It's known in the exercise science world as your glucose sink, the place where carbohydrates can go to get stored for future energy rather than being turned into fat and stored or just hanging around in your bloodstream. And so think about it. You eat, you start to move, Your body is going to use that sugar instead of having to deal with it. That's the first part, part 1. So you could walk, you could do some air squats. But part 2 is build a bigger reservoir for that sugar to go into. And that's where muscle comes in. So muscle is a metabolic Spanx, holds everything in tighter, boosts your metabolism. It's a sugar sponge. It gives carbohydrates a place to go, but it's also a multitasking messenger. And this is one of the fastest places you can start to restore insulin sensitivity to by contracting and building those muscles. Now, if you're thinking, I'm over 50, it's too late for me, or I don't know what to do, or I don't have time, I gotcha. I created something called the 2x2x2 Workout. Literally, all you need to do is 30 minutes twice a week of your big body parts. That could be doing some pushups and overhead presses, some high pulls and some bent-over rows, some squats and some deadlifts. Might sound daunting. You can do this all at home with dumbbells and bands and body weight. And again, I show you how to do this in my 2x2x2 Workout. And I've got a little cheat sheet for you on how to get started on a resistance training program. So I got you covered there, 'cause this is a non-negotiable for turning around that insulin resistance. In fact, this is my number one for doing it. Next thing, one of my mantras. Besides building muscle first, it's also eating protein first. Why? We know that when you eat protein first, you tend to make better food choices overall, and it improves your satiety. It's also gonna be a little bit more blood sugar neutral. So what I want you to do is eat protein first so you get in What you need to help your body build muscle. And then I want you to follow it, and this is very important, follow it with fiber. Fiber's gonna help you lower that blood sugar response to the meal, let the slow release of blood sugar rather than a big hijack of it. So I want you to eat your protein first, 30 to 40 grams each meal, and then follow it with fiber, at least 10 grams per meal. Now, one of the ways you're gonna get that fiber up is Trading some of your ultra-processed foods, the processed carbohydrates, for minimally processed or unprocessed carbohydrates. Let me give you some examples. If you've been eating potato chips, let's just swap those out, or French fries, right? Potato chips or French fries, which are basically oil sponges. Let's trade those out for a potato. And bonus points if we can Eat a slightly cooled potato because when you cool potatoes, you get more of what's called resistant starch. And resistant starch is called resistant starch because it resists digestion, goes to the colon, helps your body make butyric acid, which helps your body burn fat. Big thing here is trading out those more processed carbohydrates. Another great example would be like a corn tortilla for fresh corn, beet juice for In fact, trade any juice for the whole fruit or the whole vegetable so you get the fiber alongside it. Again, that fiber is going to slow down the release of the sugar. Super duper important. But especially I want you to start to trade out, swap out the ultra-processed foods for minimally processed foods because those ultra-processed foods generally are high fructose corn syrup plus fat, kind of the worst combination for insulin resistance. Next up, I want you to also trade out those sugary drinks. Let's make a little new rule, and this is really important. Don't drink your sugar. Don't drink your sugar. If you've been doing some of these juices, juice is just fruit or greens with the fiber taken away. So you get a big glucose spike. You need to make sure you're getting the fiber in. So don't drink juice. Eat the full whole fruit or vegetable and have some water with it. So we're not going to drink our sugar, but more likely these are things like sweetened coffees, sweetened beverages, sweetened I want you to trade those. And ideally, what I'd love to see you do is trade them for a little bit of black coffee. Believe it or not, black coffee can support better insulin sensitivity, and it also can lower your liver enzymes, so can help with fatty liver. And then something called green tea. So green tea is rich in something called EGCG. These are catechins that can help improve insulin sensitivity and balance blood sugar. So this is another one that I want you to focus on, is like, let's swap out the water and get some support by doing some black coffee earlier in the morning. Okay, not, not past noon, especially if you're a slow caffeine metabolizer. And green tea. Green tea is lower in caffeine, so likely that won't bother you. If you do need to sweeten it, here's one that's amazing. There's actually a sweetener that can help lower the blood sugar response to a meal. It naturally raises GLP-1. It is called allulose. And in fact, they've, they've shown case studies using it with type 1 diabetics, using it after they eat sugar to lower the blood sugar response. Don't try that at home, but know that this is something that you can use safely as a sweetener that's going to be therapeutic, not destructive. And 10 grams is actually a dose that does well. So allulose for the win. That's the sweetener that I want you to do. Next up, super important, is sleep. One poor night of sleep and you are more insulin resistant. Not only are you more insulin resistant, you're also hungrier. And I always say, not hungry for salmon. And the problem is, if you are more insulin resistant and you are overeating, it is easier to store that as fat. So big thing is to start to work on your sleep, prioritize your sleep. That means getting around the same bedtime each night and same wake time, getting your room super dark. If you can't, wear a great eye mask, getting your room super quiet. If you can't get your room quiet enough, try Oslo earbuds. These are amazing noise-canceling earbuds that actually can help you sleep better. I take my temperature down to about 68 and then establish a great nighttime routine. We all talk about morning routines and how important they are, but equally important, or maybe even more important, is a nighttime routine that's telling your body, hey, guess what, we're getting ready for bed now. One of the things that can help here is a hot sauna or a hot bath, and then your body will start to cool down in preparation for sleep. When you wake up in the morning, the next thing you're going to want to do is go see sunlight because this is going to boost your cortisol, which brings me to the next thing. You want to Really get your cortisol back in rhythm again and manage your stress hormones. We tend to live in a state of sympathetic overdrive where our cortisol is up higher than it should be all day long. It's like we're being chased by a tiger all day long. So instead of that, what you wanna do is get your cortisol to get back into rhythm where it comes up in the morning when you wake up. And the best way to do that is get out and see the sunlight. If you are living in a place where the sunlight's not up yet, or maybe we're, you know, it's We're during the shorter winter months. You can use a 10,000 lux light in the morning. This mimics natural sunlight to help you do this. You can boost your cortisol by as much as 50%. And again, what we're trying to do is get your cortisol back into its natural rhythm where it's up in the morning to wake you up and then starts to decline gradually during the day. So it's really declining at night to help your body prepare for sleep. The biggest way to help get you back in rhythm is what you do first thing in the morning. So super important. If you do find that you are living in this state of sympathetic overdrive where you're just driving, driving, driving. One of the things that can help break that pattern is a mindfulness break. Now, this could be breathwork like box breathing. It could be a short meditation. I really like the Dr. Joe Dispenza meditations. Another great tool is a heart coherence tool. So there's a variety of different ways you can get there. Tapping is another one that's been shown to lower cortisol by as much as 27%. Doesn't matter which one you use, just matters that you Do this and that you give yourself the permission. And I find so often, especially for women, it's giving yourself the permission to take a moment for yourself, take a breath, bring it down. Because living in that sympathetic overdrive is basically putting you into this catabolic state where your body is being told it's running from a tiger. And what's it doing? It's breaking down muscle to drop— to get to the blood— to elevate your blood sugar. And now you've got elevated blood sugar, even if your diet was perfect. You would have elevated blood sugar. And what's interesting is same thing with your sleep. You can have great sleep, great exercise, great diet, and if your sleep is not good, you will become more insulin resistant. So sleep and stress kind of— if you're not sleeping well, you'll be more stressed. If you're stressed, you won't sleep well. So think of them as the dynamic duo here and make sure that you are doing things to support Both of these. I always want to start with those foundational pieces first because there are some great supplements that can help here, but I don't want you to think you can do this with supplements and ignore the nutrition and exercise and lifestyle habits because they are super important, right? They are the most important. And then we're going to add in supplements. And I'm going to start with supplements, really focusing on the ones that you should have in your body first, starting with vitamin D, which is so important for insulin sensitivity. The next time you get labs, along with getting that fasting insulin, make sure you also get a 25-hydroxy vitamin D test. You want to optimize your vitamin D between 50 and 80 ng/mL. Now, I will tell you that I rarely see someone who has a normal ideal vitamin D level who is not supplementing. Mainly because we're not out in the sun enough. And if we are, we're wearing sunscreen, which is blocking your absorption. So, and some people genetically just do not make good vitamin D from the sun. So this is where you want to test. Remember, if you live in a seasonal location, you may have to take more vitamin D in the winter than you do in the summer. So I like to do D3 with K2. The only exception would be if you're on blood thinners, talk to your doctor about that. And depending on where you're at and where your levels are at, you're going to need to be anywhere from 2,000 to 10,000 IUs a day. One of the cool things with vitamin D3, K2, because you want to take those 2 together, is depending on how much you need, you can do it once a week. It's a fat-soluble, fat-storing, you know, storage vitamin. You want to take D3 with K2 because D3 is going to help you absorb calcium, and then K2 is going to help direct it go to the right places Right? Not in your arteries. So I always have you take D3 with K2. The next thing that I want you to check out is magnesium. You can do that by doing a red blood cell magnesium. We look at magnesium, chromium, vanadium, and zinc as the 4 horsemen for blood sugar balance. Really important to have all of these on board, with magnesium being the most critical and the most likely for you to be deficient in. All right, I talked about fiber before. I want you to make sure that you're getting in 30 grams of fiber a day minimally, and if you're a man, 40 grams, and ideally a little bit more. Now, most people are getting somewhere in the 10 grams of fiber a day range. It's 5 to 14 is the average. You know, ideally we're getting it from food, but I find most people don't get enough from food. And if you need to supplement, add in a supplement as well. I like to get in 10 grams or more at each meal. I have my supplement product through Reignite Wellness called Extra Fiber that I did that was rich in resistant starch, because I find that's the one we don't tend to get enough of. Remember, you've got soluble, insoluble, prebiotic, and resistant, and they all do different things. And so you want to get a variety of different foods so that you get the fiber. And great, you really want to get it at each meal because again, it's going to lower the blood sugar response to the meal. So Other sources of grape fiber besides taking a fiber supplement, I would hope you're getting a lot from me from your food too. Nuts and seeds, avocados, vegetables—they'll be low, but relative to their calorie density, they've got good fiber. Things like legumes are amazing sources of fiber, and berries and apples are amazing sources of fiber. So this is where it's important to eat a variety of different foods. The American Gut Health Project found that thirty different types of plants a week was sort of the sweet spot for. best for your getting the diversity of your gut microbiome. And part of that is not just the phytonutrients, but all the different types of fiber. Now, one of the protein sources I hope that you will eat is wild fatty fish. But unless you're eating 4 or more servings of it a week, you're likely not getting enough to get the fatty acids you need to really have a good omega-3 index. Your omega-3 index is important for controlling inflammation, but also for your cell membrane and helping you With your cell receptors and helping you be more insulin sensitive. So one of the things we know with insulin resistance, resistance is you tend to get more inflamed. And some of that resistance can be on the cell membrane. So having better cell membrane fluidity and lowering inflammation is one of the things that omega-3 fatty acids can do for you. And again, unless you're eating a lot of clean wild fish, you're probably going to want to supplement. I find most people do well with about 2 grams of fish oil a day. If you're having trouble controlling your blood sugar, if it's riding high, one of the things you can try before meals is a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar. This is one that I would put into that iced green tea and then drink with a straw just to protect your teeth enamel. One of the supplements you've probably heard about is berberine because it's all over the internet as nature's GLP-1. It actually isn't like a GLP-1. It's closest in the way it works Of metformin, so it can help improve insulin sensitivity. So this is one that I would give a shot to. I like Berbera Veil from Designs for Health. Berberine can be hard to absorb, so that's why I like that product. But this could be helpful. It'd be if you want to test it. I would try taking one to two with each meal and see how you react. Again, apple cider vinegar is another thing that you can do to try before each meal. So these are all things that you can do. What should you do? I would. Do all of them. I would start with making the differences in what you eat, right? Getting your NEAT up, really using that exercise post-meal, getting your muscle mass up so you give sugar a place to go, changing your meal composition and the order of how you eat the foods. So all of these things can make a big difference. And what I would highly recommend is throwing on a continuous glucose monitor so you can actually see in real time what's going on. It's pretty fun to be able to see, wow, when I take a walk after a meal, I lower my blood sugar response. Wow, when I do some apple cider vinegar before a meal, I lower my blood sugar response. Wow, I upped my fiber and look how much lower my blood sugar response is. So you can actually see in real time what's going on. And then ideally, I would wait 3 months and then I would go and test again, test fasting insulin, test fasting blood sugar, test hemoglobin A1C. You won't see any change for at least 3 months because that's how you see it, but you you can be checking your body composition and your waist measurement all along the way. All these things on their own can make an impact, but when you put them together, it's exponential.