You Don't Have to Cut Out Sugar! | Glucose Goddess

If you really want to eat some sugar, let's say a cookie, a donut, or whatever, the best time to eat that sugar so that you have maximum dopamine from it, maximum pleasure and less impact on your body is going to be after a meal as dessert. You want to always avoid eating sugar on an empty stomach and always avoid eating sugar in the morning. Okay.

Really?

Yes. So breakfast should be savory. Okay. In the morning, nothing sweet. Really?

Yeah, man. Those pastries, though, with chocolate inside and just. Oh, man, the donut in the morning, keep the.

For dessert, after lunch. Because if you have them in the morning, then what's happening in your body as you digest that sugar and those carbs, they turn into glucose molecules. And these arrive into your bloodstream really quickly and cause what's called a glucose spike. So a blood sugar spike. And then about 90 minutes later, Louis, your glucose levels are going to drop. You're going to feel a crash. And now it's 10am, 11am and all of a sudden you feel more cravings for sweet food. You're like, I need a cookie, I need some chocolate. I need a snack.

I need that spike again.

And then you spike again. And then all day you're on a roller coaster where you feel addicted to sugar because your brain, when you're experiencing a glucose crash after a spike, the cravings center in your brain actually activates and says Louis, find a cookie. Find a cookie. And you want to avoid that because then you cannot fight against the craving center in your brain so hard. Yeah, that center is very powerful, and it's linked to evolutionary responses that we have to low blood sugar. So. So you want to avoid that from happening. The way you do it is have sugar after a meal as dessert, never on an empty stomach, never as a snack, never for breakfast.

Oh, my gosh. Never as a snack, if you can. So you eat something first before you have the sugar.

Exactly. Or if you really need the snack, the sugar snack. What you do is another hack that I call put clothing on your carbs. So what does that mean? So, first of all, carbs. Carbs are two types of foods. Starches. So that's bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, oats, or sugars. Anything that tastes sweet, from a banana to chocolate cake. Those are carbs. Okay. When you eat them on their own, for example, a slice of cake on its own or a bowl of pasta on its own, well, carbs break down to glucose molecules. So those naked carbs, very quickly, they end up as lots of glucose in your bloodstream. Therefore, a glucose Spike. What you want to do instead is put some clothing on your carbs. And the clothing are proteins, fats, or fiber before or with them. You can have them before or with them. So, for example, you could have a.

Bite of cake, but then have something else fat within that.

Yeah. You could have, like, some Greek yogurt with the chocolate cake or with the bowl of pasta. Add some chicken or some cheese or some spinach. Right. Put clothing on your carbs.

Don't eat it naked.

Exactly. Never eat your carbs naked so that they don't cause as big of a glucose spike. Because when you put clothing on those carbs, digestion happens more slowly. So you're still eating the carb that you love with less impact on your glucose levels. And this is just one of many different hacks that I have that help us eat the stuff we love with fewer consequences on our physical and mental health.

That's powerful. So the more glucose spikes we have on a daily basis and the more we have over time, it causes us to live less.

Yeah.

It won't allow us to live longer, is what I'm gonna hear you say.

It causes us to age faster.

Really?

Through a process called glycation. Yeah.

What does glycation mean?

So glycation and glucose kind of sound like the same word. They're similar. Glucose, glycation. And this is why, first of all, before we talk about glycation, I have to explain something to you. So, you know when you put a chicken in the oven and it goes from pink to cooked to brown, what actually happened is that in the oven, it glycated. Glycation is the cooking process of the chicken. Now, did you know that as a human being, from the moment you're born, you slowly glycate. You slowly cook.

You start to cook.

Yes. Like a chicken in the oven. And then when you're fully cooked, you die. I know it sounds crazy, but it is true. And on the inside, you're actually browning. So if you look at the cartilage of a baby. Baby, it's white. If you look at the cartilage of somebody who's 100 years old, it's brown. It's been glycated. Glycation is cooking, and it's aging. Now, why am I telling you this? Because every time you have a glucose spike, it accelerates glycation. Glucose causes this cooking, causes this glycation, causes this aging. So the more glucose spikes you have, the faster you age. And this shows on your skin as wrinkles. Right. I'm actually 85 years old, but you can't tell. So I don't have glucose spikes. And it also ages your organs within. And that's just one of the few things that happen when you have too many glucose spikes over time. Wow.

How many glucose spikes is ideal to have on a daily basis? Like, what's the optimal amount of spikes that we should have?

As little as possible, I would say. How do you keep.

I mean, besides not eating, I guess. How do you not have a glucose spike when you're eating foods you avoid eating?

Too many carbs on their own own, too many carbs for breakfast, too many processed foods. But I don't want people to become too obsessed with keeping their glucose levels perfectly steady because you can actually do that in some unhealthy ways. What I want people to think about is, do they have symptoms of glucose spikes? Do they feel cravings for sugar? Do they feel tired throughout the day? Do they ever experience brain fog, mental slowness? Do they not sleep very well? Do they have inflammation on their skin like ACNE, psoriasis, eczema, etc. Those are all signs of glucose spikes. If you can never leave the house without a snack because you know you're going to be hungry every couple of hours, that's glucose spikes causing that. And so as we implement these hacks, you can actually check in with yourself and see that these symptoms are improving. You don't have to wear a glucose monitor, you don't have to track your glucose levels to see the spikes or the no spikes. You will feel better and pretty quickly, too, because your glucose levels respond in a matter of minutes to what you eat and what you do. So I recommend people learn to check in with themselves and see how they feel.

What is the optimal amount of eating in a day to manage glucose in a good way?

Are you into intermittent fasting? Yeah, kind of. Yeah.

Yeah.

It's been very trendy recently. But you don't actually need to fast for many hours a day to have healthy glucose levels. You don't know. It's more about what you eat. Right.

So you don't need to skip breakfast, you don't need to skip dinner.

No, you don't.

You don't need to have 500 calories a day and restrict calories. Now, are you still going to look healthy and lose weight in this process or you're going to gain weight if you're just eating whatever in the right order?

Well, so there's the order thing, but the hacks that I share, they allow you to stop focusing on the calories, stop focusing on the restriction and just kind of understand what, what molecules are in your food. And then naturally, as you focus on these glucose hacks, a lot of other things fall into place. Because you're less hungry, you have fewer cravings for all the processed junk.

So your hormones are healthier.

Exactly. Your hunger hormones are more balanced instead of you feeling famished every two hours. So naturally, when you focus on the hacks, a lot of things fall into place into your body. And then on the, on the fasting topic, I just want to remind people that intermittent fasting is not necessary to have a healthy body. You don't need to fast in order to be healthy. It's much more important to eat well in a way that keeps your glucose level steady than to restrict your eating window. For example, especially for females, we have to remember that fasting is actually a stressor on the body. So if you already have a life where stressful job, kids to take care of, you don't sleep a lot, you drink coffee, you do intense cardio exercise, maybe you do cold showers, you add fasting on top of that. That is a lot of stress for your body to handle. And that's why you see some women who are piling on all these things. Their hormones are breaking down, they feel exhausted all the time. Their body is just being like, no, that's too much stress. So I love fasting when I'm on vacation, for example, and it feels like an easy stress to add on. But when I'm working and I'm doing lots of stuff, I prefer to have breakfast, to have a savory breakfast, as I explained, to keep my glucose level steady and to just eat three times a day, you know? Yeah. The solution to this crazy food landscape that we live in, food environment, is not to cut out stuff. You can eat whatever you want. If you really want to eat some sugar, the best time to eat that sugar so that you have maximum dopamine from it, maximum pleasure and less impact on your body is going to be kidney.