If losing weight would have been a sport, it would be the most popular sport in the Netherlands. Unfortunately, for most people, if not all, losing weight is a necessary evil. Sometimes it is purely aesthetic, but most of the time it is also really necessary for health. What everyone associates losing weight with power supply and to move, hardly anyone knows that a stable blood sugar the secret to a healthy weight. Curious about that? read more
In this article
- What is your blood sugar level
- Risks high or low blood sugar
- Lose weight with unstable blood sugar
- Tips for a stable blood sugar level
What is your blood sugar level?
Your blood sugar is one gauge for the amount of sugar in your blood. Now you must be thinking, hey, sugar in my blood? But it does not work like that. Your body needs fuel to function. Energy is burned for all the tasks you do. Also the unconscious tasks such as breathing, digestion and you heartbeat.
Your body gets this energy from multiple sources, but the most well-known are:
- Glycogen stock (fast energy, stored in your muscles)
- Grease supply
We need to eat enough to maintain our energy supply. Now that is not the biggest problem in our current society. A bigger challenge is getting the right food, but more on that in a moment.
Fuel for your body
Food is, of course, our fuel. But our diet consists of different kinds of macro and micronutrients. Today we limit ourselves to the macronutrients, and more specifically to the carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are very important for our body, they supply the essential sugars.
That works like this:
- When you eat, the carbohydrates are converted into glucose by your body.
- Glucose is a form of sugar that provides your cells with energy
- Your blood transports the glucose around the body
- If you have too much glucose in your body, your pancreas will produce insulin.
- This insulin binds to the glucose and ensures that it is removed more quickly.
Risks high or low blood sugar
High Blood Sugar
High blood sugar means that there is too much glucose in your blood. An ideal value is between 4 and 7 mmol/litre. Above 7 mmol/liter we speak of high blood sugar, or in medical terms hyperglycemia (hyper).
In our consumer society, high blood sugar is a common problem. This is because we eat a lot of processed foods. These are mainly made up of carbohydrates. Now carbohydrates are very important to you, but we (unconsciously) eat so much of them that we constantly have high numbers of glucose in our blood.
Risky products:
- white bread, white pasta, white rice
- potatoes
- sugars in candy, biscuits and cakes
- snacks, snacks and,
- ready meals.
Our body therefore spends a lot of time draining that glucose. Your body uses insulin for this. Insulin is produced by your pancreas.
There are two possible risks here:
- Your body is no longer sensitive to the insulin
- Your pancreas no longer produces enough insulin.
The danger is that your body is no longer able to properly dispose of this sugar and there is a continuous high blood sugar level. At that point you are at risk Diabetes 2 to develop.
Low Blood Sugar
Low blood sugar means there is too much insulin in the blood. Insulin drains glucose (sugar), so if the insulin works too hard, you develop low blood sugar. This is also called one hypoglycemia called (hypo).
Too much insulin in your blood arises in the following way:
- Diabetes patients who inject too much insulin
- By eating a lot of processed and refined products
In the latter case, your body actually reacts too late and too hard. Our blood sugar level first rises faster than our body realizes.
The delayed response of the pancreas then causes a surplus of insulin. That's why your blood sugar drops so fast.
You can recognize low blood sugar by:
- Feeling lethargic after the meal (After Dinner Dip)
- Feeling hungry after meals (binge eating)
- Irritation with a delayed meal.
Lose weight with unstable blood sugar
Losing weight with a disturbed or unstable blood sugar level is very difficult. There are several causes for this. We start with where we left off in the previous chapter, the after-dinner dip and binge eating.
Vicious circle
The well-known after-dinner dip, or the feeling of hunger after a meal, puts you at extra risk of eating again (and usually badly). After all, too much sugar leads to high blood sugar, which in turn leads to an excess of insulin with low blood sugar as the end result.
To convert that lifeless feeling into an energetic feeling, you grab fast energy. This fast energy is often full of calories and therefore you will not lose weight.
Burn sugar instead of fat
As long as your body has enough sugars in the body, the body sees no reason to switch to burning fat. As we mentioned in the beginning, there are multiple energy systems and stores in our body.
For quick energy (a sprint, just walking up the stairs, getting up from your chair) your body uses the glycogen stock. This is the supply of glucose. Only when this is used up does she switch to another stock.
Too much sugar turns into fat
Insulin ensures that you transport the excess glucose from your blood to your body cells. Basically the idea is that they transport this to your muscles so that it can be stored as quick energy (glycogen stock). However, this fills up quickly.
As a result, the excess glucose is absorbed into your fat cells. And that's exactly what we don't want, isn't it?
Tips for a stable blood sugar level
A stable blood sugar level gives you an energetic feeling throughout the day, ensures a higher degree of controlled eating and has major health benefits in the long term.
Below are some tips to promote this:
- to play sports and movement is the best medicine for chronic diseases and high blood sugar => 1 x every 5 days and only 35 minutes at a time is enough
- Try healthy enough fats to add to your meal.
- Try a lot fibres to eat, which work in your intestines as a kind of cushion against your intestinal wall so that the sugars do not enter in 1 go. You can get fiber from vegetables, for example.
- Eat something half an hour before you eat a large plate of spaghetti or sandwiches vegetables.
- Or, less tasty, take a glass of water with ten percent half an hour before your meal vinegar
- Go to walk after dinner, even if it's just a small round. Movement requires energy and thus helps to use the excess sugars.
If you want to learn even more about this topic and how to find out how to control your blood sugar, listen to this one podcast from two of our trainers!
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