Rooted Mama Podcast
Episode 10: Balancing your Blood Sugar
Episode 10: Balancing Your Blood Sugar
Hello friends, welcome to another episode of the Rooted Mama podcast. Today we’re going to start a series on creating a foundation for our mental health because you can’t remove the physical from your mind. You really have to look at them in tandem and make sure you have all the puzzle pieces in place before you can really attack your mental health and work on it for the better. So today we’re going to talk about blood sugar.
This is a topic that I’ve studied for a long time and I’m not as interested in it as I used to be, but as time goes, I do realize that for a lot of people, it is a fundamental key. And so I want to break this down and make it super simple for you today so you can understand it and see how it connects to your health and your mental health in particular. I did several episodes about this on my previous podcast, but I wanted to do it again for you here today.
Understanding Blood Sugar [00:01:01]
So your blood sugar, along with your hydration levels, are really the fuel that your body needs to function optimally and to make you feel good. If you have a lot of erratic spikes in your blood sugar, that puts a lot of stress on your system. And while your body can compensate short term with that, it’s not going to make you feel good. And it’s kind of one of those diseases that’s tricky because a lot of people don’t realize they have blood sugar issues when they actually do because they’re so used to feeling bad all the time.
It’s kind of like that frog in the boiling water. He doesn’t realize what’s happening to him, but over time it gets worse and worse and worse. And so when you consume a lot of sweets or processed food, it causes your blood sugar to spike. And that spike forces your body to release a surge of insulin to bring your blood sugar back down to normal levels. Because again, just like we talked about in previous episodes, your body wants things to stay the same and be predictable. So if you’re having these huge blood sugar ups and downs, it’s very stressful for your system.
Your Brain on Anorexia [00:02:00]
So if we want our brains to function optimally, we need to create an environment where the brain can get the nutrients it needs and feel safe and as minimally stressed as possible. I was doing some research recently to renew my nursing boards and I learned something that really intrigued me.
Antidepressants are pretty much ineffective for patients who are anorexic. And the reason, this is so interesting, is because anorexia is a mental health disorder in which the person literally starves themselves, because they believe they’re overweight. Medications are unhelpful because for people with anorexia, they literally, their body is running on empty. They don’t have any resources or nutrients or reserves to pull from. It’s all gone. It’s all depleted. And so medications can’t do anything with nothing. They have to have something to make an impact. And so the food that you put in your body is literally the fuel your brain needs to be able to function, much less thrive.
Eating and Resting Cycle [00:03:11]
So when you eat in a balanced manner, not only are you making sure your body has the nutrients it needs, but you’re also putting it in a state of what we call rest and digest, where you can actually access those nutrients and utilize those resources.
I’m going to break this down for you and I’m going to give you some super practical tips on how to keep your blood sugar balanced.
Avoid Isolated Carbs [00:03:30]
Tip number one is avoid consuming sweets or carbs in an isolated form. Carbs are not the devil. I think for some people restricting carbs can have a lot of benefit, but I think for the general population, if we just stopped consuming sweets in an isolated fashion, I think it would help our bodies tremendously. A classic example of this is like consuming a soda in the middle of the afternoon versus consuming a soda with a meal. If you have sugar with a meal, and especially a balanced meal with appropriate protein, fats, veggies, the whole thing, your body’s going to be able to deal with that sugar spike much better than if you just have a soda in the middle of the day, because there’s nothing to balance it. It’s just spikes your blood sugar and then your body has to release a bunch of insulin and then it crashes.
I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this, but like sometimes when you eat a lot of junk food or you eat a big meal, like you get really tired afterwards. And that’s because your body’s trying to compensate and deal with the challenge you presented to it. And so if you’re going to have something sweet, I encourage you to pair it with something else like a fat or a protein source. I always like to think of like apples with peanut butter. This helps balance the fruit with a fat and some protein in the peanut butter. Or like instead of having a candy bar, like having some nuts. Or instead of drinking a soda, cutting the sweets in the soda. Our family likes to drink a brand called Olipop and it’s a company that they create soda that has less sugar in it and they use different prebiotics in it to make it so it doesn’t spike your blood sugar as much.
Most cans of soda have anywhere from 45 to 75 grams of sugar, sometimes in one serving. And if you look at the serving sizes, a lot of times they put two or more servings in the bottle. Putting that with other food is going to make it much more tolerable for your system than if you just have it in isolation by itself.
Hydration, Hydration, Hydration [00:05:45]
The second tip I’m going to give you is actually about hydration. Dehydration can make you crave sweets and junk food. And there’s actually a reason for this. Most people, when they drink water, they just drink plain water and that is not going to hydrate you.
You need to have electrolytes in your water. And when I say electrolytes, I don’t mean Gatorade. I mean, just plain electrolytes. The thing my family likes to use is called a Solay. You can also get mineral drops to put in your water depending on your preference. I like the Solayl because I don’t, it doesn’t really have much of a taste and it’s super affordable and cheap.
The other thing I’ve been having the twins do lately, because I do think certain people are more sensitive to the taste of electrolytes than others. But I have been getting frozen fruit to have the twins put in their water drinks to help increase their willingness to drink the electrolytes.
Because from a physical perspective, your body has a charge to it. When you don’t have electrolytes in your water, the water isn’t actually able to go in the cells and hydrate you. It just gets pulled out. It just pulls out more of the electrolytes and actually leaves you feeling dehydrated. This is why athletes drink things like Gatorade and stuff like that to keep them hydrated when they’re working out and exercising.
When you’re dehydrated, you’re going to crave the junk food, rightfully so, because a lot of those things have a lot more salt in them. Like we need salt to survive. We need magnesium. We need all potassium. We need those electrolytes to be able to function optimally.
My next tip is to focus on what you need to add to a meal instead of what you need to take away from a meal. My favorite way to explain this is actually using my friend Erin’s BSB method, which stands for blood sugar balance. Her format, I think is one of the simplest ways I’ve heard it explained to me. So I’m going to share a little bit about that with you guys right now.
Erin really focuses on looking at your plate and going, okay, what do you need? It’s really critical for a meal that you have a balanced plate, meaning you need a solid serving of protein. You need a healthy fat source. A lot of us are fat phobic, but fat actually helps you feel satiated and it’s really good. Healthy fats are really essential for your brain as well. So when I say healthy fat, I’m talking like olive oil or avocado oil or butter or peanut butter, things like that, that you can add to your, your plate that really help satiate you.
So a protein, a fat, you want a healthy veggie. So like, not like a potato, but like a green, like a leafy green, because the greens really help get some of those nutrients that you need into your system. And you want to have a carbohydrate as well. So this would be the time where adding a potato is good or adding some sourdough bread or something like that, because carbs can help you feel energized, especially if you put them in tandem with the other things on your plate as well. So you need protein, healthy fat, some sort of green and a carbohydrate, ideally a nutrient dense carbohydrate. But when you, when you focus on what do I need to add to this to help me be satiated and help me feel full, that will help balance that blood sugar and also help you be satisfied.
The reason we tend to eat a whole bag of chips is because they’re not super satisfying. So it’s like, if you want to have chips, think about, okay, what else could I pair with these chips? So I’ll actually be satisfied after the snack, instead of coming back and continuing to eat a bag full of chips. I love to make avocado or guacamole to put with my chips. Like it’s a great fat source. It tastes good and it adds some spice to my chips as well.
Nervous System as an Aid to BSB [00:09:30]
The previous episode Aaron and I did also ties in very nicely to this point, but you really need to focus on your nervous system because when you’re able to get into that vagal state where you feel safe and loved, then your body can actually digest and you won’t be as stressed and you’ll actually be able to process the sugar and the food you take in and utilize those nutrients appropriately. So accessing the resource we did talking about the nervous system and how to regulate it is really critical because the more you can be in that safe place on an energetic level, the better your body’s going to be able to handle stressors and deal with your blood sugar.
I think for me, in a lot of ways, God helped me address my physical health before my mental health, because for some people, the mental health piece is so daunting that until you help them with some of the physical things, they don’t feel safe enough to work on their mental health. And what is ironic to me, it kind of came full circle because I really worked on my physical health for a long time. And then in recent years, I’ve really focused more on my mental health. And now that I’ve done the work on my mental health, my physical health is now also improving too, without me having to do a ton of extra work on it.
So they really do go hand in hand. I’m going to create a worksheet with all these resources and this information put into one spot so it’s easy for you to understand. I am wanting to create more resources for my mental health clients as well. I really want to break it down and make it simple for them and so you guys are going to get to benefit from that as well. Click HERE to download your blood sugar worksheet!
So if you have questions, send me an email at info@shelbyleppin.com and we will continue this series in a future episode.