Today, we're diving deep into the world of insulin and its vital role in regulating our blood sugar levels, particularly in relation to our food choices. Liam O'Toole discusses how the type and quality of carbohydrates we consume can lead to significant spikes in insulin, impacting our energy levels and overall health. He emphasises the importance of balanced meals that include a mix of proteins, slow-digesting carbohydrates, and plenty of vegetables to maintain stable insulin levels. With humour and insight, Liam shares practical tips for smarter eating habits that can help mitigate the risks of insulin resistance and improve your well-being. Join the conversation as we explore how making informed dietary choices can support your fitness journey and enhance your energy throughout the day.

Takeaways:

• Insulin is crucial for moving glucose into cells, enabling energy production and preventing starvation.
• Processed carbohydrates lead to rapid insulin spikes, causing energy crashes and hunger pangs later.
• Balancing meals with proteins, carbohydrates, and healthy fats helps regulate insulin levels effectively.
• Choosing whole grains over refined carbs can promote a slower release of glucose into the bloodstream.
• Eating smaller, balanced meals throughout the day can prevent dramatic blood sugar spikes and crashes.
• Understanding the impact of food choices on insulin can significantly improve your health and energy levels.

Hi, everybody.

Welcome back to the weight loss strength and fitness podcast.

It's me, it's Limo Toole.

And today we're gonna talk about something very glamorous when it comes to your health.

But it's something that has a big impact, right?

It's insulin.

So you've probably heard of insulin a million times over, you know, when it comes to things like diabetes or weight and things like that.

But, but today we're going to dive into it a little bit further.

We're going to talk about food choices, how that affects it, and ultimately, I guess what you need to know as someone who's listening to a gym based podcast about it.

So before we get to that, I'd just like to say a huge thank you to everybody for the conversations that followed up last week's episode about Ozempic and other medications.

Reason being is that I really found coming out of that, you know, the messages, you know, whether you were someone who was, you know, considering it, someone who's already taking it, someone whose family kind of has an experience with it, or even just someone who listened and found the kind of concept of it quite interesting.

I really enjoyed the conversations that spun out of that.

So thank you very much for the engagements.

And it was, it was fun to talk to everybody and it was nice to know that it made an impact.

So then, you know, following up on that episode, I was kind of thinking, you know, what do we want to talk about this week?

And I suppose it's kind of, you know, it's January.

So I guess a lot of the conversations I'm having in the gym are, you know, nutrition based.

I had three nutrition consultations last week.

I already have two booked for the week coming.

And I suppose, like, obviously we've got our habits challenge running.

There's the nutrition course that I sent out to everybody.

So I think it's just something that's on everyone's mind as we start the year.

Everyone wants to, you know, start out healthy.

So I decided, I was like, how can I go a little bit further than the nutrition course?

How can we start talking about it?

And I'm going to, I'm going to reference it in terms of the gym, you know, and kind of if we're thinking about the gym, we're thinking about maybe losing weight.

So we're thinking about diets and things like that.

And, you know, that's what I'm going to kind of gear this around, around when it comes to talking about insulin.

Right.

So, you know, first of all, like, what is It.

What does it do in the body?

It's a hormone produced by your pancreas, and its main job is to help you digest food.

So without insulin, you literally couldn't do it.

You could eat all you want, but none of it would get to the muscle cell and you'd starve to death.

Okay, so when you eat food, especially carbohydrates, your body breaks it down into glucose, which then enters your bloodstream.

Insulin's role is to help move that glucose from the bloodstream into your cells, where it can be used for energy or stored for later use.

Right?

So it can get stored as fat.

Without insulin, the glucose would just stay in your bloodstream.

As I just said, it causes high blood sugar levels, which can lead to health issues over time.

And that's kind of what we've heard about a lot, right?

So, like, insulin doesn't really care what goes where.

It just looks for emptiness in the cells and fills it accordingly.

So when your blood sugar is rising too fast or too high, the pancreas can overreact a little bit, and insulin pours into our bloodstream, pushing blood sugar, amino acids, anywhere possible.

Okay.

Unfortunately, this is what results in the blood sugar crashes that we can feel later on because insulin doesn't know when to stop, right?

It just keeps pushing.

So a few hours later, you know, after having a big spike in blood sugar levels, like, let's say you eat a ton of jellies and drink a load of Coca Cola, you know, you're gonna feel tired and probably hungry again.

Okay.

So I guess what we're going to be talking about today is, you know, the impact of the food choices that we make on insulin.

So if we think of carbohydrates, okay, whether it's bread, pasta, fruit, or sugary foods, your body breaks them down into glucose.

However, the more refined and processed, the carbohydrates.

So think, you know, jellies, right?

Coca Cola, those things can turn very quickly into sugar, which causes a spike in the blood sugar levels.

This spike triggers your pancreas to release.

Release a large amount of insulin to bring the blood sugar levels back down.

And this is what gets referred to as that traditional insulin spike.

So what can cause those rapid spikes?

It's the.

It's the really processed stuff.

Like we've talked about it before, and when we've done the nutrition stuff with macronutrients, it's highly processed things.

It's not single ingredient foods.

It's white bread, sugary snacks, drinks.

Whereas I guess, on the other hand, you've got things like oats, whole grains, fruits, they're digested a lot more slowly, which leads to a more gradual release of glucose and a less dramatic insulin response, which is why you don't get that blood sugar dump after having porridge the same way as you would if you had a pack of Haribo.

Okay, so when it comes to, that's carbohydrates, right?

But if we think about proteins, then, you know, proteins can also, you know, stimulate insulin production, but to a lesser extent.

Right.

So I guess if we're thinking about diets and things, some diets, I guess over time, the reason.

Actually, let's go back a little bit further.

Right?

So one of the main reasons that a lot of diets don't work for a long period of time, you know, where we can get some short term results focusing on them, but, you know, we can't stick to them for a very, very long time, is because they don't actually address the hormones behind the storage of fat and the insulin spikes associated with the processed food.

So we are finally getting to a level where most diets are recognizing the value of five to six small meals per day as opposed to kind of restriction.

Few acknowledge that the goal behind having more frequent meals is the controlled insulin levels.

So instead of waiting to have a couple of big meals, that would lead to spikes.

Right?

But a lot of diets also choose to restrict carbohydrates, proteins, fats, or total calories.

Okay.

So like Weight Watchers, for example.

For example, if you ate six small meals per day and some of those meals were solely carbohydrate, your blood sugar levels would make you store carbohydrate as fat.

And then at the opposite level to that, you know, on an Atkins diet, where it's really high protein, you know, insulin levels can be too, too low, and the protein isn't effectively used as energy.

You know, using protein for energy is a very inefficient process.

Okay.

Especially without the insulin levels there to help.

Okay.

So I suppose as we look to what we're doing, when we're talking about kind of like building diets and building sustainable habits for people, we want to do is make sure.

And if you've kind of downloaded the nutrition course, you'll be aware of this.

We want balanced meals, okay?

We want 25 protein, 25 of a starchy carb, slow digesting carb, and 50% vegetables for all your micronutrients.

Right?

Because I guess if we look at foods like, let's start with breakfast, right?

And I'm going to tell you guys a story about John Harvey Kellogg.

And you might recognize the last name of Kellogg, right?

So a little known fact about John Harvey Kellogg is that he was a very religious man and he was part of an organization that, you know, he fully believed in, you know, no alcohol.

He didn't believe in eating a lot of meats.

He did.

He really wanted a bland diet because he actually believed in spirit, like in terms of spirituality.

He believed it helped, but also he believed it helped your gut.

Okay.

However, he was also not a big fan of sex.

And he believed with the invention of Corn Flakes being a bland food, Right.

He believed that that would help reduce sexual desire and cure the epidemic of masturbation by lulling the eater into a lazy, unmotivated state.

Right.

That kind of like blood sugar drop.

Okay.

I suppose they weren't aware of the mechanism, but they knew that carbohydrates would lull people, right?

They knew.

It kind of brings us down a little bit.

We know if we've had a big carby meal and you just want to go curl up on the couch, right?

You know, if you've had like a big pasta dish, for example, like sometimes you just want to lie down.

You're like, oh, I overage.

I'm almost exhausted.

Okay.

So that's just, I guess, a little bit of an indication about breakfast, right?

Because if you think of the cereals that you could be eating, right?

It's not that it's.

You wouldn't necessarily think of, of cornflakes as like the bad one, right?

But bear in mind that that's what its inventor was thinking at the time.

It was going to help sedate people and bring them down and keep them calm.

But when we think about traditional breakfast cereals, you know, milk is probably there enough to kind of bring us back down.

But think of Cocoa Pops.

Think of, I don't know, what's the most sugary cereals out there?

The one that comes to my mind is Cocoa Pops, but I'm sure there's a million others.

And particularly, like, if you think of like Lucky Charms and stuff in America, like, they're absolutely packed full of them, right?

So I guess when you think of breakfast, it's the first meal we've had in maybe since dinner the night before.

Maybe you had a snack before going to bed.

But what do we actually want to have in that meal?

Well, we actually do want to have a balanced meal.

And I know it can be hard to think in the morning time of, oh, Am I supposed to have protein at breakfast?

Really don't want to.

Am I supposed to have veg at breakfast?

Really don't want to.

I just want to have my, my cereal.

Which is why sometimes I'll often recommend porridge for people.

So to have some oats and you can mix in some protein powder, you can have some Greek yogurt and things like that to help.

And then I suppose, moving through the day like our traditional lunches and dinners, I mentioned pasta.

But like when we look at a traditional dinner plate, like most of it is 2/3 carbohydrate.

You know, pasta dishes is nearly all carbohydrate.

You know, it's very hard for your pancreas to be able to control the insulin output with that kind of diet.

Right?

Because we're just spreading, spiking it so high.

So in terms of that balance plate, if we can reduce that down a little bit, you know, if we compare carbohydrates alongside some of those, some more protein sources, some healthy fat sources.

So like understanding the impact of food on insulin, can we now make smarter choices to support regulation throughout the body so that we have more sustained energy throughout the day rather than peaks and troughs, you know, choosing more whole grains.

So instead of going for white bread and cereals like cornflakes, we go for things like brown rice, oats, quinoa, whole wheat based bread.

You know, these have a lot more fiber and it has a lot slower release of glucose.

And then obviously think of that balance plate.

We want to make sure we pair carbohydrates with protein.

So as we mentioned earlier, pairing them together and having, you know, 25% of your plate being starchy carbs, 25% being protein, and then making sure there's some healthy fats kind of moderated through that will really help you monitor or moderate blood sugar level spikes and insulin release.

So, for example, having eggs along with your toast or some nuts to go with your apple, whatever it is, adding more fiber to your meals.

So vegetables, I'm always telling people to eat more vegetables.

Right?

50% of that plate, if you can get it, you know, and then just be mindful of, of sugary snacks, you know, I guess everybody wants something sweet every so often.

But you know, understanding how quick that can lead to a spike in your blood sugar levels, does that make you consider it a little bit differently?

Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't.

I know it does for me.

And I think over time, you know, over the course of the 11 years that I've been Doing this, I've been paying a little bit more attention and I've always been trying to increase my vegetable intake, you know, so I suppose eating denser carbohydrate sources at the same amount of protein, you know, having your veg, you know, a little bit of fat at each meal, it really does go a long way.

Okay.

And then also, you know, exercise intervals, weights, aerobics, you know, these things are.

Do you know, the energy output that's going to help regulate everything too.

So we're keeping it in check, you know, by eating well, by exercising, you're going to make sure that you're managing your blood sugar level spikes so that your body doesn't build up a resistance to insulin.

And build up to resistance of insulin is where, you know, that's where diabetes comes around, right?

That's the resistance of the muscle to the insulin.

And we don't want that.

Right?

Not that anyone listening to this podcast is in danger of something like that, but I did just want to kind of go a little bit deeper than the macronutrients episode of this to kind of talk a little bit about what happens when we've digested those foods and they enter into the bloodstream.

So hopefully you found it somewhat interesting.

The big thing is, no matter what you do, just think of that balance place, think about how can I best fuel myself for the day, how can I best fuel myself for my exercise and how can I best fuel myself to be the best version possible of me?

And that's the way to go about it.

And unfortunately it's not with Kellogg's elsewhere, I suppose in the gym this week.

It's a pretty busy one.

I'm off to Stockholm at the end of the week for a coaches congress which should be good fun and I'm looking forward to bringing back some nuggets.

Hopefully I'll actually be recording the next week's version of this podcast in Stockholm.

So maybe we'll have a Stockholm based episode where I can talk to you guys about what I've learned and what I'm planning to bring back and implement and things like that elsewhere.

Other than that, I suppose, training wise, we've got another couple of weeks in this cycle.

It is quite a, quite a short cycle, I think, as I mentioned in previous episodes.

But we're coming towards, you know, a mini assessment week before we get into training for the open and we're going to try a new power based cycle which I think I mentioned last week, which is going to be a interesting one.

So for anyone who follows me on Instagram, you might have seen me do, you know, seated box jumps and things like that.

So if you want a glimpse into your future, there it is.

And, yeah, other than that, guys, for those of you who are doing the habits challenge this week, we've one or two small additions coming later on in the week.

So they won't be there immediately, but when they're coming in, I'm gonna get on to you guys.

It's gonna be about carbohydrates, actually, so it kind of follows on nicely from this episode.

And other than that, guys, I really hope you enjoyed it.

I hope we can have a little discussion about it if you're interested in kind of learning a little bit more.

Happy to chat about it.

I suppose the main thing to remember is that, you know, insulin is a powerful hormone.

It regulates our blood sugar levels, but our food choices have a direct impact on how it functions within our body.

So make sure we are controlling the carbohydrates that we eat so that they're of the best possible quality, making sure we're eating plenty of protein and healthy fats to better support the sensitivity and just the overall health.

You know, thanks for tuning into this episode.

I really hope it gives you a better understanding of how insulin works, and it helps you make some smarter choices for your health.

And obviously, if you found this helpful, let me know.

Share it with a friend, things like that.

Other than that, guys, hopefully I'll see you in the gym and I'll talk to you soon.