Glucose Revolution: The Life-Changing Power of Balancing Your Blood Sugar

by Jessie Inchauspé

HACK 1 EAT FOODS IN THE RIGHT ORDER

if you eat the items of a meal containing starch, fiber, sugar, protein, and fat in a specific order, you reduce your overall glucose spike by 73 percent, as well as your insulin spike by 48 percent. This is true for anyone, with or without diabetes.

What is the right order? It’s fiber first, protein and fat second, starches and sugars last.

If starches or sugars are the first thing to hit your stomach, they get to your small intestine very quickly. There, they are broken down into glucose molecules, which then make it through to the bloodstream very quickly. That creates a glucose spike.

The more carbs you eat and the quicker you eat them, the more forcefully the load of glucose appears—the bigger the glucose spike.

Picture your stomach as a sink and your intestine as ...

Fiber has three superpowers: First, it reduces the action of alpha-amylase, the enzyme that breaks starch down into glucose molecules. Second, it slows down gastric emptying: when fiber is present, food trickles from sink to pipe more slowly. Finally, it creates a viscous mesh in the small intestine; this mesh makes it harder for glucose to make it through to the bloodstream.

Eating veggies first and carbs second greatly slows down the speed at which glucose makes it to the bloodstream, thereby flattening the glucose spike associated with that meal.

To illustrate the effect of food order on glucose spikes, return to the Tetris analogy: blocks coming down slowly are easier to arrange than blocks coming down quickly.

Eating the potato first led to the biggest spike, mixing it with the meat was better, but starting with the meat and saving the carbs for last was best for my glucose levels.

How quickly can I eat the foods one after the other? Many different timings were studied in clinical settings—0 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes; they all seem to work.

HACK 2 ADD A GREEN STARTER TO ALL YOUR MEALS

HACK 3 STOP COUNTING CALORIES

To measure how many calories are in, say, a doughnut, here’s what to do: dehydrate the doughnut, and place it in a cubicle submerged in a water bath. Then light the doughnut on fire (yes, really) and measure by how many degrees the water around it warms up.

So when we say “This doughnut and this Greek yogurt have the same number of calories,” we’re really saying “This doughnut and this Greek yogurt warm up water by the same number of degrees when we burn them.”

Judging a food based on its calorie count is like judging a book by its page count. The fact that a book is 500 pages long can certainly give you some information about how long it will take to read (about 17 hours), but it’s unfortunately reductive. If you walk into a bookstore and tell an employee you want to buy “a 500-page book,” they will look at you a little strangely

One 500-page book is not the same as another 500-page book, and likewise one calorie isn’t the same as another.

One hundred calories of fructose, 100 calories of glucose, 100 calories of protein, and 100 calories of fat may release the same amount of heat when they burn, but th...

fructose, as you know from part 2, inflames our bodies, ages our cells, and turns to fat more than glucose does).

So if you’ve ever heard that to get healthy you just need to cut calories, now you know that’s not true.

It’s important to make this change away from starchy and sweet snacks gradually, because it can take a few days or even weeks for the body to adapt.

HACK 4 FLATTEN YOUR BREAKFAST CURVE

By blending a piece of fruit, we pulverise the fiber into tiny particles that can’t fulfill their protective duties anymore.

Essentially, as soon as it’s juiced, dried, candied, canned, or turned to jam, you should think of fruit as dessert, just as you would a slice of cake.

My go-to smoothie recipe is 2 scoops of protein powder, 1 tablespoon flaxseed oil, ¼ avocado, 1 tablespoon crunchy almond butter, ¼ banana, 1 cup frozen berries, and some unsweetened almond milk.

Nondairy almond or other nut milks work, too, but oat milk tends to be the biggest spiker, because it contains more carbs than the other milks, as it’s made from grains, not nuts.

5 HAVE ANY TYPE OF SUGAR YOU LIKE—THEY’RE ALL THE SAME

You get it: any kind of sugar, regardless of its color, taste, or plant of origin, is still glucose and fructose, and will still lead to glucose and fructose spikes in our bodies.

The best sweeteners that have no side effects on glucose and insulin levels are: Allulose Monk fruit Stevia (look for pure stevia extract because some other forms of it are mixed with glucose-spiking fillers) Erythritol

There are some artificial sweeteners I’d recommend you avoid, because they are known to increase insulin and/or glucose levels, especially when combined with foods, or cause other health issues. They are: Aspartame Maltitol (turns to glucose when digested) Sucralose Xylitol Acesulfame-K

HACK 6 PICK DESSERT OVER A SWEET SNACK

HACK 7 REACH FOR VINEGAR BEFORE YOU EAT

Here’s an even easier way to use this hack: now that you’re adding a green starter to all your meals, you can add some vinegar to your dressing.

Adding vinegar to our diet, either in a drink or a salad dressing, is an excellent way to flatten our glucose curves.

HACK 8 AFTER YOU EAT, MOVE

If we sit in a chair for an hour after eating cake, the glucose will accumulate in our body and cause a spike. If we exercise instead, the glucose will almost immediately be used up by our muscles.

Resistance exercise (weight lifting) has been shown to decrease the glucose spike by up to 30 percent and the size of further spikes over the following 24 hours by 35 percent.

If you’re going to eat something sweet or starchy, use your muscles afterward.

HACK 9 IF YOU HAVE TO SNACK, GO SAVORY

THE 30-SECOND NO-GLUCOSE-SPIKE SAVORY SNACK

Apple slices smeared with nut butter

Bell pepper slices dipped in a spoonfu...

A cup of 5% Greek yogurt topped with a ha...

A cup of 5% Greek yogurt with nut butter ...

A handful of baby carrots and a spoon...

A handful of macadamia nuts and a square of 90...

A hard-boiled egg with a dash ...

HACK 10 PUT SOME CLOTHES ON YOUR CARBS

It’s for those times when we’re going to eat a slice of cake for breakfast because we’re hungry and it’s there.