Glucose Revolution: The life-changing power of balancing your blood sugar

by Jessie Inchauspé

The 30-second no-glucose-spike savoury snack Here are my go-to savoury snacks: • A spoonful of nut butter • A cup of 5 per cent Greek yoghurt topped with a handful of pecans • A cup of 5 per cent Greek yoghurt with nut butter swirled into it • A handful of baby carrots and a spoonful of hummus • A handful of macadamia nuts and a square of 90 per cent dark chocolate • A hunk of cheese • Apple slices with a hunk of cheese • Apple slices smeared with nut butter • Bell pepper slices dipped into a spoonful of guacamole • Celery smeared with nut butter • A handful of pork rinds • A hard-boiled egg with a dash of hot sauce • Lightly salted coconut slivers • Seeded crackers with a slice of cheese • A slice of ham • A soft-boiled egg with a dash of salt and pepper

By putting clothes on our carbs, we avoid hunger pangs. We also avoid being hangry,

Combine your fruit – top favourite partners in the Glucose Goddess community are nut butter, nuts, full-fat yoghurt, eggs and Cheddar cheese. • Note that dried dates are some of the biggest glucose bombs in the fruit kingdom. Yet they are said to help with managing diabetes. Go figure. • And one last thing – when you have a choice between various fruits, the best option is berries. Tropical fruits and grapes are bred to contain high amounts of sugar, so eat them for dessert or put some clothes on them.

If you’re eating carbs on their own … Bread, corn, couscous, pasta, polenta, rice, tortillas, cake, sweets, cereal, cookies, crackers, fruit, granola, hot chocolate, ice cream, or anything else sweet … combine them with fibre, fat and/or protein: Any vegetable, beans, butter, cheese, cream, eggs, fish, Greek yoghurt, meat, nuts, seeds

Good fats are saturated (fat from animals, such as butter, ghee and coconut oil) or monounsaturated (from fruit and nuts such as avocados, macadamia nuts and olives). For cooking, use saturated fats – they’re less likely to oxidise with heat. Monounsaturated fats, such as olive and avocado, can’t stand the heat as well. A good rule of thumb to distinguish between them: cook with fats that are solid at room temperature when you can.

Bad fats (which inflame us, harm our heart health, make us gain visceral fat and increase our insulin resistance) are polyunsaturated and trans fats, which are found in processed oils – made from soybean, corn, rapeseed, safflower and rice bran oil – and fried foods, and fast foods. (The one seed oil that isn’t as bad is flaxseed oil.)

But I keep in mind that the hungrier I am, the emptier my stomach is, the bigger the spike those naked carbs will cause. (This is why flattening our breakfast curve is so important.)

So next time you’re about to grab a cookie, set a timer for 20 minutes. If your craving was due to a glucose drop, it will be gone by the time the alarm rings.

If the 20 minutes have come and gone and you’re still thinking about that cookie, set it aside for dessert at your next meal.

drink a tall glass of water with a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar swirled in

Then put some clothes on your carbs.

Use your muscles and move within the next hour.

The many names of sugar on an ingredients list Look for these: agave nectar, agave syrup, barley malt, beet sugar, brown rice syrup, brown sugar, cane juice crystals, cane sugar, caramel, coconut sugar, icing sugar, corn syrup, corn syrup solids, crushed fruit, date sugar, dextrin, dextrose, evaporated cane juice, fructose, fruit juice, fruit juice concentrate, fruit purée concentrate, galactose, glucose, glucose syrup solids, golden sugar, golden syrup, grape sugar, high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), honey, icing sugar, malt syrup, maltodextrin, maltose, maple syrup, muscovado sugar, panela sugar, pressed fruit, raw sugar, rice syrup, sucanat, sucrose, sugar.

The grams next to Total Carbohydrate and Total Sugars represent the molecules that cause a glucose spike: starches and sugars.

So here’s a tip: for dry foods, look at the ratio of Total Carbohydrate to Dietary Fibre.

Select items whose ingredients get the closest to 1 gram of Dietary Fibre for each 5 grams of Total Carbohydrate. Here’s how to do it: find the number next to Total Carbohydrate and divide it by five. Try to find a food that has that amount of Dietary Fibre (or as close to it as possible).