How to Use Food to Get Excellent Blood Sugar Control As A Diabetic

“I exercise so I can eat whatever I want”. So many diabetics live by this creed but still get the same results with blood sugar levels and weight management. Eating right is hard because people think we need to give up “quality” to be healthy. Words like “deprivation”, “flavorless”, and “diet” come into the conversation.

But what if I told you that with some information and minor adjustments in what you eat, you can see food as fuel instead of an indulgence? And eating right can be enjoyable? This is not a pipe dream.

In my last article, I talked about the importance of anaerobic training for blood sugar control. Now let’s look at what fuels that training and how to use food as a weapon against high blood sugar.

Food and Blood Sugar

Food is broken down into three types of macronutrients: carbohydrate, fat, and protein. When you eat carbohydrates, they’re quickly metabolized and broken down into glucose – immediately raising blood sugar levels. As a result, your pancreas makes insulin to bring that sugar down. The starchier or sweeter the carbohydrate (AKA simple carbs), such as bread, pasta, and candy, the higher your glucose level rises, and the more insulin is needed to bring it back down.

Fat, on the other hand, is an energy-dense macronutrient that has virtually no effect on blood sugar if eaten alone. This macronutrient is your buddy for blood sugar control which I’ll talk about in a bit.

Protein is more of a maintenance macronutrient which helps repair damaged muscle and tissue. It has a very small effect on blood sugar levels. Some type 1 diabetics even dose a little extra insulin to cover protein but, for the most part, it’s negligible and not comparable to the sugar-raising effects of starchy carbohydrates.

There are two big problems I see diabetics and non-diabetics encounter when it comes to maintaining good blood sugar levels: addiction and fear.

The Insulin Roller Coaster

We get addicted to carbs, and I’m not talking about vegetables here (those are carbs, too). You know which ones – bread, pasta, rice, tortillas, whole grains, sweets, natural sugar, organic sugar, etc. I don’t blame them. That’s what they’re designed to do. I mean, just look at them!

When you eat this stuff, assuming your pancreas is working fine, your glucose levels spike and insulin is made to bring your blood sugar back down so low that you start to feel hungry again. You then eat more to feel satisfied, raising your glucose levels back up, and the cycle repeats.

This is a reason why it’s so easy to keep eating a big bag of chips or tub of ice cream until it’s completely gone. To make things worse, your body loves this surplus energy and stores any unused glucose as body fat (kind of like those cat-loving hoarders on TLC). This stored fat is not necessarily a bad thing – your body needs it. It’s just that you (and most people) probably don’t want more than what you need.

This insulin roller coaster is bad enough for non-diabetics and makes it nearly impossible for diabetics to have a steady sugar profile because they’re either insulin resistant (type 2) or their pancreas cannot make any or enough insulin (type 1 or 2) to keep up with the demand.

Fear Not

The second problem with trying to maintain good blood sugar levels is that people are afraid that, if they ditch the carbs, they’ll miss out on all the vitamins and nutrients from whole and ancient grains that gurus, commercials, and labels hype up.

I had this fear, too, but Dr. Richard Bernstein (and much contemporary research) reassured me in his book that humans have existed longer on Earth without agriculture and they were fine. We can get everything the body needs from fat, protein, and leafy non-grain and slow-burning complex carbohydrates. If you avoid starchy (simple) carbohydrates, you can greatly improve your cholesterol levels, too.

Fat is Your Friend

When reducing your carb intake, the calories removed need to come from somewhere else. Your body has a limit as to how much protein it can eat because of the load it imposes on kidneys since they must clean out the nitrogen and waste products from the protein breakdown process.

A general rule I’ve seen mentioned by fitness professionals for how much protein to eat is about 0.45-1.0 grams per pound of bodyweight for highly active individuals looking to build muscle and about 0.36 grams per pound of bodyweight for sedentary people and those looking to maintain body composition.

This leaves fat as the last source of energy. When people see what I eat, they ask, “Won’t your heart stop by eating all that fat?”

I won’t go into the scientific details but fat is a clean-burning fuel source that is dense in calories and nutrients. There are plenty of books and studies that explain why we need to stop fearing fat, but here’s the truth: it’s an outdated belief that fats will lead you down a path full of clogged arteries, dead hearts, and rivers of cholesterol.

It’s this belief that causes people to have trouble eating right and reducing the carbs. They think that all starchy carbs are bad along with the belief that fat is also bad, so all they leave themselves to eat are protein and leafy greens – the old chicken-broccoli-air dinner. That gets boring fast.

If you make good fats such as monounsaturated and polyunsaturated (omega-3’s and 6’s) fats part of your daily diet, you’ll experience many benefits such as

• reduced inflammation
• getting full faster
• a healthy brain
• tissue repair
• weight loss
• a steady blood sugar profile

Fat also makes things taste way better. Steamed broccoli is not the same as steamed broccoli with butter or olive oil. This is a big reason why fat is your secret weapon for good blood sugar levels.

Some sources of good fats that I eat every day are various nuts, a whole avocado a day, olive oil, olives, and fish oil.

Saturated Fat

After reading much about the topic, I think that saturated fats contribute to most of the fear and controversy. This type of fat has many studies that come to conclusions that contradict each other. Some say that saturated fats will do nothing to your body and others say it will lead to increased levels of LDL (bad) cholesterol. I still need to do more research on this but when I see something in which people disagree to that extent, I think it just means that we need to moderate – not completely avoid it but not stuff my face with it.

I still love eating saturated fat. Some sources of saturated fat which I include often in my meals are cheese, sour cream, butter, coconut oil, half-and-half creamer, chicken skin, and ground turkey.

Despite the claims about fat, one thing that I’m certain about is that the complications that arise from high blood sugar levels (resulting from a high-carb diet) are much worse than those that supposedly result from a high-fat diet.

My experience with food has shown that eating moderate protein (within the limits I mentioned earlier), lots of polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats, moderate amounts of saturated fats, and very low amounts of simple starchy carbohydrates has given me an excellent lipid profile and history of blood sugar readings.

Start Small

Ditching the carbs is simple but not easy to do. If you decide to try it, I don’t recommend going cold turkey because you can go back to your old habits just as fast as you gave them up. The goal is to slowly reduce the starchy carbs (i.e. bread, pasta, chips, tortillas, flour, etc.) and increase the non-starchy (complex) carbs such as leafy greens, cauliflower, squash, broccoli, artichokes, green beans, zucchini – anything green or colored.

To make the change, start small. If you’re eating a hamburger, remove one of the buns. If you’re eating pasta, remove about a quarter of what you’d normally eat and replace it with steamed vegetables with butter or olive oil. The next time you eat a hamburger, order it lettuce-wrapped (no bun) with a side salad topped with creamy dressing. When you eat pasta again, reduce the amount of pasta even more and replace it with veggies or more protein.

Gradually reduce the carbs each day or week and replace it with more protein or fat – starchy carbs don’t make you feel full the way protein and fat do. In my experience (and others’), this strategy is very effective and minimizes carb withdrawals. After the first one or two weeks, almost everyone I know who did this noticed that they stopped craving the carbs, including me. They also felt less tired, less bloated, and more energetic.

You don’t need to go full ketogenic to get the blood sugar benefits of eating low-carb. But I must mention that the keto community has many delicious low-carb recipes that I’ve been trying out lately which have brought back some of the foods I couldn’t eat after being diagnosed – coconut flour pancakes, keto bread, keto protein bars, low-carb pasta, egg muffins, etc. Their recipes have helped make my low-carb journey so much more enjoyable and, more importantly, sustainable.

If you’re serious about controlling your glucose levels then eating low-carb is another tool to add to your stash along with anaerobic training. I’ve been eating like this for over 4 years and I still don’t feel like I’m missing out or deprived. I still eat starchy carbs but only for those rare cheat meals once every one or two weeks, or after an intense workout. If you have any experience with eating low-carb or have questions, I’d love to hear about it.