Are you on top of your diet and exercise regimen but the scale won’t budge? Do you feel overly hungry even after eating? Are you tired of being frustrated with your relentless sugar cravings?
If any of this speaks to you, you don’t want to miss this lesson! Dr. Cederquist and Nicole RD share an underlying culprit that challenges weight loss and increases the risk of diabetes, otherwise known as insulin resistance.
Despite insulin resistance’s wide prevalence (in 50-60% of the population!) and diverse causes, so many people have no idea what it is. And even more alarming, most people have NO idea they have it!
Through years of experience helping hundreds of patients manage insulin resistance, Dr. Cederquist and Nicole RD know the key to unlocking weight loss. And they’re excited to provide actionable tips to undo years of frustration and help you regain control of your health once and for all!
Dr. Cederquist: Are you giving it your all, but frustrated that the scale won't budge?
Nicole: You are not alone. Losing weight can often seem impossible. That's why we want to discuss one of the main culprits that many of you may not be aware of.
Dr. Cederquist: Thank you for joining us again. As we take a deep dive into one of the main reasons why losing weight can be so difficult, many people have what's called insulin resistance.
Dr. Cederquist: Insulin resistance is a metabolic condition, and I found that 90% of the patients I saw in my practice had it. Now granted, I'm a doctor who specialized in weight loss, but when we look at other statistics throughout the U.S., the numbers are equally high. Just in the regular population, 50% or 60% of the population has insulin resistance, but most people don't know what it is, and they don't even know that they have it.
Nicole: Yes, I've seen so many patients with insulin resistance, and many, if not most, didn't even know that they had this condition. This is why we want to introduce you to insulin resistance and address the causes, the symptoms, and how we can treat it and reverse it. Yes, it's reversible!
Dr. Cederquist: Insulin resistance is a metabolic condition that makes it harder to lose weight and easier to gain weight. It is a condition that's on the continuum to pre-diabetes and eventually diabetes. If you have pre-diabetes, you have insulin resistance.
Nicole: Yes, you may also have some degree of insulin resistance if you've been told you have an elevation of your blood sugar, your hemoglobin A1c, your triglycerides, and/or a low HDL or “good” cholesterol level.
Dr. Cederquist: If you have a family history of diabetes, meaning if one or more of your parents or grandparents had diabetes, you're much more likely to develop insulin resistance and develop it at an earlier age.
Dr. Cederquist: With regards to age, just getting older increases your risk of development of insulin resistance. I remember a study I had read that showed if you gave the same meal to a 30-year-old versus a 60-year-old, a healthy 30-year-old, and a healthy 60-year-old, the 60-year-old had much higher blood sugar response in response to the same meal. This had nothing to do with weight. It just has to do with age.
Dr. Cederquist: We also know hormonal changes like menopause and low testosterone in men can cause insulin resistance to become much more noticeable and really take off.
Dr. Cederquist: Another very common cause is weight gain, especially abdominal weight gain. Many times people have a lot going on in their life and they gain weight thinking that eventually I'll be able to lose this weight and focus and get my life all balanced and then things change, but then they find that the things they used to do no longer work, they've developed this change in their metabolism and that change in the metabolism is insulin resistance that develops because of abdominal weight gain.
Dr. Cederquist: Another common cause is stress. So many of us are under stress—we have a lot to do, a lot's going on, and stress is something that our bodies respond to by secreting the hormone cortisol which affects blood sugar, which causes abdominal weight gain and it keeps the cycle going. So you can see that there are many, many contributors to this metabolic condition. And, unfortunately, once it gets established, the weight just comes on. And the things that used to work to lose weight don’t seem to work anymore.
Nicole: Yeah, insulin resistance is complex. And so oftentimes, this visual is really helpful in explaining what insulin resistance is doing to our metabolism. So in this picture here, we have a picture of a normal cell, a cell without insulin resistance. And then we have a picture of an insulin-resistant cell.
Nicole: So I first want to address the normal cell. And basically on the outside of the cell is glucose, which is just a fancy term for sugar. And then you also have the little orange dots there that indicate insulin. And insulin's job is to really help in regulating our blood sugar levels.
Nicole: And then we have a picture below of a cell and the cell channels or little doorways to the cell. So you can see that there are these insulin receptors, and within the cell is some more glucose.
Nicole: So to put this into perspective a little bit, let's say for someone who does not have insulin resistance, they eat an apple in the morning for breakfast, let's say. And the apple has a lot of natural sugar in it. So after we eat that apple and digest it and break it down, that sugar from the apple moves into our bloodstream. So our blood sugar will rise after eating that apple. And when our blood sugar becomes elevated after eating, the body will signal the pancreas to produce insulin.
Nicole: And again, insulin's job is to regulate that blood sugar and bring it back down to a healthy ideal range. So I always picture insulin to kind of act like a key. And what insulin does is it attaches to these insulin receptors in the cell wall there to unlock the doorways to your cells to allow that glucose to move from your bloodstream into your cell.
Nicole: The whole reason why we eat is to feed ourselves. And there's a nice balance of sugar outside of the cell and inside of the cell. So the body is happy.
Nicole: Now, when we have insulin resistance, looking at this other picture of the cell, we could eat the same apple, we digest it, we break it down. Our blood sugar rises after eating that apple. We still signal the pancreas to make insulin to regulate our blood sugar.
Nicole: However, the biggest difference here is there's a miscommunication happening between your cell and insulin. So that key, that insulin isn't unlocking all the doorways to your cell. And so when that happens, you can see in this picture, there's a lot more glucose or sugar building up in the bloodstream. And your cell isn't getting as much access to that glucose. You can see inside the cell, there's very little glucose compared to what we're seeing in the normal cell picture here.
Nicole: And so essentially, the cell is becoming starved. It's not getting the nutrition that it needs. And so when the cell is not getting what it needs, it makes weight loss more difficult and slow. We can also have lots of other symptoms that can speak to this insulin resistance in this situation that's occurring.
Dr. Cederquist: But you may wonder, “Okay, well, I'm not in front of you. I don't know what my lab work is. Are there some other ways that I might be able to know if I have this?” And the answer is yes, insulin resistance does cause symptoms.
Dr. Cederquist: So some of the symptoms are this over hungry. Like when Nicole said inside the cells, there's not much glucose. The cells are starved and people would say, “How can I be hungry?” It's because despite having glucose around, it's not getting in the cells where we need it. So this over hunger that's present, feeling starved.
Dr. Cederquist: Intense cravings for sugars and carbohydrates are another big one where people will say, like, “I know these don't work for me, but I can't stop. I crave sugar. I've even just had a meal and I crave carbohydrates.”
Dr. Cederquist: Another common one was feeling weak and shaky if someone was to miss a meal. Like I've gone too long without eating; I feel like I'm going to almost pass out. Some of my patients would say, “I'll eat anything that doesn't eat me first. I feel so weak.” And this is not normal hunger. It's over hunger. It's a crazy up of blood sugar and a crazy down of blood sugar.
Dr. Cederquist: And then, of course, slow and difficult weight loss. It makes sense that if your cells are starved, they're not going to voluntarily allow weight loss to happen, even if you're eating less. It already feels starved. So we're dealing with this metabolic dysfunction.
Dr. Cederquist: And the other important thing about insulin resistance is that insulin is responsible for moving sugar into cells, but it's also responsible for allowing your body to store fat. So not only are your cells starving, but your body is storing fat more efficiently. So it's really not a surprise that it's so hard to lose weight if you have this going on.
Nicole: Yeah, think about it in that, like that sugar building up in our bloodstream has to go somewhere. So I always picture the insulin kind of saying, “Okay, I can't get it into the cell I have to put this somewhere else because high sugar levels can become dangerous.” And so as a means to kind of protect ourselves, our bodies from that danger zone, the insulin is going to store that high sugar. And so that sugar is fat mass, so it just creates this cycle.
Dr. Cederquist: Yes! So if you happen to have that experience that you're doing the right things, you are trying to eat well, but you're hungry all the time, or you're doing the right things and you're just gaining weight regardless. You could end up feeling like something's wrong with me or what is happening. This is what we found was happening with thousands upon thousands of our patients over the past 25 years.
Dr. Cederquist: And unless you look for it in the lab work, you may not pick it up in the earlier stages. Classically, an insulin level or a hemoglobin A1C aren't done routinely as part of a physical or just because of experiencing change of life. So many times people don't know that this is happening. But the good news is it can be reversed; it can be treated!
Nicole: Targeting fat loss, especially in the abdomen, improves insulin resistance. And truly, we accomplish this through diet. The right meal plan is the cornerstone of bistroMD. And in our practice, we found that the balance of adequate lean protein, controlled carbohydrates, and healthy fats is key to reversing insulin resistance and helping people lose weight and transform their life once and for all.
Dr. Cederquist: Understanding the what's underneath that's present most likely can really be very, very freeing as you're able to take simple nutritional steps to reverse it.
Nicole: So when we change what we eat and when we eat, we see profound transformations. So like you said, Dr. Cederquist, improvements in lab work, as well as improvements in your hunger and your cravings, your energy, your sleep, and fat loss. We have seen profound transformations day after day. And we know that you can too.
Dr. Cederqust: Absolutely! So please continue to join us as we go through more of the details of the nutritional program of bistroMD and why it will work to help with metabolic issues like insulin resistance.