We know one of the key drivers of weight gain is raised insulin levels. In this video I'm
going to give you five ways to naturally help lower your insulin levels that will help you
lose weight. Hey carb dodgers, my name is Dr. Dan Maggs.
I help people who've been struggling to lose weight achieve their goal of long-term sustainable
weight loss. I had a life-long battle with my weight until about three years ago when
I managed to find the solution. It is now my passion to share what I have learned from
my own weight loss journey and from helping others through my medical practice with you.
Now I release new videos every Tuesday, so be sure to hit the Subscribe button and hit
that bell to get notified whenever I release a new video.
Last week we talked about the important shift from thinking about weight loss in terms of
calories to in terms of hormones. If you didn't see that video, I'll link to in the description
below and up here. In that video I focused in on the role of raised insulin in weight
gain and the importance of maintaining low insulin levels in achieving long-term sustainable
weight loss. In this video I'm going to give you five ways to achieve and maintain lower
insulin levels completely naturally, no medications or anything like that. Let's dive straight
in with the big one. Number one, a well-formulated low carbohydrate
diet. When we look at the overall scientific studies about weight loss, low carbohydrate
diets consistently outperform low fat diets. And that's not a surprise. Carbohydrates are
the main nutrient that promotes the release of insulin in our bodies. If you eat carbs,
your blood sugar level rises, your pancreas produces insulin in order to drive glucose
into the cells and bring the blood glucose levels back down to normal again.
Now carbs can be found in the form of things like sugar, high fructose corn syrup, added
into drinks or into foods during the manufacturing process. But carbohydrates are also found
in high quantities in foods like potatoes, rice, pasta, bread, basically lots of white
or beige colored foods. Now starch is just long chains of glucose molecules strung together,
and whenever you consume starch, your body just breaks down this starch into glucose,
which in turns raises your blood glucose levels. Now, not as quickly as sugar does, but it
raises them all the same. The good news is that carbohydrates are not
an essential nutrient for life. In fact, we are designed to survive without taking in
any carbohydrate in our diet. We can make all the glucose we need within our bodies.
But we can also get a small amount of glucose from non-starchy vegetables, things like broccoli,
cauliflower. There's loads of different vegetables like that. I'm not advocating a no carb diet,
just one that is low. Low means different things to different people. Everyone has a
different tolerance to the amount of carbohydrate they can consume. Your tolerance will be different
from mine. But it must be a well-formulated low carbohydrate diet.
There is definitely a right and a wrong way to approach low carb diets, particularly if
you want to make them sustainable for the longer term. See, when done correctly, a low
carb diet will lead to low insulin levels which will allow you to use your own fat for
energy. This in turn will lead to decreased hunger, meaning you naturally want to take
in less food. I'm an advocate of low carb diets that are predominantly real food which
means unprocessed foods with an adequate amount of protein supplemented with healthy fats.
And this is what I teach here on this channel and over at my website which is carbdodging.com.
But all foods stimulate the production of insulin to a certain extent. And whilst a
well-formulated low carb diet will keep insulin levels to a minimum, the second way to keep
your insulin levels naturally low is to introduce fasting into your diet. Now fasting is the
opposite of feeding. Insulin levels will naturally be low when you're fasting. And we all do
it every night for at least 10 hours and then break that fast in the morning, hence break
fast, breakfast. Fasting has also been a part of many cultures
throughout human history. Whilst fasting days have largely disappeared from Western culture,
many people around the world still observe fasting days for religious reasons. Extending
the time we spend in the fasting state, low insulin levels, leads to longer periods where
our bodies are able to access our own stored fat for energy. It doesn't mean we're simply
starving ourselves. For example, I don't eat breakfast. In fact, as I record this it's
about 11:00 in the morning and I haven't eaten since 7:00 last night when I had my last low
carb meal. I'm really only just starting to get hungry. So rather than having a high carb
breakfast cereal, my insulin levels are currently low and my body is just running on its own
fat stores. Now some of you watching this will be thinking,
"Yeah, I could do that. I am not really hungry in the mornings." And others will be going,
"No, I cannot do that." Which are you? Let me know in the comments down below this video
if you're a breakfast person or not. Just type love breakfast or hate breakfast.
I know we've all been told that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. But
is that really true? Or is it just something that we've been told by the food industry
to get us to eat breakfast cereal? Fasting can sound pretty scary, but there is a lot
we can do to make it much easier. I like many people quite naturally fell into a pattern
of fasting after being on a low carb diet simply because I didn't feel hungry in the
mornings anymore. The third way in which we can keep our insulin
levels naturally low is through exercise. Now exercise is fantastic in so many ways.
But when it comes to weight loss, there is some effects of exercise that I think are
far more important than just burning calories. On that note, think about it, have you ever
been hungry after exercise? Of course. You burn more energy and your hunger increases
to compensate it. Hunger is just your body's way of trying to correct the imbalance that
you've created. And it might not be immediate, it might be days or weeks over which it corrects
that imbalance. But as I discussed in my last video, this
idea of burning calories has been over sold. I could probably talk to you all day about
the positive effects of exercise on our metabolism, but there are two key things I want to mention
here. Firstly, exercise increases the sensitivity of muscles to the actions of insulin. You
need less insulin to take up the same amount of glucose. Secondly, exercise allows our
muscles to use glucose without the need for insulin. It's amazing.
You'll often find me talking about insulin allowing glucose to enter into cells, such
as in this video where you can see the star shaped insulin molecule interacting with the
surface of the cell in order to open up that channel where glucose can pass through. But
one of the effects of exercise is to open up these channels without the need for insulin.
After exercise glucose just gets taken up by the muscle tissue without the need for
insulin to ever be produced. Resistance training, lifting heavy weights, and short burst of
a high intensity exercise are particularly good for activating these important metabolic
effects of exercise. Much better than going out and running a marathon or a four hour
bike ride in order to burn off calories. Now the fourth way to naturally lower insulin
levels is to reduce stress. A little bit of stress can be a good thing. It prepares our
body for action by doing things that are raising blood glucose levels. In short bursts at the
right time that is normal. But being stressed for long periods of time will cause persistently
raised blood glucose which will mean that your body needs to produce more insulin in
order to respond. Now we're not designed to live in a constant
state of stress. And if you are, then this could seriously undermine your weight loss
efforts. Now I can't give you a one size fits all method to reduce stress. The causes of
stress are different for everyone, but it is an important piece of the weight loss puzzle
that's often overlooked and can prevent weight loss even when you're doing all the other
stuff correctly. Now the fifth and final way to lower your
insulin is to sleep well. There's a reason for people who work night shifts are significantly
more likely to be obese than people who don't. Sleep deprivation causes excess glucose levels.
You're putting your body under stress and your body will produce more insulin in response
to this. It also affects other hormonal systems. It reduces the amount of leptin, one of the
hormones that controls our hunger. We're just more hungry after a poor night sleep and we
just make better decisions about nutrition when we're not tired. I remember as a junior
doctor doing long shift at the hospital. I used to make terrible decisions about food,
mainly because I was exhausted. Now if you're serious about weight loss, then
you must make getting enough sleep a priority. Now we often say eight hours. Some need more,
some need less. Really you need what you need. Now you might be able to get away with sleep
deprivation in the short-term, but longer term it will catch up with you.
There you have it, my top five ways for reducing insulin, number one, low carb diet, number
two, intermittent fasting, number three, do some exercise particularly strength and high
intensity exercise, number four, stress reduction, and number five, get enough sleep.
Now these are not only my five tips for reducing insulin levels for weight loss. These are
really five foundational principles that I think are the most important lifestyle factors
you can influence for enduring health. These are the five key areas I work on with my one-on-one
coaching clients. Now if you're interested in learning more,
then I'd love it if you'd subscribe to this channel. New videos come out every Tuesday.
If you enjoyed this video, I'd really appreciate it giving it a like. Come and say hi to me
in the comments. Let me know which of the five areas that you feel you need to work
on. I do try to respond to every comment. Have a great day and I'll see you next Tuesday
when I'm going to be talking about some of the medical reasons which might prevent you
from losing weight. See you then.