karenmartel

Episode 56 Insulin Resistance and Weight Loss

If you are insulin resistance weight loss will be challenging!

In this episode you will learn;

- What is insulin and how does the body become insulin resistance

- Why everyone needs to test for it if they are trying to lose weight

- How it can stop you from losing weight and cause weight loss resistance

- The best diet and exercise to reverse it and quickly

- My top supplement recommendations

- How to use fasting to reverse it

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Transcription

You're listening to the other side of weight loss. I'm your host, Karen Martel, Transformational nutrition coach and expert in women's weight loss and hormone health. If you are ready to go beyond diet and exercise and tune in each week to hear from the meeting experts in psychology, nutrition, and spirituality as we explore the many avenues of what it really takes to lose weight and feel your best.

Hey, welcome back to the other side of weight loss. Today we are talking all about insulin resistance and weight loss. I am going to tell you what insulin resistance is, why everyone, including you, needs to test for it, how it can stop you from losing weight. And I mean really, really stop you from losing weight no matter what you do or what you eat, the best diet and the best exercise to reverse it. And also how to reverse it as quickly as possible with diet and also supplements. What are the best supplements you can take to help reverse the insulin resistance faster. We're also going to dive into the effects and how to use fasting for insulin resistance. So let's jump in ladies. So insulin, what is insulin? So I have to get into the science part first. So just bear with me.

Because if you don't understand what insulin is, it's going to be hard to understand why it's such an important thing to, you know, if it's insulin resistance, why it's so important to reverse that when it comes to your ability to lose weight. So let's get into the science. I'm going to try and be as non sciency as possible so everybody can understand what I'm talking about. Insulin is a hormone so it delivers, this is a very simple way to put it. It delivers a message to our cells inside our body to take glucose out of the blood, out of the blood to use for energy. So insulin binds to these receptors on the cell surface. You can kind of think of it like a lock and a key. That's how usually, you know, people will describe it. The insulin is the key, which fits into the receptor, which is the lock.

The door opens and glucose enters. All right. It's like you can kind of think of it like that, right? That the key is insulin, that the lock is the receptor and so we fit it in, we opened the door, opens, glucose enters. The more sugar you eat, the more you stimulate insulin release, which releases from our pancreas. Now carbs of any type you guys will raise blood glucose therefore it will raise insulin levels. And when I say any type of carb carbohydrate, I mean any type. So a lot of people think, well I'm eating, you know, my healthy oatmeal every morning and my squirrely bread or my, you know, my sprouted wheat bread, I'm eating Brown rice, I'm eating quinoa. So your body on the inside doesn't say, Oh wow, this is a healthy heart. Healthy is I think is what it's called heart-healthy oatmeal.

I'm not going to raise blood glucose. It doesn't distinguish between the oats and straight up sugar. Now oats is going to have more fiber, which fiber we don't absorb. And so it actually helps to reduce the glucose response so it doesn't spike as quickly and it can actually help to lower the carb. Count, the higher the fiber. Okay. So fiber does matter and it can help that glucose response, but your body will still raise blood glucose in response to eating any type of carbohydrate, which therefore will also raise insulin. All right, so hopefully I haven't lost yet. Now for protein, in fact, now we still actually get a little bit of an insulin response, but nowhere near what the carbohydrate response gets. Okay. So protein kind of on the moderate fat, almost negligible. So protein will actually can, can raise blood glucose a little bit.

Uh, but like I said, nowhere near what the carbohydrates will. So when we eat an excess of the carbohydrates, our cells taken what they need thanks to the insulin, thanks to the insulin opening of that door so it can get in and get the glucose inside and the access insulin and the access sugar that can't fit into that cell cause can't all go in there. So your cell will get what it needs. It takes the sugar and the access. The insulin moves into storage for later use. Okay. We store this glucose, this sugar will interchange those words. We store this glucose by turning it into glycogen in the liver. Okay, so all any access that the cell can't use gets shuttled to the liver, converted to glycogen, and the liver then stores it. Now our liver, her liver has limited storage space for glycogen, just like ourselves have limited space for the glucose.

Okay, so once full, the excess carbs will be turned. Can you guess what it's going to turn to fat? Of course, right? It has to get stored somewhere. You always just have to think. It has to be put somewhere, so if the cell can't take it all, it's going to go to the liver. If the liver, once the liver is full, is going to be stored as fat on your body, so you can kind of like, for me, I think of it as when I look at somebody's body, including my own and and the fat deposits I have, it's like that to me is an abundance of sugar that I've eaten over a lifetime. That's kind of how you can think of it. Now we each will store this differently in the sense of some people will use like some people with these super great metabolisms that can burn up sugar super fast.

They don't have any to go store anywhere, right? So they've got that, you know, you know those, those people that we don't like, those metabolisms that they can eat whatever the heck they want and they don't gain a pound. Oh gosh, I hate those people. But so that is genetics, right? It's can be a multitude of different things. But point being we're all going to, you know, utilize that sugar differently. The more muscle you have on your body, for instance, the higher your metabolism is, which means the more sugar you're going to be able to burn at a sitting rate, more fat that you're going to be able to burn at a sitting rate. Okay? So insulin is a storage hormone. Too much food leads to insulin release. Insulin then stores the excess in your liver as fat. High levels of insulin encourage sugar and fat storage while low levels encourage glycogen and fat burning.

Okay, so let's, let's hear that one again. Low levels will encourage glycogen and fat burning. When your body has no glucose to burn for energy, it is forced to go to your fat stores. Hence why the ketogenic diet and the other primal diets usually result in weight loss because your, your body is finally able to access your own fat stores to burn for energy rather than all the sugar you're eating that's just floating around in your, just waiting in, in your body, waiting to be used up, right when there is no sugar, your body has no choice but to go to the fat stores for energy. Okay? So that's, insulin. So what is insulin resistance? So insulin resistance is when the amount of glucose that you're consuming is in excess. Okay? Which is for the most part, most of society nowadays, we eat too much carbohydrates.

So when we eat an access of these carbs over a long period of time, and like I said before, different for everybody, some people it's going to happen sooner. Other people, it can happen later or not at all. But over a long period of time. In most cases, if you're eating an access of carbohydrates, especially those ones that are like really high in sugar and they don't have the fiber in it to slow it down, then the cells are constantly full of glucose. Okay. And for a while this you can get away with this, but eventually what starts to happen is glucose. It's like your cell is just going, Oh my gosh, I have way too much glucose I don't need anymore. Okay. And the insulin tries to push more glucose in because it's like, but come on, you need to take this. I, I don't want it.

That's how I'm gonna how you can think about it. I don't want this glucose. Please take it's out. Please take it. It doesn't take it. So what happens? More insulin is released from the pancreas in response to all of the access glucose in your bloodstream. Okay? So your body begins to make more insulin in response to all this glucose trying to push it into the cells. Here's kind of a way to think of it. Think of it. There's a concert. Okay. There's a concert going on, there's a concert hall, there's a lineup of people outside the concert, that lineup of people. Think of that as your glucose. Okay, so at the front we have a bouncer, just one that's letting everybody through, right? Everybody's happy. One person has an X goes through into the concert hall, which is inside the cell. Your bouncer is insulin.

Now as the concert hall started to fill up, it gets, so there's so crowded that people are kind of spilling out of the concert hall. So the bouncer says I need to get some backup. So he calls on another bouncer more insulin and the two of them begin shoving the people, the glucose into the concert hall, the cell. And so at first this works, the extra bouncer works cause that gives that extra push that it needs to get in there. It gives it a necessity. They have enough strength now to move it into the cell. But this only works for a short period of time before it doesn't work anymore. Now when this happens, nobody's getting through. Glucose is not getting through.

So the people have to go somewhere, right? The glucose has to go somewhere, livers full, cells are full. So it's going to get stored as fat. And I mean everything you eat is going to be stored as fat. It does not matter how healthy it is. Your cells are full, right? Your body has become insulin resistant. Okay, so you're now storing everything you eat as fat on your body. Okay? So that is why insulin resistance is one of the worst hormone dysfunctions that you can have when it comes to weight loss. And you'd be very surprised at just how many people have some degree of insulin resistance and we're going to get into how you can test for that. But there's other causes besides food that I just want to go over and besides sugar that can contribute to insulin resistance. So as I said before, it can be genetics.

You can just be extremely prone. So if you could be one of these people that just has the bad genes, one of the causes can actually be if your mother ate too much sugar when you were in the womb can actually cause problems for you down the road. An addiction to sugar as well as um, just being able to very easily become insulin resistant because you're already right from the get go, you were exposed to too much sugar. Okay. So genetics can be a huge factor, a stress. So when you're stressed out, cortisol goes up because it's the flight or fight hormone. Now if you're running or if you're fighting, you want sugar and you need it fast for energy cause sugar is fast energy, right? So [inaudible] when it's what is working in the right way, it's can be immediate energy. So cortisol, when there's a cortisol response and cortisol goes up, blood sugar will automatically go up because it's trying to give your body whatever it needs to either run or fight.

So when you're in a high stress state, you can have too much insulin being produced in response to the blood sugar that's constantly being raised. Because you're stressed out. So that is how one of the ways that cortisol is such a impact has such impact on our ability to lose weight. Um, it's definitely something that I see in most women that I work with have some cortisol dysregulation going on. So it's that that is a really key factor is your stress levels, um, lack of physical activity, uh, that can certainly contribute to it. And what sucks is when you're insulin resistant, you're very tired, you're exhausted because you're just not getting any of that and you're not getting any energy anymore because you become insulin resistant and that share's not able to get into the cell anymore. So you get very tired. But lack of physical activity can also contribute to insulin resistance.

Illness of any sort. Infections, immune dysfunction can also contribute. Medications can contribute, lack of sleep. This one's huge. I just had a client of mine who was recording her blood sugar,  morning blood sugar, fasting blood sugar response for me. Every day was normal. And then there's one day I notice on her chart that it's spiked way over and had it, had it been that number, I would have told her she was, you know, prediabetic that's how high it went up.  I said, well, what happened? What happened here? And she said, I didn't sleep the night before. So just so you guys know, one bad night asleep raises your blood glucose. Now there's a couple of different reasons for that. One of them being, it can raise cortisol. So what did I just say about cortisol? Every time we raise cortisol raises blood glucose.

So if you have a bad night's sleep, cortisol is going to be high in the morning, which is going to make your blood sugar high. Okay? Keep that in mind. Now, another reason why you need to get the eight hours, plus I like, I like a good nine when you're sleeping at nighttime. Okay. Because it can keep you fat. I know it's crazy. People think, well, how can a good night's sleep make me lose weight and trust me it can. All right. So those are some other factors that can contribute to it. Now, testing for insulin resistance is super important. If you are trying to lose weight, let me tell you right now, you need to test your insulin 100% you may think, Oh, I don't have insulin resistance. Nope, you need to test it. I test mine and I'm like, I have very little sugar addiction.

And I like the occasional ice cream I have to admit. But that's about it. I don't eat a lot of carbs. I've been paleo for over 10 years. So you know, I don't indulge all that much and I still have a blood glucose monitor and I still test myself, you know, not all the time, but I do occasionally pull it out and you know, once every few months I'll, I'll do a couple of days of testing just to make sure. Okay. So, uh, this is something that I feel is an amazing tool to put the power in your own hands on where your blood sugar status is, where your insulin state is. Okay. So you want to know this, you don't want to have to go to the doctor every month to get your blood glucose tested. You want to know yourself so that you can take control of it. Okay?

This is super, super important. So it is so easy to do it. You buy yourself a blood glucose monitor from online on Amazon or from a drug store. You know, you can pick one up from anywhere between 60 to $80 if a lot of places, if you buy the glucose test strips, they give you the, the blood glucose monitor for free. And that's what I did. So it ended up being, I think it was $60 in total and I still have, I bought it, uh, two years ago and I still have test strips left. I think I bought a hundred test strips. So you know, it's, it's, it's well worth it. Start testing first thing in the morning and you can get your ranges. They're different from Canadian to American. So you want to go online and look at what the range healthy ranges are, what's, what's pre-diabetic, what's type two diabetic and start charting your blood glucose.

And if it's high, you want to be on a mission to get it back to normal. And this is why you want that blood glucose monitor at home with you because you need to see that what you're doing, what's you're eating, the efforts that you're putting in are working in that you're on the right path to reversing the insulin resistance. Okay, this is super important. Do you want me to say that again? How important it is? Uh, the other thing you can do, and I highly recommend doing this as well, is asking your doctor for a test called the a hemoglobin a one C. so this gives you a three month look at your blood glucose levels. So it's more, it's, it's a lot more accurate because it's giving you this kind of overall look rather than, like I said before, like you could have a bad night's sleep and your blood glucose could go up, right?

So having the hemoglobin A1C is important. I like to see it under 5.2 but your doctor's range, I think it's like they won't tell you that you have a problem. I think until it's at like six or 5.7 or something, somewhere in there. To me that's like, why are we waiting till it's at six to tell somebody that, Hey, you're probably a type two diabetic. We've got a problem here. What do you know? We want to catch it beforehand because these things only get worse. They don't get better and magically if you're not doing anything about it. So if it's high, you want to go, you want to get it down, you want to get in 5.2 or lower. Okay, so that is testing. Now with that blood glucose monitor, you can do so much. You can do carb tolerance testing. I mentioned this in, I'm not going to remember what episode number it is, but it's called the good, the bad and the ugly of calorie counting and carb counting.

Uh, it's an episode I did. I think it's like maybe four or five buying this one. And I go into the effect of how to do carb tolerance testing and how important it is, and you can get my little outline for it. Um, but that is a really great way to see just how much you respond to different carbohydrates because we will respond differently depending on how insulin sensitive we are. And that's different for everybody. So some people can eat ice cream and have no insulin or have no like blood sugar response and other people do. So it's a really great way to see what foods you need to eat in order to lose weight. Okay. So you cannot lose weight with insulin resistance because you're storing everything as fat. It doesn't matter what you're eating, you can be eating the healthiest food in the world, but if you're super insulin resistant, it's going to be converted.

It's going to be stored, sorry, not converted, stored as fat. Okay? So it makes it very challenging. Now, given eating well will help still to lower it. But for some people eating well may not be enough to reverse it. Okay? So as well, once your body releases insulin, it immediately starts to inhibit your fat burning hormone called, is it called? It's a hormone called a hormone sensitive lipase. So that is your fat burning hormone. And when the insulin comes out, when it really is released out of the pancreas, if it immediately medially inhibits that fat burning hormone. So just really think about that. Okay. Um, and as I mentioned before, you're going to be super tired. So it's going to make it very challenging to lose weight if you can't exercise, right? Plus you're constantly hungry because you're riding this blood sugar dysregulation all day long, right?

Your blood sugar goes up and it comes crashing. Now you're chronically tired, like, and all, both of those together will drive hunger. I remember before I was paleo, I was always a good eater, but I was like everybody else where I ate, you know what I thought was the healthy carbs. I was eating, you know, Brown rice and my squarely Brad and you know, my whole wheat passed on and thinking and Oh God, you know, we have to have the oats. Apparently. I thought it was doing so well and I remember having to eat like every hour I would go to where I used to do body work. So I used to deep tissue massage and I would panic if I didn't remember to bring a snack. So because in between people I would have to have something to eat or else my blood sugar would drop so much and I would get shaky and hangry.

We've all been that. We all know the angry feeling. I used to just ride that blood sugar roller coaster all day. And because of that I had to eat all day to keep my blood sugar stable because it would just come crashing down if I didn't. And so think about that. When you're constantly eating, you're never ever allowing insulin to go down, right? Which means you're not ever burning fat stores. So this whole idea of eat, eat six small meals a day is bologna ladies, bologna. You know what? I really want to stay there, but really it is the worst advice you need to give your body a chance to access your fat stores and quit running this blood sugar, riding the blood sugar roller crows roller coaster all day long. Maybe I could learn how to talk one of these days too.

All right. So what can you do about it? Fix me, Karen, please. So of course diet, we all know diet is going to, is, is the reason why we're insulin. You're insulin resistant, right? If you're listening to this and you have insulin resistance, obviously diet is the main factor. So changing your diet has to be first and foremost. Um, you know, going paleo was enough for me. It stabilized my blood sugar. I've never had a problem since I can go for hours now without eating Hank, Hank goodness for that. Um, it really helps. Uh, but you know, Quito may be necessary as well as carnivores. So let's just talk about these each separately. So paleo, like they said, can be, can work really, really well for a lot of people. I actually just had a woman, um, on a call with me earlier today who was telling me that just going paleo really helped her correct her.

PCLs which is an insulin driven disease. So peop women with PCLs polycystic ovarian syndrome are, are usually insulin resistant. Uh, so she sad going paleo was enough and for many of my clients it is, it's all they need in order to bring that blood glucose down, stabilize everything and resensitize the cells to the insulin into the blood glucose coming in. Okay. So paleo might be, all you need to do there is they need to go into Quito. So Quito is, is proven to help reverse type two diabetes and insulin resistance. It's got, you know, such low amounts of sugar. The only carbs that we're talking in Quito are coming from, you know, nuts and seeds that stubbles. Um, some people do a low-glycemic fruit and like a Berry or something, but very minimal and then as well, a little bit from the protein that they're eating can be converted into glucose.

Right. So, uh, with those things. But you're still, it's so minimal that most people can get away with going Quito to reverse their insulin resistance. Now there's some people, and I've, I've had them in my practice and it's a phenomenon, but they going Quito, even going down to like 10 to 15 carbs a day, they can't reverse their insulin resistance. I had one woman, she was on strict keto for probably about six months and her blood glucose was so high, like it was, it was the highest I'd actually ever seen any of my clients have. So she was type two diabetic. She was refusing to go on insulin. She was determined that diet was going to work for her. And here she was like super dedicated to the keto diet and she couldn't lose a pound and she could not bring down her blood glucose.

So I put her on carnivores. So carnival diet is a meat only diet. So all you're eating mostly beef, you're eating no carbs. I mean, not even in the form of herbs and spices. It's basically you can have water salt. I think they allow for pepper. Um, and then some people do like, uh, tell me we'll do coffee. And some people will do dairy too, like kind of like, uh, there's two, there's three different levels to it. So, um, the dairy one, some people can tolerate, some people can't. Um, I usually recommend just doing the hardcore strict carnivore, which is no dairy. So carnivores, because you're having zero carbs, it will reverse insulin resistance faster than anything I've seen. It's crazy. I mean that woman, that same woman that I was just talking about one month on Carnover, all her numbers went to normal. She, she fell off the way again.

She went back on KIDO and was kind of eating whatever and her numbers went back up. So then she had to go back on carnivores for a while until it stabilized. Another client of mine, same thing, she had some underlying infections that were causing her to be insulin resistant. She had tried keto a number of times, couldn't even get into ketosis, always had high blood sugar numbers. She went and carnivores. And within two weeks she had normal blood glucose levels. It's crazy. And you think, how is that even possible? I don't know. Like I think that it's just that you're starving the system of all the sugar basically. Right? And you don't eat enough protein, I don't think on the diet for it to really convert to that much sugar in the body. So it's just taking it that one step farther. I don't know if there's actual science on this.

I do have to, I have to find somebody, a carnival expert to come in and talk about it on my podcast and see if they understand why it is. But all I know is that it works really, really well. And oddly enough, I personally learned it from a woman. It's group that I was in a Facebook group that I was in for migraines. And her big thing was that she really believed that it had, you know, you had to follow a ketogenic diet for migraines, um, and balance the sodium potassium levels in the body in order to prevent migraines. It was quite fascinating. You can, if you have migraines, I highly recommend checking her out. It's uh, um, the Stanton pro, the Staton protocol for migraines, I think it is Stanton, like S S T a N T O N Stanton protocol for migraines. If you, if you look that up, you should be able to, on Facebook, you'll be able, you'll lead to the Facebook in the Facebook group.

It's free. But anyways, off topic here, she recommended for people with insulin resistance, which would be causing more migraines for people to go Carnover and eat, not zero carb diet until it reversed their insulin resistance. And she always said, you know, it could take a matter of a week or it can take a matter of months. Like each person is different. You just follow a carnivore diet until your blood sugar goes back to normal. And then you can, you can start putting back in, you know, the vegetables and stuff like that and, and kind of see what happens. And if your blood glucose goes back up, they may, you may need to remain carnivore for a while longer, but basically you can just keep testing until your body can start to tolerate them. So it's pretty fascinating. I have a 21 day carnivore program. Now just for those people that do have insulin resistance and they want to utilize the carnivore diet, the Carver diet can also be very good for, um, people with high amounts of inflammation, autoimmune conditions, um, gut problems.

It can be, uh, an amazing kind of push, the button reset sort of thing. So there's some people that have done it for years, so it's very safe for some people. You know, everything's, everything's going to have its issues for some people. So you're going to have to test it out and see if it's for you. But I do have a 21 day introduction to the carnivore diet. It comes with a three week sample meal plan. Each week is a different carnivore version. So I've got the one with dairy in there, I've got the one that's got um, coffee in it. And then I have one that is just like just the meat, including even a liver and heart and things like that. Like the Oregon meats, which is very, very nutrient dense food. So it's kind of gives you the three week sample meal plan.

And you can kind of test out each one and see where you fit in best. So you can find that on my site@karenmartell.com forward slash store. Um, and it's in there and it's, it's cheap. I think it's $10. So it's a nice quick introduction to it, a little ebook basically on the corner of our diet. So check it out. It's also free for any of the members in my hormone in weight loss group. Um, if you're a member there, that program is free inside of it. Okay. As well as an entire program, I'm all about insulin resistance and a supplement recommendations, lifestyle recommendations, all that jazz is in there as well. So moving on. Um, so those are the diets that I would recommend. Exercise wise, you weigh. Lifting definitely is my first Peck. It promotes insulin sensitivity. Now cardio, you know, going for a good hike is awesome.

Going for a walk is awesome, but any sort of chronic cardio where you're running for a long period of time where you're really, you know, you're getting, you're getting up there as far as the cardio goes. Um, it's going to spike cortisol. So quince, again, cortisol spikes, blood sugar. So you want to avoid chronic cardio. Now doing high interval training like hit exercises is fine because you're just doing short bursts. Uh, but any sort of long distance running and things like that can become a problem for somebody that's insulin resistance. So just be very careful things like, like I said, walking and hiking seem to be okay, but anything, you know, any sort of long distance thing seems to be a problem. Supplements. Okay. So I'm going to just give you my top four supplements for insulin resistance. Number one, berberine's love berberine for insulin resistance.

It's, it has been shown in science scientific study to be as effective as Metformin, which meant for me it is like one of like the number one drugs prescribed for people that have insulin resistance and cholesterol issues, right? So Metformin. So berberine can work really a can work wonders on blood sugar and cholesterol. So check that out. Alpha lipoic acid is another one. It can help to improve insulin sensitivity and reduce inflammation. Uh, chromium is another one. It will help increase insulin sensitivity as well. And then curcumin, which is probably my, my favorite supplement of all times because it helps reduce inflammation, um, and it can, and it has been shown to improve pancreatic function, but as well in one test and one study that they did, it showed that it helped to significantly lower chances of developing type two diabetes. So incur cranium in is one of those ones that I think is good for everything.

Great for migraines. It was, it's my savior for migraines. Um, but any type of inflammation, uh, curcumin is okay. So last but not least, one of the most effective ways I'd say besides carnivore is fasting. When you fast regularly, you can very quickly reverse insulin resistance. Uh, at least many people can. Um, so fasting is the most efficient and consistent strategy to decrease insulin levels. Okay. So regular fasting by just routinely lowering your insulin levels, it has been shown to significantly improve insulin sensitivity. So when the body has no sugar, okay. So you have to think of it as when you're not eating, because when every time you eat insulin is going to be raised to some extent. So if you're not eating insulin doesn't get raised. Hello. And then that knife fat burning hormone can be utilized to burn fat stores for energy. So fasting for like, here's the tricky thing with fast, I'm going to do a whole podcast on fasting because I, in my practice I use it a lot, but I in over the years I've just found that some people do really well with fasting and other people don't.

Uh, if you've got adrenal insufficiency or you've got hypothyroidism that isn't optimized, that like a thyroid does not optimize, then putting the strain because fasting can be a strain on the body, can affect it. Now, not for everybody, but for some people it can really backfire. So you do want to be careful with it. Um, in general, you want to fast and feast so you don't want to put your body into a fasted state every day for months and months and months and months that your body will then be in a caloric deficit for months and months and months, which means your metabolism will get lowered and it will become very hard to burn fat. So you don't want to do that to yourself. It's like too much of a good thing, right? You don't, you have to be so careful. People call me and be like, I'm fasting every day. And I'm like, yeah, but now you're only eating like 700 calories a day and that's not good.

Right? That's going to, that's going to backfire. It works in the beginning, but in the end it'll backfire. So be very careful with fasting. You'll learn more about it. Um, I've got programs on fasting inside, uh, the on track program so you can check that out. But you do definitely want to be careful when it comes to how much, and you know how frequently you can fast and that's going to look different for everybody. Some people can do like seven day fast, no problem. Some people can do 24 hour fast. So you kind of have to just test it out for yourself and, and see what it is you can do and just be safe about it, right? But it can be one of the fastest tools to reversing insulin resistance. So, um, I suggest and recommend easing your way into it. Start with the instrument and fast of like 16 and eight.

Maybe do that a few days a week where you don't eat, let's say like you stop eating the night before at six or seven and then don't eat until you know, lunchtime the next day. That's usually pretty easy for most people to do. You basically skip breakfast, so that's just keeping your body in that fat burning state until lunchtime the next day. So doing that a couple of days a week can be a great starting point and then move your way up so that you can try maybe doing like a 24 hour fast once a week or twice a week. And because the longer you can go, you can get obviously more fat burning. Right? So, but like, just remember too much of a good thing. It's a bad thing. So doing that here and there and just making sure then that you eat a proper amount of calories the next day and that will help to counteract any problems when it comes to lowering the metabolism by going into a caloric deficit.

So you get the, you get the benefit of caloric restriction when you're fasting, so you, you'll lose weight and then the next day you're going to counteract any sort of detriment that it may have caused by eating normally throughout the day. Now that when I say feast, I don't mean like, okay, now eat 3000 calories. I mean, just eating a healthy, you know, keto, paleo based diet for the day. Um, and just make sure you get in a normal amount of calories for your body. Okay. So that's it. Um, I'd love to hear from you. Do you have insulin resistance? Is this something that you struggle with? What have you done? Have you tried keto? Have you tried carnival or let me know, share in the comment section. Um, and don't get to subscribe to the podcast. Leave me a review on iTunes. It's super easy to do. It takes like 10 seconds. But if you like  what I'm putting down, I always appreciate them and it just helps my podcast get out there more, which is my mission in life, to reach as many women as possible to help them out. All right, have an awesome day wherever you are in the world.


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Karen Martel is a Certified Hormone Specialist and Transformational Nutrition Coach dedicated to empowering women through their health journeys.

As the host of the popular podcast The Hormone Solution, Karen tackles the complexities of hormonal health, weight loss resistance, and the challenges that come with perimenopause and menopause. Her mission is to disrupt outdated narratives surrounding women's health, providing reliable information and practical solutions that help women reclaim their vitality. With personal experience overcoming her own health struggles, Karen offers insights into hormone optimization and sustainable weight management strategies.

Join her as she engages in enlightening conversations with experts and shares actionable advice, all aimed at helping women navigate their unique hormonal landscapes with confidence and clarity. Tune in to discover how to embrace life's stages while enhancing overall well-being.

Find Karen Martel on Apply Podcast 

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