5 tips to balance your blood sugar naturally

The topic of blood sugar has been getting a lot of attention over the past couple of years, so I just wanted to share what I’ve learned about it and give you some quick and easy tips mixed with some more gradual changes that can make a big difference.

Keeping your blood sugar levels stable throughout the day is SO important for your metabolic health, hormone health, and impacts how you actually feel on a day to day basis. 

So let’s dive right in!

(If you don’t want to learn the details about insulin etc, you can skip down to the section “5 easy tips for balancing your blood sugar”).

What is insulin and insulin resistance?

Insulin is a hormone that brings sugar/glucose from blood to cells to be used for energy.

This is what should happen after you eat a meal:

You eat a meal → your digestive system breaks down the food → blood sugar goes up → your pancreas makes insulin → insulin shuttles sugar from the blood into the cells to be used for energy → blood sugar stabilizes.

If you have continuous blood sugar spikes, then your pancreas will keep quickly making insulin in response. Over time your cells will be less sensitive and more resistant to insulin, which leads to insulin resistance. So now you need more insulin to achieve the same effect and eventually, the pancreas can’t keep up, which can lead to higher blood sugar levels and potentially prediabetes or type 2 diabetes.

So, the goal is to keep those blood sugar levels stable (not too high, not too low). 

Why is insulin resistance a bad thing?

If you develop insulin resistance, then the glucose in your blood can’t get into the cells and organs that need it. 

This will make you feel fatigued all the time, have brain fog, and crave sugar a lot because the cells aren’t able to use the fuel you’re consuming. 

When it comes to how this affects your health, having excess glucose causes inflammation and damage to your organs. This then leads to metabolic health conditions like diabetes, Alzheimer’s, dementia, and cardiovascular disease.

Excess blood sugar and insulin also has a huge impact on female sex hormone metabolism and regulation. What is commonly seen in healthy active women with fluctuating blood sugar levels is a suppression of progesterone production, which can lead to all sorts of menstrual cycle, PMS, and fertility issues. 

Related: How to balance your hormones with food.

Why you can be lean and “healthy” and insulin resistant

I just wanted to mention this because it’s important to understand that insulin resistance looks different for everyone.

Insulin resistance is seen a lot in very active lean healthy women. Excessive exercise, “too clean” of a diet, and stress can also lead to insulin resistance. Over-exercising, under-nourishing, and other physical and mental stressors increase glucose and insulin production. More on why that happens later!

Signs of blood sugar imbalance

If you experience any of the signs below, it could indicate some blood sugar and insulin issues going on.

• Fatigue after meals or constantly throughout the day.
• Always feeling hungry/hangry despite eating enough OR feeling hungry because you aren’t eating enough.
• Frequent sugar cravings and reaching for snacks all day.
• Anxiety, mood swings, or irritability (little things piss you off that shouldn’t, AKA hangry).
• You wake up at 2-3am most nights – this can be a sign that blood sugar is dropping overnight and causing alarms to go off and wake you up. 

There can be a number of reasons why you might be experiencing any of these symptoms, but they all can be signs of poor blood sugar balance.

5 easy tips for balancing your blood sugar

Insulin resistance and blood sugar balance is a spectrum and some people need more help than others, but I think most people could benefit from the tips below.

1. Make sure your meals and snacks have plenty of fiber, protein, and healthy fats.

Fiber, protein, and fat slow down your digestion so that the glucose from the meal is more slowly absorbed into your bloodstream.

So, every time you’re throwing a snack or meal together, think about this formula:

Healthy fats + fiber + protein = stable blood sugar 

If you’re eating a banana or apple, have it with some nut butter or nuts. That fat, fiber, and protein from the nuts will reduce the blood sugar spike from the sugar in the fruit.

If you’re having a bowl of pasta or pizza for dinner, roast some veggies in olive oil to have alongside it and make sure there’s some protein involved.

My go-to when I want to quickly add veggies to a basic carb heavy meal is to just steam some frozen (or fresh) broccoli and then drizzle it with good olive oil and a sprinkle of salt. For protein, ground meat always saves the day because it cooks so fast!

2. Eat your veggies, fiber, and protein first

If you’re having a high carb dinner, try to get a few bites of protein and veggies (fiber) before you eat all of those carbs. 

Or if you find yourself feeling hangry while you’re cooking dinner, don’t reach for crackers or chips. Eat cheese or nuts instead.

This small change can make a huge impact on your blood sugar levels. Protein, fat, and fiber (fiber particularly) helps your body digest your food more slowly and, therefore, minimize the glucose spike from the meal. 

3. Eat three satiating meals per day

Snacking, grazing, or eating lots of small meals throughout the day puts your blood sugar on a roller coaster ride without any time to rest and reset.

If your blood glucose is constantly high, then insulin will stay high and your body will be constantly working to regulate your blood sugar without any rest, which can lead to insulin resistance.

If you eat a meal and find that you’re hungry 2 hours later, maybe you need to change what you’re eating. This usually means you’re not eating enough quantity and/or not eating enough protein and fiber.

We don’t want blood sugar to drop too low because when you do eat, it can spike really high in response AND often people will reach for sugar or carbs first. 

Basically, we want to see rolling hills of blood sugar going up a little, then back down rather than peaks and valleys. You want to feel hungry before a meal, but not so “hangry” and irritable, because we all say and eat things that aren’t the best for us when that happens!

4. Space your meals 3-5 hours apart

This ties into what we just talked about – preventing a blood sugar rollercoaster. Spacing your meals like this will give your pancreas and gut time to reset and digest to get you back to baseline with your blood sugar. 

5. Prioritize protein in your meals

Not only does eating enough protein slow the absorption of glucose (similar to fiber), but it also supports your body in building muscle (more on that below). 

The big three: stress, sleep, and movement

Apart from diet, these are the big three categories that can have a huge impact on blood sugar regulation. They are a little more complex and difficult to navigate than your diet.

1. Strength train your way to better glucose regulation

Your muscles have more insulin receptors than any other tissue, so it’s the most efficient at using glucose. The more muscle you have, the more efficiently you’ll be able to use the glucose that comes into your blood.

Even just 15-20 minutes of strength training can improve insulin sensitivity, so you don’t have to spend an hour at the gym to make a difference.

2. Take a 10-15 minute walk after meals

Walking for 15 minutes after meals can improve insulin resistance. Your muscles act as a glucose sponge, so if you work them soon after you eat a meal, that glucose in your blood will get used by your muscle cells. 

You’ll never regret a short walk after a meal!

3. Get a good night’s sleep

There are so many studies that show that even just one night of poor sleep can cause your blood sugar to fluctuate more frequently throughout the day than it would from a good night of sleep.

This is one of the reasons why we feel so awful from a bad night’s sleep – we crave all the things, we have brain fog, we’re irritable, and our will power goes out the window. But it really doesn’t have to do with willpower, it just means you’re starting your day on more of a blood sugar roller coaster because of the poor sleep.

4. Reduce physical and mental stress

Easier said than done, but it’s good to know the “why” behind it!

Stress, whether it’s physical, mental, or perceived, triggers your adrenal glands to release hormones cortisol and adrenaline. These hormones are glucose stimulators, meaning they recruit glucose to be increased in your blood. They also inhibit the effect of insulin. This is why insulin resistance can develop in part because of stress. 

Anything that triggers your adrenals to work harder is going to increase the glucose in your blood. A stressful situation can actually cause your blood sugar to rise more than a meal can.

If you’re doing too many high-intensity workouts (more than 2-3 times a week), that can be overly stressful to your body which can lead you down an insulin resistance snowball, especially when it’s combined with mental stressors and poor sleep. Less can really be more when it comes to exercise.

High intensity workouts are great, but only if it’s dosed properly – two 15-minute high intensity workouts per week is recommended along with strength training and other low intensity workouts in your routine.

Doing a really hard workout can alleviate mental stressors we have, but even though it’s temporarily alleviating stress, it can be causing and layering more stress in your body at the same time.

An hour-long walk is even more of a mental recovery than a HIIT workout and it’s not as stressful on your body. You want to do enough exercise to give you the physical and mental benefit without doing damage to your body. 

So, stress, poor sleep, and too much high-intensity exercise can cause stress on your body – it tells your adrenal glands that you’re running from a tiger and need more glucose in the blood to fuel you through it. 

A recap:

It doesn’t have to be perfect, just a few small changes can make a huge difference in how you feel throughout the day. Some are harder than others, so just start with what feels easiest to you.

• Your pancreas produces insulin to shuttle glucose from your blood to your cells for energy. 
• Insulin resistance happens when you have continuous blood sugar spikes and the pancreas gets overworked. Over time your cells become less sensitive and more resistant to insulin. Then you end up with lots of insulin that can’t do it’s job, resulting in high blood sugar and cells that can’t absorb the energy they need.
• Protein + fat + fiber = stable blood sugar. Make sure your meals and snacks are balanced.
• Eat a few bites of fiber and protein before your carbs to dampen the spike.
• Eat three satiating meals per day rather than grazing and snacking.
• Space your meals 3-5 hours apart.
• Prioritize protein (and fiber) in your meals and snacks.
• Mental, physical, and perceived stressors can increase blood glucose just like food can.

Small changes I’ve made

Look at your body like a science experiment and test things out. Just because you change something for a month or three months, doesn’t mean it will be forever. We’re all different and respond differently to foods and exercise. 

There are a few small changes I’ve made to my diet and exercise routine have made a difference in how I feel throughout the day.

I’m a very routine breakfast person and love my morning smoothies, but I recently started switching from smoothies to a bowl of ground meat, eggs, and kimchi. I really do notice that it keeps me satiated longer and there’s something about a savory, warm breakfast that feels so good in the morning.

I cook a pound of ground meat (beef or turkey, I’ll add in frozen spinach or mushrooms if I have them) for the week, then every morning I warm it up, top with 3 fried eggs (runny yolk is key to sauce up the meat) and kimchi. I’ll add bone broth if I have some.

I used to love my peloton bike rides, but since cutting back on that and doing a combination of yoga, strength training, and plenty of dog walks, I feel like my nervous system has calmed down and I’ve noticed an improvement in my sleep quality (I use an Oura ring for this). I only do a peloton ride once a week now – usually a 15-20 minute HIIT session (with Tunde, always).

These are just things I’m trying out to see how they make me feel. It’s fun to experiment and mix things up and I encourage you to try!