Monday Morsels: Blood Sugar Balancing Foods #4
It’s #mondaymorsels day, a brief post about a food you’ll want to add to your grocery list. This food, as always, will be related to the main topic of the month! This month, we’re talking ways Nutrition can support balancing blood sugars, and the role that plays in reducing your own personal Burden of Stress.
Click on the image to get the full exploration of today’s find.
Happy Monday! Time for another blog post on one of the best foods to bring in to your day to day eats if you’re wanting to address this month’s focus.
September is for Balancing Blood Sugars, one of the essential pillars of reducing your own personal burden of stress.
One last food to add to your grocery list:
APPLES.
I’ll give you three reasons why adding apples to your day to day will bring you blood sugar balancing benefits:
BECAUSE FIBRE
Apples, especially when consumed with the skin on, are a brilliant source of fibre. Fibre has been shown to help slow down the hit of carbohydrates from the food you’re eating - and metering it out slowly over time. As apples contain carbohydrates (a necessary nutrient, thank you very much!), the fibre found by eating the actual fruit will help release sugars to your bloodstream slowly over time. Slowing down digestion this way is one of the important steps in balancing blood sugar, and metering out the sugars over a longer period of time.
BECAUSE FRUCTOSE
The main sugar found in apples is called fructose. Fructose is a type of carbohydrate (or sugar!) that your body can utilize right away. Good news - fructose, when consumed in whole food form, has been found to not trip blood sugar imbalances as other sugars may.
Apples are also relatively low on both the glycemic index, and the glycemic load charts. This means it has little impact on your blood sugar levels. I’d equate it with eating carbohydrates the way Ma Nature intended, and doing it this way won’t get you on a roller coaster over the course of the day.
BECAUSE POLYPHENOLS
Apples (and all foods from Ma Nature’s world) come rich with compounds called polyphenols - think of them as vitamins. These compounds do some serious work in reducing what’s contributing to your own personal burden of stress - that chronic inflammation.
I love me a good analogy. Sure, we’re talking blood sugar balancing this month. It’s one of the corner stones of reducing your own personal burden of stress. Now think of inflammation / a high burden of stress as if it is a fire going on in your body. Polyphenols help to put out those fires, and help do the rebuild to make sure fires can’t set up shop in your cells and tissues!
There’s a brilliant study that shows that type II diabetes was lower in a population that consumed a lot of apples (1). There are quite a few other studies that would support the inclusion of polyphenols (of which apples have loads!) as brilliant allies in supporting the body to better regulate blood sugars and keep type II diabetes at bay, along with supporting all the pieces of the puzzle here. (2, 3)
Oh the humble apple.
Let me be clear: we’re talking the whole fruit here, chickens. This does not apply to apple juice.
It will always be best to consume the apple with the peel, as much as possible as this also has a positive sway on your microbiome at the gut level. This is also a part of what goes in to helping reduce your body’s burden of stress, but a topic for another month.
And in the spirit of full disclosure, apples are among the highest on that list of Dirty Dozen. This means they’re one of the highest pesticide-laden foods out there. If you’re looking to maintain good health, this is one of those foods that I would strongly recommend you reach for organically. Check out your local shops, grocery stores, farmers markets and health food stores!
Aiming to Keep Well? Looking to start working on your blood sugar balancing prowess? Need some help in feeling real good?
Get in touch by clicking here. Let’s meet up to start drawing up your road map to support you in both quantity and quality of life.
*This is not medical advice.
Monday Morsels: Blood Sugar Balancing Foods #3
It’s #mondaymorsels day, a brief post about a food you’ll want to add to your grocery list. This food, as always, will be related to the main topic of the month! This month, we’re talking ways Nutrition can support balancing blood sugars, and the role that plays in reducing your own personal Burden of Stress.
Click on the image to get the full exploration of today’s find.
Mondays, as always here on the blog, we build your grocery list with one food, focusing on this month’s main topic.
September is all about balancing blood sugars. So where to next?
EGGS.
I’ll give you three reasons why you’ll want to get eggs in your belly…
BECAUSE SELENIUM
Selenium is a mineral our bodies need. There is an interesting study that looked at how this important mineral had the potential of favourably changing the expression of genes that were involved in blood sugar management in the body. (1) What food has a good amount of selenium? EGGS. Egg yolks, to be specific.
So eat the yolks! 2 eggs a day will provide you almost half of the selenium you need for that day. (2)
BECAUSE B VITAMINS
B Vitamins are a family of water soluble vitamins where quite a few are involved in the balancing act of blood sugars in the blood and in your cells. For example, vitamin B1 helps your cells utilize the glucose you are consuming for fuel. (3) There are a host of other benefits that B vitamins confer on to the body, from supporting the pancreas in the making of insulin — that hormone you need to get the sugars in your bloodstream INTO cells and out of your blood — to B vitamins needed to digest and utilize (aka metabolize) the glucose you are consuming from your carbohydrates.
Most of the B vitamins are found in the yolks, again. So when you eat those eggs, make sure you’re consuming the yolks! The runnier the better…
BECAUSE MY FAVE BREAKFAST FOOD
Eggs are an excellent source of protein and fats. These two macronutrients are necessary nutrients that have a big role to play in balancing your blood sugars. When you start your day with a good protein and fat, paired with a carbohydrate (roots? fruits? toast? potato hash?), you are starting in on the work of getting off of that blood sugar roller coaster.
The protein and fat content in that meal will help slowly release those carbohydrates in to your blood stream. This means protein and fat have the potential of metering out the glucose your body uses as fuel. Oh yes, every single cell of the body utilizes glucose as its source of fuel! (Unless your body is in ketosis. Which is another topic for another day.)
Ensuring a solid protein and fat at breakfast for me is one of those essential pieces to setting yourself up for success over the course of the day, especially when it comes to supporting your body in better balancing blood sugars (+ hormones).
Huzzah for eggs!
I am a regular 2-eggs-for-brekky kinda gal. This happy happenstance came about when I was trying to reduce my gluten intake many years ago by ditching the boxed cereal and white bread. (This was before going to Nutrition School…)
The benefits to my mood + energy levels, the reduction in fatigue was one of the biggest and earliest needle movers for me. And while I think reducing my intake of simple carbohyrdates was a part of the solution, so was the addition of nutrient dense eggs. Because you can take some of those foods that offend, sure. But that isn’t the whole picture.
You have to make sure to include those foods that support and nourish deeply, and enhance your body’s ability to do repair, and do the work of Being Human. Oh heck yes, I think #foodismedicine. And eggs are a part of your medicine toolkit.
Aiming to Keep Well? Looking to start working on your blood sugar balancing prowess? Need some help in feeling real good?
Get in touch by clicking here. Let’s meet up to start drawing up your road map to support you in both quantity and quality of life.
*This is not medical advice.
Monday Morsels: Blood Sugar Balancing Foods #2
It’s #mondaymorsels day, a brief post about a food you’ll want to add to your grocery list. This food, as always, will be related to the main topic of the month! This month, we’re talking ways Nutrition can support balancing blood sugars, and the role that plays in reducing your own personal Burden of Stress.
Click on the image to get the full exploration of today’s find.
Mondays are about building your grocery list with one food, focusing on this month’s main topic, balancing them blood sugars.
What’s next on the grocery list?
REAL FOOD.
All of it. Allow me to explain.
I’ll give you three reasons why reaching for the real foods will be of utmost importance, when it comes to balancing blood sugars.
EAT AS THOSE BEFORE YOU DID
Oh sure, some will think this means you need to go Paleo. And in some instances, for certain folks, that will be of tremendous support. But it’s not for everyone.
What I mean here is, eat as those before you did. Eat more like your ancestors would. The way those 100+ years ago ate was pretty much the same from one generation to the next, when looking towards the past. Those are the foods that fed the bodies and cells of our ancestors. Those are the foods that fuelled the expression of their cells + fed them through their days. Their bodies were designed to digest that type of diet.
Out-sourcing the making of our meals has taken us one more degree away from the natural world. It’s leaving an important piece of being human to someone else. Making your own meals, simply, at home, from scratch as much as possible, you know what goes in to it. You inherently bring on the Slow Food movement in to your own home. What fed our ancestors for so many millenia before the advent of fast food + quick pre-made meals from companies — using the cheapest ingredients - otherwise you wouldn’t buy it and they wouldn’t have a business! — well this food is inherently Slow Food.
You are a product of those before you. You were dreamed on a foundation of Slow Food. And that is what will nourish you the best, what your body was made to digest
So start in-sourcing, and start with simple meals. If it’s one more meal a week you’re making at home, then that is the direction you want to aim for!
FOR THE VARIETY + DIVERSITY
Why do we eat? Give it a think for a second.
We eat to give our body those ingredients she needs to get jobs done in the body. We eat to give those macronutrients like fats, protein and carbohydrates to help fuel our bodies in doing the work of Being Human. Would you agree?
It takes a wide variety of nutrients to do the job of Being Human. So what’s the best way to think about this, when it comes to making meals in your home? Bring in as much variety of foods as you can, ensure as much diversity on the plate as will work. This doesn’t mean 22 ingredients in your Celery Root Gratin. (Although that does sound amazing.)
It can be as simple as choosing 5 vegetables in your meals this week: think carrots, celery, peppers, peas and tomatoes. Next week, it can be a different 5 veggies: like cucumber, sweet potatoes, broccoli, salad and radishes. Different colours of foods, different types of meat and/fish cuts, different fats, they all end up giving us a bigger diversity and variety of nutrients we need to work well.
Tips on how to think of this: switch it up every week / go with what’s in season / make a double batch of one thing to freeze for an easy meal down the line that will add diversity to that week’s meals.
The more pre-made a food is by machines in a company somewhere, the less the nutrients are in the end product. Making this real food a thing in your very own kitchen is quite possibly the most radical act you can take on in order to ensure Keeping Well. Not only for yourself, but for all the humans sitting at your table.
FOR THE GUT LOVE PIECE
Part of why you want to bring in the real foods is to support a healthy gut. (The gut really is Ground Zero for all things in the body. Free Master Class on the subject available here.) Real food helps support all layers at the gut lining - the intestinal cell wall itself, as well as the mucosal lining and the microbiome that lives within.
When your gut works well, you are reducing that internal burden of stress. Doing this work actually helps get you off the roller coaster of blood sugar imbalances. Heck yeah!
Additives, preservatives, emulsifiers, pesticides and food-like ingredients wreak havoc at the gut lining. They have the potential of wreaking havoc at the gut lining and promoting permeability at the gut lining. That’s code for leaky gut. And that leaky gut has the potential of driving blood sugar imbalances.
The solution? Switch to real food. One meal at a time.
See, the idea behind including REAL FOOD on the daily is to bring in variety, diversity, and provide your body with loads of nutrients you need to do the work of balancing blood sugars, and nourishing those organs that work hard in this work. Real food is the best and most nourishing thing for your pancreas, your liver and your brain sugar pie.
it’s also about reducing what doesn’t help in balancing those blood sugars - namely additives, refined ingredients that are missing some of those important nutrients.
New to the concept of Real Food? I have a few spots to get you started.
I have a variety of on-demand classes designed to get you in the kitchen. From a series of Scratch Skills, to recipe-driven programs, there’s something for everyone.
Click on the image to the left here for a full exploration.
Aiming to Keep Well? Looking to start working on your blood sugar balancing prowess? Need some help in feeling real good?
Get in touch by clicking here. Let’s meet up to start drawing up your road map to support you in both quantity and quality of life.
*This is not medical advice.
Monday Morsels: Blood Sugar Balancing Foods #1
It’s #mondaymorsels day, a brief post about a food you’ll want to add to your grocery list. This food, as always, will be related to the main topic of the month! This month, we’re talking ways Nutrition can support balancing blood sugars, and the role that plays in reducing your own personal Burden of Stress.
Click on the image to get the full exploration of today’s find.
Mondays, as always here on the blog, we build your grocery list with one food, focusing on this month’s main topic.
September is all about balancing blood sugars. So where to start?
PUMPKIN SEEDS.
I’ll give you three reasons why adding pumpkin seeds to your regimen will be of benefit…
BECAUSE MAGNESIUM
Magnesium is quite possibly my most favourite mineral. It’s an important essential macro mineral, meaning we need more of this guy than most other minerals, and some of those reasons are due to its ability to help balance blood sugars. We need magnesium as a part of the recipe that our body needs to make enzymes needed for the digestion + assimilation of carbohydrates.
Low magnesium levels have been found to be associated with Type 2 Diabetes (1, 2), a condition associated with insulin resistance, and difficulties in managing blood sugars. Ergo, focusing on foods rich in magnesium — like pumpkin seeds — can be one of those ways you nourish deeply, so that your body has the ingredients she needs to get her day to day work done.
BECAUSE MANGANESE
Manganese is an essential trace mineral we need in our diet in quite a few different areas of the body’s function. It’s a key nutrient needed for digestion and turning those foods into nutrients your body can use. And surprise surprise, it’s a key piece of what’s needed for the metabolism of glucose! That means digestion + using of glucose in your cells’ function. It’s a cofactor in the action of glycolysis in the body! (Elson Haas, Staying Healthy With Nutrition, p. 197)
Also here it should be noted that manganese is an activator of the enzyme glutamine synthetase, which helps fuel the cells of your intestine with glutamine, their preferred food source (Elson Haas, Staying Healthy With Nutrition, p. 197). When you do this work, you are looking after a robust gut health which helps reduce inflammation right at the source. What is one of the biggest contributors to you getting on that roller coaster of blood sugar imbalances all day long? CHRONIC INFLAMMATION. Ergo, anything that helps at the gut level will also, in a round-about way, help reduce blood sugar imbalances. (And to boot - it’s a key nutrient in that amazing antioxidants we make called Super Oxide Dismutase!)
BECAUSE METERING OUT NUTRIENTS IN DIGESTION
Pumpkin seeds provide some good amounts of fat, protein and fibre in their little green morsels. What’s that go to do with blood sugar regulation? Ensuring these three types of nutrients helps slow down the hit of carbohydrates (aka sugars) from the foods you eat. They essentially help meter out nutrients and digestion of other foods and slow down your digestion, helping provide a steadier stream of carbohydrates to your system as opposed to a sudden surge of carbohydrates, as would be with a spoonful of sugar.
Fats, protein and fibre are all brilliant allies in helping slow down the hit of sugars to your system from the meal you eat. So consider this when putting together meals, should blood sugar balancing be a part of the issue for you.
Yay, pumpkin seeds!
Hold on a minute… Oh sure yes yes, you know it if it’s coming from me. I am not one to mince words. Anything from the plant world with the potential of becoming a plant has the capacity to do a wee number on you and your body. Read this blog post for the full exploration on that topic.
So if you’re a regular consumer of nuts / beans / seeds / legumes, consider purchasing sprouted ones on the shelves.
Want to learn to do it yourself? I have a few programs that will help you figure this piece out. Find more details by clicking on the images below:
Aiming to Keep Well? Looking to start working on your blood sugar balancing prowess? Need some help in feeling real good?
Get in touch by clicking here. Let’s meet up to start drawing up your road map to support you in both quantity and quality of life.
*This is not medical advice.
Monday Morsels: Breaking for August
Just a wee note to say I’m going to find a hammock for the month, and will be back with blog posts come September.
May the deep summer vibes be good to you.
Hi friends!
Just a wee note to say that I’ll be laying low all month long in August, working on projects over at Histamine Haven. I’ll be taking just a one month long break here at Good Food + You from the blog, in order to concentrate on building programs + content for my other venture.
I’ll be back to regular programming come September. In the meantime, enjoy the deep summer vibes, and go find yourself a hammock! Tout de suite!
