The Wellness Connection with Fiona Kane

Insulin Resistance Diet: What and How to Eat | Ep. 111

• Fiona Kane • Season 1 • Episode 111

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Insulin resistance diet tips that actually make sense—whether you're managing the condition yourself or supporting someone you care about. In this episode, I break down what insulin resistance really is and how the right foods can help you take control of your blood sugar. We’ll talk protein, healthy fats, low-glycaemic veggies, and smart food combos that work with your body—not against it. If you’re looking for a clear, practical way to eat for better energy, focus, and long-term health, this one’s for you.

As mentioned in this episode, I discussed cholesterol in episode 29 here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2142323/episodes/13503298-episode-29-debunking-the-cholesterol-myth-how-it-affects-your-heart-health

Learn more about booking a nutrition consultation with Fiona: https://informedhealth.com.au/

Learn more about Fiona's speaking and media services: https://fionakane.com.au/

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The Beat of Nature

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Fiona Kane:

Hello and welcome to the Wellness Connection Podcast with Fiona Kane. Today I'm going to be talking to you about insulin resistance, some useful things in regards to what to eat if you have insulin resistance, and a little bit about what it is as well. So, essentially, insulin resistance is often referred to also as pre-diabetes, and it's a sign that your body is not managing to process carbohydrates properly, and it could be a sign that you might be heading towards diabetes. So it is something to be aware of. Now, with insulin resistance, one of the ways that they test for it is they test things like in your blood tests. They test for things like glucose and insulin to see what is going on with your body's ability to process carbohydrates. So I'll explain a little bit more to you.

Fiona Kane:

So carbohydrates in our foods. So carbohydrates would be things like grains, so like cereal, breakfast cereal or breads or pastas, or fruit and vegetables, beans, beans, like pulses. They can be a mixture of carbohydrate and proteins, but generally speaking, there's a lot of carbohydrate in them, things like rice. So all of those foods are carbohydrates, and obviously anything with sugar itself. So soft drinks or lollies or things like that they're carbohydrate-based foods. And when we eat carbohydrate foods. What happens is our glucose goes up in our bloodstream and our body always likes to keep our glucose within a certain range. It's very important it stays within a certain range, because if it's too high it does damage and if it's too low it's a problem as well. If it's too high, what happens is it's a little bit like shards of glass that do damage to your small capillaries and to your arteries. So we really don't want that happening. And what happens with these shards of glass that do the damage is your body will send cholesterol to try and heal it and fix it. But if it happens over and over and over and over again, you keep sending more and more cholesterol and then there ends up being a blockage and the cholesterol is blamed. But the cholesterol is kind of the band-aid. But because the underlying issue didn't get addressed, that's why there ended up being a problem. But anyway, I've got a whole other episode on cholesterol, so go to that one. I'll link it in, if I remember. I'll link it for you so that you've got it. But otherwise, just look up cholesterol and you'll find it in my podcast.

Fiona Kane:

So back to insulin resistance. So what happens with insulin resistance is so when we eat these carbohydrate foods, our body will make insulin. Our pancreas makes insulin, and insulin's job is to direct any glucose that's in the bloodstream, any excess glucose that we don't need, out of the bloodstream and into cells. And what it will do is it'll take the glucose into your liver cells for storage there as glycogen and also to your muscle cells for storage as glycogen, which is kind of easy energy for your body to access. But then any excess it actually will then put into fat cells and essentially a certain amount of glucose will go into various cells to provide some energy.

Fiona Kane:

But what happens is, with insulin resistance there's kind of two factors. So one factor is that maybe the insulin doesn't work anymore as far as insulin is like the key to open up the cell, and the insulin doesn't seem to open up the cell anymore. So that's considered to be maybe one of the things that causes insulin resistance. But the other thing is maybe the cell's just full already, because if you're having a lot of glucose and a lot of carbohydrate which is glucose in your diet, then what happens is these cells just get full of glucose and if your cells are really really full, trying to put more in, it's just not going to happen. So there's different theories about sort of either of those or both of those, but essentially what's happening is you can't get glucose into the cell and because you can't get glucose into the cell, then you can't metabolize, you can't use your glucose and then you end up with high levels of glucose in your bloodstream, which does damage, as I was talking about before and when I was talking about damaging the vessels and things.

Fiona Kane:

It damages the small vessels first, which is why it damages the renal arteries that go to your kidneys. But it also damages if you think of, the areas that are affected when people have uncontrolled diabetes is that it affects their feet, it affects their eyes, also affects all extremities. So it also will affect your sexual function, sexual organs, because these are all small vessels that go to those places and also to your kidneys. So all of these places are often where you'll see signs and symptoms that something is wrong, because if someone starts having issues with their eyesight, or they can't feel their feet, or they're hurting their feet and it's not healing, or if you start having something like erectile dysfunction, all of these different things could be signs that you've got really high glucose in your system that's causing a lot of damage. Also, high cholesterol could be a sign as well, because the reason you've got high cholesterol is because of the damage happening. Your body's pumping out more cholesterol to heal this damage, but it's not fixing the initial problem, so more and more damage is happening, as I was explaining before. So these could all be signs that you have high levels of glucose in your system.

Fiona Kane:

And if you have insulin resistance, it will also show that you have high levels of insulin, because what happens is your body makes insulin to deal with the glucose and then, if the glucose isn't going into the cell, your body's constantly to deal with the glucose and then, if the glucose isn't going into the cell, your body's constantly checking, checking, checking. Your body checks again and says, okay, the glucose is high, I'm going to make more insulin. And then, however, many minutes later it checks again and says the glucose is high, I'm going to make more insulin. And it just keeps doing it over and over and over again. And, of course, if it's not getting the glucose into the cell, it just keeps making it. So high levels of insulin.

Fiona Kane:

Having high levels of insulin in your system all the time. It is also quite inflammatory, so a lot of inflammatory processes happen in regards to having high insulin and then also what happens is you will probably gain weight. In most cases, people in this situation will gain weight and often it's around the tummy, so it's that kind of waist weight which is why that's considered to be the dangerous kind of weight, because this is metabolic syndrome I'm talking about and sometimes it can affect things like your blood pressure, it can affect other things and start to drive things like heart disease and eventually what can happen is your pancreas can be so worn out by trying to make so much insulin all of the time that it actually might slow down how much insulin it makes and someone might need to start taking insulin to the point where it might stop making insulin altogether or just not make enough. So that gives you a bit of a rundown of kind of what insulin resistance is. Essentially, it's when your body cannot get glucose into the cells and therefore it sort of starts to call that you just have high glucose, high insulin, and your body's making lots and lots of fat cells to try and store up all of this glucose. So in regards to how to eat to manage insulin resistance, well, you have to consider that, because this is a problem of metabolizing glucose, which is in carbohydrate foods, one of the best things to do is reduce your carbohydrates in your food, because if you're not eating a lot of carbohydrates, you don't need to make a lot of insulin.

Fiona Kane:

So, generally speaking, what I recommend with my clients is you base your diet around protein, so you have protein with every meal, and so that would be something like meat or eggs, and for vegetarians it's all right, they can have eggs. But for vegans it's more challenging because the source of protein for vegans is often very high in carbohydrate as well. So if you're thinking of things like lentils or chickpeas or that kind of thing, they're really high in carbohydrate, unfortunately, so there's often more carbohydrate in there more just as much carbohydrate as there is protein, and that can be okay to a point, but there's a challenge. If you're trying to reduce your carbs and you're a vegan, then that can be okay to a point, but there's a challenge. If you're trying to reduce your carbs and you're a vegan, then that can be quite challenging. But some proteins that are lower carb for vegans would be, say, something like tofu. So tofu, I don't think, has much carbohydrate in it at all, but obviously you'd have to check all the different foods and see what's right for you.

Fiona Kane:

But generally what I do is I encourage my clients to start with a protein-based meal and not a normal serve of protein, but it would be that palm-to-hand size of protein and it's your palm-to-hand size, not mine and then what you do is you have some good fat, some good oils, so that could include things like the fat that's already in the food, so the fat that's already in your fish, or the fat that's already in your chicken or beef or whatever you're having, the fat that's already in your eggs. Or it could be things like a good quality olive oil. Or you might be having just real fats like butter, like real butter, the pure butter. It could be you're having some avocado, so there's some really good fats in avocado, but essentially you're having fat with your meal. And also what you would do is you'd have fibrous carbohydrates that are relatively low in carbohydrate, though, and that would be salad type vegetables. So if you're having loads of greens, if you're having your bok choy and your cabbage or your broccoli or your cauliflowers, those sorts of foods, lettuce, that sort of thing, so essentially lots of kind of low starchy vegetables, lots of different colors, all of the slaws, the coleslaw type stuff, those kinds of low carb salads. That's feeding your microbiome. So it's good for your microbiome, it's good for your gut. You're still getting some carbohydrate there, and those carbohydrates also are ones that are really high in fiber. So you'll get the fibrous benefit of the diet as well, and I'll explain that to you, not just from a carbohydrate, not just from a gut microbiome perspective, but also from a whole meal perspective.

Fiona Kane:

So I'll explain this to you that there's something called the GI and there's something called the GL. And's something called the GL, and I'll explain those two things to you. So GI is glycemic index and glycemic index is a measure of how quickly your blood glucose goes up after you eat a certain food. So foods that are really high GI tend to be things like bread or like cola, something like that. Rice is quite high GI. Any kind of cake or muffin or something like that high GI. So essentially, you eat that food, your blood glucose goes up quite quickly. A bowl of cereal is high GI. Most of them would be, if not all of them. So that's a high GI carbohydrate food. A low GI carbohydrate food would be something like blueberries or something like the salad vegetables I just talked about before, foods that just don't have that much sugar in them to start with and they're also quite fibrous. So you can check levels. There are charts and things you can look at.

Fiona Kane:

Gi is affected by other things, so it's affected by your digestion. It's affected even by things like if you slice bread, it changes the GI as opposed to if it hasn't been sliced or how long it's been sitting on the bench as opposed to if it hasn't been sliced or how long it's been sitting on the bench, even the GI of different. You know you can have wholemeal bread in France and wholemeal bread in America and have different GI. So GI is a bit unpredictable, but it's a bit of a general idea for how quickly your blood glucose is going to go up when you eat a certain food. If you wear a glucose monitor, you'll see very quickly how this works for you. So you'll see which foods are high GI. And the other thing I was talking about is GL.

Fiona Kane:

Gl is glycemic load and glycemic load is how quickly your blood sugar actually does go up. Two things One, it can be the individual food and what I was saying before. If you have a food that's quite high in fiber but also quite high in glucose, it might go up a little bit slower. So you might notice that some legumes your blood glucose goes up a bit slower because there's fiber in there. You might notice the same thing for, say, like cabbage or something like that. It's a fibrous food Broccoli your blood glucose goes up a bit. There's some glucose in there but there's also a lot of fiber. So that will slow down how quickly your blood glucose goes up.

Fiona Kane:

But then it's like glycemic load is also looking at the whole meal. So, for example, if there is fiber in your meal whether it's fiber in that carbohydrate, which is where it normally would be, but the fiber would also be in, say, something like avocado. So if there's fiber in your meal, that does slow down the gastric emptying, which is your stomach emptying, which is essentially the amount of time that food spends in your stomach. If you slow down the amount of time the food spends in your stomach, you slow down how quickly the glucose spills into your bloodstream and how quickly your glucose goes up. So when you add fiber to a meal and there's fiber in there, it slows it down, which is a good thing. The same thing will happen when you add protein. Protein also slows it down, and so do fats. So that is why the recommendation is you have this lovely balanced meal where you start with a protein, you make sure there's some good fats in there somewhere, you have lots of low starch fibrous vegetables and then if you do have something that's a bit higher in carbohydrate, that's a bit of a higher GI food.

Fiona Kane:

If you have that with that meal, your blood sugar probably won't go up quite as quickly and you'll be able to tolerate it more than maybe you would have having it on its own. So if you have that piece of bread on its own, it might push your blood glucose up really, really quickly. Potentially, if you have it with some avocado on it and some salmon on it or some egg, that might slow things down. But it's always good to test and measure for yourself, and a glucose monitor is a great way to do that. And if you have insulin resistance, that's actually a really good idea to start wearing a glucose monitor so that you can start to see how different foods affect you. So, rather than just making assumptions, why don't you just see what actually happens when you eat different foods, but in general I find that people with insulin resistance are better off if they're really not eating much in the way of foods like breads.

Fiona Kane:

Or if you are, there are some you can buy that are quite low carb. So just look up the low carb bread varieties and when you do have it, add something that's got fiber and fat and protein to it. So whether you're adding a nut butter like a pure peanut butter, or a pure almond butter, or whether you're adding some avocado and tuna or avocado and salmon, or you're adding some mashed up eggs or something like that, those are really good choices to put with your bread to help to kind of manage the glucose in that bread. Or otherwise, like I said, have your salads without having the bread and you might add some high glucose. But good quality foods full of fiber that are full of nutrition for you would be things like the starchy vegetables. So it might be things like sweet potato or beetroot or carrots or pumpkin, and you don't have huge amounts of them but you have some of that starchy.

Fiona Kane:

So you might have, say, like a fistful of your starchy carbohydrate with your meal, but you have a half a plate full of all of the other, the slaws, the low-starch carbohydrates. You're having that palm-to-hand size of protein in there, whether it be tuna or egg or whatever it is, or steak, and then you're having some good fats in there that might already be in the protein, like I said, the oils in fish, or it might be something that you're adding in, like your olive oil, your avocado oil, your avocado, also nuts and seeds. They have good fats in them, they have fiber in them, they have lots of nutrition and they also have some protein, so they can be a good way of adding some balance to a meal. So essentially, if you have insulin resistance, I recommend you eat fairly low carbohydrate.

Fiona Kane:

You have balanced meals, as I've just explained to you, also making sure things like if you have insulin resistance, you might be low in some nutrients, so you might need things like vitamin D, you might need things like magnesium, and so it might be worth seeing someone like myself or an expert who can recommend the clients that you might take and also if you've got a blood test that can be really useful to see whether or not you need some nutrients or not and the types that you should take and the dosage you should take. Also, too. You can get magnesium from things like Epsom salts. So if you have Epsom salts baths and you can certainly buy magnesium sprays and things and they don't absorb quite as well as something that you take orally, but you still can absorb some of it that can be quite useful to you.

Fiona Kane:

So part of the insulin resistance picture is also understanding there can be nutrition deficiencies associated with it. So it is good to explore more of that, maybe with an expert who can help you with that side of things, where they can look at signs and symptoms of nutrition deficiency and look at the best ways to fill that and whether that is through your diet or whether that is through taking a supplement. And the other thing, too, is also looking at your digestion, and again you might work with an expert like myself or whoever it is, but someone can help you manage your digestion overall, because if you've got digestive issues, you're not going to be maybe absorbing the nutrients that you need and that might also lead to or contribute to things like insulin resistance. So it gives you a bit of an idea there of what insulin resistance is and some of how you manage it. Obviously, different people respond differently to things, so you have to get the right advice for you.

Fiona Kane:

And I would also say if you're taking any medications to reduce your blood glucose levels, then you really do want to monitor this with an expert and maybe, like I said, wear a blood glucose monitor if you're taking insulin, especially because if you are taking insulin, you can end up with your blood sugar levels too low, which can be a medical emergency. So if you're taking insulin, please learn about what hypoglycemia looks like. Please understand that you could potentially push your blood glucose too low and really, really need it's like a medical emergency. So, just before exploring all these things, or when you're exploring all these things, just take a lot more care if you're on medications, particularly if you're on insulin, and if you're unsure, please get medical advice and please understand what low blood glucose looks like. And it can look like an acetone sort of breath, like acetone is like the nail polish remover. It can look like nausea and vomiting and confusion and those sorts of things. So just be aware that that could be a medical emergency for someone who's taking insulin. So please just be really, really sure that when you're playing around with your diet, with these things, that do it safely and get medical assistance if you feel that you're not feeling safe to explore this on your own, because sometimes we can get ourselves into a bit of trouble exploring and changing things around if we're not really sure what we're doing or if we need to be monitored a bit more because we're on a medication.

Fiona Kane:

So, anyway, I hope that was useful for you to learn a little bit more about insulin resistance, what it is and the best way to eat to manage it. And this will differ slightly for different people, but that's a general outline of what works quite well for people with insulin resistance and, of course, always drinking plenty of water and things like drinking alcohol, water and um, and things like drinking alcohol and soft drinks and things like that that's just alcohol and soft drinks are laden with carbohydrates, so they're really going to affect your glucose levels. So I would not recommend or even juices and things like that. Just, you know, water and herbal teas and a little bit of tea or coffee or whatever, depending on the individual, what works for you. But just be aware that your drinks actually can be have a bigger effect, especially actually some people, some people they're having kind of like the you know the coffees that have the caramel flavors and different things like this. So not only that, but even if you're not getting the flavoring, if you have a cappuccino, there could be 20 grams of carb in that drink, whereas if you have a black coffee, there's no carb in there unless you put sugar in there.

Fiona Kane:

So just have an awareness of just how much carbohydrate is in your drinks and you may not be realizing how much you might be having Some people I've measured it before they're having over a hundred grams of carbohydrate a day in drinks, which is an awful lot. So just be aware. I didn't really talk about drinks. So just have a real awareness of whether or not you're getting your carbohydrates from your fluids, and I don't care if it's like a, if it's a homegrown organic juice. If that is full of fruit juice, then there is a problem. That is just pure sugar. So just be aware of that. There might be lots of nutrients in there, but sugar is sugar, sugar and for someone with insulin resistance that can be a real problem. So do consider your drinks as well.

Fiona Kane:

Okay, I will leave it there, but please remember to like, subscribe, share and rate and review my podcast. It really helps me other people to hear about and find out about my podcast. I really appreciate your support and any feedback as well. Um, and make sure that you are subscribing. I looked at my stats and it looks like 80 of people who watch and listen to my podcast are not subscribers. So it makes a difference to the platforms. They will show and promote your podcast more if you have more subscribers, so please make a point of subscribing as well. I hope you have a great week and I'll talk to you again next week. Thank you, bye.

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