17. STOP DIETING! Learn how to lower your insulin levels for belly fat (and weight) loss

Struggling with stubborn belly fat? Join me today as we unveil the secrets to conquering menopausal belly fat by harnessing the power of  lowering your insulin levels.

Instead of fixating on dieting for weight loss, our latest episode uncovers why insulin management could be your stealth weapon in this fight. Today we reveal how lifestyle changes, such as a short walk after dinner, can prevent the blood sugar surges that play into insulin's fat-storing hands.

This episode isn't just about shedding pounds—it's a masterclass in reading between the lines of 'healthy' food labels and sidestepping the added sugars trap. I share with you my own transformation from significant weight challenges to hormonal harmony, all through mindful eating rather than fads or quick fixes.

Ready to recalibrate your body's response to food and reclaim your health? Join the ranks of those who've found success by embracing the 21-day boot camp, featuring live demos of meal preps that blend health with hearty satisfaction—like a pizza crust that'll make you rethink chicken's place in the kitchen.

Let's journey towards weight loss success together!

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Before you go, don't forget to check out my 21-day boot camp, the boost you need on your health and wellness journey!

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello, my friends, welcome, welcome. I made it early today to work so I said I'm going to stop here and share some information with you. So welcome to my channel. This video will be saved and it will be on my YouTube channel as well. So if you missed this live, come to my YouTube channel. I want you to subscribe. Hit that notification bell so anytime that I put out a video like this, you get notified. It is also gonna be saved on my podcast. So today we're going to do something a little different. We'll take a focus of weight loss in order to control belly fat. So we'll be talking about how to control belly fat without thinking about weight loss. Change your focus and think about how to control one important hormone only. That hormone is insulin.

Speaker 2: 0:56

Welcome to the Thriving Through Menopause podcast. Dr Inaka Yembe, your host, is dedicated to helping you navigate the transformative journey of menopause and perimenopause, particularly focused on achieving menopausal weight loss and reducing belly fat. As a post-menopausal physician herself who has helped thousands of women experiencing the significant life stage, she understands the unique challenges you face. Listen in as we explore a wide range of topics aimed at supporting you in your health and wellness journey. Hopefully, the practical tips and strategies offered potentially help you adopt an empowering approach towards menopausal weight loss and belly fat reduction. And now here's your host, dr Inaka Yembe.

Speaker 1: 1:42

Why insulin? Insulin is a very important hormone. It is not only for diabetics, it's for everyone to think about, especially those of us who are overweight. Insulin is a hormone that's produced in the pancreas. The pancreas sits somewhere in the upper abdomen. Insulin is produced in response to carbohydrate consumption. So if you eat a burger, you consume carbohydrates. We need insulin.

Speaker 1: 2:08

Insulin is like a waiter it takes the carbohydrates and it breaks it down into glucose and it serves it to yourself, in your muscles, your brain, so that they can function. Insulin is also one of those gatekeepers. It's there just to balance out your blood sugars. And so whenever you consume too many carbohydrates or constant consumption of carbohydrates, then insulin, if the cells have had enough, it will take it, weave it into a substance called glycogen. That's the storage form of glucose, and glycogen is stored in your muscles, in your liver, very little stored in your brain. Now, if you consume too much that you have saturated your stores, then the excess is now repurposed and stored as fat. And guess where it's stored? Mostly in the belly and the rest of your body. So, without thinking about cutting down calories, without thinking about how much weight am I losing If you just change your focus and think about how am I going to control my insulin levels. That may help you actually in controlling belly fat. This is most important for those of us who are in menopause. We know when you're in menopause, your estrogen level declines, and so your body, now its fat storage is reprogrammed per se. You're no longer storing fat in your hips and in your thighs, you're now mostly storing it in the belly. So let's talk about that hormone insulin.

Speaker 1: 3:47

I want you to think about controlling insulin. One of the things that I do when I want to remind myself about anything when it comes to weight loss, I create what I call a silence seminar. Write it on a piece of paper, stick it on your refrigerator, take a picture of it, put it as your screen saver on your phone. Put the reminders in so many places that your eyes fall on it so that even when you're not thinking, it is giving your brain some messages. Really, that's how the advertisers work. You know Disney. The Disney jingle is everywhere, even kids who have never been to Disney. They know about Disney. So why don't you create a silence seminar for yourself? Write down control insulin levels, put that through you wherever your vision falls so that it can remind you.

Speaker 1: 4:34

So let's think about the habits that we can change in order to control the insulin levels. Again, I'm not going to focus here on food, but let's focus on some habits. One of the habits that you can change is really just walking. For example, if you make it a habit, especially for the meals, that you can walk after you eat mainly lunch and dinner I'm not sure about breakfast, but mostly lunch and dinner you can walk, just make it a habit. Just think about it. Each time you eat, your muscles need glucose to function. So, technically, if you're walking and you don't need to get up and jog a marathon, but you can walk 15 minutes, walk 20 minutes glucose will land on those muscles. So muscles have fantastic landing pad your insulin levels.

Speaker 1: 5:26

Studies have shown that if you walk after you eat, then your blood sugar spikes are not as high. Why do we not want high blood sugar spikes? Because when the blood sugar spikes, insulin spikes as well, and insulin is a fat storage hormone. It is serving the glucose to your cells, but the cells could be saturated and so it's just repurposing it as fat, which mainly goes in the belly area for our age. So think about walking after lunch, walking after dinner. If you went out somewhere for snack after hours and things make it a habit sit with friends, talk, chat, then get up and walk 10 minutes, 15 minutes, that habit alone can change things for you.

Speaker 1: 6:11

The number two habit change we want to think about is not eat empty carbohydrates. What do I mean about empty carbohydrates? Empty carbohydrates are eating carbohydrates without coating it with proteins or fat. So when I was younger, we had this habit of eating cornflakes and milk and drinking a little bit of orange juice. That was a good standard breakfast, we thought. However, that gives you a big load of sugar, so don't do it. It's going to spike your insulin levels high because the blood sugar is absorbed immediately into your system. Insulin spike fat storage, mainly again in the belly. I want to cover my carbohydrates, so this morning I had some oatmeal 30 grams of oatmeal but prior to that I had a couple of boiled eggs. Yes, when you consume proteins prior to eating carbohydrates, it will slow down the absorption of carbohydrates and not spike your insulin as much. Coating your food with fats also, I'm talking about healthy fats, I'm not talking about vegetable fats like corn oil or vegetable oil or canola oil. Don't do this. Don't do this? Do the healthy ones, like olive oil or nuts. So let's say I'm going to eat my oatmeal, I can just crush some nuts, throw that in the oatmeal. Those healthy fats will also slow down the absorption of sugar. So you want to think about how can you coat your carbohydrates, cover them with protein or fats prior or during when you're eating them. That's going to slow down the absorption of insulin. Again, we're talking about how to control our insulin levels throughout the day by changing certain habits, walking and covering your carbs.

Speaker 1: 8:05

Another thing that I learned and I'm going to really hear from my show notes and make sure I pronounce this correctly it is called retrogradation. So your starches are better consumed after retrogradation. What does that mean? There is a very interesting study that I found I'm going to tell you. It was published in 2022 in the Nutrition and Diabetes Journal and they looked at the influence of retrogradation on type 2 diabetics, and that simply means that you keep a carbohydrate for long enough that it starts to denature itself and then it becomes a more resistant starch. So it is more of fibers stays in your gut and less of it gets into the bloodstream In real life.

Speaker 1: 8:53

How do we do that? Simply by cooling your food overnight. For example, if you cook rice and you eat that immediately, you have a higher insulin response because the carbohydrate gets into your system a little faster and you have a higher insulin response. However, if you cook the same rice and you keep it in the refrigerator overnight, it cools down, that process of retrogradation starts and the starch in the rice becomes more resistant to quick absorption into the bloodstream. Fantastic, how do you translate that in real life? Alright, meal prep will help you. So if you prep your meals, prep your potatoes, prep your rice, keep it in the refrigerator, you better off eating it tomorrow compared to today, right? Because you know that it's going to go through retrogradation part of the starches in the rice and the potatoes. They are going to become a little bit more resistant and they will have a lower insulin spike and technically lower insulin fat storage in the belly area. And actually in this study they looked at type 1 diabetics who ate rice after it had been cooled overnight and it showed that these children type 1 diabetics they had a lower blood sugar after they ate and those who were kept on their insulin pumps without any adjustment after the rice was kept in the refrigerator and they ate it the next day. Those who continued to receive insulin at the same amount had a hypoglycemic response, meaning their blood sugar dropped too low. So just cool your rice overnight. It will help you to not have a high insulin spike. We don't want high insulin spikes, all right.

Speaker 1: 10:46

Next next tip to help you control your blood sugar is what we've been talking about all the time. It's just really your exercise. How do you exercise? Most of us feel that we go to the gym for an hour or you work out at home for an hour. That's it. It gives me a passport to sit down and not do anything. No, there is something called non-exercise activity thermogenesis neat for short. So just stay active throughout the day. Fidget, if you're somebody who has to answer the phone all day long, stand up and just move around your chair. Park far away from the entrance. All that activity can add up into using up enough calories and enough energies, as much sometimes as you did during your one hour of exercise. All of it is going to help you. So just the neat.

Speaker 1: 11:40

And, ladies, ladies, ladies I say this all the time we want to add some resistance to our exercise. Pick up the dumbbells, use the resistance bands, use your body weights, do those exercises that challenge your muscles and can help you lower your insulin levels. Remember, your insulin is serving the glucose to your muscle and so if you are exercising, muscle is a great landing pad for glucose and it would help you not have those insulin spikes. Again, we're talking about how we can control our insulin levels to reduce belly fat without having to think about dieting all the time. All right, this one here is another big one, it's another big one.

Speaker 1: 12:29

So, without thinking about dieting, how about I think of just consuming protein? Studies do show that those of us women in menopause actually, when you pass the age of 35, for most women your muscle muscle start to decline because your estrogen level is declining, and so you go through a process called sacropinia muscle fibers declining number. You get a little bit weaker. If you do nothing to change it, then you're going to notice it's easier for you to gain belly fat now, even if you changed nothing. So those of us who are older, we want to increase our protein consumption. Every time I say that, some of you get a little squeamish and think am I consuming too much protein? No, you're not. You're not.

Speaker 1: 13:13

You need at least one gram of protein per pound of your ideal body weight on a BMI chart. That's part of our challenge today. Go look at the BMI chart. Make sure you measure your height. I did not know my height until I measured it. I actually measure shorter than I thought. You want to know your height in order for you to know your ideal body weight. Your ideal body weight means ideal. We're not in an ideal situation, right? So maybe your ideal body weight says 120 pounds. You don't want to be 120 pounds, I get it, but you're going to use that 120 just for calculation purposes. Why is that? The study is also showed that the average American female of our age is consuming about 60 to 80 grams of protein tops per day. That's very, very low and the tendency for those of us who are older women, now that we want to get healthier, we use to eating salads. We just take a bowl of salads, eat that. There's nothing wrong with eating your veggies, but you do want to come back and eat at least 30 to 40 grams of protein per meal and yes, I said per meal all your ideal body weight in pounds per day. Alright, very, very important. So you're eating your chicken, seafood, cottage cheese, tofu, nuts those kinds of things have high protein.

Speaker 1: 14:38

Another thing that we want to think about again. I'm not thinking about counting calories, but I'm trying to control my insulin levels. I'm trying to not have insulin spikes. Next thing you want to do is increase your fiber consumption. Actually, the recommended amount of fiber per day is 25 to 30 grams of fiber per day for women. It is going to improve your satiety, so keep you full longer, make you not want to snack all the time, and so will proteins, and it's also going to slow down that insulin response to a meal. So how does that translate in real life?

Speaker 1: 15:13

If you can, if you can one good habit is to eat that little, small bowl of salad before you actually eat your meal. It would help you slow down the absorption of carbohydrates. And if you add a little bit of vinegar yes, apple cider vinegar is what has been studied in most of the studies that were done, but hey, any vinegar will work. If you can tolerate vinegar, add it to your salad and eat that right before your meal. It's gonna help you to not have an insulin spike. Very important other vegetables, leafy vegetables, those are fantastic. Other things like chia seeds, flax seeds and yes, somebody asked a question vegetable tablets also help. Another good way to control your insulin levels is not to eat all day long.

Speaker 1: 16:01

This week is my weight loss clinic day in the hospital and it's just typical. Most of us women come in and this is the first thing they'll say dog, I don't know why I'm so heavy. I only eat one time a day, and, yes, that's correct. Most women actually eat one or two times a day, most women. But then we forget that the snacking is consumption of calories. So what do most women do? Get up in the morning, they in a hurry. They're gonna eat a little bit, I don't know, maybe a little bit of something running out of the house, maybe granola bar. I'm running out the house and then my coffee is loaded with all kind of things. It's actually 200 calories and zero calories.

Speaker 1: 16:44

Like I'm thinking, the woman is not considering that. She gets to work. She has a work meeting. There's some little things out there for you to eat. You eat a little bit of that, but then you come to lunch and you tell yourself I have not eaten all morning, but I want to be a healthy person. I'm just gonna eat my little salad. So now you have your little bowl of salad. You get home in the evening you're thinking, wow, wow, I am so hungry. All I had today was a bowl of salad.

Speaker 1: 17:08

We forgot that all the little snacking. It adds up to quite a bit sometimes, and it adds up to a lot of sugar consumption. That keeps your blood sugars high all day long and keeps your insulin levels high all day long as well. So we are steadily storing fat and we come back here at the end of the week. We have gained two pounds this week. We're thinking, wow, and I hardly ate all week. That's not true. I want you to bring your awareness to everything that you put in your mouth. Very, very important. I'm not saying don't eat, I'm just saying be aware.

Speaker 1: 17:40

One of the things that we want to try that can help us is to intentionally adopt a habit of intermittent fasting. If you can try to stay for 12 hours without eating, intermittent fasting is best done around the time that you sleep. So if you can fast for 12 hours, that's great. If you can fast for 14 hours, that's great. So if I'm sleeping for eight hours, all I have to do is not eat two hours before I sleep, not eat two hours after I wake up and that already gives me a good 12 hours of intermittent fasting. That time that I'm not eating, your body is not getting any exogenous carbohydrate. Your insulin levels are dropping insulin. When it drops, your body can start now using its own stored energy and if it's completely consumed, the glycogen that was stored in your liver and your muscles guess what nice. It's gonna go to the fat and it's gonna borrow some energy from there. If you can fast a little bit longer 14 hours, 16 hours better because you're walking around, you're not consuming any energy, your insulin levels are down and your body, easily reduced, releases fat. Insulin is not only a fat storage hormone but it tells your fat cells that, hello, we have got a lot of energy sitting here, so do not do not release any energy. So if you just snacking all day long those little snacks, it doesn't serve you well. You're better of eating even three, four meals a day as opposed to snacking, snacking, snacking and putting little things in your mouth. Be aware of what you put in your mouth, because that's gonna help you keep your insulin levels low.

Speaker 1: 19:27

All right, this one here is a big one. I had promised I was wasn't gonna talk about diet, but hey, we've got to mention this when we are talking about insulin. Are you ready? Added sugars, added sugars, the obvious is true, of course, we know cookies, sodas, cakes, bakery foods, candy chocolate yes, all of those have added sugars. I'm not talking about those ones. Let's talk about the ones which we potentially think are healthy, the ones like juices. This is a big, big argument all the time.

Speaker 1: 20:04

Ladies, please, if you are interested in keeping your insulin levels low, if you're interested in reducing your belly fat, one of the things you want to avoid is consuming fruit juice. It's a big dose of fruit toast, which is a natural sugar, but then it's still big all the same. It's going to load your system with a lot of sugar all at once. Insulin level spikes and then you're storing all that energy as fat, giving that your glycogen storage systems, liver muscle. They are saturated now, so you're going to be storing fat. In fact, a recommended amount of added sugars is 24 grams per day for women and 36 grams per day for men.

Speaker 1: 20:53

It's a little tricky sometimes when we read the food labels, because you're looking for added sugar on the food labels. I wish I was in politics, you know, because the government allows the manufacturers to have a 20% margin of error, which is huge. I'm trying to do the right thing for my body, yet when I read the food label, I just don't know. I just don't know because I assume they can be 20% off, and usually is not. 20% off for benefit of the consumer is going to be 20% off for benefit of the manufacturer. Also, when they say added sugars on the label, yes, those ones are especially obvious to us. But you do want to read the ingredients. Why is that? Because most of and this really happens, especially with fruit juice they'll tell you no sugar added, which is very, very true. And sometimes the manufacturers do not list natural sugars as added sugars because they don't have to. Technically, it's not an added sugar, it's a natural sugar. So look at the total carbohydrates that's on the label. That will tell you how much carbohydrate you actually have in that product. You want to avoid those.

Speaker 1: 22:06

Those cause huge insulin spikes. You can prove it to yourself by either wearing a continuous glucose monitor, which is really cumbersome, or sticking your finger every day, which I don't do neither of those, which is really cumbersome, but I've seen studies of people who have done it and the response of insulin production to that amount of sugar load is pretty high, and when you have that insulin spike, then of course you would assume that you're storing blood sugar, one of the things that happens when we have high levels of insulin. All the time, your body starts to protect itself against your insulin levels and it says whoa, system overload. Here, I don't want to feel all this insulin is not happening. That gatekeeper or that waiter that's serving all this energy to ourselves. It is too much, we don't want it. So now your cell says that I'm not gonna feel this insulin. You become insulin resistant.

Speaker 1: 23:02

Insulin resistance is a dangerous place to be. Think about it for seconds. So I'm gonna be working in the emergency room today. This is the classic person who comes in with a high blood sugar. You would assume that sugar is energy, right? So these people who come in with high blood sugars of 800 a thousand, they are supposed to be jumping, they're supposed to have all this energy because they've got a lot of sugar. But the opposite is true, though. Some people actually go in a coma from too high blood sugar because system shut down. I'm not gonna feel a thousand blood sugar. Your body is trying to protect you. So you in a coma, you're not responsive at this point.

Speaker 1: 23:39

We're doing everything to lower those blood, that blood sugar, down quickly and most of the time that is as a result of our nutrition. So you really want to pay attention to the added sugars. Other subtle places where added sugars come in for those of us who are trying to be healthy they come in our salad dressings. They come in a process meat like ham. They come in our barbecue sauce. Actually, barbecue sauce is the worst. Most of them if it doesn't say sugar-free. Barbecue sauce is one of those. That's actually sugar and seasoning. So is ketchup, which is just sugar and seasoning. We're trying to be healthy so we're eating salads with added sugars from our salad dressing. Make your own in my 21 day boot camp and if you haven't joined, consider joining. Link is in my bio or type link in the chat and you're gonna get a link to join.

Speaker 1: 24:31

We talk about hormonal imbalances that lead to weight loss and just by controlling the influences of hormones in your body then you can actually control your weight that way, without thinking too much about I need to be on a diet, I need to be on a diet. That kind of diet mentality really hurts us. It hurts me when I was 300 pounds. Right now I'm between 157 to 160 pounds. That's my current weight. My weight at the time of 300 pounds I had a diet mentality while I went to diet to lose weight. Don't do that to yourself. You just want to think about eating in a way that you can control your hormones.

Speaker 1: 25:11

So that's it for me today. That's all I have to share with you. I hope the information helped you. If you're not in my belly fat loss challenge, there's a channel there where I even show you what I'm eating. If you haven't joined my boot camp, hey, listen. Yesterday, like every Sunday except for orientation day, we have a live meal prep. Yesterday I made pizza crust from chicken. It's so delicious. I love to eat. I love to eat, but I've got to eat the healthy things. All right, my friends, that's it for this morning. Have a fantastic start of the week. Come back here and ask me question type link in the chat and I'll send you the link to join my next weight loss boot camp. Thank you everyone bye.

Speaker 2: 25:57

Thank you for tuning in to this episode of thriving through menopause. We hope you found valuable insights and practical advice to support your journey. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe to the podcast, share it and review. Your feedback is greatly appreciated. Remember, menopause doesn't have to be a challenge. It can be an opportunity for growth, renewal and self-care. Connect with us on social media, where we share additional resources, tips and advice to help you along your path. Once again, thanks for listening in and we hope you'll join us again on the next episode of thriving through menopause. Until then,