03 - The Blood Sugar Roller Coaster: Why It Matters & How To Get Off

In this episode, we’re diving deep into blood sugar regulation—why it matters, how it affects your energy levels, and simple ways to keep it balanced throughout the day.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
- What blood sugar regulation actually means
- Signs of uncontrolled blood sugar (fatigue, cravings, weight gain & more)
- Signs of balanced blood sugar (steady energy, fewer cravings, better sleep)
- The secret to keeping blood sugar stable every time you eat
- Easy meal & snack ideas that support blood sugar balance

If you’ve been struggling with low energy, mood swings, or sugar cravings, this episode is packed with actionable tips to help you feel your best!

If you found this episode helpful, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share with a friend who could use these simple health tips! I appreciate your support!

Connect with Courtney: 

Instagram: @nourished_living_

Work With Me: Nourished Living

Transcript

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Welcome to the nourished living podcast, where I will be diving deep into nutrition, holistic wellness, and practical tips to help you live your healthiest, most vibrant life. I'm Courtney Podany, a nutritional therapist, certified personal trainer. Type 1 diabetic and mom. And I'm here to help you take charge of your health with ease and confidence. Together, we'll explore how to nourish your body, mind, and soul in a way that feels good and sustainable. So, grab your favorite beverage, take a deep breath, and let's get into the episode. What's up guys? We are back for the third episode of the Nourished Living Podcast. Thanks so much for being here today. We are getting into blood sugar and blood sugar regulations, so of course this is like my jam. I have. To prepare my days for regulating my blood sugar every single day being a diabetic. But blood sugar regulation is not just important for diabetics. It affects everyone and is directly correlated to our energy levels throughout the day. So we are going to be. Looking at why blood sugar regulation is even important, why you should be concerned with it. Symptoms of long-term, uncontrolled blood sugar, as well as symptoms of controlled blood sugar. I. Okay. And how we can achieve blood sugar regulation with specific examples for meals and snacks. Okay, let's get into it, shall we? So what does regulating blood sugar even mean? Regulating our blood sugar is achieved by keeping our blood glucose levels stable throughout the day and avoiding blood sugar spikes and blood sugar crashes. So if you are on what I call the blood sugar roller coaster, where after a meal you experience a blood sugar high, which ultimately leads to a blood sugar low, and you just ride along this ride all day, that would be having uncontrolled blood sugar and some symptoms of having uncontrolled blood sugar are. Increased cravings and specifically for sugar and carb type foods, weight gain and difficulty losing weight, increased hunger, a diminished ability to become full from meals, chronic fatigue, low energy. Anxiety, irritability, maybe becoming dizzy, shaky, and having headaches, difficulty concentrating and memory issues. Waking up a few hours after you fall asleep, and then having a hard time getting back to sleep. Inflammation in the body and wounds and injuries are slower to heal. So on the flip side of that, having regulated controlled blood sugar would look like having less cravings. You would be able to lose weight if that was something you were working towards, and you would have less weight around your stomach and midsection. You would be satiated and full throughout the day. You wouldn't be experiencing any like ravenous hunger fits that seem to come on. Suddenly, you would feel energetic and refreshed when you wake up because you'd be having better sleep as well. You would be able to focus and have better memory recall, and you wouldn't be inflamed. So the secret to regulating our blood sugar is achieved by pairing protein, fats, and carbs together for every meal and every snack, which means basically anytime you are eating, this needs to happen. These are the three macronutrients and they work. Synergistically together by slowing down digestion, which reduces the risk of a blood sugar spike because like roller coasters, once there's a blood sugar spike and we are heading up, that will be followed by a blood sugar crash. It's exactly like the saying. What goes up must come down. And during this blood sugar crash is when you will experience the feelings of fatigue, dizziness, shakiness, irritability, anxiety, and those sweet cravings. Typically, once we get that sweet craving during the blood sugar low, we tend to reach for something else to eat that is going to bring us back up. On that roller coaster into the blood sugar spike and riding along this roller coaster just up and down all day long, not in a controlled range at all, is very taxing on our bodies, and it utilizes a lot of resources and minerals to get us back into that controlled range. Because our bodies like to be in homeostasis, so if something is too high, our body works really hard to get it lower again. Or if something is too low, our body works hard to increase it. So going on this rollercoaster, we are using so many resources and minerals that we wouldn't need to if we had just planned our meals a little bit better and ate a little differently. And when we keep our blood sugar stable, we create consistent energy throughout the day because at the end of the day, food is fuel and you should feel energized after eating food. You shouldn't feel like you need to go take a nap or you need to reach for something sweet or you need to reach for coffee, anything like that. And since digestion is slowed, when all three macronutrients are present, we tend to stay fuller for longer periods of time. And you might find that when you eat this way, it allows you to stay full from meal to meal, thus reducing snacks quite possibly. You should typically be staying full for about four to five hours after a meal if you have included a well balanced meal with all three macronutrients. If you find that you are hungry one to two hours after a meal, there are a few things that could be going on, but you might not have eaten enough. Just, too small of a portion or not enough protein, or not enough fat. So I like to experiment. If I find that a meal had me hungry within two hours of eating it, I will recreate that meal. But next time, I will increase the protein and fat to see if I can get myself to stay full for that full four or five hours. But of course if you are hungry, I want you to eat. I am not trying to say that you should only be eating every four to five hours. I'm just saying if you are able to prepare a well-balanced meal that fits your needs, you might stay full. For four to five hours, which is typically, the next time that we need a big meal. But of course, please, please, please eat if you are hungry, your body is telling you that you need food, and so I don't ever want you to try to skip over that hunger cue or Q or think well, oh, it's only been, two hours since I ate, so I shouldn't be eating again already. No, that's not what I'm saying. And carbohydrates provide a quick energy for us when they are broken down into glucose in the body, which enters the bloodstream immediately. When we just eat these carbs by themselves, there will absolutely be a blood sugar spike and what happens after a blood sugar spike? A blood sugar low. when our blood sugar spikes, our body has to release insulin to bring that blood sugar back down into range. And the more carbs that are eaten, the more insulin that needs to be released, and that is increasing our chances of a blood sugar crash. When there's no protein or fat to balance out that meal, there's nothing to slow down our digestion, which leads to that rapid rise in blood sugar with just the carbs. An example of just eating carbs by themselves would be like eating an apple or a bag of chips. To round out these snacks so that we don't send our blood sugar skyrocketing. We could have included protein and fat, like a slice of cheese and some olives, which would then, keep everything nice and controlled. So I wanted to list some good sources of each macronutrient so you even know what are examples of. Carbs, protein and fat. And obviously this is not going to be an exhaustive list because there are so many foods out there, but this is kind of just to get you started here. Carbs include fruits, vegetables, legumes, oats, bread, rice, and then also more of the processed foods that you'll find down the aisles, like crackers, chips, and sweet treats, things like that. Examples of fats are butter, ghee, avocado, olives, coconut, nuts and seeds, and fatty fish like salmon. And examples of protein are going to be lots of your meats, so beef, bison, Turkey, chicken, pork, seafood, also dairy beans, chickpeas, lentils, quinoa, and tofu. So if you are someone that likes to follow recipes when you're cooking, when you look for something to make, I would just ensure that there is protein, fat, and carbs included for you to make it.'cause I totally get that. I am not a chef by any means. I don't even claim to be a good cook. I can get us by, and so I definitely follow recipes. All the time, so no hate at all. Just make sure that you have identified that there is protein, fat, and carbs included to set you up for success. But meals can be simple. If you don't want to follow a recipe, you don't have to for breakfast. It can be as simple as some eggs with toast and butter. Lunch could be something like a spinach salad where you just throw some chicken, sunflower seeds and olive oil in, and dinner could be salmon with quinoa and broccoli. Of course you can always make it a little more interesting with a nice sauce to go over the salmon and quinoa and stuff or whatever. But I just want to stress that recipes and cooking don't need to be complicated. This should not be a source of stress for you as long as you are including the three macronutrients, you are good to go. But one of the most common questions I receive when trying to help people focus on stabilizing their blood sugar is how can they incorporate this shift with snacks? Because we're all busy, right? And we sometimes we just need to grab something and go. So I have a few of these to get you started as well. So you could have a Greek yogurt and mix in some nuts and berries or fruit of your choice. You could have sourdough toast with some avocado and a hard-boiled egg. Make it into a little sandwich. You could make a cheese quesadilla with some guacamole to dip it in. You can mix up some tuna with avocado and then eat that with some cucumber slices or crackers. You could make your own trail mix, which I think is really fun. Here you have limitless possibilities, but I would include some type of nut, some type of seed, and then you can kinda go crazy with the carb options here. But I like to do like a dried fruit and then some dark chocolate chips. Also when thinking about snacks, I like to channel my inner charcuterie board enthusiast and throw together like some salami, olives, and strawberries, something like that. Just think about what you would include on a charcuterie board. And there's usually protein, fat, and carbs there. So again, can't really go wrong with that either. And there are some. Like really good grab and go snacks that either do not have carbs or have very minimal carbs that I always like to keep in the house. So some of these things that I make sure we have all the time are string cheese, or if you're, really in a bind, you could just do cheese slices, meat sticks, olives. Nuts and seeds. You can get like a can of mixed nuts or, whichever kind you like. The nut butter packets, like Justin's is one of the brands. They have a almond butter packet, beef jerky or Turkey jerky. And you can also find some good low carb protein powders if you want to make a protein shake as well. So I hope that these were some good ideas to get you started on how to start creating your meals with protein, fats, and carbs, and also some good snack ideas to have on hand when you need something in between meals or just need something to grab and go, Or even just like a few things to keep on hand at the office to. Get you through the day. I hope you can also see why blood sugar regulation is. Not just for diabetics, why it's important for every living being on this planet, and definitely something that you should focus on if you want to feel good on a regular basis and be able to think clearly and not feel sluggish, and just be the best version of yourself. Blood sugar regulation can help in so many ways in so many aspects of your body. So I hope that you can start implementing these and notice at least like a big increase in your energy. So you will have to let me know if you do. I would love to hear about it. The first step to keeping your blood sugar nice and stabilized is incorporating these protein, fats, and carbs every time you eat. So this is going to lead to that. Increased energy, less cravings, weight loss, improved mood and mental health, better focus, feeling full and satisfied for longer periods of time, and reduced inflammation. And bonus points if you are able to make the three nutrition shifts that I mentioned in the previous episode paired with the blood sugar regulation tips. And I'll remind you of those real quick. So last episode, we talked about trying to focus your foods on nutrient dense real foods, including as many colors of produce as possible and eating. What is currently in season? So what produce you'll find at like your farmer's market. So if you can get on board with those three shifts and then include protein, carbs, and fats with each meal, you are on your way to feeling so good, feeling incredible, and like you can really do anything you set your mind to. I don't ever want, symptoms to hold you back because it doesn't seem like there's a way to get out of this. Food is so powerful and can honestly be used in so many ways to help us to feel good and feel better. All righty. So that is it for this episode. Thanks for joining me, and I will see you in the next one. Thanks for hanging out with me today and tuning in to the Nourished Living Podcast. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and found something you can start implementing right away to kickstart your nourished transformation. If you loved this episode, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, or share it with someone who could benefit from these insights. You can also connect with me over on Instagram at nourished underscore living underscore for more resources and support. Until next time, stay nourished.