HSOS #6: The Sugar Rollercoaster and How to Get Off

Balancing blood sugars is the number one nutrition strategy to support hormones in perimenopause and menopause. Kim explains how hormonal shifts impact insulin sensitivity, why steady glucose levels matter for energy, cravings, weight, and long-term health, and how to understand key labs like fasting blood sugar and A1C. With practical daily tips and an invitation to her free 5-Day Midlife Momentum Challenge, this episode equips women to take small, powerful steps toward better health.

Let’s talk.

Welcome to Her Season of Strength—where women over 40 reclaim their bodies, their energy, and their voices, without apologies. I'm Kim Duffy—registered dietitian, personal trainer, mom, and your biggest hype woman when it comes to aging like you mean it.

This show isn’t about chasing skinny or counting wrinkles. It’s about building real strength—physical, emotional, and hormonal. Each week, I’ll share straight-talking nutrition tips, sustainable fitness strategies, and conversations that help you feel powerful in your skin once again.

Menopause is not an ending, it is only the beginning. This is your season of strength.

📝 Here are a few things I cover:

• Life update: surgery recovery and anniversary reflections
• Why hormonal shifts reduce insulin sensitivity
• How blood sugar swings affect cravings, mood, and weight
• The difference between balancing blood sugar and avoiding carbs
• Chronic high blood sugars, inflammation, and long-term risks
• Labs that matter: fasting blood sugar and hemoglobin A1C
• Macro-balanced meals: protein, fiber, healthy fats, portion control
• Strength training as the best “blood sugar sponge”
• Simple daily tips: protein-rich breakfast, pair carbs, walk after meals, don’t skip meals
• Learn more about and/or join the free 5-Day Midlife Momentum Challenge by going to: https://www.strengthinnutrition.com/5-day-free-fitness-challenge

Links & resources for this episode:

Fit After 50 Plus Program: 8-Week Nutrition Coaching & Fitness Program for women 50+. Next session starts winter of 2026. Join the interest list today for the best bonuses and discounts offered.

Free cheat sheet: "20 Tips to Crushing Menopause"

Join my free weekly newsletter list and get a new high protein recipe sent to your inbox every Thursday.

Find me on social media: Instagram I Facebook I Tiktok

Transcript

  [00:00:00] Hi there, and welcome to her season of Strength, where women over 40 reclaim their bodies, their energy, and their voices, without apologies. I'm Kim Duffy, registered dietician, personal trainer, mom, and your biggest hype woman. When it comes to aging like you mean it, this show isn't about chasing skinny or counting wrinkles. It's about building real strength, physical, emotional, and hormonal. Each week, I'll share straight talking, nutrition tips, sustainable fitness strategies. And conversations that help you feel powerful in your skin. Once again, menopause isn't an ending. It's only the beginning. This is your season of strength. Hello and welcome back to her season of Strength. I am so happy you're here and I thank you for taking a few minutes outta your day to listen to this podcast. Today I wanna talk about balancing blood sugars and how this is literally the number one method for supporting our home hormones in perimenopause and menopause. But [00:01:00] before we dive in, I want to first of all give you a little update. I am healing well from surgery. A little bit of a challenge not being able to exercise or lift more than eight pounds or push, or pull or lift over my head. But you know what? I chose the surgery, it was elective. And so I have nothing to cry about. It's just for the short term and I can be patient. So next of all, I just wanna say thank you so much to everybody who reached out last Friday. For those of you who don't know, was the 13th anniversary since we lost our our youngest, our daughter who was almost 13 years old. A little bit of a bittersweet. Anniversary because we realized that, she was, has been gone now longer than she was on Earth. We miss her every day and celebrate and always wanna talk about her. I appreciate anybody who reached out with their virtual hugs and just kind words. So thank you so much. I appreciate that. All right, so if you have [00:02:00] ever felt that you're on the rollercoaster of like energy crashes increased cravings, irritability, or mental mood swings, your blood sugars are running the show more than you think. Okay? You might be blaming these all on hormonal changes and perimenopause and menopause, but they can be made worse by. Poor blood sugar control. So why the heck do we care about blood sugar? You're not a diabetic, so like why? Why does it matter to you? But hormonal shifts during perimenopause and menopause make our bodies less sensitive to insulin. Okay, so estrogen supports our insulin sensitivity, and when it fluctuates, and especially when it drops post menopause, we're gonna see blood sugar swinging more highs and lows. And those highs and lows can really affect our energy levels. It can affect when we, all of a sudden we're like, why do I want chips and sweetss and treats so bad? It can [00:03:00] affect weight gain, especially around our midsection. And it can make our mental health, we can see mood swings more so when those blood sugars are up and down. You've ever heard of the term hangry when you're really hungry and you get really grumpy? Yep. That could be typically, that can be related to a blood sugar drop. Okay, so what does it mean to balance our blood sugar? That does not mean you're avoiding sugar. It does not mean you have to stay away from sweetss or candy or crackers or anything that contains carbohydrate. Not at all, because carbs are so important to our energy levels. They're a vital part of. Our of what we're eating, our nutrition, right? So the goal though is to avoid those highs and lows of blood sugars because when we are having, when our, or when our body's living on that rollercoaster of ups and downs of our blood sugars, it can cause extra stress on [00:04:00] our body, on our insulin, and on our hormones. The more that we can balance out and make, rather than having those spikes and falls, but having more of that even keeled rise. And then it, we stay up for a little bit and then we come down gently. Just more of those rolling hills that is going. We're gonna see that we're gonna have energy for longer periods of time. We are gonna see that. We're not. Searching for that next, pick me up when our blood sugars drop. We're not looking for that boost of caffeine or boost of sugar because we're suddenly really tired and can't focus and wanna be more productive. It's just about, avoiding those highs and lows and just, think of it as more that steady energy rather than that sugar roller coaster. Why do we care? Why is this important? Chronic high blood sugars, even though you may not necessarily be able to say yeah, that's my blood sugars, that's why I'm feeling this way. But chronic high blood sugars can lead to higher insulin [00:05:00] levels in our bloodstream, which can also. Which typically what that means is that we're less sensitive to that insulin, which is what the pancreas produces to bring down our blood sugar. So after we eat carbohydrates, we eat, pasta or potatoes or rice or crackers or bread or cookies, whatever. When we eat foods, carbohydrates of any sort, even fruit it's gonna cause a blood sugar spike. And that is totally normal, right? That is how, that just indicates that our body has digested these foods and we digest 'em faster. We can break them down faster as compared to protein or fat or fiber. We break them down quicker, they cause that blood sugar spike. And then, just that, that quick fall. So when we see those higher levels of insulin and higher levels of blood sugars, we're gonna see that, that we don't lose weight as easily. We store a little more fat. It can cause increased just inflammation in our body. We might find that we're, a little more achy, our joints are [00:06:00] hurting. We might also just see more symptoms. We're more symptomatic, right? So long-term risks of having those chronically high blood sugars are gonna be things like pre-diabetes or type two diabetes, heart disease. We can also see increased risk of cancers. We can see increased risk of autoimmune issues. They even call Alzheimer's, type three diabetes. It can be related to poor blood sugar control. So women in midlife. Are at higher risk of higher blood sugars or insulin resistance due to hormonal changes. So it's all the more important for us to be aware of what our blood sugars are doing. So how can we check, how do we know what our blood sugars are doing versus, we can just tell you how we feel like. Yeah. I'm I do feel more tired. I do feel up and down as far as my. My mental health, my emotions, how do you discern that between blood sugars and just going through perimenopause and post menopause? We can check [00:07:00] one point in time, fasting blood sugar. So you can go to the doctor, they do a finger stick or they do a blood draw and they're gonna check your blood sugar. Usually they'll have you come in fasting. Not always. But they'll check your fasting blood sugar. Ideally, we want that under a hundred milligrams per deciliter. When it's higher, it just tells us that maybe we do have some insulin resistance going on. Maybe we aren't. Our body is not responding to that insulin like it should be. The another lab that I really like to recommend to all of my clients, I feel like every woman should know what this number is and should be having it checked. Once a year, and that's your hemoglobin A1C. And why I like this one versus the fasting blood sugar is that it tells us what your blood sugars have been doing over the previous three months. So our target is to keep it under 5.7%. Okay? So if we see that it gets. Above 6.4, we are in the diabetic range. If it [00:08:00] is somewhere between 5.7 and 6.4, we call that pre-diabetes. So we wanna keep that less than 5.7%. Now, if you go in and you're like, oh, mine was 5%, I never have to check it again. I'd say No, I want you to check it, especially. After we've gone through menopause and we're imposed menopause, I want you to check it and monitor it and make sure that it is not trending upwards. That could just mean that, we're not. Our body is not responding to that insulin like it should, and we're becoming a little more resistant. And hopefully we can make changes before then in order to prevent having to go on medication for type two diabetes. So they just, the, these numbers, the hemoglobin A1C and the fasting blood sugar, just give us a little insight into our insulin sensitivity. We can also check things like a blood insulin level. And what that tells us is if your insulin levels are high in your blood, we can see that your little in insulin resistance, it's like your pancreas is trying to shoot insulin [00:09:00] into your blood, to tell your cells to pull in that extra blood sugar to bring down those levels. But if you're not responding to it, then it's just gonna keep on giving you more and more insulin in your blood. Okay, so that just tells us that you can become a little, you're, you might be a little bit insulin resistant, right? And what's cool about this is when you know these numbers, you can make changes. You can do things to become more responsive or sensitive to insulin. Okay. As a type two diabetic, as type one diabetic, it's a whole different story. We're not talking about that. We're talking about type two diabetes, which typically we're going to develop later in life. It can be related to excess weight, it can be related to a lot of different factors. Also genetics can play. Play a part in that too. So how can we improve lead sugar control? And what's really interesting is these are all the same kind of recommendations that I would give to anybody who wants to be more healthy, who wants to eat more healthy, [00:10:00] a person who wants to even lower their cholesterol. The, these are just recommendations for a healthy diet, but they are going to help to improve blood sugar control. The first one is macro balanced meals. So what that means is I want you to look at your plate, and I want there to be high fiber carbohydrates. I want there always to be a great protein source, and I want there to be healthy fats and vegetables, which is fiber, right? Every time you eat. Because what's that gonna do is that it's gonna lessen the effect of those carbohydrates on your blood sugar because protein and fat and fiber do not affect blood sugars. Okay. They actually slow digestion and they're gonna give us that nice rolling hills of blood sugars rather than the spike and fall. Okay, so when it comes to protein, you hear me talk about protein all the time, but 25 to 30 grams per meal. Is gonna help to regulate your appetite, it's gonna decrease cravings, and it's also gonna help [00:11:00] stabilize the glucose. Now what are good protein sources? Those are gonna be our meat, our fish. So beef, poultry so chicken and Turkey. It's also gonna be things like beans and legumes, but there's a caveat there is beans and legumes or those vegetarian sources of protein are gonna contain carbohydrates. They also contain protein, right? So carbs and protein. So it's a matter of just realizing that there's carbohydrates in there, right? These that can cause a blood sugar spike. Next we're gonna always make sure that we have fiber. So first of all, when you're choosing carbohydrates, I want you to choose high fiber carbs. Okay. Those are gonna be, those whole grains, those are gonna be, breads that have more than, I'd say at least three grams of fiber per serving if you're looking for that. Eating your, if you're having potatoes, eat 'em with the skin on. But the biggest thing when it comes to carbohydrates, I think is is portion control. So you can be eating a really good carbohydrate, really healthy carbohydrate that has lots of [00:12:00] fiber in it, like beans and legumes. But if you eat three cups of it, yeah, it's gonna cause your blood sugar to spike. 'cause that's a lot of carbs. It's a lot of excess calories, right? So portion control. I usually tell people if you can stick to a half cup per meal of your carbs, so you know, your potatoes, your pasta, your rice if you can choose. Options of those that are higher in fiber. So maybe you choose like a bean pasta, if you've ever had red lentil pasta or chickpea pasta. Those are good options. Or like brown rice versus white rice or quinoa or some of those different nice whole grains that have lots of fiber in the whole grains. All that means is that they have not stripped or processed the fiber off of 'em. Usually in that processing they take off the whole, the outside layer, which is where the fiber is. Okay, next. Healthy fats. Fats are great for slowing down digestion as well as preventing that blood sugar spike. So choosing, those healthy fats in your meals too. But the thing about fats is that fats are much [00:13:00] more calorically dense, right? So we don't wanna load up on the fats, but we wanna, think about portion control with those as well. But those are gonna go into that macro balanced meal and help to slow down the digestion of those carbohydrates and prevent that blood sugar spike. And lastly, another one of my absolute favorites is strength training and movement Exercise in general is gonna improve insulin sensitivity. It's gonna build muscle. And muscle is your best blood sugar sponge. Even just walking or cardio is gonna improve that insulin sensitivity strength training is just gonna help you to maintain that muscle, to build up your metabolism. All these things, it's just going to help your body to be more efficient and more sensitive to that insulin. So it's gonna help with that blood sugar spike. So what are some things that you can do daily? To help to control blood sugars, right? Some simple things because it's all about small steps that are gonna help you, that that you can sustain for [00:14:00] the long term. It's not about, doing something, oh, I gotta do every single one of these things in order to be perfect. And if I don't do every single one of 'em, then I'm gonna quit, right? Because I just can't do this. We wanna make changes that we can sustain for the long term. So first of all, one, one thing we could do is we could start your day with a protein rich breakfast. So often breakfast is just a high carb, processed type carbohydrate. So it's gonna be cold cereal, or it's gonna be toast, or it's gonna be. French toast or pancakes or something like that, something that's basically loaded up with carbs and then typically, hey, we're gonna throw some syrup on top of it. So even more carbohydrates, right? So instead, I want you to think about, I wanna get 25 to 30 grams of protein in at breakfast time. I think breakfast can be the most challenging one to do that, but, so that's gonna be, maybe you start your day with a nice veggie omelet or maybe you make a protein smoothie. Where you use, some protein [00:15:00] powders or even like a Greek yogurt or chia and flax seeds, you can throw in some vegetables in there, maybe some berries, but making sure that you have some really good protein in there. Next, I want you to, another small change that you can make is pairing your carbohydrates always with protein and fat. So you can think of it as don't eat your carbs naked. Your carbs should never be naked. They should always be, with something else. They should always be with a high protein food. They should always be with may, maybe healthy fat. They should always be with some vegetables, some good fiber. Next step would be to move after meals. Doesn't have to be a lot, maybe after you have dinner in the evenings, you go for a 10 or 15 minute walk. That can make a huge difference in helping your body to digest your food, but also increasing insulin sensitivity and just be making your body. Helping it to be a little more efficient, right? Rather than, eating dinner and then just going, sitting down on the couch or, maybe you eat your dinner really late and then [00:16:00] you just go right to bed where you know that's gonna affect your sleep, that's gonna affect a lot of things. Moving after meals is just gonna help, probably help you sleep better. It's just gonna help with digestion. It's gonna help to prevent that blood sugar. Next strength training. Okay. I typically recommend two to three days a week, which is fan would be fantastic if you're somebody who is not doing strength training. And if you don't know what I mean by strength training, and that can be resistance training. That's, you can use. Dumbbells. You can use just your own body weight. You can use bands, you can use kettlebells, you can use a suspension trainer, I don't care. Just something to provide resistance and to challenge your muscles. And then as they're challenged and as they're fatigued, they're gonna grow stronger in that adaptation. And that is our goal because we know as women, we start losing muscle as we get older. We need to combat that because that loss of muscle means that we're more prone to injuries. It means that we [00:17:00] don't have as much weight on those bones. We start losing bone mass. It decreases our metabolism, so we start seeing weight gain. Strength training can help to combat all of those areas. Okay. So even if you're, you're not doing anything, even adding in one day a week is fantastic. Maybe you start with 15 minutes, maybe you increase that to 30, or maybe first you add in a second time during the week. Okay? There's lots of things you can do, but this is so important. Okay. And then lastly, don't skip meals. I think sometimes we think as women we're like, oh, I eat so healthy during the day. I hear this all the time from my clients and I'll be looking at their food journal and seeing that they're literally having a protein bar at breakfast. They're having a salad at lunch, never, don't even always have protein on it. And then they're wondering why they're just famished at dinner time and they can't stop snacking and eating. And it's like they're eating right up until bedtime. It's 'cause they're not fueling their [00:18:00] body, right? They're having these two little tiny meals and then their body's we need to eat right. Not to mention it's hard to get in, get in your protein needs and stuff when you're just basically having one giant meal in the evening. But what that's gonna prevent, that's gonna avoid those blood sugar crashes. And it's gonna prevent overeating as well, set yourself up for success. Most people are like, I don't understand. I have no motivation. I can't stop eating. I just snack and I eat too much for dinner time. And I'm like, it's not motivation. It's the fact that you have not eaten enough. Earlier in the day. So you know, beefing up that breakfast and lunch meal, making sure you have that good protein in there. Trying to get as much vegetables and fiber as you can, that's gonna help to just balance out those blood sugars. It's gonna decrease those cravings. It's gonna help your body to turn off those appetite signals that are telling you that you're hungry and it's gonna tell you, oh yeah, you know what, I'm good. I've had enough. And it's gonna prevent you from overeating later. So the biggest takeaway I want you to think [00:19:00] about from this podcast is that balancing blood sugars is the number one strategy to support our hormones in perimenopause and post menopause. I'm saying support your hormones. I don't wanna say balance your hormones because you know what? Our hormones, we're not gonna balance our hormones. We don't wanna balance 'em. There's, even the, what they call hormone replacement therapy in, in, in menopause and perimenopause. It is not replacing those hormones that are dropping, our estrogen and progesterone. It is actually just giving, it's just slowing down the symptoms that we're seeing from that. It's helping to give us enough of those hormones to be able to decrease the symptoms. It's not like we can replace them and all of a sudden be able to have babies again. And that's why rather than HRT, we can call that MRT. So menopause replacement therapy. But basically, it's gonna help to the balancing those blood sugars just helps to support those hormones, [00:20:00] and it helps, it can help in ways as far as our energy levels, giving us more even keeled energy helps to decrease those cravings. It can promote more of a stable weight. We can decrease the weight gain that we see. Postmenopausal. And then overall it goes a long ways in decreasing our risk of so many chronic diseases and chronic illnesses. One of those being diabetes, but also things like, like I was saying, like cancers, like cardiovascular disease, even, Alzheimer's, they call it Type three diabetes, can be related to uncontrolled blood sugars. So just remember, it's just about taking one small step. So one balanced meal, one strength workout, one post meal walk. All of these are positive, right? And we gotta give ourself that nice little pat on the back. Say, okay, I did this one. And once we make that one into a habit, maybe we add in another one. And if you're wondering where to begin, maybe you're not doing any strength training right now. [00:21:00] Maybe you aren't really sure where to start when it comes to your nutrition. I opened up my free five day midlife momentum challenge just this week. And what it is, it's a five day challenge where you're gonna get five different workouts. They're not all tough workouts. I'm incorporating in some nice balance work and some nice abdominal work and flexibility work, as well as getting into those big muscles. And then every day you're gonna have a daily nutrition focus or a nutrition challenge. So I would love to have you join us if you would like to. I will put the link in the show notes if you're interested in learning more about that, or if you're interested in registering. We start September 15th and then it runs to the 19th. We're gonna pull all the tips that I just talked about today into practice during the challenge, so you can feel the difference by the, by the end of the five or seven days. I want you to be able to take something away from that and feel like you've had a win. So that you can continue. That's why it's called momentum, [00:22:00] right? I'm gonna build up that momentum so that you can just keep those positive changes going. As always, if you enjoy today's podcast, I would love you to leave me a rating or send me a message, leave me a review, or even just share it with a friend who you might think benefit would benefit from it. Just remember that this is about progress over perfection. We're in this for the long haul, and this is your season of strength. Have a fantastic day.