Hannah Aylward (00:05.881)
Welcome to the Nutrient Dense Podcast. I’m your host, Hannah Aylward, holistic health coach, functional gut health practitioner, and the founder of HAN. So many people are continuously failed by conventional and alternative healthcare. We are here to do it differently. Alongside my team of functional registered dietitians, I’ve helped hundreds of women around the world overcome their chronic digestive issues when nothing else worked.

I’ve learned a thing or two about what it really takes to transform your health from the inside out. And I’m here to share it all with you. Please keep in mind that this podcast is for educational purposes only and should never be used as medical advice. Now let’s dive in. Your transformation is waiting. Hello, my dears and welcome back to another episode of the nutrient dense podcast. Today, we’re going to be jumping into kind of like a quick and dirty episode where we’re going to be getting into some of my.

top tips for balancing blood sugar levels. So first, we’ll be walking through why it’s important to actually balance your blood sugar. This gets talked about a lot on I feel like the social platforms, but I just want to make sure that everyone understands like why this is so important, what’s actually happening in the body. And then I’m going to break down my five top tips for balancing blood sugar on a day to day basis. So you can leave this episode like able to

action and implement some of these tips immediately to start to feel a big difference. we’re going to go ahead and just jump right on in. So why does balancing blood sugar actually matter? Right. And balancing blood sugar, I always say it’s like nutrition 101. This should be one of the first things that everyone is learning about when looking to optimize their health, better their health, optimize nutrition, and just honestly feel better, like full system.

these tips will make a very big difference. So if you’re kind of overwhelmed with where to start on your gut repairing journey, on your like overall health journey, on your hormone healing journey, this is really a great place to start because once you kind of learn how it all works, it’s easy to implement and it’s kind of gonna give you like a high ROI, right? So some of these things are gonna give you a big return on investment with like actioning these tips.

Hannah Aylward (02:23.596)
because regulating your blood sugar levels impacts truly your whole body. So when in doubt, come back to this. We teach clients this and every one-on-one program with us and inside of my Healing Guts and Chingamuts program, inside of my Gut Happy Eats program, which is my like smaller mini program. I call it a mini course, but it’s actually very thorough. Me and doing anything in like small, they don’t belong in the same sentence.

but we do break down how to balance your blood sugar levels inside of that program too. It’s like my gut health, know, nutrition for gut health one-on-one course. So we teach everyone this. No one that works with us is not gonna learn this basically, and that’s because of how important it is. So just to kind of run through how our blood sugar levels impact your body, my body, so you can kind of understand what this will really feel like and why it matters.

So consistent blood sugar levels help you feel more energized and focused throughout the day. So they have a very big impact on your energy levels. You’ll feel this too. So if you are skipping meals, you’ll feel the dip in your energy. If you like, like I said, go, you know, too long without eating, you’ll feel that dip. If your blood sugar levels go high and then they crash really low, you’ll feel that dip as well. That’s when you get that like hangry feeling. You start to get anxious, irritable.

That’s when your energy really, really drops. And then you kind of have the example of when you finally eat again after that. So say you skipped a meal, you went too long without eating, your blood sugar levels dropped really low, then you finally eat again. And once you do that, you’re like absolutely exhausted. That happens to me sometimes if I push it too far, which I don’t mean to do, but you know, life gets in the way. And then you finally eat and you’re like, my gosh, I’m ready for a nap. That’s because your blood sugar, you just rode that nice blood sugar roller coaster. So

Balancing your blood sugar is gonna have a huge impact on your overall energy levels and your focus, your mental clarity, and also, of course, avoiding things like that hangry feeling, which when we feel that way, we can’t even really see straight, right? The other thing is that long-term blood sugar imbalances can lead to insulin resistance, where the body becomes less responsive to insulin, and this increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

Hannah Aylward (04:36.256)
Elevated blood sugar levels, particularly combined with insulin resistance, can also increase the risk of heart disease. High blood sugar can lead to inflammation and damage the blood vessels, which contributes to the hardening of the arteries. The other thing is that poor blood sugar control can actually damage the kidneys over time, leading to kidney disease. And then chronic high blood sugar can also damage the nerves, leading to neuropathy, which can cause pain, numbness, weakness, especially in the feet and the hands. So,

As you can see, this is like full system, right? This is not just about gut health. This is not just about energy, but it’s one of the most important things that you can learn how to do in your health journey. also plays a big, know, maintaining our balanced blood sugar levels really helps to regulate our appetite and it supports healthy weight management. So what we’ll see in clients is after they’ve spent a long period of time on kind of like a yo-yo diets or they’ve done a lot of food restriction in the past,

or they’ve done a lot of calorie counting, calorie restriction. Honestly, it doesn’t have to be paired with intense exercise. It can be just that alone, but also paired with intense exercise. Like essentially, if you’ve lived on a diet for a long time, you’ve under eaten for a long time, you haven’t given your body what it needs, the fuel that it needs for a long period of time, that will contribute to this like metabolic dysfunction picture, which typically includes this insulin resistance. And that’s going to make it harder to lose weight. It’s gonna make it harder to manage your weight.

So if you’re listening to this and you’re like, I watch everything that I eat and I eat less than I did before and I can’t stop gaining weight or I can’t lose any weight, we’re very likely looking at this like metabolic dysfunction picture, which includes this insulin resistance. So balancing your blood sugar levels plays a huge, huge role in this. And I’ve got some tips for kind of helping you support insulin resistance in this episode as well. So just know once again, like blood sugar balancing.

is going to impact, it plays a huge role in weight management. It’s also going to play a huge role in your hormone health and your hormone balance. So you cannot balance your hormones without balancing your blood sugar. You have to have to balance your blood sugar if you are on any hormone balancing journey or if you just like want to feel good, right? Because our hormones influence so many different things depending on the hormone. But essentially,

Hannah Aylward (06:58.256)
When you have these erratic blood sugar levels, you’ve got a lot of like blood sugar swings, you know, high highs, low lows, which can happen for a variety of different reasons. When your blood sugar dips too low, your body is going to push out cortisol in order to bring your blood sugar levels up because low blood sugar can make you feel dizzy, woozy, you can faint, right? So the body just goes into this very natural, smart, protective response.

to help to raise your blood glucose or your blood sugar levels by pumping out cortisol. Now, you can’t balance your hormones if you’re just running on the stress hormone the whole time, right? Because as I’ve discussed in previous episodes, if you’re running on stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, this is gonna negatively impact other hormones. So this is going to slow down thyroid function. It’s going to decrease progesterone production, which can contribute to something like estrogen dominance.

So we can see a lot of like PMS, we can see a lot of painful period symptoms. We can see increased anxiety. It can influence so many different things. And then of course thyroid function, right? So once again, metabolic health, your thyroid is kind of setting the pace for your metabolism. any time our thyroid slows down, we’re going to have our gut motility slow down. It can lead to things like constipation.

will have weight loss slow down. can be very difficult to lose weight when you’re dealing with sluggish thyroid. So it’s all connected here and everything influences something else, which is why it’s so cool. You know, when we look at the body through this more functional root cause lens and we look to optimize our blood sugar levels, we can see positive impacts kind of widespread, which is once again, why I love this and why I kind of say that learning to balance your blood sugar levels.

has like a pretty high ROI because it can influence all of these things. So blood sugar imbalances can affect the release of various hormones in the body, right? Like insulin, of course, but then cortisol and adrenaline. And these hormonal imbalances can lead to things like increased stress, weight gain, fatigue. So by stabilizing our blood sugar levels, you can really help support your overall hormone balance. Keeping your blood sugar levels balanced can also help to reduce the risk of developing inflammation related diseases.

Hannah Aylward (09:14.95)
So when we’re looking at inflammation kind of playing a role in many different disease states, you know, there’s a lot of talk in the functional space that’s like inflammation is the root cause of all disease, but we have to once again ask what’s actually causing the inflammation in the body. A lot of the time it’s stemming from the gut, different gut infections, gut imbalances. And another thing is going to be these erratic blood sugar levels. So when our blood sugar levels, blood glucose levels are going up and they’re crashing really low,

This is like a big source of stress for the body and it’s going to contribute to inflammation. So if we’re looking to reduce inflammation, we have to look at balancing and regulating our blood sugar levels. We can also see that high highs and low lows over time in blood sugar can impact nerve function, as I mentioned before, which will also impact your gut, right? It’s going to impact your gut motility. So it does play a huge role in our gut health as well.

The other really, I think, cool thing is that high blood sugar can lead to glycation where these sugar molecules bind proteins, including things like collagen and elastin in the skin. So this can actually result in skin aging, wrinkles, decreased skin elasticity. So balancing blood sugar can help maintain healthy, youthful skin. So if none of that other stuff matter to you, but your skin matters to you, hopefully you will pay attention now because it can influence your skin. We can also see

blood sugar and like erratic insulin levels and insulin resistance contribute to other things like acne as well. So there’s some good research on that too. So it’s important, right? It’s super important. We also see insulin resistance present in PCOS and I believe it’s 70 to 80 % of PCOS cases. So if you have PCOS, if you think you do, once again, learning to balance your blood sugar levels is it’s very, very key here. So when we see someone

like I said, any client at all, we’re looking to help support regulating these blood sugar levels. So it really, truly couldn’t be more important. So essentially, anytime you eat anything, your blood sugar levels are going to go up and food is not the only thing that bumps up your blood sugar levels and we’ll kind of get into that. So anytime you eat anything, blood sugar levels are going to rise, insulin’s going to rise.

Hannah Aylward (11:35.378)
And then typically when your blood sugar levels go up really high, they’re going to crash really low. And when they crash really low, that’s when we start to experience like that hangry feeling where we’re irritable, we’re anxious, we can’t really even think straight. And then when we’re in that state, the body’s going to secrete cortisol to help to raise those blood sugar levels. So what we want to do is we want to get your body off of this like blood sugar roller coaster. So we have to look at the food that we’re eating.

We have to look at how we’re pairing this food properly. The other thing is stress. So stress can really heavily impact your blood sugar levels as well. So when we’re looking at kind of like, what do we need to do to regulate blood sugar? We’re looking at nutrition and food. We’re looking at stress levels. We’re looking at sleep. I’m going to talk about that. We’re also looking at sometimes toxin exposure can influence our blood glucose levels. And that can be one of these like missing pieces or missing keys as to

why things aren’t getting better when we are eating the right ways and doing that kind of stuff. And then exercise we’re going to touch on too. So just know, yes, nutrition influences our blood sugar levels, but that’s really not all. We’ve got sleep, we’ve got stress, we’ve got toxin exposure, and all of these things really matter in addition to the amount of muscle that we have on our bodies. So let’s get into some of these direct tips for you so you can implement all of this and start feeling better.

So number one is going to be to eat more balanced meals, which I know it’s groundbreaking, but let’s kind of break this down. These meals need to include protein, healthy fats, and fiber. And then, you know, technically fiber is a carbohydrate. I like to put fiber in its own camp because I like to emphasize it. Then we also want to have some good carbohydrates because without them, we won’t have the energy that we need. So I’m not a huge fan of like,

incredibly low carbohydrate diets, especially for women. typically don’t respond well to these things, especially if you are like an actively menstruating female. Typically it puts too much stress on the body. It can actually impact cortisol levels. It can impact thyroid function when we go too low carbohydrates. So not a huge fan there. I also think, you know, your average American’s diet has way too many carbohydrates. So it’s something in the middle, right? You can also tolerate more carbohydrates.

Hannah Aylward (13:56.434)
If you exercise more, if you’re more active, if you have more muscle on your body. So we’ll talk about that as well. But just know at each meal, we want to have protein. We want to have healthy fat. We want to have fiber. And then of course, you want to have some, some carbs. You’ll find fiber in these carbs. So you’ll find it in things like oats and that kind of stuff, you know, whole grain breads, whatever. So when we include these protein fats and fiber, these nutrients help to slow down the absorption of sugar into the bloodstream.

And it’s also going to help keep you full longer. So what we recommend is really going for about 25 to 35 grams of protein at each meal. I usually say 30 grams. That’s a good place to start for most people. If this is brand new to you, you know, a lot of women we’ve worked with hundreds and hundreds of people and you know, probably 90 90 % women is who we see. And I think we’ve seen one to two women come in eating actually enough protein for what their body needs.

And I feel for you on this. I think it’s hard. It is hard. It’s because protein takes the most prep, right? You kind of have to prep it ahead of time. So I like to prep a few proteins at the beginning of my week to make sure that I get it in. That’s also why I love smoothies. They’re super easy. You can utilize good quality protein powders and it takes five minutes. So I’m a big fan of things like that. But we want to aim for 25 to 35 grams of protein at every single meal.

We wanna get at least about 10 grams of fiber at each meal. That’s gonna give you 30 grams for the day. I’d say 30 grams is going to be a lot for some people. We wanna get it to about like 25 to 35 grams a day for most people. But aiming for 10 grams of fiber at each meal is gonna help get you there. And then we’d say, on average, we’re looking for about 15 to 25 grams of fat per meal as well. So just keeping in mind,

this is a podcast episode, you’re not working with us one-on-one, I’m not exactly sure of your activity levels, I don’t know where you’re starting. So this is more of a general recommendation, right? But this is typically a good place to start for most people. So the most helpful thing for balancing and regulating your blood glucose or your blood sugar levels is gonna be protein. So big, big emphasis on protein here.

Hannah Aylward (16:13.07)
We want to make sure that we’re getting in enough protein. Protein is going to bump our blood sugar levels the least. Carbohydrates and sugars are going to bump our blood sugar levels the most. Fiber is a very helpful for slowing the absorption of the sugar into the bloodstream. Fiber is helpful for a million things. It’s kind of a magical, it’s like a magical ingredient. It helps to reduce cholesterol. It obviously helps your gut function. It helps support healthy bowel movements.

It helps move toxins out of the body. helps to regulate blood sugar levels. The list goes on and on. So make sure that you’re getting in enough fiber each day. And then the fat is also going to really help you stay satiated. And it’s going to help with regulating these blood sugar levels as well. So that’s what we really want to emphasize here. Most people are under eating protein. Honestly, most people are under eating protein and fiber, I would say are the biggest things that we see. People can kind of hit their fat intake and then they

They typically hit their carb needs too. So just make sure that you’re putting a big emphasis on protein there and keeping in mind as well that the goal is not to never bump our blood sugar levels. It’s very natural for your blood sugar levels to go up as if you eat something. That’s a natural response. We just want to avoid these like really high highs and these are really high lows. And we want things to be, I always say we want them to be like the tide, like rolling in and out versus like a tidal wave. So

We want things to be smaller, kind of like smaller bumps in the roller coaster versus like huge highs and low dips. So in order to do that, big emphasis on protein, aiming for 30 grams per meal, about 10 grams of fiber, and then 15 to 25 grams of fat per meal. You wanna, you know, add carbohydrates into this as well. I, once again, am not a huge fan of the low carb diets. We wanna be mindful of our carbohydrate intake, I guess, you know, kind of once again impacts or…

depends on your activity levels and a lot of other things. If you’ve been low carb for a really long time, you may actually need more carbohydrates, which I know can feel scary. A lot of things kind of factor into your ability to utilize these carbs efficiently as well. So that’s kind of a bigger conversation, but this is a really good place to start for everyone. So that was tip number one. The second most important tip is to avoid things that I call naked carbs.

Hannah Aylward (18:33.338)
So once again, carbohydrates are essential. They’re supportive of thyroid function. They’re supportive of healthy stress levels. They’re supportive of, mean, they taste good. They taste great. You need them. They help with energy production, all of that. We just want to avoid naked carbs. So this is a carbohydrate that doesn’t have any of these other key macros. So if we’re eating a carbohydrate, say it’s something like crackers, Even healthier crackers like almond flour crackers or simple mills crackers or whatever. I love those personally.

they’ve been shown to blood sugar a lot, like a ton, because they’re still primarily carbs, right? They’re not bad for you. We just want to make sure that we’re eating them with the right thing. So you’re going to be better off eating these, these crackers with avocado, with hard boiled eggs, with hummus even hummus is kind of mostly carbs too. So I would, I would want to get more fat in there and more protein in there. So you, you want to kind of pair these things properly, just like eating an apple and apple is going to be higher in carbohydrates.

It also has fiber in there naturally occurring, which is great. That’s going to help to kind of blunt that blood sugar high, but it’s, you know, higher in sugar. Once again, not bad. Fruit is not bad for you. Love fruit. We just want to pair it properly. So add some almond butter or chop up an apple and put it in Greek yogurt, that kind of thing. So you’re adding in protein and possibly fat with that as well. That’s going to help to blunt that blood sugar high, which then leads to that blood sugar low, which then leads to

disruptions in energy, potentially even disruptions in sleep later on, more cravings, that kind of thing. So pairing things properly. So aiming for no naked carbs. Another example would be oatmeal. People kind of hate on oatmeal. I don’t understand why. There’s like tons of research behind how supportive oatmeal is for overall health. Everyone says it’s full of glyphosate. It is if you’re not buying organic. So just buy organic. I don’t understand why people like get their panties in a twist over that one. I’m like, just buy it.

buy good quality. It’s like a dollar more and you can find it almost everywhere nowadays. So anyway, I don’t agree with the oatmeal is destroying your gut, like theory or narrative, whatever that like circulates social media. So oatmeal is great. It has some fiber in it could be higher, but it’s great. It’s typically like pretty easy for people to digest as well. So you want to avoid like eating a bowl of oatmeal with just, you know, maple syrup and brown sugar, something like that. Like those Quaker Oats packets that I lived on when I was a kid, I would eat them before.

Hannah Aylward (20:58.118)
like middle school every day. So instead, we want to pair this oatmeal with something like chia seeds, adding in some almond butter, adding in a scoop of protein powder or a scoop of collagen. Maybe we’re eating it with a side of eggs, right? You kind of see where I’m going here. We want to pair it properly. So oatmeal is going to be mostly carbohydrates, which once again are not bad and should not be vilified. We just want to make sure that we’re balancing it out. So adding in a scoop of vanilla protein powder.

adding in a tablespoon or two of chia seeds or flaxseed, something like that, psyllium husk, acacia fiber, partially hydrolyzed guar gum. These are all great fiber sources. You can stir that into there. You can add in a nut butter. You can add in some coconut oil. When you’re making it, you can even crack an egg in there for additional, you know, minerals, things like choline, great for liver function, additional protein. You can top it with Greek yogurt, right? So I kind of, when I’m making a bowl of oatmeal, I do all of these things. I usually add in

A scoop, half a scoop to a scoop of protein powder. You know, I need to get an unflavored one because sometimes the other ones are a bit too sweet for me, but I don’t want it to be too, too sweet. That’s why I pulled back on it. I’ll usually add in maybe a scoop of collagen. I’ll do like a big dollop of Greek yogurt, maybe like a quarter cup, like a solid amount of Greek yogurt on top. I’ll add in some berries. And then I always add in a good fiber source too, like chia seed or something like that. And then I’ll always do some…

good fat too. So that could be chopped nuts. could be pumpkin seeds, almond butter, cashew butter, whatever kind of floats your boat there. That is going to impact your blood sugar levels very differently than eating a bowl of oatmeal. That’s just like oats and sugar, right? or even oats and like fruit. Cause that’s going to be more carbs and sugar, which once again, not bad. We just want to pair these things properly. So to reiterate, tip number two is going to be, you know, avoiding naked carbs. And this is going to be, I find this to be tricky just because

Carbs are so easy to eat. It’s so easy to go for chips or crackers or a piece of toast, right? That’s a great other example. So a piece of toast with butter is going to be very different, impact your blood sugar levels differently than a piece of toast with avocado and an egg. You can see the difference there, right? With avocado and egg, we’ve got protein, we’ve got a hefty amount of fat. With just some butter, even though toast with butter is fantastic, and you will never take that away from me.

Hannah Aylward (23:15.46)
It’s going to be that we’re lacking some stuff. It’s going to be more of a naked carb. So have that with your eggs. Have it with, you know, Greek yogurt. Have it with breakfast sausage, that kind of thing. Okay. So then tip number three is going to be to eat regularly. No skipping meals. Not a huge fan of the big intermittent fasting for women, especially once again, if you’re a menstruating female, the body’s very sensitive to not having enough of what it needs, not having enough nutrient stores, not having just straight up, not having enough fuel.

that’s going to impact the body’s feeling of safety. And that the female body is that’s like the number one key marker. It’s always asking, do I feel safe? And if it doesn’t feel safe, we’re going to start to get symptoms, whether that’s low energy, missing period, weight gain, because it’s too afraid to lose any weight, that kind of thing. So we want to avoid skipping meals a lot. And we want to, I find the sweet spot for most clients is going to be

that like three to four and a half hour mark. I like to get clients to the point where they can go about four hours in between meals. But in order to do that, you have to eat enough. That’s the, that’s the big key. And you especially have to eat enough protein. So what’s interesting is a lot of the feedback that I get from clients and people come in to work with us, they come into healing guts and shaking butts, my signature gut repairing program, and they think they’re going to be on this diet. They think they’re going to feel really restricted. They’re going to be hungry all the time.

And usually it’s the exact opposite. They’re like, I’m less snacky. I have more energy. I’m not thinking about food as much. The food noise has gone down. It’s pretty amazing. And that’s because we start to balance these blood sugar levels, regulate the blood sugar highs and lows. And we are also doing that because we’re pairing these foods properly. So going back to, you know, making sure that you’re eating enough protein, fiber, and fat at each meal in order to go those four hours. But

Ideally, we want to space it out because that’s when our migrating motor complex or MMC, which is this nerve regulated function in the GI tract that helps kind of move through and sweep through debris in the small intestine into the large intestine. And that’s really important because it helps protect us from things like SIBO. It helps protect us from things like other dysbiosis, bloating, different kinds of digestive issues.

Hannah Aylward (25:32.174)
So that’s really a nerve regulated function and it only happens in a fasted state. So we want to give ourselves a little bit of time in between each meal for the body to like do what it’s meant to do. This is why, you know, snacking all day can cause bloating and kind of lead to more gut issues down the line. Always eat if you’re hungry, right? But if you’re hungry every two hours, you’re probably not eating enough at your meals. We need to increase the intake at each meal.

So you can go on three meals a day that are maybe heftier or more balanced, and then you’re not really thinking about it as much. That alone right there changed my life personally, because I used to be… I was thinking about my next meal when I was eating my current meal for many, many years, and I think that’s because I restricted a lot, and my relationship with food was not the best, and I was chronically dieting. So I never actually was satiated, right? Because I was counting calories, and I was minimizing, and…

I also think when you go to restrict yourself, you can’t wait to get out of that restriction. So it’s like, you can’t even be present with eating what you are currently eating, because you’re just thinking about the next thing, because it’s like scarce, right? There’s never enough, because you’re kind of putting those boundaries on yourself. So that was a lot of my history. So I would be thinking about my next meal constantly. I would be so excited to eat my next meal. There’s nothing really wrong with that.

But it’s a really good feeling when the food noise just quiets and you’re honestly just not thinking about it as much because it frees up a lot of headspace. You’re not worried about it. It’s a much like more gentle relationship to food and your body. And it’s totally possible. Once again, our clients report that back to us like a lot. And in order to do that, we’ve got to eat enough at each meal. So aiming for three balanced meals day. If you need a snack in there, that’s great. We just want to avoid

The long periods of time without eating, know, the overnight fast of 12 hours, think is a good, it’s good for most people. Rest to the GI tract, let it kind of do its thing, let it repair. And then once the day begins, you know, we want to make sure that we’re not waiting too long to have breakfast, we’re not waiting too long after that to have lunch and et cetera. So the 16 hour fast, I don’t see working for most people. Usually you feel really good at the beginning because you’re just running on cortisol and adrenaline, which feels great.

Hannah Aylward (27:47.692)
yes, it feels great. You’re like ready to do anything. You feel lighter, you’ve got energy. And then eventually it’s just a matter of time before you crash. And then the thyroid function takes a hit. The cortisol levels, you know, are up. You may even have trouble sleeping and high anxiety. And that happened to me as well, because I, of course, of course I couldn’t go through my whole health journey without trying intermittent fasting. I did that for a little while and it felt great at first because you feel lighter. And then eventually I was like, I can’t really sleep because

My body’s blood sugar levels were so erratic and my body was like, we don’t have enough. We don’t have enough fuel. So we want to make sure that we’re eating enough, avoiding the intermittent fasting, balancing our blood sugar levels through the food that we are eating and trying not to go like the six hours in between meals either. I know it can feel a little hard when you’re just like in the middle of your work day or you know, some life is happening, but keep a snack with you. Try not to push it too, too long. Okay.

The fourth biggest tip here is going to be adding in strength training. Physical activity helps to improve insulin sensitivity and it really allows your cells to use glucose for energy. What I like to say, you can think of your muscle as like a sponge, a sponge to this glucose, this blood sugar. The more muscle you have, the more you’ll essentially be able to tolerate carbohydrates and sugar. That doesn’t mean you should try to put on muscle and then eat a bunch of sugar, right?

But if you’re someone who you’re like, my blood sugar levels are all over the place or I’m having a really hard time losing weight. I’m eating less, right? We have to make sure that you are putting on muscle. We’ve got to make sure that your strength training. This essentially helps with insulin resistance. It helps with to improve that insulin sensitivity. So your body can use up the sugar that it’s getting better. And this is really key too, because you want to live a life where you eat healthy, but like

It’s Saturday morning and you go and you grab a donut and you enjoy it and it’s fine. Right. So when someone comes to me, when I’m speaking with a woman and she’s like, my gosh, if I even look at a donut, I gained 10 pounds. I’m like, you have metabolic dysfunction. That’s like a clear cut sign. You should be able to tolerate some of this here and there and, and feel like it doesn’t really, it doesn’t really make much of a difference. Right. So I used to feel like if I ate anything outside of my, the confines of my restrictive diet,

Hannah Aylward (30:08.576)
I would put on weight immediately. I simply do not do not feel that way anymore. I can eat very healthy and then I can go out and it’s Friday night. I’ll have a burger and fries. I’ll have a martini. I move on with my life. There’s no problem. I don’t feel heavily inflamed after that. I don’t feel like I gained five pounds after that. It’s just, it’s a small percentage of what I eat. It’s no problem. I move on. I eat a healthy breakfast the next day. Life continues. That’s what I want for all of our clients. So

Of course, you can’t expect to maintain your health or maintain your weight or your insulin sensitivity if you’re just eating crap all the time. But most of our clients and pretty much everyone listening to this, that’s not the case. The client that we see is putting in a lot of effort and already has so much education in this space and is eating very healthy. So that’s not really the case. But if we’re eating fries and pizza or whatever, these are just examples, add in whatever you want there, cookies, cakes, whatever.

If we’re eating that stuff like 10 % of the time, we shouldn’t really feel much of a difference. So strength training is going to help improve this insulin sensitivity. It’s incredibly important if you have PCOS, if you have hypothyroidism, if you have any issues regulating your blood glucose levels, if you have weight loss resistance, if you have metabolic dysfunction, strength training is absolutely essential here. And what’s also really cool is that you can kind of go and strength train like two to three times a week.

and still get massive, massive benefits from this. So it really doesn’t have to be this like seven days a week, know, Barry’s bootcamp crossfit situation. All it takes is like picking up weight that feels heavy to you. When you’re first starting, that could be five pounds. As you continue, it might turn into 30 pounds, right? You just have to pick up this weight and do very simple exercises. This can be squats. This can be lunges, bicep curls.

whatever, right? And, get some support on this too, if you need, but adding in the strength training just simply a couple of times a week can have a huge impact on your insulin sensitivity. This is going to help your body build this muscle. So in order to really build the muscle, it has to feel like strenuous to you where you get to those last couple reps and you’re like really fatiguing. So if you’re brand new to this, that could be like literally picking up five pounds or 10 pounds.

Hannah Aylward (32:31.584)
And once you hit rep number 12, you’re like, my legs are starting to shake or I can’t do many more of these. That’s your edge right there. Continue doing that until you feel like this is easy. I could do more of these, right? Then you want to increase the weight. Essentially. I’m not a personal trainer. Go get a personal trainer for a couple of sessions. If you are brand new to this, so someone can really teach you. I just do this personally and I love it. I’ve like totally fallen in love with strength training. I used to be a huge runner. I was like a cardio bunny. I love cardio.

I barely do it anymore. do love walking though. It’s like my, it’s also like my piece and I’m a big fan of that. But the strength training, it changed my body. It changed my body composition. It changed my ability to tolerate more carbohydrates. also just feels so amazing to feel strong and to feel like you can pick things up and to also feel like you’re getting stronger as time continues. It’s a very good feeling. It’s what’s also really cool is I used to run, I’d run like six miles a day back, back in the day before I knew better.

And I would sweat so much, right? Running like makes you sweat so much. And now, and I would really, I’d really be like pushing my edge, right? And cardio is still, it’s great for cardiovascular health. However, now I didn’t, I didn’t really realize that my workouts could be way more chill and get me like better results, if that makes sense. So now I can do 30 minutes of strength training a couple of times a week. My goal is like three to four, cause I’ve been doing it for a long time.

And that’s what I try to maintain. It’s, it’s relatively easy to maintain as well. My goal is not to get to like seven days a week. It’s really like hanging out in the three to four space. If I have a very busy week and I can get a strength training session in two times a week, I’ll take it. But my goal is at least three, if not four, based on how I’m feeling different phases of my cycle, my mood, my workload, all of that kind of stuff. But I used to really think I had to be like huffing and puffing and sweating so hard in order to like get a good workout in.

And then the irony was that I toned everything down. started picking up weight. I don’t sweat as like quite as much. And what I mean by sharing that is like, I’m not like, my gosh, I can’t breathe doing this. Right. Strength training doesn’t really give you that. It’s great to sweat, but I don’t have to like push myself to my absolute max to get a very effective workout. And that’s honestly not something I even believed a couple of years ago. I was like, if I’m not pushing and huffing and puffing and sweating, then it’s not doing anything.

Hannah Aylward (34:51.84)
I was only going for calorie burn and now I don’t even pay attention to that at all because once again, I can literally tolerate more calories and I can tolerate more carbohydrates when I add more muscle to my body. So we’ve got to hit our edge where we feel like we can’t do a ton more reps when we’re picking up this weight. We also have to make sure that we are eating enough protein to actually stimulate muscle protein synthesis as well.

in order to essentially like build the muscle that we’re trying to build. So we can’t also just do strength training and then not eat enough protein. So you’ve got it all here. Do your strength training two to four times a week, right? Pick up the weights that are a bit heavy for you. This is also going to seriously help with like bone density and keeping strength as we get older. I would have to fact check this, but I think it’s like once we hit 30 or 35, we start losing muscle each year, which is terrifying. That’s terrifying to me.

So my goal is to be strength training like for many years going forward. And it’s just way easier to do that when you start it younger. But I think when we’re in our 20s, when we’re in our 30s, we don’t think too much of it. But this is like prime time. This is like prime time to build the muscle, to maintain the muscle, to learn all of this stuff. So you can ease into getting older, just easier. All of it’s going to be more simple. You’re already on another stuff. You’re going to have more protein to begin with. Or excuse me, have more muscle to begin with. So start it now.

Everyone, um, Pilates doesn’t really fall into this camp. Yoga doesn’t fall into this camp. That’s, I’m not like knocking those things. I think they’re wonderful, but ideally if you’re going to do Pilates or you’re going to do a run or you’re going to do like a dance class or a yoga class, all of those things are awesome. You know, find what you love, make sure that you’re doing what you love, but also like at least get into strength training sessions per week for that blood sugar regulation. And once again, huge emphasis on this. If you do have PCOS, it’s really truly game changing.

I worked with someone, gosh, it was a couple of years ago at this point because I don’t see one-on-one clients anymore. But she had so many things. Her periods were so erratic, she was getting them every 30-something days, like 38 days. She had no energy. She had a lot of weight gain, weight loss resistance. She had PCOS. It was a lot. We were looking at a lot. Thyroid, PCOS, gut issues, energy, adrenals, all of that.

Hannah Aylward (37:08.834)
And one of the things that I had her do was add in strength training. We also had worked on a ton of other stuff. She had mold exposure. She had a parasitic infection. We did a lot of gut work with her. We did a lot of blood sugar regulation. And finally it took her body a second, but she started getting better. Very like she saw, she started seeing results, you know, pretty quickly, like little results here and there. Digestion started getting better. Energy periods went from like 38 days to coming, you know, every 31 days. was a huge, huge feat.

her TSH started normalizing. So we got started to see a lot of improvement. Her weight was the last thing to budge, which that can definitely happen you guys. The weight is the last thing to budge. So she was doing all of the right things and it wasn’t budging. And it took a good, it took a good like eight months, I would say before the weight started to budge. But I warned her, I said, girl, this is gonna take some time. You got to trust the process. And finally we started to see, to see it budge. And she’s like, she’s like a different person now. She like completely 180’d.

I have her testimonial somewhere, but she was a great, like very dedicated client as well. But one of the big things that we worked on was adding in the strength training and she was very intimidated by that because she had also gained weight and she was like, felt awkward in her body. You know, she was like, this is more than I’m used to carrying. She was exercising before, but she was doing like cycle classes, spinning classes, which just, it’s just not what her body needed. So I got her walking, I got her walking on incline and I got her doing strength training and in conjunction with all the other thyroid work.

the blood sugar regulation with nutrition, the optimizing sleep, the nervous system work. She kind of already had that down and then a lot of the gut work, her health completely 180. So pretty cool. you’re, if that’s like resonating with anyone listening, you know, reach out, come and work with us in a one-on-one program. There’s always the link to book a call, a strategy call with me on the, um, on these podcasts, episodes and the show notes. So book a call. We can chat through everything and see if we’re a good fit to help you and kind of dig, dig a bit deeper to see what’s going on.

And why all this is happening. It’s our favorite thing to do. Okay. So number four was going, was that strength training piece. And then number five, my last tip is going to be sleep, which can sound very basic, but here is the deal. You guys, this like blew my mind when I learned this and it kind of, sometimes I feel like you’ve got to be like shocked into making a change or, know, typically people don’t make changes until the pain gets too bad. Right. You have to kind of get like sick of your own shit before you really make a change.

Hannah Aylward (39:32.0)
And that’s unfortunate because I wish people would make changes sooner, including myself. I’m not, I’m not like immune to this, but usually you’d have, have to get to like your rock bottom point or your like breaking point before you actually make a change, which is just how the human brain works. So please do some of this before that happens if it hasn’t happened already. But I was, you know, my sleep is something that’s always been, it’s always been a thing for me. I have a tendency to go to bed late and wake up a little later and

When I look back, like this started in high school, I would be up watching TV, like trying to go to bed in high school and I’d be going to bed at like midnight and I’d be waking up at 6 a.m. for my classes. And I was tired, you know, I don’t know why I got into this bad habit. There was a lot going on in my house. Anyway, there’s background to that. But it’s interesting to think because I really built the pattern then. And it’s been it’s like probably the hardest thing to shake for me when it comes to my health. But when I read.

how much our sleep impacts our blood sugar levels, I was like absolutely shook. So getting not enough sleep or short sleep, fewer than like five to six hours per night, it actually increases your fasting blood sugar levels the next day. So you literally wake up more insulin resistant the next day after you don’t get enough sleep. Now, if you are a new mom and you’re like breastfeeding, just like, just don’t worry about this. There’s only so much you can do. Try to get in your strength training when you can, go for a walk when you can, use the nutrition tips that I’ve shared.

The sleep piece is hard and I get that and we do the best that we can and then when life gets a little easier, we move forward, right? But if you do not fall into that camp, please, please, please make sure that you are prioritizing your sleep. We’ve got to be getting at least seven hours. We’re looking for seven to like nine hours. Women tend to need more sleep than men as well. We’re just more sensitive to stress. You guys are more sensitive to stress. We feel the stress of others around us.

We’re more sensitive to not having enough for the body’s needs. Once again, the body has to feel safe in order to heal. It has to feel safe in order to have like proper hormone function, proper gut function. It’s really, really important. And getting enough sleep, helps to signal that safety, right? So poor sleep reduces our insulin sensitivity, meaning that your body’s cells become literally less responsive to insulin, that hormone that I’ve discussed that helps to regulate blood sugar.

Hannah Aylward (41:50.784)
And this makes it harder for your cells to absorb the glucose from your bloodstream, which can then lead to those elevated blood sugar levels. So when we have a lack of insulin sensitivity, we’ve essentially, you the cells become less responsive to the insulin. And then we have more of the blood sugar hanging out in the bloodstream because the insulin, it’s less responsive, right? So then we have those chronically high blood sugar levels, which can cause…

all sorts of bad stuff. can cause energy issues. It can cause like mental focus issues. It’ll cause weight loss resistance, et cetera. Sleep deprivation. It also affects the balance of several hormones that are important for blood sugar control. So of course we probably already can understand this, but when we don’t sleep enough, right? The body’s cortisol levels are going to be impacted. So cortisol is that stress hormone, one of the stress hormones, and it’s going to increase when you don’t get enough sleep.

and elevated cortisol levels can raise blood sugar by stimulating glucose production in the liver. Like I mentioned before, right? When our body, when our blood sugar levels dip really low pumps out cortisol in order to raise those blood sugar levels to like keep us from fainting and that kind of stuff. But if we’re running on high cortisol levels, high stress hormones due to lack of sleep, that’s going to impact our blood sugar levels not in the right way, not the way that we want them to. So

Sleep deprivation can lead to higher cortisol, which can then lead to higher blood sugar levels. Then we have growth hormone. This is going to regulate our metabolism and it’s also affected by poor sleep and lower levels can hinder your body’s ability to produce and use glucose efficiently. Then we have leptin and ghrelin and these are hormones that help to regulate hunger. These hormones become disrupted with poor sleep and this can lead to more cravings.

bigger appetite, especially for like higher carbohydrate foods. And this can also cause, you know, obviously this can cause an impact on our blood sugar because we have more cravings. We have more cravings for sugar and carbs. We’re going to eat those things. Those are going to impact our blood sugar levels. So that’s when you feel like you’re like fighting your body because you are hungry and you do have cravings, but you’re trying not to give into them. And everything just feels like way more difficult.

Hannah Aylward (44:06.972)
I am all here for like listening to your body and giving it what it needs. We just have to make sure that your body is actually like functioning properly in order for you to actually practice something like the intuitive eating, right? Like, I’m hungry. Let me eat something. If you’re just chronically exhausted and you’re running on cortisol and your leptin and ghrelin are being negatively impacted, you’re going to have all these cravings. So it’s, hard to kind of like listen to your body efficiently, if that makes sense.

So sleep deprivation causes issues with all of these, right? Growth hormone, cortisol, leptin, rilin. Chronic sleep deprivation has also been linked to insulin resistance, where your body essentially requires more insulin to manage blood sugar. And over time, this can increase your risk of developing type 2 diabetes. So don’t take this lightly. We’ve got to make sure that we’re sleeping enough because of all of these things. And this is something I think people overlook because it’s not like food exactly. When people think blood sugar, they think food specifically.

But we literally see in the research, when you don’t get enough sleep, you wake up with higher fasting blood sugar levels. You literally wake up more insulin resistant when you don’t get enough sleep. Now one night here and there, no problem. However, if that’s how you’re living your life, this is going to cause a whole cascade of issues going forward. So we wanna take this seriously. So those are my top five tips. The other kind of like…

honorable mention would be stress because stress is going to impact our blood sugar levels. And you’ll see that if you are wearing a continuous blood glucose monitor, I think they’re cool. I’ve never used one personally. Someone on my team is using one right now. It’s fun to do little experiments, but if you have any history of like disordered eating or restrictive eating, I wouldn’t really recommend it because it’s like, can just, it’s very easy to become hypervigilant. And then you’re like looking at every single thing that you eat. So if you already have like a complicated relationship with food, it wouldn’t be my recommendation.

It typically doesn’t show us anything we don’t already know as well. So like with all of the tips that I gave you today, you just use this and you’re pretty much going to be good unless we have other things playing a role. Like we’ve got the toxin burden or something like that, you know, that would require some deeper digging or the deeper gut issues. gut microbiome can also influence our blood glucose levels and our insulin sensitivity and our metabolic function. So there’s more, you know, that we can like dig into there.

Hannah Aylward (46:26.586)
You definitely want to work with someone through all of that. We help a lot of people with that kind of stuff. But if you use these tips, typically you won’t really, you know, you won’t really need like the blood glucose monitor. We’re not learning anything that is like, my gosh, that’s so different than what we thought. But we will see if you are having a stressful day, if you go into a stressful meeting or something like that, your blood sugar levels will literally rise and we’ll see that in the data, which is pretty crazy and why I am scared to use one.

Not scared, not scared, but you know, I’m like, gosh, do I want to know? Do I want to know what’s happening with my blood sugar? But I actually just got some blood work and everything looked great, which is fantastic. So I’m not too, too worried, but just to kind of recap on the biggest tips, let’s just run through them all together here. So, you know what you’re working on after this podcast episode ends. So first off is going to be eating balanced meals, protein, fiber, fat at every single meal. Number two is going to be no naked carbs, always pairing your carbs with a protein and a fat.

Number three is gonna be eating regularly, avoiding the skipping of meals, avoiding like six hours in between meals, avoiding the long periods of fasting. This is going to negatively impact your blood glucose levels. Number four is gonna be strength training. Any movement is helpful. Walking is also helpful, but strength training, if you’re like super serious about this, I could not recommend it more. It will change your health for the better. And then number five is going to really be optimizing sleep and getting enough sleep.

to help support insulin sensitivity. So those are my top five tips for balancing your blood sugar. I hope this was super helpful. And if you are interested in working with us more directly, if you want to dig deeper into your gut issues, dig deeper into other things that could be influencing your blood sugar levels, learn more about your body if you’ve resonated with anything that I said in this episode in regards to like sluggish thyroid function.

low energy, weight loss resistance, and then usually comes hand in hand with gut and digestive issues. We’d love to help you. And you can always find that link to book a strategy call with me in the show description of the shown notes of this episode. So until next time, I will see you next week. Bye guys.

Hannah Aylward (48:37.125)
Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Nutrient Dense Podcast. If you found this episode valuable, don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review, share with a friend, and come back next week for a new episode. See you then!