Discover the secret to curbing your hunger and achieving your weight loss goals in this episode of 'Weight Loss Made Simple.' Dr. Stacy Heimburger, the Sugar Free MD, delves into the impact of sugar on your hunger hormones and how cutting back on sugar can make weight loss easier. Learn how insulin, grilling, and leptin play crucial roles in your appetite and find out practical tips for reducing sugar intake and making mindful food choices. Don't miss this eye-opening episode that can transform your approach to dieting and mindful planning. Join us now for 'The Sweet Truth' and take the first step towards a healthier you!
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This episode was produced by The Podcast Teacher.
Welcome back to the podcast. Today I want to talk about a topic that affects all of us it’s sugar and it’s impact on our hunger now if you follow me at all, you know that I go by sugar-free MD and everyone assumes that means no sugar and it’s not really what it means. It just means that when I start losing weight and doing this work myself, I did a lot of research on sugar and it’s really amazing how much it affects our hunger And I like things to be easy so when I decided that I was going to try something different to lose weight and I had read that sugar could make me hungrier I thought well they may give up sugars so that I’m not hungry because wouldn’t weight loss. Be easier if we weren’t as hungry so that’s how I got into researching all of this about sugar, and wanted to share this with you today so to start, let’s talk about our hunger hormones. This is gonna be as less nerdy as I can make it for you, I’m gonna try not to be too technical, but I do want you to get a basic understanding so we have two key players in our hunger. We have grillen which is dubbed the hunger hormone, and I like to remember this one because it I think makes our stomach growl, right a growling growl. It means I’m hungry. My brain is signaling that it’s time to eat and so this hormone is high when we are hungry the other one is left in and that’s our full hormone so that’s the one that says we’ve had enough we’re good we’re satisfied and so those two work in harmony with each other But we have to eat so we taken glucose and that releases insulin and insulin really plays a huge role and how grilling and Leapin work so let’s talk about that for a second when we eat we break down our food into glucose molecules so in response to that our body releases insulin so we eat something we get glucose in our bloodstream we release insulin to clear that glucose out of our bloodstream. Our body really doesn’t like sugar floating around in our bloodstream. It wants to get it out of there so insulin is released and that tells our body to let’s use what we need for energy right now and we’re going to store. The rest is fat. OK so insulin kinda grabs onto that glucose and it puts it into the cells where it can be used for energy right away if we have more than we need at the time right to we eat a little bit more than our body needs right that minute it will store it as fat for later so that is our stored energy so we have our immediate energy from where we ate and then we have our fat is stored energy that a great way to think of it. OK are that fat hanging around is stored energy and it makes sense that our body would wanna work that way because we Came from a place of feast and famine. We wanted to eat as much as we could use what we needed right then and then store the rest for times that we were not eating. The problem is in America right now we’re usually eating all the time so we’re not really giving our bodies a chance to use that stored fat for energy. The other thing is is that when we get used to having sort of fresh energy, our body doesn’t really like to do the work of accessing our stored energy so the best way I heard this described is like if you think of our energy producing factory as a chef OK and so the chef likes to make us an energy meal using fresh ingredients, so it is going to turn up the Growin and it is going to ask you to take in fresh food because chef wants fresh food to make a meal if we are not taking in fresh food and it Hass to go to our freezer section and it Hass to get frozen food and it Hass to do a little bit more work right it’s got a thought it’s gotta be a little more creative because it’s not gonna be quite as fun as fresh food but that’s using our fat or stored energy for energy when we need it if we don’t eat Now too much insulin can be a problem if you think about the fact that insulin is taking glucose and putting into ourselves for energy and then takes the excess and stores. It is fat, and we are not giving ourselves a chance to access that fat we’re gonna run out of fat storage, and so what used to be pretty easily for insulin to put that glucose away becomes much more difficult so for you visual learners out there like me it’s like packing a suitcase. OK so all of our fat needs to go into a suitcase the suitcase is empty it’s very easy, right it doesn’t take much energy at all for insulin to put that fat into storage when it doesn’t take energy to put the clothes into the suitcase now if our fat stores are full, so our suitcase gets full Lot harder to put more stuff in there right this is where you might have to sit on the suitcase to close it right like really trying to jam it in there and it takes a lot more energy so it starts to take a lot more insulin to push that into storage to push that extra glucose into storage This is how I like to think of insulin resistance were resistant to the initial amount of insulin that we needed because we have run out of room for fat storage so we need more insulin to push that fat push that extra glucose into storage. The other problem can come if we eat something very sugary very concentrated sugar, so juice, apple juice versus an apple an apple we eat it glucose comes into our bloodstream. We got some fiber we’ve got some stuff to damper the response a little bit and then insulin released. We use what we need. We store the rest everything works great, now if we take that same apple and turn it into apple juice, the amount of sugar that hits our bloodstream is significantly higher so instead of having this little bump in our bloodstream of glucose, we have a huge spike, and with that does is sort of tells our brain to flood the system with tons of insulin right like of getting two sugars. We got 2000 sugars so our body releases a ton of insulin to get rid of it sometimes it’s over and then we’re gonna get a crash where our blood sugar may go lower than our body wants to be because we’ve sort of overshot with this massive insulin release so this is where you might see people talking about a sugar crash or I just feel really tired after I eat high sugar meal is our body has sort of gotten out of whack. We’ve released too much insulin because we took too much sugar, OK so this is how too much sugar can be a problem the other thing I want to talk to you about let’s go back to our friends and Lefton if we take too much sugar and then we have too much insulin release our blood sugar goes too low cause we overshot, and now we’ve triggered Growin so even though we may have just eaten a very calorie dense High sugar meal that should calorically leave a satisfied and maybe even volume leave us satisfied our body is going to tell us we are hungry and because it is trying to reestablish this glucose balance so I can tell you I was like this I was hungry truly physically hungry every two hours and it’s because I was just had messed with the cycle so much that it was not under control and my blood sugar would go low and my body would tell me I was hungry and I would eat so that is how we can sort of mess with our growing with our hunger hormone our growing hormone. If we have too much sugar we can overshoot then our body needs to correct and so we are hungry again even though sometimes intellectually we think like I probably shouldn’t even be hungry yet, but I am that’s what’s going on and let’s talk about Lon Latin is our I feel full Latin. It’s very interesting because it needs two things in your stomach to stretch a little bit to be activated it also cannot have too much insulin around if we have a big insulin surge that blocks leptin isn’t that interesting right so I always use cookies and cake are my two examples Where I can eat cookies and I swear my body does not process it as food and I have decided this is why it is such a sugar hit to my system that left and is not released so my brain does not think it is fault. It really is not counting it as food. My didn’t eat enough to stretch my stomach to release slept in but even if I did, it’s so much insulin that I’m blocked. My brain doesn’t know that I ate that I’m supposed to feel full king cake is the same way so much sugar so here you’re eating this piece of cake that might be significant size no judgment right but it’s so much sugar that your brain doesn’t even register it that you ate because you’re left in is totally blocked Now I thought I was doomed I was not doomed I thought I just messed up my hunger hormones so much I was never gonna be able to fix it, but that really was not the case. It’s why when I first started my journey, I decided to go 90 days without concentrated sugar And to not snack between meals what happens this was the knowledge that I had to make that decision I wanted to stop this huge sugar influx when I ate give my hunger hormones a chance to work like they’re supposed to and I didn’t wanna be constantly feeding my body. I wanted to give my body some time in between meals to maybe get to using some fat storage like send little chef to the freezer, if we’re eating a lot of sugar and we’re snacking all the time none of those things can happen our hunger hormones are gonna be out of whack and chef is never gonna be able to go to the freezer and access our fat storage for stored energy, so what are some things we can do in addition to decreasing our sugar Well can help reduce growing levels so we protein that does signal to growing or growing hunger hormone to calm down fiber, rich foods, whole grains vegetables, all that that helps slept in OK so we have protein veggie meal combos we are satisfying our growler and we are letting our leptin tell our brain we’re good OK interestingly, I always promote sleep sleep or lack of sleep really does mess with our levels so you may just anecdotally see this if you’re really tired do you feel like you’re hungry or maybe you’re even craving sugary foods this is why lack of sleep, totally messes with your growing hydration same thing Our body if it is thirsty and wants water and you are not giving it water will start to release Grellin because it’ll take the water from food if it has to so if it’s thirsty, it is going to increase your grilling so some of these old diet rules are making sense right if you’re hungry drink a glass of water first this is why you might not truly be hungry for food. Your body is hungry for water and so it is releasing your hunger hormone to get you to drink something regular exercise not need to be super strenuous just some movement can really improve your left and sensitivity. Meaning I don’t need quite as much to feel full. I just need the normal amount. I’m more sensitive to left and I can feel it better And of course mindful eating eating slowly and mindfully can reduce grow and give in a chance to signal that we’re done the sugary snacks and these processed foods consider maybe 2024 you could use a little bit less of those again I did it because I want things to be easy and I don’t like to be hungry trying to put my health first when I was hungry every two hours really felt like torture. I really didn’t like it so reducing my sugar and processed foods and limiting my snacking was really just to give my hunger hormones a chance to recalibrate, and it was so much better I could easily start to go for even six hours without being hungry Which made more sense from what I was eating but if I had a full breakfast I shouldn’t be hungry two hours later so it just really helped me. I hope it helps you. I hope that this was helpful if you need help making a 2 pound plan and sort of putting some of this in a practice. I am happy to help Please consider subscribing reading and reviewing the podcast it really does help reach more people and I just wanna thank you for joining me understanding how this all works this little nerdy episode for you can really be a vital step and improving your health and wellness goals. Knowledge is power so staging for more episodes. I’ll see you next time. Take care and have a wonderful week bye