Daily Tip #31 Metabolic Flexibility Through Meal Spacing
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[00:00:00] How many times did you eat or snack yesterday? If you're like most Americans, it was probably about six to eight times or maybe even more throughout the day. But what if I told you this constant grazing, even on healthy snacks, might be sabotaging your metabolism and keeping you trapped in a cycle of cravings, energy crashes, and weight resistance.
~Here's what's happening. ~Here's what's happening inside your body. Every time you eat your blood sugar rises, and this triggers insulin to bring those levels back down because insulin controls your blood sugar. This is completely normal and healthy when it happens at appropriate intervals, but if you're eating every two hours and you are not metabolically healthy, you might be keeping your insulin levels chronically elevated. This creates metabolic chaos and it's one of the biggest drivers of inflammation, weight gain, ~and chronic disease that we see ~and chronic disease. When you wait three to four hours between meals, something remarkable happens in your [00:01:00] body.
Your insulin levels have to return to their baseline, which allows your body to tap into stored energy, both glycogen, which is stored. Sugar and fat for fuel. ~This pro, ~this process is called metabolic flexibility, and it's like having a hybrid car that can ~seamlessly, ~seamlessly switch between different fuel sources.
When you're constantly snacking, you're forcing your body to run on only one fuel and that's glucose, and you lose this incredible metabolic adaptation. Research shows that people who space their meals three to four hours apart have better insulin sensitivity, lower inflammatory markers, and more stable energy levels throughout the day.
They also can use fat for energy more efficiently than someone who is not as metabolically flexible.
When you give your body this digestive break, after about one to two hours, your blood sugar [00:02:00] levels and your insulin levels gradually return to baseline,
~your body. ~Your body switches from wanting to store energy to actually wanting to use energy. This brings me to today's daily habit challenge. That is to wait four hours between your meals today, assuming you're not. Diabetic or at risk for hypoglycemia. So make sure you check with your doctor first to make sure this is an appropriate strategy for you, as you should with any of these daily habit challenges, because this is just for educational purposes only.
But. If your doctor gives you the go ahead, I challenge you to wait four hours between your meals today, no snacking, ~no, just little something. Now, of course you can drink water or black coffee or black tea if you like that. Preferably black green tea prefer.~
Now you can drink water, black coffee, or black tea or green tea, which would be even more ideal because green tea is anti-inflammatory, so you can even double your anti-inflammatory benefits.
And so this can be very hard at the ~first time, ~first get go when you're trying to. Wait it out. But what you wanna do [00:03:00] is you wanna make sure that you eat breakfast, and it should be good quality protein, about 20 to 30 grams. Again, assuming you don't have any medical reasons where you can't eat a lot of protein, so check with your doctor and then you should have healthy fats and fiber, and that combination really helps you stay full ~and helps.~
~Gives you sustained energy and ~helps you to have sustained energy.
Now, four hours is too hard, then try three hours, and if you're used to eating every hour, then try two hours. So just do longer than what you normally would and, and then slowly extend the time until you're getting about three to four hours between meals. And if you do find that you are feeling hungry, make sure you drink water first. 'cause a lot of times when we think we're hungry, it's actually that we're thirsty. And if you drink a glass of water, you may find that your hunger dissipates.
This habit will also allow you to recognize real hunger ~Sometimes. ~Sometimes we're bored or we are stressed [00:04:00] and we don't know what to do, and we want something to kind of relieve our uncomfortable situations and we think we're hungry and we eat when in reality we're really not.
I hope this was helpful. ~Me know. So I will try to create some videos on that and ~let me know if there's any particular topics that you wanna know more about.
~Thanks for. Um, ~thanks for listening or watching, and have a fantastic day!
