8 sneaky ways you’re negatively impacting your blood sugar and how to repair it
Blood sugar balance seems like a hot topic these days, but are you often left wondering how to actually achieve it and why it matters?
Blood sugar balance is an important part of our overall health. When we have repeated blood sugar spikes and crashes it can cause serious health implications overtime (including heart and kidney disease and strokes). It’s also our main source of energy and can impact many functions of the body we need to thrive day to day (including melatonin, the hormone that helps deliver us restful sleep!)
The good news is, we can largely repair our blood sugar through lifestyle swaps, often without needing to go on medication. And it doesn’t mean that we have to view it through a perfectionist lens, treats are a part of life! It’s when we have consistent, continual blood sugar spikes and crashes that we are harming our health, so making small consistent daily lifestyle changes can really add up.
Without further ado, here are 8 sneaky ways that you might be unknowingly impacting your blood sugar. Although food is an important basic building block of blood sugar, most of the list is actually NOT food related!
1. You’re not balancing your micronutrients: Eating enough protein, fat and fiber alongside your carbohydrates can help to blunt blood sugar spikes. Let’s say that you’re currently eating avocado toast for breakfast, often touted as a healthy breakfast. While the fat will help to blunt the blood sugar spike that comes from the toast, adding some protein like eggs and spinach sauteed in avocado or grassfed butter is an even better bet to keep you feeling full and satisfied and avoid the negative reactions of a blood sugar crash.
2. You’re not eating the ideal amount of carbs for your body: Everyone has a different level of tolerance to carbs, and this can vary with factors like exercise or breastfeeding/pregnancy. So while eating protein, fat and fiber will help blunt a spike, it doesn’t always save a spike if you’re eating something outside of your carb tolerance. Additionally, nutrient dense carbs that are wrapped in fiber (like a sweet potato) are going to have less of an impact on your blood sugar than even a “healthified” processed food, even if the carb amount is the same. If you have a blood sugar monitor, watch out for delayed blood sugar swings- sometimes it can look like our body can handle things (I see you ice cream!) when it’s actually causing a delayed blood sugar spike.
3. You’re not getting enough, restful sleep: This is a tricky one, because it can be a little like the chicken or the egg scenario. Imbalanced blood sugar can impair your sleep on its own, but we need restorative sleep in order to heal our hormones. Try not to view a sleep routine through perfectionist lenses. Start with your night routine and work your way into adding in what you can to improve your sleep (limit screen time, try a weighted blanket or sound machine). I’m in the thick of sleep regressions with our 8 month old and 3.5 year old, so coming from someone who used to have a SOLID sleep routine down that has gone haywire, I’m right there with you and taking small steps towards bringing it back!
4. You’re skipping meals or intermittent fasting too long: I won’t go into too much detail on intermittent fasting here because it could be it’s own blog post. While intermittent fasting can have many helpful benefits for the right person, it’s detrimental for the next. If you’re reading this blog post and are dealing with imbalanced hormones or blood sugar, you are likely to be in the latter group, especially the delicate balance of female hormones. While it IS important to have breaks from eating, it’s crucial that you’re following an eating schedule that follows our natural circadian rhythm. I recommend eating three macronutrient balanced meals a day (plus a snack if breastfeeding/pregnant), stopping after dinner and starting the day with a balanced breakfast- this gives us a natural pause in eating while still following our bodies internal wisdom.
5. You’re either over or under-exercising: Movement is one of the most important things we can do for our health. It’s often recommended to work out right after a carb heavy blood sugar spiking meal, but if our hormones are extra sensitive (especially if you’re also dealing with thyroid issues), workouts that are high intensity can cause more damage to our blood sugar. If you’re feeling worse after an intense workout, don’t skip out on the importance of daily movement, just try more low impact workouts (like walking or pilates).
6. You’re constantly operating in a state of overwhelm or hustle: Stress can be a huge blood sugar imbalance trigger, and many of us are living in a constant cycle of stress and burnout. I share a ton of stress management tips on Grounded with Jenni content, but the best place to start? Just take space for yourself. Give yourself a break from your phone in the morning, take time to get clear on your true priorities, and find a pocket in the day where you can just breathe.
7. You’re using wine to calm your nervous system: I love wine as much as the next gal, but just know that alcohol is a toxin to your body, so each time that you drink it, your body has to work double time and shut down other processes in order to rid itself of the alcohol, so overconsumption, drinking it too late or without food can wreak havoc on your blood sugar. Again, we don’t need to be perfectionists about it, but try limiting to 1-2 glasses per week and pairing your glass of wine with food as much as possible.
8. And the one that might be tough to hear… you’re sensitive to coffee: I tried all of the above to lower my blood sugar and while they helped tremendously, it still wasn’t in that healthy optimal range. So I took the plunge to cut out caffeinated coffee. I had already started to pull back on my coffee, but it was when I started drinking one decaf cup with breakfast rather than on an empty stomach and stopping before 12, bam! My levels drastically lowered. I notice any days where I have a second decaf cup or drink coffee too late in the day, my blood sugar goes haywire.
Your blood sugar could become imbalanced through any of the reasons above, and sometimes more! If you don’t have a blood sugar monitor (like Levels) to track, start tracking with your phone notes app or a spreadsheet for a week or two. Record your food intake, coffee consumption, stress levels, sleep and exercise and note anytime that you have a mood swing, feel an energy crash, shakiness and/or brain fog- these can all be signs of blood sugar imbalance. The more you start to pay attention, the more you will become in tune with your body’s signals and what your own personal blood sugar signals are.
I recognize there are a lot of habits on the list, many that are hard to start! I recommend just choosing 1-2 to really focus on and go slow, this will really help to make habits stick. And if you recognize a habit that you know is probably your trigger but you’re scared to start it… that’s probably the one your health is most depending on you to start with. Just go slow, and overtime I promise the benefits will outweigh that initial fear!
And if you need added accountability, this is exactly something we can work together on in my signature coaching program. I offer complimentary discovery calls on my website where we can find out if we’re a good fit!
