If you find yourself having ups and downs, struggling with a little bit of belly fat and fatigue this article is for you.  When I sat down to prepare this week’s content I was really answering a question about “blood sugar issues” but the more I thought about it the more that I realized that we are all on a continuum with stability at one end and instability on the other and each of us falls somewhere between those end points, never being perfectly “balanced” or “imbalanced”.  Imagine how boring the literature would be if we could achieve perfect balance!  Blood sugar management is one of the most important jobs carried out by our endocrine systems.  Our bodies are working on this all day and all night, continuously and each of us could use a little help from time to time.

Some ways to know if this might be a current issue are if you feel hungry after a meal, crave carbs, need to eat right away when you do feel hungry, have symptoms of low blood sugar like dizziness, nausea and frustration, crave sweets after a meal, feel foggy-headed, have a bit more belly fat than you’d like or suffer from any type of exhaustion or fatigue.

Here are 12 food categories to get off the roller coaster:

• Foods high in nutrients.  Foods high in minerals like magnesium, boron and zinc and high in vitamins like all the B vitamins especially 1,3 and 5 and vitamin C can really help to get off of the roller coaster.  For example magnesium.  Magnesium gets burnt up by high insulin levels in the blood AND low magnesium levels can actually lead to insulin resistance.  Low magnesium can be a real downward spiral and can really contribute to if not cause blood sugar dysregulation.  You can break out of the magnesium spiral by (drumroll please) eating foods high in magnesium!  This is easy if you love green juice or greens in general and is also possible through nuts and seeds.  Each of the minerals and vitamins mentioned above is particularly important for keeping the blood sugar roller coaster steady or even hopping off of it if desired.
• Foods that don’t spike YOUR blood sugar or insulin levels.  This one is different for each person because we are all somewhere different along the continuum.  The only way to really know is to test blood sugar after eating using a blood sugar monitor.  I have had salads that have shot my blood sugar way up but also had fruits that did not.  This will be highly individual.  Another way to get a good idea is if there are foods that make you feel tired after eating them or if they cause you to experience any of the symptoms mentioned in the second paragraph above they are suspects.  Remember that it doesn’t mean that you have to say goodbye to those foods forever if they are healthy foods.  Really finding balance and then figuring out where those foods fit in can work too (unless it’s a jelly donut I really don’t advise jelly donuts…)
• Foods high in enzymes.  Enzymes come from two sources:  those made within our bodies and those made outside of our bodies.  Most of the protein we eat and much of the nutrients go into making enzymes in our own bodies.  Enzymes are like the commands that our bodies use to make things happen.  They are not the commanders but the commands themselves.  Enzymes make things in our bodies change, rearrange, digest, get promoted to other jobs…  They are really working behind the scenes very hard.  Enzymes from outside our bodies can come from food directly.  These enzymes can work to digest foods and clean our bodies including our cells and insulin receptors.  All raw fresh fruits/veggies have enzymes UNLESS they have been irradiated.  Yup.  As more and more of our fresh produce is irradiated coming into the country we are getting less and less enzymes from our fresh fruits and veggies.  Somebody stop them.
• Foods high in fiber.  It keeps the bad stuff moving out and creates an environment for the good stuff to be absorbed.  Fresh fruits and veggies, especially greens are going to be amazing here.  Fiber can also be a good way to eat fruits if they are usually too high in sugar to be eaten alone.  Some fruits might just be too sweet but if strawberries or raspberries on their own are a problem try raspberry kale kale raspberry kale kale.  It works for me.  Does it work for you?
• Foods high in water.  Water is each of our friends and some people are just not getting enough of it.  One way to get more water is to eat foods that are high in water content like cucumbers and fresh veggies.  Drinking water is definitely a good idea to keep everything moving and detoxing but the water that we can get from foods is important too.  If your body tolerates tomatoes, cucumbers and watermelon they may be good sources of water as well as nutrients.  They are also good dipped in guac… except the watermelon.
• Foods that optimize/heal digestion.  We already talked about water and fiber which are very important for optimizing digestion.  It is also important to heal the digestive tract.  This is not a quick fix but some foods that can help here are slippery elm, DGL licorice root, marshmallow and aloe.  L-glutamine is important too.  Healing the digestion can reduce inflammation in the body and less inflammation means more stable blood sugars.  It’s all connected.
• Stress-free foods.  What are stress-free foods?  They are foods that do not cause any digestive stress or stress on our immune systems.  This will be personal for everyone.  If you happen to be allergic to tomatoes please don’t eat them…. even though this article said to eat them.  They may be high in water but if they cause your immune system to go on red alert then you know they are contributing to inflammation and therefore adding to the blood sugar rollercoaster.  Other stress-free foods include non-processed foods with few ingredients that are easy to digest.  Usually if you are reading a label and you can’t pronounce an ingredient your body can’t pronounce it either.  Yes except quinoa.  Generally the more toxins in a food the more stressful it will be for the body.
• Organic foods.  Speaking of toxins organic and non-GMO foods are the cleanest we can get at this time with the exception of home-grown.  Eating clean takes a burden off of the body so that it can heal and perform metabolic functions more optimally.
• Foods that cause no auto-immunity.  Sometimes it can be very hard to identify triggers.  These may be foods that cause no overt symptoms but signal the body to attack itself in some way.  One example of this is gluten and how some of the peptides in it, when not digested properly, can signal the body to attack the thyroid or the thyroid hormones.  Dairy products can be a very important trigger for pancreatic autoimmunity which is particularly connected here.
• Foods that lower blood sugar.  In this section we will focus on foods that can lower blood sugar without raising insulin levels because that may be counter-productive for insulin resistance.  Two of these foods are carob and cabbage.  Both of these foods contain compounds that have been shown to lower both blood sugar and insulin levels after eating (yay).  The bonus of carob is that it tastes sweet.  I have used it as a sweetener when I stopped eating sugar and found this beneficial even before I knew about its blood sugar lowering qualities.  Cabbage can be juiced or borsch-ed if your body can tolerate digesting it.
• Foods high in the right bacteria.  This will of course be highly individual because we each are dealing with a different microbiome.  The two types of microflora most prevalent in the human guts are Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes.  Some strains of the former have been connected to obesity and diabetes.  It seems like we want those to be outnumbered by the Bacteroidetes although we need both types in abundance.  Unfortunately none of these bacteria are the ones we are getting from probiotics.  Yup.  To rebalance these organisms if your body will tolerate wild ferments and you have a safe place to make them that is a really good option.
• Herbs that lower blood sugar.  Fenugreek, cinnamon, ginger and basil are either available in your cupboard or in a store very near you.  These foods are excellent because they are everyday foods that are common flavours that will not seem medicinal or weird tasting at all.  Pesto.  Yes!  You can check out last week’s recipe for arugula pesto here  and check out this week’s recipe for Carob Spice Elixir here  with the addition of Maitake if you have it available for some extra blood sugar balancing effects.

Take it one day at a time and meal-by-meal.  You have already accomplished great things and have incredible body awareness or you would not be here.  Let’s hop off this roller coaster step by step together.

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Just in case you thought otherwise, NOTHING on this site or app can be construed as health advice.  I don’t know you.  I can’t give you advice and besides, I abhor telling people what to do.  You are the only person who can tell yourself what to do after doing your due diligence which includes consulting your medical practitioner.  If your medical practitioner doesn’t believe food is connected to health get a new one!

This article is more about family and friends who just have to tell you what they think whenever you have something going on.

Everybody eats food and everybody has a body.  It’s pretty easy to see how everyone has their own opinions about food, health and how the body works.  Some opinions are far more informed than others.  Most people have no idea how uninformed they actually are.

We all have experience with food and therefore everyone’s an expert.  As soon as friends and family hear that you are interested in health or perhaps changing the way you eat to better support your body it starts:  The opinions start flying in like paper airplanes in a grade three classroom.  In time it can get pretty overwhelming and although each of the ideas presented are unique they all start to blend together into a wash of unsolicited dietary advice.

I’m sure you have developed your own coping mechanisms for this type of advice.  I like to really listen to the person and find something we can agree on before moving on.  But before even that how do you know when you are actually getting good advice from a friend or family member and how do you pick it out from the seemingly endless stream of nonsense coming from media, institutions, professionals, friends and loved ones.  Here are five questions to ask yourself to guide your intuition as to whether your advisor may be onto something.

• Their advice is something that can be read in more than one reputable place.  Maybe there has been more than one reliable study on what this person is recommending or maybe their opinion has been featured in a wide range of well documented literature or across many cultures or traditional practices.  Don’t trust something just because it is in a medical journal.  Read it for yourself and determine the strengths and weaknesses of the studies done.  Cosmo, while fun to read on the plane, may not be the best place to get information on certain topics although if Cosmo says the same thing that is also featured in a published study in the Gastroenterology and if it’s also something that your grandmother told you once and there are other traditional cultures that have used this practice it may be worth a look.  This is not to say that if something has not been traditionally practiced or scientifically documented it is not true.  There are more things that we don’t know yet, haven’t tried, haven’t done and that haven’t been studied than we could possibly imagine.  It is always trial and error and risk/benefit analysis.  Fortunately most plants in and of themselves are not that risky.  Removing whole classes of foods from a diet can be if not done with knowledge.
• Their advice is not overly simplistic or black and white.  Yes, some things are black and white (elephant steps on toe, toe hurts) but food and health are nuanced and because experiences and exposures can vary so much it is great to receive recommendations that are not quite so dogmatic.  Thou shalt eat cabbage may or may not be the best diet ever for every person.  If the friend or family member giving suggestions seems to have an understanding of the nuances of food and how it works in the body they are likely to be dishing out better words of wisdom.
• Their advice does not limit or increase any essential nutrients to the point at which it could be damaging.  Yes the vegan or a grain free diet may seem a bit extreme to some but these types of diets do not necessarily limit or eliminate key nutrients from our foods.  Some diets that are really really low in vegetables or really really high in protein or fats may represent excesses and extremes that cannot be compensated for and may not be good advice for everyone to follow.  Certainly not long term.  No doubt the friend or family member giving advice about the diet has anecdotes to share on success with an extreme food plan but this does not mean that it will work for everyone.  When using the word extreme think.. is the idea of the diet extreme or are the nutritional elements of the diet extreme?
• Their advice focuses on something reasonable rather than obscure.  While your exhaustion may be a result of some exotic or terrifying sounding disease it could also be dehydration, lack of sleep or a B vitamin deficiency.  If their advice has you thinking about the apocalypse it may be time to consider advice from someone else.  For any sign or symptom look to the things you are exposed to every day and the most common causes in everyday life.  When you hear hoofbeats think horses, not zebras.  Unless of course you have zebras nearby.  Then think zebras.  The problem with googling symptoms is all that will come up are diagnosable diseases, not dehydration, sleep deprivation, stress, sensitivities, mold exposure or blood sugar swings.  Rule out the obvious and close-to-home first.
• Their advice is not designed to make them feel better about their own choices.  If you are eating kale salads all day long and you are taking advice from someone who is eating pizza and ice cream AND the advice is to eat more pizza and ice cream…  this may be a little suspect.  It’s not always going to be this obvious but friends and family can be driven subconsciously to keep us the way we “were” or make us more like them so that they can feel just a little better, just a little safer.  This can be particularly pronounced where one person is going through great healing and change and others start to feel left behind or invalidated.  While they may have some great advice they may also be driven by their fears and trying to change you.

There is good advice out there and there are wonderful people who love you with your best intentions in mind.  You cannot follow every piece of advice you receive from friends, family, strangers and professionals that are helping you.  Before you get overwhelmed consider whether their advice is something that can be read in more than one place, is not too black and white, not limiting essential nutrients, not focusing on anything totally obscure and not designed just to make the advisor feel better.  Keeping this in mind you will be able to take on what serves you, follow the advice that will lead you down the right path and move toward your goals with the help of well meaning friends and family as a team.

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