How enjoying a boozy bevie can lead to food cravings and what we can do about it.
TL;DR: Alcohol messes with our liver’s ability to keep steady blood glucose levels. This tricks our brains into thinking we need to eat more food to avoid low blood sugar. (about 6.5 min read)
Metabolic tips for avoiding over-eating when (responsibly!) enjoying adult drinks:
Stay hydrated! This helps your liver do its job better and faster.
Choose alcohol + food combinations that won’t create a “sugar crash”.
Dance (aka move around) to increase circulation so your brain, liver, and pancreas can communicate faster through signals in the bloodstream!
Bad pizza places are always open late because nobody goes there for pizza. We go there for the post-bar snacks. (RIP Hi Fi Pizza, you were good to us/your pizza was very bad.) Greasy spoon diners, really inauthentic Chinese take-out, any place serving bare-minimum nachos* isn’t really selling us food. They are selling us a fix to our late night food cravings. That’s why the food doesn’t have to be good; it isn’t actually the product. The real product is being open during the off-hours.
Why is it so common to be hungry after drinking? Alcohol messes with our liver and brain’s ability to properly control our blood glucose levels (BGLs) and this leads to a “sugar crash” (hypoglycemia) that tricks our brains into thinking we need to eat more. Normally, our livers will sense when BGLs are getting low and they will put more glucose into the blood stream. The liver does this by making new glucose from other molecules (gluconeogenesis) and from breaking down glycogen into individual glucose molecules (glycogenolysis). Your liver then releases this glucose into the blood stream so that your BGLs don’t fall too far.
How alcoholic beverages affect your blood glucose depends on the type of beverage, your hydration state, and when you last ate. It’s been known since the mid-70s that alcohol increases insulin secretion in response to food (some of the early studies gave people a 2oz whiskey pour an hour after lunch; the scientific method really does come down to “fuck around and find out”…). This means that drinking before eating will result in more insulin being in the blood before glucose from food hits the bloodstream. This is sometimes interpreted as “good” for blood glucose control, but that is a superficial interpretation. Anything that makes it harder for your liver to maintain proper BGLs is not good for blood glucose control.
Insulin is still a growth factor, and having more insulin around = storing more food as fat or glycogen. The later it is in the day, the more of that food is going to get stored as fat since your fat cells become more sensitive to insulin later in the day (ie, less insulin is required to get your fat cells to take glucose out of the bloodstream, so the fat cells can take it out more quickly. This is in contrast to earlier in the day when you’re muscles do more work to take glucose out of your bloodstream and less goes to your fat cells.)
Beer and sweet cocktails cause “sugar spikes” followed by “sugar crashes”. All alcoholic beverages are going to cause someone’s body to release extra insulin. Extra insulin in the blood = sugars get taken out of the bloodstream really quickly, leading to a “sugar crash”. In addition, some alcoholic beverages like beer and sweet cocktails contain simple carbohydrates (aka sugar) themselves and are going to contribute to a larger sugar spike, a release of even more insulin, and a harder sugar crash.
Staying hydrated is a really important tool in fighting this sugar crash. While the absorption of simple sugars into our bloodstream can be slowed down by eating foods with fiber, the absorption of alcohol cannot be slowed down. Ethanol (the specific alcohol that we drink) can pass through our cell’s membranes. So it’s immediately hitting our blood as soon as it hits our mouth, stomach, and intestines.
Choosing low-sugar beverages and snacks can also help reduce the sugar spike and dampen the sugar crash. There is no getting around the extra insulin that is coming from drinking alcohol, so a sugar crash is very hard to avoid unless we make a conscious effort to drink alcohol slowly, with water, and with some moving around (mingle with friends, walk to a new bar a few blocks away after a drink or two**, dance) so that our livers have time to deal with everything.
All alcohol makes it hard for your liver to release glucose and lowers BGLs. Normally, when your BGLs drop, your pancreas and liver communicate with each other†, and your liver releases glucose into the bloodstream to prevent low BGLs (hypoglycemia). Alcohol inhibits your liver’s ability to put glucose into the bloodstream - so even if BGLs don’t drop that low, the liver isn’t able to regulate things it normally does and we have metabolic imbalance. Metabolic imbalance is stress.
“Sugar crashes” make us feel hungry. All of this leads to our brains thinking - correctly - that our livers are not able to put glucose into the bloodstream. Which then leads our brains to thinking - incorrectly!! - that our livers must not have the supplies available to make and release glucose. Unless you’re having a post-marathon or endurance cycling session beer, you do in fact have enough glycogen. You just can’t access it. You don’t need more food. But you want it because alcohol has messed up communication between your liver and brain.
Metabolic tips for avoiding over-eating when (responsibly!) enjoying adult drinks:
Stay hydrated! This helps your liver do its job better and faster.
Choose alcohol + food combinations that won’t create a “sugar crash”.
Dance (aka move around) to increase circulation so your brain, liver, and pancreas can communicate faster through signals in the bloodstream!
†For my nerds: Glucagon is released by the pancreas when BGLs are low and this stimulates gluconeogenesis and glycogenolysis in the liver. The liver also senses BGLs via the high binding affinity of hexokinase IV (HK IV; aka glucokinase), which acts as a rheostat to let the liver know when BGLs are high (glucose binds to HK IV) or when they start dropping (glucose stops binding to HK IV). Consistent BGLs are so important that there are multiple mechanisms and layers of regulation.
*I have a penchant for nachos and an entire rating system to compare across establishments, I take nachos seriously.
**And I mean WALK. Don’t ride your bike. You are not good at biking while drunk and please don’t end up with a nasty scar or more serious injury before you take this to heart. This will be the one and only time I am not pro-biking.
McMonagle, J. and P. Felig. (1975) Effects of ethanol ingestion on glucose tolerance and insulin secretion in normal and diabetic subjects. Metabolism.
Emanuele, N.V. et al. (1998). Consequences of alcohol use in diabetics. Alcohol Health and Research World.
Your gut wants you to be happy.
TL;DR: Your gut (and its associated microbes) produce the majority of neurotransmitters in your body, and play a major part in how “stressed” (physiologically and psychologically) we feel. Taking care of our guts helps us feel better in many ways. (About 6.5 min read)
Metabolic tips for keeping your guts happy:
Get 25g of fiber a day. This increases diversity in your microbiome.
Stay hydrated! This reduces metabolic stress by allowing us to absorb food faster.
Avoid eating a lot of simple carbohydrates at once, unless you’re actively moving & absorbing those sugars. Dumping simple carbs into our guts when we aren’t moving increases metabolic stress in our intestinal cells and causes Leaky Gut Syndrome.
Your gut wants you to be happy. So how do you keep your gut happy? First, who cares if your gut is happy? You do and you care a lot because everyone hates a tummy ache. No one wants to be bloated. The sale of probiotics in North America is forecasted to reach almost $15 million in USD by 2025. People aren’t buying prebiotic and/or probiotic supplements because they taste good - those things are on the market because a lot of us want our guts to feel better and we haven’t found a sustainable way to do that yet. (Spoilers: you have to eat enough fiber and you have to take breaks to move/stretch throughout the day, and most people aren’t, and it’s leading to a lot of ppl having gut issues).
Your gut communicates with your brain through an extensive nervous system. This is called the “enteric nervous system”. Why are there so many nerves and neurotransmitters in your gut? Because you cannot stay alive without eating essential nutrients, so you sure as shit better know what you’re eating. Food also gives you information about how “stressful” the environment is.
Here we mean “stressful” in a very “basic needs” sense: Are you living in a place that has enough nutritious food to support you? Your body detects the fat and sugar content of food to help you make that decision. Are you living in a place that has a lot of parasites? Your gastrointestinal (GI) tract is VERY sensitive to different signals that say you’ve eaten something you shouldn’t have. (No, not too many slim jims on your last road trip, although that isn’t helping…)
Eating too much non-nutritious food sets off the same “danger” pathways in your body as pathogens do. Non-nutritious foods are foods that don’t contain fiber, are low-protein, low-vitamins, or high in simple carbs. They cause metabolic imbalance and set off the same signals in the immune cells in your intestines and liver cells that pathogens do.* This is one of the ways that non-nutritious foods increase inflammation and make us feel bad. Metabolic imbalance is low-key sickness.
Your gut has a lot of nerves so that you can keep things moving. Things = your body. The rest of your body moves by using the fuel from the food you eat, so you need to be able to absorb that food across your intestinal cells. Your intestines themselves also need to keep food moving through them, so the smooth muscles that line your intestinal cells need signals from nerves so they continue to contract and push food down your GI tract. If you do happen to ingest something you shouldn’t have, and your body needs to get rid of it ASAP, your gut and brain need to quickly, and appropriately, communicate with each other.
Your gut + serotonin (and other neurotransmitters!) The saying “gut feeling” is literal. The fact that your intestinal cells produce the MAJORITY of serotonin in your body is becoming common knowledge. Bacteria can modulate your gut’s production of serotonin, and your gut microbes themselves produce a wide range of other major neurotransmitters. In fact, your gut bacteria produce so many neurotransmitters that “bacterial endocrinology” was proposed as its own field of study in 1993.
Your gut bacteria also produce the majority of dopamine (the “happiness” hormone) in your body, and there is an interplay between your gut microbes, dopamine, adrenaline (aka epinephrine), and norepinephrine. Adrenaline and norepinephrine are both involved with “alertness” and will increase your heart rate. Adrenaline is released when extra cortisol is also released so that you can get moving quickly. Norepinephrine is continuously released and is the most common neurotransmitter of the sympathetic nervous system (the nervous system you aren’t consciously in control of).
Your gut microbes + mood. Wow this one is a quagmire! And we don’t know enough yet to really say anything more than you need a diverse population of gut microbes** and you need them to not be causing inflammation by trying to get past your gut lining into your bloodstream, or by making it into your blood and causing inflammation in the liver. We do know that metabolic stress is associated with depression, that a variety of mood and cognitive disorders (like anxiety and Alzheimer’s) are more common in patients with insulin resistance, and that these patients have a tendency to have reduced diversity in their gut microbiomes than healthy individuals. You increase gut diversity by eating fiber. You decrease the amount of bacteria getting into your bloodstream by reducing inflammation in your intestines since inflammation causes Leaky Gut Syndrome.
So how do we keep our guts healthy? We eat a minimum of 25g of fiber a day and we don’t dump sugar into our guts faster than we can absorb it. We stay hydrated. Basically, we maintain metabolic balance. If we want to feel good, we need to feel good in our guts.
Metabolic tips for keeping your guts happy:
Get 25g of fiber a day. This increases diversity in your microbiome.
Stay hydrated! This reduces metabolic stress by allowing us to absorb food faster.
Avoid eating a lot of simple carbohydrates at once, unless you’re actively moving & absorbing those sugars. Dumping simple carbs into our guts when we aren’t moving increases metabolic stress in our intestinal cells and causes Leaky Gut Syndrome.
*The molecues that send a “danger - pathogens!” signal to your immune cells and liver cells are called pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs). PAMPs activate a “danger” pathway that causes inflammation - rightfully so, since your immune system needs to fight an invader. The same “danger” pathway can be set off by metabolic imbalance when there are no pathogens around. This is called “sterile” inflammation and the molecules are called danger-associated (or damage-associated) molecular patterns (DAMPs).
**The first study showing that “good” bacteria reduced anxiety used germ-free mice and measured their response to a restraint stress test. Mice who were then treated with Bifidobacterium infantis showed less anxiety and “stress” behaviors compared to mice that had a germ-free intestine track as well as mice that were treated with E. coli, meaning that some specific bacteria (in this case, B. infantis) can reduce anxiety and improve stress responses.
Christ, A. et al. (2018). Western Diet Triggers NLRP3-dependent innate immune reprogramming. Cell.
Sudo, N. et al. (2004) Postnatal microbial colonization programs the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal system for stress response in mice. J. Physiol.
Strandwitz, P. (2018) Neurotransmitter modulation by the gut microbiota. Brain Research.
How stress leads to bloating and what we can do about it.
TL;DR: Stress (psychological & physiological) can lead to increased inflammation in our intestines and decrease how well we absorb food. Poor absorption makes more food available to our gut microbes, which produce gas and bloating. (about 7 min read)
Metabolic tips for reducing stress and bloating:
Stay hydrated to help food get absorbed across your gut and into your blood faster!
Take breaks to stretch and move around throughout the day: increased circulation helps absorb food, reduce inflammation, and break up pockets of gas so they move through your intestines with less uncomfortable build-up.
Get enough fiber (25g per day) in your diet and reduce simple carbs when you aren’t moving to reduce gut inflammation and IBS symptoms.
Stress, quite literally, is a gut feeling. Stress - both psychological, like a stressful work deadline, and physiological, like not getting enough sleep - causes a number of changes that hurt our guts. Some of those immediate changes include decreased blood flow to our intestines and slower absorption of food. This means that our gut microbes spend more time with our food and have more time to turn it into gas before we can absorb that food into our bloodstream (even if the microbes themselves are “good” and our microbiome is “healthy”). Extra gas = uncomfortable bloating.
If we stay stressed out for too long, these short-term changes compound on each other. Remember that stress = metabolic imbalance, and chronic stress leads to inflammation. When our guts (aka intestines, if you want to be technical about it) get inflamed, we can get bloated or have other gastrointestinal (GI) issues like diarrhea, constipation, IBS, and/or leaky gut syndrome*.
Stress increases cortisol, which moves more blood toward your muscles and away from your guts. Your brain’s first (probably unconscious) response to stressful situations is literally to try to get you to run away from the problem. There’s a release of cortisol and one of cortisol’s actions is to move more blood toward your muscles and away from your intestines. This preps you to move fast, but the trade-off is that you digest slow.
Cortisol also interferes with insulin signaling, which raises the amount of insulin that needs to be released into your blood to bring your blood glucose levels (BGLs) down after eating if you don’t move around. Extra insulin itself is stressful and leads to insulin insensitivity, and eventually, type II diabetes.
Slower absorption of food from your gut into your blood increases the amount of gas that your gut microbes produce. This is because there’s more time for the food to sit with your gut microbes. Bloating is always caused by something not getting absorbed across our intestines - sometimes it’s a molecule we can’t digest (like the lactose in cheese on pizza if we’re lactose intolerant), sometimes it’s a molecule we just don’t digest fast enough (like the glucose overload from binging sugar cookies at our desk instead of taking a proper break).
Diets that are low in fiber and high in simple carbs increase gut inflammation. Fiber is an important mediator between your gut microbes (all the bacteria and yeast that are supposed to live in our intestines) and your immune system. Our gut microbes will break down fiber into molecules that let our immune cells know everything is okay. When we don’t get enough fiber, our immune cells that patrol our intestines don’t get the “a-okay” signal and start getting aggro at the intestinal border.
To add insult to injury, diets that are low in fiber are often higher in simple carbohydrates. Overwhelming our intestinal cells with too much sugar causes a traffic jam of sorts, since we can only transport so much of a certain molecule across our intestines at once. This increases gas production. AND it also causes biochemical stress to our intestinal cells by producing too many “reactive oxygen species” (this is the biochemical term for “oxidants”; you have probably heard of “anti-oxidants” that help reduce inflammation and/or slow aging and/or prevent disease. Well, like the name implies, anti-oxidants counteract oxidants, which are the things that increase inflammation, quicken aging, and progress disease.)
“Burnout” could be a pretty good description for how stress burns your gut nerves out. There’s been a lot of research showing that stress from high sugar, low fiber diets mess up the nerves that serve our intestines, and that this is partly due to increased reactive oxygen species*. Our intestines have a layer of smooth muscle cells that need to contract in order for food to continue moving down the line from our stomachs toward our butts. If the nerves aren’t communicating with the intestine’s smooth muscle properly, then food doesn’t move through. This, again, slows digestion, leads to possible gas build-up, and constipation.
Staying hydrated increases how fast you can absorb food. Staying hydrated helps balance the osmotic pressure in your guts and makes it easier for your intestinal cells to transport nutrients into the bloodstream and get them out of the intestines faster*. This also reduces the time those nutrients spend with your microbes, thereby reducing gas production.
Moving around throughout the day increases circulation and reduces gut inflammation. Again, anything you can do to bring blood back to the intestines is going to speed up digestion and absorption. Increasing circulation also helps reduce cortisol levels so the signals to move blood away from your guts to your muscles will go away faster when you take breaks to stretch and move throughout the day. More movement = less stress = less cortisol = more metabolic balance!
Metabolic tips for reducing stress and bloating:
Stay hydrated to help food get absorbed across your gut and into your blood faster!
Take breaks to stretch and move around throughout the day: increased circulation helps absorb food, reduce inflammation, and break up pockets of gas so they move through your intestines with less uncomfortable build-up.
Get enough fiber (25g per day) in your diet and reduce simple carbs when you aren’t moving to reduce gut inflammation and IBS symptoms.
Konturek, P.C. et al., (2011) Stress and the gut: Pathophysiology, clinical consequences, diagnostic approach, and treatment options. Journal of Physiology and Pharmocology.
Chandraeskharan, B. et al., (2011) Colonic motor dysfunction in human diabetes is associated with enteric neuronal loss and increased oxidative stress. Neurogastroenterol Motil.
Bipat and Toelsie. (2018) Drinking water with consumption of a jelly-filled doughnut has a time-dependent effect on the postprandial blood glucose level in healthy young individuals. Clin Nutr ESPEN.
Not getting enough protein keeps you hungry, even if you have enough “calories for energy”. Here’s why.
TL;DR: We need to get “essential” amino acids from our diets in order to stay healthy and not feel hungry. Low-protein diets can leave us feeling hungry and eating more, leading to metabolic imbalance and storing extra fat. (about 8 min read)
Metabolic tips for getting enough protein to avoid over-eating:
Build your nutritional base with protein and fiber first to feel full and get enough vitamins/minerals.
Make sure to eat a variety of plant protein sources to ensure you’re getting all of the essential amino acids.
Stay hydrated and take short movement breaks so that the food you eat gets into your bloodstream and to your brain so your brain knows what nutrients you still need (and if you don’t need to eat more).
We eat in order to nourish our bodies. We feel hungry when we’re undernourished. Which is not necessarily the same thing as not eating enough calories. Our bodies need essential amino acids, fats, and micronutrients (vitamins, minerals) from our diets in order to function properly. If we don’t get enough of these nutrients, we can continue to feel hungry.
Amino acids are the “building blocks” of proteins. When we eat proteins, we break them down into amino acids and then our cells do something with those individual amino acids. All unprocessed foods have some amount of protein in them - yes, even plants! no, dead animal muscle is not the only source of protein!! - because the cells of living things need proteins to survive. Muscles and eggs (from animals) and seeds (beans, legumes, nuts from plants) have higher protein content than other foods that may be mostly fat or starch.
We need to eat dietary protein that contains essential amino acids. There are 20 amino acids used to make all the different proteins in our bodies just like the Roman alphabet has 26 letters that make up all of our words (some bacteria have one or two additional rare amino acids but they don’t really play a role in our life so I’m going to ignore them, if you want to learn more, study microbiology metabolism). Our bodies make about half of these amino acids in-house. We need to get the other half from our diets.
Sometimes foods are called “complete protein sources” because the food contains all the essential amino acids. “Incomplete protein sources” are lacking at least one essential amino acid, which would need to be obtained from another food source. Since other animals have similar protein composition in their muscles as us, their muscles are pretty obvious sources of “complete” protein. With the exception of soy, proteins from plant sources may be “incomplete” proteins. That doesn’t mean plant-based diets are inferior sources of protein! It just means that someone would need to be conscientious of which amino acids are present in which plants, and pair them together to have a “complete protein meal”.
Our bodies won’t function properly if we don’t eat enough essential amino acids. The essential amino acids are (in alphabetical order): histidine*, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine*, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan, and valine. Not getting enough of the essential amino acids will stunt growth, impair immune function, slow healing, and contribute to feeling hungry (and possibly over-eating if we keep eating foods that don’t have enough of these essential amino acids).
Low-protein diets make us hungrier and can drive overeating. Our brains respond to signals from our other organs (especially the liver, pancreas, and fat cells) to help us decide if we have enough nutrients and enough energy, or if we need to eat more food. Our brains are great at sensing when something is missing and telling us that we need to eat. Our brains are not so great at telling us what to eat - consciously, we think “I’m hungry” and not “my methionine levels are low”. Since unprocessed foods have a variety of nutrients in them (eg., walnuts have protein, omega-3 fatty acids, AND fiber; chia seeds have protein, fiber, AND iron), a general “please eat more” signal from our brains isn’t really a problem.
Now that we have unprocessed foods that are nutrient-poor, or are fortified with one particular nutrient but are not a well-rounded source of multiple nutrients, a “please eat more” signal from the brain isn’t enough information for us to know if we need more simple carbs to recover from our long run, or if we need more protein to recover from our big lifts, or if we need more of some other nutrient. Because of this, low-protein diets keep our brains looking for those essential amino acids and, if we aren’t paying attention, we can keep eating low-protien foods that don’t satisfy our hunger. This leads to extra fat storage from the extra calories.
High-protein diets can cause stress (metabolic imbalance) in our kidneys if we are dehydrated. Our bodies can’t absorb more ~1g protein per pound body weight (BW) (2.2g protein/kg BW, if you’re using the metric system). Eating more protein than that will mean that your kidneys will have to clear extra nitrogen from your body to maintain nitrogen balance. We use nitrogen as part of proteins (the amino group in an amino acid) and as part of the nucleic acids, DNA and RNA. Excess nitrogens that aren’t part of protein, DNA, or RNA get turned into uric acid - which gets removed from your body as urine. Your kidneys do a lot of work to filter waste out of your blood AND to filter back in nutrients that you still need. For instance, your kidneys will push glucose back into your bloodstream so that you don’t have a drop in BGLs levels every time you pee (some type II diabetes prevention/treatment medications will stop glucose reabsorption to help BGLs fall when you pee). It is easiest for your kidneys to sort out what needs to be removed as waste (uric acid, extra salts, some other wastes) and what needs to stay in your blood (glucose, important proteins, other important micronutrients) when you’re properly hydrated. Being dehydrated stresses our kidneys out and leads to inflammation and reduced kidney function.
Too much dietary protein when we aren’t moving around can also cause metabolic imbalance. Because eating protein also causes insulin to be released into our blood by the pancreas, we can create a situation where there’s too much insulin around even if there’s not an obvious spike in blood glucose levels. Remember that metabolic imbalance is not just having too much glucose in our blood at once - it’s a problem with glucose spikes AND too much insulin creating confusing signals for your organs. A high-protein diet can raise insulin without causing a BGL spike. This is an important point when we’re trying to reduce stress and restore metabolic balance!
So how much protein do we actually need in our diets? We need about ~0.34-0.55g protein/lb body weight, unless we’re training vigorously, training to get big, healing from something, recently lost a lot of blood, and/or are pregnant. In those situations, we need closer to 1g protein/lb BW.
Metabolic tips for getting enough protein to avoid over-eating:
Build your nutritional base with protein and fiber first to feel full and get enough vitamins/minerals.
Make sure to eat a variety of plant protein sources to ensure you’re getting all of the essential amino acids.
Stay hydrated and take short movement breaks so that the food you eat gets into your bloodstream and to your brain so your brain knows what nutrients you still need (and if you don’t need to eat more).
*For my nerds: Methionine is always the first amino acid added when your cells build a new protein, so if we’re methionine-deficient, we can’t make ANY new proteins! There’s a whole system of regulation in your cells build specifically around sensing methionine levels. Histidine is used as both an amino acid incorporated into proteins AND as a signaling molecule used by immune cells! Histidine signaling is part of the allergy response, which is why anti-histamines are used to treat over-ambitious allergic reactions.
Grech, A et al., (2022) Macronutrient (im)balance drives energy intake in an obesogenic food environment: an ecological analysis. Obesity.
Ferraz-Bannitz, R et al., (2022) Dietary Protein Restriction Improves Metabolic Dysfunction in Patients with Metabolic Syndrome in a Randomized, Controlled Trial. Nutrients.
How much protein do you actually need in a day?
TL;DR: “Protein” is a macronutrient made up of amino acids. There are several amino acids that our bodies can’t make in-house and we have to get them from our diets for our bodies to function correctly. Not getting enough protein encourages over-eating, slows growth and healing, and promotes weight gain. (about 10 min read)
Metabolic tips for eating enough protein:
Aim for 0.34-0.55g of protein per lb body weight (0.75-1.2g/kg BW) each day. If you’re doing strenuous exercise, recovering from an injury or illness, or are pregnant, aim for ~1g protein/lb BW.
Spread your protein out over 3-4 meals to maximize how much your body actually uses for muscle growth/recovery.
Eating too much protein if you aren’t moving around, or if you are dehydrated, can be stressful on your body. Context matters!
What is “protein” and how is it used in our body? When people use the word “protein”, they may be talking about different things. Scientists will say “protein” when they mean the macromolecule made up of amino acids joined together by a peptide bond (the actual definition of “protein”). Some menus will list “protein source” (especially for salad add-ons) when they really mean “dead animal muscle”. I’ve overheard people at gyms talk about whether or not they should add amino acid supplements in addition to their protein powders. (This secretly-not-so-secretly kills me because proteins ARE amino acids! Yes okay sometimes I am listening to a podcast in the rogue rack and sometimes I am listening to bros get biochemistry wrong and that shit STICKS IN MY BRAIN.)
Proteins are macromolecules made up of amino acids. A macromolecule is just a science term for “big molecule”. You’ve probably heard of “macronutrients” and “micronutrients”. A macronutrient is a macromolecule that we eat. The main macronutrients we eat (aka “macros”) are protein, fats, carbohydrates, alcohol, and nucleic acids. Micronutrients are vitamins and minerals that we need to eat for our enzymes to function correctly. Enzymes are a type of protein that does some chemical reaction. The sum of all the chemical reactions, and how they are regulated by our hydration, hormones, and neural signals, is “metabolism”.
Our bodies can only use a certain amount of protein for new cell growth and repair. The rest gets converted to other macromolecules. The amount of protein we need in a day has a lower limit determined by the essential amino acids that we must get from our diet. For the average person (aka, someone not doing strenuous athletic stuff daily), that’s usually 0.34-0.55g protein per lb body weight (or, 0.75-1.2g protein/kg BW). A lot of exercise nutrition and physiology studies will use “kg body weight”, so remember that 1 kg is roughly 2.2 lb if you’re using the English system (which, in America, we are). So a 150 lb person should be eating ~51-83g of protein a day. A 200 lb person should be eating ~68-110g of protein a day. You can do the math for your body weight.
The amount of protein we need also has an upper limit determined by how much our bodies can absorb and incorporate into new cells (eg, muscle cells or healing). This upper limit will be influenced by how much strenuous exercise we’re doing or if we’re healing from something, lost blood recently, or are pregnant. Under these conditions, we can absorb and use about 1g protein per lb body weight a day* (or 2.2g/kg BW/day).
Can we eat all of our daily protein in one meal? No. Your body can only use so much protein at once and the rest is then used in other metabolic pathways. You can’t store amino acids themselves (nitrogen balance, it’s a thing) so you can only use the protein you eat to make new cells. The rest of the protein will be broken down into two parts: (1) an amino group that gets turned into uric acid (a precursor to urine) and (2) a carboxyl group that is used to make carbohydrates (gluconeogenesis, if blood glucose levels (BGL) are low, or glycogen, if BGLs are fine and your body still has room to store glycogen). You should spread your protein out between all of your 3-4 meals (second breakfast is a real meal).
Do you need extra protein in your diet if you are doing strenuous exercise? Does this change when in the day you should eat protein? Yes. Your body still has to balance nitrogen levels and you can’t really use more than 1g protein/lb body weight/day. However, just like with carbohydrate metabolism, the amount and intensity of your movement will determine how much and what type of fuel your body needs. Eat protein and simple carbs before (30-90 min) and after (30-90 min) workouts to maintain energy levels, improve performance, stimulate muscle growth, and speed up recovery/prevent injuries. The amount of protein and simple carbs you need to eat depends on what exercise(s) you’re doing and what your goals are. Talk to a metabolic coach to figure out these nuances and design a diet that’s right for you.
Extra protein that we eat is less likely to be stored as fat than extra carbohydrates that we eat. It is technically possible for extra protein to get converted to glucose, and then for that glucose to get converted to fat, but it would take a whole other set of biochemical processes and use more energy to do this, so turning protein into fat doesn’t really happen in our bodies. Before you start thinking “OH OKAY, if I just eat protein I won’t store fat!”, remember that we never consume one macronutrient in isolation. I don’t care if you only snort whey powder for your meals, eating excess protein is not a magic bullet to fat loss.
Dietary protein still causes an increase in insulin, even if it doesn’t raise blood glucose levels. Eating proteins does cause a rise in insulin. It also causes a rise in another hormone, glucagon, which blocks insulin action (similar to cortisol). Insulin is saying “take glucose out of the bloodstream” and glucagon is saying “ignore insulin”. WTF? Doesn’t this mean that protein causes your body to send two contradictory signals at once? Yes. Yes, it does. Isn’t this metabolic imbalance the very definition of stress?!? Welp. Just when you thought you didn’t need a Ph.D. in metabolism…
High protein diets can be stressful on your body if you aren’t moving around. Your body REALLY wants to keep stable blood glucose levels. So it prepares for two, somewhat opposing situations at once: (1) when you start moving, your body will also release cortisol, which stimulates your liver to put more glucose in the bloodstream by breaking down glycogen or by making new glucose via gluconeogenesis. Some of that protein will be made into new glucose that gets released into your blood to feed your muscles as they move. Both cortisol and glucagon will inhibit other tissues from responding to insulin so that almost all of the glucose made from protein can be used by your muscles. You’re moving a lot, after all, and your muscles need it!
BUT what if you actually aren’t moving and you’re just drinking a soylent at your desk during a mid-afternoon conference call? Now your body is going to be prepared for the second situation: (2) your blood glucose levels are about to rise and your muscles are not going to use that glucose. The rest of your body needs to help take glucose out of the bloodstream to maintain healthy BGLs. Since protein also causes a rise in glucagon, and glucagon messes with insulin signaling, you will have to put out more insulin to get BGLs stable than if there was no glucagon around. Your body is basically hedging its bets that you probably will move, and preparing for that first, but releasing insulin just in case you don’t.
It is important to maintain metabolic balance with dietary protein. Even if excess dietary protein isn’t going to get converted to fat directly, it can create an environment that makes it easier for your body to store carbs as fat and harder to break down fat into energy. Too much cortisol, insulin, protein intake, and/or glucose in the bloodstream are all stressful and lead to inflammation. Which increases the number of growth factors in your system and makes it harder to build muscle or lose weight. Balance is important and context matters!
Metabolic tips for eating enough protein:
Aim for 0.34-0.55g of protein per lb body weight (0.75-1.2g/kg BW) each day. If you’re doing strenuous exercise, recovering from an injury or illness, or are pregnant, aim for ~1g protein/lb BW.
Spread your protein out over 3-4 meals to maximize how much your body actually uses for muscle growth/recovery.
Eating too much protein if you aren’t moving around, or if you are dehydrated, can be stressful on your body. Context matters!
Shoenfeld, BJ and A Aragon, (2018). How much protein can the body use in a single meal for muscle-building? Implications for daily protein distribution. J International Society of Sports Nutrition.
Reitman, A et al., (2014). High dietary protein intake, reducing or eliciting insulin resistance? European J Clinical Nutrition.
What makes a food “healthy” and how do we choose at the store?
Photo of Lucy Sparrow’s 2017 art installation at the Standard: an all-felt bodega. Technically high in fiber…
TL;DR: “Healthy” foods feed us something we need: essential nutrients our bodies can’t make, the fuel we need to move, and the experience of food are all things to consider when we choose which foods to eat. (about 9 min read)
Steps for deciding between different packaged foods:
- Protein & Fiber first. Simple carbs in proportion to the amount of movement you normally do.
- “Hard to find” vitamins and minerals second.
- Nutritious, delicious, nourishing: Food is also an experience, enjoy it.
“Healthy” foods are foods that feed us something we need. And we need to do two things: to make new cells when we’re growing or healing, and to move around. Healthy foods supply the nutrients to do this.
There are “essential” nutrients that we can only get from our diet: amino acids and fats (yes, there are fats you NEED to get from your diet such as omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids and a low-fat diet may not provide enough of them), vitamins and minerals. Carbohydrates are not essential; we can make carbohydrates in our own body.
Our diets also supply “Food as Fuel”. Food provides that fuel that we break down the things to make non-essential amino acids, fats, and carbohydrates. The things we make in our own bodies are called “non-essential” because it isn’t essential that we eat them in our diet. We make these molecules so that we can make new cells (for healing, for new blood cells, for new gut cells, etc, as well as growing bigger muscles).
Another way we use “food as fuel” is to fuel our movement. Even though we can make carbohydrates and maintain steady blood glucose levels (BGLs) without eating any glucose, sometimes we use glucose faster than we can make it (like when we’re doing a lot of aerobic exercise. If you gu, you knew.) When we use glucose faster than we can make it, then getting some from our diet helps us move faster and not be limited by our pace of production.
Prepared and packaged foods are convenient and will probably always make up some part of your diet. Maybe you’re someone who always has time to food prep, gets all their produce from a local garden, and is never caught out in the wild without snacks in stacks. But most of us aren’t.
There is a lot of marketing on packaged foods to convince us they are healthy. What do we actually want to look for? We want to start with the nutrition label and get protein and fiber first.
The Nutrition Label is a lot more informative than the ingredients list. The ingredients list gives us a good idea of how processed a food is and, well, what the ingredients are. If some type of sugar (including dextrose, honey, agave nectar, cane syrup, coconut sugar, corn syrup, maple syrup, or another “natural”* sugar) or refined flour is listed in the first three ingredients, this food is going to have a lot of simple carbohydrates that spike our blood glucose levels (BGLs). Eating foods with refined flour or sugar in the first three ingredients when we aren’t going to be moving around, or when there is a lot of insulin in our system (like before bed) will create metabolic imbalance (aka stress) that leads to storing more glucose as fat.
The rest of the ingredients list will give us an idea of how many preservatives are in a food, or if there is a non-sugar substitute. Non-sugar substitutes fall into a couple of categories; we want to avoid the ones that raise our blood glucose levels (saccharin and sucralose)* and the sugar alcohols (xylitol, sorbitol, and mannitol).
Side note: Sugar alcohols are not absorbed by our guts; that’s why they don’t raise our BGLs. However, not being able to absorb something across our guts also causes bloating and GI distress.
Look at the protein and fiber content first. Then, take a look at the total carbohydrates. Added sugars and sugar alcohols will be listed under total carbs where fiber is also listed. We want to avoid foods with a lot of added sugars and sugar alcohols. Ideally, we’d also choose foods with low total carbs as well. What is “low” total carbs is going to vary by person – someone eating a ketogenic diet may sacrifice fiber in a packaged food in exchange for a really low carb count. Someone doing a lot of endurance activities or trying to build muscle mass may pick a food with a higher fiber content that also has a higher total carb count. If you aren’t sure what is a “high” or “low” amount of carbs for your lifestyle right now, check out this guide or talk to a coach.
If two foods are relatively similar in protein and fiber/carb content, look at the vitamins and minerals. Some vitamins and minerals are easier to get in our diets than others. For example, vitamin C is in a lot of fruits and vegetables and most people are not at risk of developing a vitamin C deficiency. Iron is in heme groups (so red meats, beets) and some whole grains and nuts (chia seeds are a great source of iron). It’s a lot harder to get iron from common fruits or veggies and a lot of people are anemic at some point in their lives*. If you’re choosing between two foods with relatively similar protein & fiber, go with the one that has more of the “hard to find” nutrients. Again, which nutrients are “hard to find” is going to vary by person, so if you aren’t sure which nutrients you currently get in your diet and which ones you need more of, talk to a coach.
You don’t have to worry about fat content if you focus on adequate protein and fiber. Your digestive system has sensors that tell you when you have eaten protein, fat, and fiber (but not sugar, this is why sugars don’t make you feel full). You need a certain amount of fat for your brain to register that you’re full. If you focus on protein and fiber first, you’ll feel full and be taking in nutrient-dense foods. You won’t have to worry about fat. (Go ahead and try it out for two weeks with a food long if you’re skeptical).
There are no “bad” foods. Remember that everything you eat should feed you. If you are eating something that isn’t feeding you that many nutrients, ask yourself what part of you it is feeding (Core memory: making cinnamon rolls with my great grandmother. Not high in fiber. Also not going to skip eating them). It’s okay to eat things that aren’t “super nutritious” but they should be super delicious. Don’t eat foods that don’t feed you. Enjoy what you’re eating and how it makes you feel.
Steps for deciding between different packaged foods:
- Protein & Fiber first. Simple carbs in proportion to the amount of movement you normally do.
- “Hard to find” vitamins and minerals second.
- Nutritious, delicious, nourishing: Food is also an experience, enjoy it.
*The quote marks are not to say that the sugar isn’t natural, they are a reminder that natural does not automatically mean something is good for us. Cyanide is natural and found in apple seeds. It’s also a poison.
*Fun fact: long-distance running increases our need for iron because we break a lot of blood vessels in our feet from just striking the ground for so long! It’s called “foot strike hemolysis”. Hemo = blood; lysis = breaking a cell open. The more blood cells we lose, the more iron we need to replace them. This is one of the reasons why beets are good for long-distance performance.
* Suez et al. (2022) Personalized microbiome-drive effects of non-nutritive sweeteners on human glucose tolerance. Cell.
What are “natural sweeteners” and are they actually better for you than sugar?
TL;DR: Whether or not a sweetener is “healthy” has more to do with quantity and how it gets handled by our gut bacteria than if it’s “natural” or a sugar-substitute. (about 8 min read)
Metabolic tips for healthy sweeteners:
Get adequate fiber in your diet to protect your gut and reduce the amount of bacteria that can cause inflammation.
Stay hydrated and eat sweet things slowly to reduce GI distress from unabsorbed sugar or sugar-substitutes
The rate of gut absorption is going to play a much larger role in health than the sweetener.
Natural sweeteners are things that taste sweet and are technically found in nature. This doesn’t mean that they aren’t heavily processed or that the ones sold to us in processed foods aren’t made in a lab, it just means that you can find naturally occurring versions of the same molecule outside of a lab.
Natural sweeteners are promoted as being “healthier” for marketing. Especially for people with diabetes, who have to manually check their blood glucose levels (BGLs). Processed foods need to be palatable, people will eat sweet food. If a Business is making money off of selling people sweet food, why leave out a group of people just because they can’t eat sugar? Hello, non-sugar substitutes.
Some non-sugar substitutes still raise blood glucose levels (BGLs). These include saccharin and sucralose. Raising BGLs will also raise insulin levels, which is not what someone wants when they are trying to maintain metabolic balance. Other non-sugar substitutes induce GI distress. However, too much regular sugar will ALSO induce GI distress!! This is important when we ask “is this healthier than sugar”? If both are causing GI distress, maybe the solution is not to avoid non-sugar substitutes. Maybe instead it’s to increase our fiber intake, reduce processed foods, and stay hydrated.
Sugar alcohols don’t raise BGLs or insulin levels. Sugar alcohols don’t raise BGLs or insulin levels because we can’t absorb them across our guts. However, there are two consequences of not being able to absorb sugar alcohols: (1) not absorbing something changes the osmotic pressure in our guts and water moves from your blood into your intestines (you don’t have to pull out the notecards you made to get through chemistry class, just know that the change in osmotic pressure = watery stools and then constipation). And (2) the bacteria in our gut can digest these sugar alcohols and that produces a lot of gas that builds up in our intestines. Anyone who has eaten sugar-free gummy bears or other sugar substitutes before monkfruit or stevia became popular knows about this firsthand.
Bloating, gas cramps, and changes in bowel movements are a sign that we have eaten something that cannot be absorbed by our guts. Like when we eat other foods with “rare” sugars like raffinose (found in Brussels sprouts, cabbage, and beans). Contrary to popular belief, it’s not the fiber that causes bloating, gas, or changes in bowel movements, it’s an influx of a simple sugar that gets broken down quickly by gut bacteria. We can avoid this by eating slower and staying hydrated.
Anyone who is (or knows someone who is) lactose-intolerant knows the effects of eating something and then not absorbing it. Lactose isn’t absorbed across the gut by anyone; there is an enzyme in (some of) our guts that breaks lactose into glucose and galactose. Those glucose and galactose molecules are absorbed. Any lactose that is not broken down cannot be absorbed.
We can reduce bloating and GI distress by eating sugars (all sugars!) more slowly. This is because gut bacteria that feed on fiber will produce gas less quickly than gut bacteria that feed on sugar. Here’s where we get to talk about timing – even if we can absorb a sugar, like glucose or fructose, we can only absorb that sugar at a certain rate.
Let’s say that your gut has 10 little doors to let sugar through. If you eat foods with 6 sugar molecules, then they can all go through a door when they hit your gut. If you eat a food with 12 sugar molecules, the first 10 will go through and the next 2 will have to wait their turn. If you eat a food with 50 sugar molecules, now there are 40 sugar molecules waiting their turn. Sugar molecules at the end of the line will be hanging out for a long time.
Except that the extra sugar molecules actually don’t hang out that long. Because in addition to the 10 little doors that our guts have for letting sugar molecules in, there are also hungry little gut microbes that will eat sugar molecules waiting their turn to enter your gut. So you probably do absorb sugar molecules 11-20, but not sugar molecules 41-50. 41-50 get eaten by bacteria and make you gassy and bloated. So even if you could have absorbed a certain type of sugar, you don’t absorb that sugar when you eat a large quantity of it at once (and the problem is made worse if you’re dehydrated).
Continuously eating foods that feed sugar-eating bacteria increases inflammation in our guts. When we eat sugars we don’t absorb - either because we can’t (lactose intolerance) or because we ate too much, too fast to absorb it effectively - we feed a certain type of that bacteria. There are two “main types” of bacteria in your gut: ones that break down fiber and have a good relationship with your gut’s immune cells, and ones that eat sugar like fiends and do not give any fucks at all. The sugar fiends literally fight with your immune system and cause gut inflammation.
Inflammed guts are “leaky” and end up getting more inflamed if we don’t stop eating the original sugar we aren’t absorbing. If we continue to stress our guts out by eating sugar faster than we can absorb it and feeding our sugar-loving bacteria, we will create inflammation in our gut lining. Inflammed guts get worse at absorbing everything. If this happens, we now have a hard time absorbing other nutrients, we reduce the number of little doors we have to let sugar in from 10 down to 6, or 4, or whatever, depending on the amount of damage.
Eventually, we cause little mini tears in our gut. Shredded guts = “leaky gut syndrome”, which causes IBS symptoms and other GI conditions. This is another reason why diets high in fiber and low in simple sugars are healthier for us. They don’t tear small shreds in our guts.
Soooooo…. are non-sugar, “natural” sweeteners healthier than sugar? It’s more important to keep our blood glucose levels stable and to not put things in our guts that will get eaten by sugar-fiend bacteria. Sweeteners that we don’t absorb OR get eaten by bacteria won’t raise BGLs or cause GI distress (e.g. like stevia or monkfruit), but they probably change the population of gut bacteria from fiber-friends to sugar-fiends. The healthiest thing to do is to eat sweet things in moderation, slowly, and with water.
Metabolic tips for healthy sweeteners:
Get adequate fiber in your diet to protect your gut and reduce the amount of bacteria that can cause inflammation.
Stay hydrated and eat sweet things slowly to reduce GI distress from unabsorbed sugar or sugar-substitutes
The rate of gut absorption is going to play a much larger role in health than the sweetener.
What is “inflammation” and how does it affect our metabolism?
Colored Transmission Electron Micrograph of a Macrophage, an important immune cell in maintaining balanced metabolism. (medimage/science source)
TL;DR: “Inflammation” refers to the whole phenomenon of: (1) signals that stressed-out body cells send to our immune system, (2) the activity of those immune cells themselves, and (3) the signals that these immune cells send back to our stressed-out body cells. Inflammation is the first response to any metabolic stress, including stress from excess cortisol and insulin both acting at the same time, too little nutrition, or some type of infection. (about 7 min read)
Metabolic tips to lower inflammation and promote balanced metabolism:
Check in with your Foundational Five habits: get 6.5-8 hrs sleep/night, stay hydrated, build a nutritional base with fiber and protein, add simple carbs in proportion to movement, and move your blood around.
Avoid eating 2-3 hrs before going to sleep to help your immune system clean up during sleep.
Reduce the amount of simple carbs in your diet that are not supporting movement - simple carbs cause insulin spikes that confuse your cells and make them metabolically stressed!
“Inflammation” is the crosstalk between your stressed-out cells and your immune system. Remember that stress = metabolic imbalance. At the whole body level, both physical or psychological stress both lead to too much cortisol and/or too little insulin sensitivity; this is one form of metabolic imbalance because cortisol and insulin influence what different organs do with glucose and fat. On the cellular level, stress to your cells is also a metabolic imbalance, and cells, internally, deal with glucose and fat in an inappropriate or confused way. (This has to do with how the mitochondria works, and we’ll get to that later).
Each of your organs has a specific job it needs to do. Here, we’re referring to all the cells in your body that are not part of your immune system as your “body cells”. These are the cells that make up all of your other organs and (except for your blood) these cells all stay in the same place. Your organs are like little workshops that have specific jobs - your brain thinks thoughts, your stomach oozes acid that breaks down food (similar to the way citrus or vinegar marinades tenderize meat), your liver makes sure that the rest of your organs have the energy supplies they need by modulating blood glucose and blood fat levels.
The job of your immune system is to help your other organs keep a “clean shop” without intruders breaking in. These little workshops are all necessary for the whole body to function. However, your organs are so focused on their job that they do not have time to (a) clean up or (b) provide security. Cleaning up and providing security are the jobs your immune system does. When you aren’t stressed out and don’t have any actively healing injuries or infections, your immune system plays a HUGE role in just helping keep everything orderly and taking out the trash.
Your immune system helps your other organs “take out the trash” so they can do their jobs properly. This is partly why sleep deprivation is associated with higher risk of metabolic diseases like Type 2 Diabetes and cardiovascular disease - your immune system cleans your brain when you sleep. When you don’t sleep, garbage builds up and neural cells get stressed out. These stressed-out cells call for backup and more immune cells come in to deal with the threat.
Immune cells provide “security” to your other cells. In addition to waste management, the immune system also provides security. Your immune cells are constantly on the lookout for things that should not be inside the body - this is why there are so many immune cells lining your gut. Your gut microbes should stay on one side of your gut and should not cross into your bloodstream. If the gut microbes start to cross over into the blood, you have a line of professional bouncers, your immune cells, there to stop the microbes from going any further.
When your body cells are metabolically stressed, they send signals to your immune cells to ask for help. Your body can be threatened by intruders like microbes or viruses, and it can also be threatened by traitors like cancer cells and infected cells that have been invaded by a virus or bacteria. Your immune system finds these traitors and takes them out. How does your immune system know which cells are about to commit mutiny?
Infected cells, cancer cells, and metabolically stressed cells send the same signals to your immune system. Unfortunately, the signals that tell your immune system that one of your body cells might become cancer or might be harboring a virus are some of the same signals that tell your immune system that your body is metabolically stressed. There is a lot of nuance here, and this explanation is very simplified, but the take-home message is that when your body cells are metabolically out-of-balance and stressed out, your immune system thinks those body cells are about to become traitors and takes them out. Your immune system’s response to metabolic stress is called “inflammation”.
During “inflammation”, your immune system sends signals back to your body cells and tells them to store fat. Your immune system is trying to help the rest of your body deal with what it thinks is an attack from invaders (infections) or traitors (cancer). Some of the signals that your immune cells send back to your body cells are to store fat and not break down too much energy supplies. This is like your immune system showing up on the block and telling all the “healthy” cells to shut their doors and keep all their supplies inside for a few days. The immune system doesn’t want the healthy cells to share with the unhealthy cells. It wants the healthy cells to have enough canned food on their shelves to get through this battle the immune system is about to wage on the unhealthy cells.
When we are metabolically stressed, the immune system acts less like a maintenance service and more like the mafia. It would be a shame is something happened to these confused cells that are getting too many signals from cortisol and insulin at the same time, wouldn’t it? Before we can make positive changes in our health, we first need to make sure that we aren’t accidentally encouraging low-grade inflammation in our bodies. And that’s why all successful diets reduce inflammation by developing sustainable habits.
Metabolic tips to lower inflammation and promote balanced metabolism:
Check in with your Foundational Five habits: get 6.5-8 hrs sleep/night, stay hydrated, build a nutritional base with fiber and protein, add simple carbs in proportion to movement, and move your blood around.
Avoid eating 2-3 hrs before going to sleep to help your immune system clean up during sleep.
Reduce the amount of simple carbs in your diet that are not supporting movement - simple carbs cause insulin spikes that confuse your cells and make them metabolically stressed!
(for the nerds: TNF-a is a growth factor.)
Why does getting enough fiber in your diet have a bigger impact on weight than counting calories?
TL;DR: Getting enough fiber from foods reduces inflammation, allowing us to store less of our food as fat and meet our fitness/health goals faster. Without fiber, multiple organs get stressed out, inflammation increases, and our liver + fat cells get signals to store glucose as fat (instead of glycogen or new muscle growth). (about 5 min read)
Metabolic tips for reducing inflammation by getting enough fiber:
Build your meals around fiber + protein first.
“See the seeds”: When you do eat refined carbohydrates (aka processed grains like cereal, crackers, breads), choose options that have visible whole grains and seeds on them. “Made from whole grains” is a marketing trick - you need to be able to see the seeds.
Stay hydrated so that these nutritionally-dense foods can get absorbed by your gut: their super-power is that they get absorbed slowly (so you avoid sugar spikes) but this means you need more water to keep that absorption going.
Why does getting enough fiber in our diets have a bigger impact on weight than counting calories? We've all been told that we need to eat fruits & veggies because they're healthy - but what exactly makes them healthier than other foods? Why do we have to work harder to lost weight AND gain muscle when we don’t get enough fiber in our diets?
Foods that contain fiber and are low in refined carbs are healthy because they reduce inflammation. Period. Forget all the "natural" and "organic" stuff. That is marketing speak. There are a lot of natural things that are not good for us (apple seeds contain cyanide). In the US, the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) does not regulate the use of the term “organic”. Cow pies are natural and organic. Don’t eat them.
So while natural and organic are nice, they do not guarantee that a food is actually healthy or will help us restore metabolic balance, reduce stress, and lower inflammation (all things you need to do to lose fat or gain muscle).
Foods high in fiber reduce inflammation in a couple of really important ways:
Fiber is processed by "good" gut bacteria into metabolites that communicate with the immune cells in your gut and let them know things are cool. This lets your immune cells chill out and reduces gut inflammation.*
Fiber slows down the absorption of simple carbs so those simple carbs don't hit your liver and bloodstream like a tidal wave. This helps you avoid sugar spikes that are stressful to your liver, pancreas, blood vessels, and other organs and reduces inflammation.
Foods that are high in fiber are fruits, veggies, nuts, whole grains, DARK CHOCOLATE (a personal fav). These foods come with other nutritional benefits like vitamins & minerals that allow your cell's enzymes to work properly and antioxidants that help reduce stress.
There is a reason why some nutrients are called “essential” vitamins, minerals, amino acids, or fats. Our bodies need them to function and we can’t make them ourselves so they have to come from our diet. Remember that enzymes are the little protein machines that actually carry out all of the chemical reactions in your body. If your enzymes don’t work properly, your body doesn’t work properly and you feel crummy and you eventually get sick.
Getting enough fiber in our diets reduces the amount of fat our bodies will store. This is because foods that are low in fiber cause sugar spikes and inflammation. Sugar spikes = BGLs raise too fast, causing too much insulin to be released, encouraging our liver & fat cells to store more glucose (as fat or glycogen). Insulin will also stop our fat cells from releasing fat and being able to use it for energy.
Rapid blood glucose spikes are biochemically stressful on our cells. The metabolic stress of sugar spikes causes our liver & fat cells to call for "help" from the immune system - these signals also encourage our bodies to store fat and not burn it! Insulin can encourage our bodies to store glucose as glycogen in the liver, but inflammation changes things and encourages fat storage specifically. When you have inflammation, you get less glycogen storage or muscle growth. You just get fat storage.
If we rely simply on eating less calories, or trying to burn more calories with exercise, without getting enough fiber, we're going to have to overcome the fat-storing growth factors first. This is why we have to work harder to lose fat - or build muscle - when we have metabolic imbalance & inflammation in our bodies.
And who wants to work harder or take more time making progress on our health & fitness goals? Especially when you could enjoy snacks like dark chocolate and bananas, or peanut butter and apples, or whole grain toast with honey. Stop counting calories and start getting those 25g of fiber a day.
A short note on foods that are “made from whole grains”: this is another marketing tactic. Foods that are nutrient-rich with the vitamins, minerals, and fiber you’re looking for need to be actual whole grains. You need to be able to “see the seeds”.
Everything else is “made from whole grains” but this means that whole grians were the starting point, fiber was removed, and something else was made from that refined carbohydrate. Everything is “made from whole grains”. Vodka is made from whole grains. Vodka is not a health food.
Metabolic tips for reducing inflammation by getting enough fiber:
Build your meals around fiber + protein first.
“See the seeds”: When you do eat refined carbohydrates (aka processed grains like cereal, crackers, breads), choose options that have visible whole grains and seeds on them. “Made from whole grains” is a marketing trick - you need to be able to see the seeds.
Stay hydrated so that these nutritionally-dense foods can get absorbed by your gut: their super-power is that they get absorbed slowly (so you avoid sugar spikes) but this means you need more water to keep that absorption going.
*There’s so much new, freaking cool research coming out about how our gut microbes interact with us and help regulate digestion, inflammation, & gut function.
Richards, JL et al., (2019) Dietary metabolites and the gut microbiota: an alternative approach to control inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. Clinical and Translational Immunol.
Kawano Y et al., (2022) Microbiota imbalance induced by dietary sugar disrupts immune-mediated protection from metabolic syndrome. Cell.
How do high blood glucose levels (BGLs) raise blood pressure?
TL;DR: High blood glucose levels (BGLs) cause vascular muscle cells to change their biochemistry and create “stress” (metabolic imbalance) that stiffens the vessels and raises blood pressure. (about 5 min read)
Metabolic tips for reducing blood pressure by stabilizing BGLs:
Eat foods with refined carbs around the time you’ll be moving around. Movement = your muscles can pull glucose out of the blood & bring BGLs down.
Moving throughout the day can improve circulation by physically pushing your blood around.
Your blood is pumped mostly by the elasticity of your blood vessels. Your heart “pumps” your blood in the sense that it is the obvious pacemaker but most of the pressure that keeps your blood moving around your body comes from the elasticity of your blood vessels. If your blood vessels didn’t need to be elastic, it wouldn’t be a problem if they got stiff. And it is a problem, or else your doctor would never talk about hardening arteries being a risk factor for heart attacks.
High blood glucose levels make your blood vessels less elastic*. Excess glucose in the blood causes biochemical changes in the vascular smooth muscle cells that line our blood vessels. A particularly detrimental change is that the vascular smooth muscle cells do not produce the metabolite nitric oxide correctly; this leads to less elasticity and stiffer blood vessels. Stiffer blood vessels = higher blood pressure.
Stiffer blood vessels lead to poor circulation. Your heart can pump harder to overcome some of the extra resistance of inelastic, stiff blood vessels, but the increased force cannot completely compensate for the loss of elasticity. This is a more serious problem for smaller blood vessels - the ones that actually feed your cells nutrients and oxygen, and take away wastes like uric acid and carbon dioxide (CO2). Stiffer blood vessels mean that it is harder to get nutrients to all the cells of your body, further increasing metabolic stress. Which increases cortisol and inflammation, which increases blood vessel stiffness if they are persistent.
Stressed-out blood vessels are stiffer AND weaker*. Since high glucose levels cause metabolic stress inside vascular smooth muscle cells, those cells will also make signals that ask the immune system for “help” - basically, they release chemicals that tell certain cells of your immune system that there’s trouble and it needs to be cleaned up. The cells in your body use the set of “help” signals when they are under metabolic stress as they do when they are under attack from a pathogen; in both cases, immune cells show up to fight the Good Fight and throw down in a pretty gnarly way that tries to eliminate the threat. This makes sense when cells are stressed because of a virus or bacteria infection which can be eliminated by an immune ambush, but it’s not such a great response when the threat is a metabolic threat from too many refined carbs in someone’s breakfast combo before their first business meeting.
Inflammation of blood vessels contributes to the risk of cardiovascular disease. In your immune system’s very noble attempt to fight off the “threat” that is stressing out the vascular cells, your immune system ends up doing more damage since the call is coming from inside the house - the stress is a metabolic stress from frequently and/or sustained elevated BGLs. Stress is metabolic imbalance: if the stress is going to be constant, then the inflammation is also going to be constant. Inflammation of blood vessels leads to the progression of atherosclerotic plaques and an increased risk of cardiovascular disease.
Increasing movement can help with circulation. Muscle contraction can help offset some of the negative consequences of stiffer blood vessels, even before metabolic balance is restored. This is because moving around squeezes your muscles and all the blood (and other fluids) in the muscles. Muscles also help take glucose out of the bloodstream without insulin - this helps lower BGLs without your pancreas having to put out more insulin and is important for maintaining (or restoring!) insulin sensitivity. Keep blood flowing properly by staying hydrated and moving throughout the day to help your heart out.
Metabolic tips for reducing blood pressure by stabilizing BGLs:
Eat foods with refined carbs around the time you’ll be moving around. Movement = your muscles can pull glucose out of the blood & bring BGLs down.
Moving throughout the day can improve circulation by physically pushing your blood around.
*Many studies have shown that increased sugar intake leads to increased blood pressure.
Dokken, BB. (2008) The Pathophysiology of Cardiovascular Disease and Diabetes: beyond blood pressure and lipids. Diabetes Specrt.
Malik, et al., (2014) Impact of Sugar-Sweetened Beverages on Blood Pressure. Am J of Cardiology.
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