Hacks. Nudges, Choices....

We’ve talked quite a lot about how the little things can add up to make big differences, and how “nudging” our behaviour in the right direction can be easier than making radical, sweeping changes.

This article will take a look at some useful “hacks” that you can incorporate, especially around blood sugar regulation, and there are others we will look at later, as well - more around the gut microbiome, and also exercise.

Jessie Inchauspe’s “Glucose Revolution” is an interesting, useful book, and it’s really clarified my understanding of carbohydrates, and how it’s not just what we eat, but how we eat it that makes such a significant difference. It really turns on its head so much of the nutritional advice and dogma out there. Time and again studies have demonstrated that, for instance, the old “calories in vs calories out” model is limited and outdated. Not that it’s completely irrelevant - people certainly have lost weight on calorie deficit diets, and people have gained weight on a surplus - but there are still health organisations that state categorically that a calorie deficit is the only way to lose weight, and it’s blatantly not true. It is, as the menopausal among us can testify, even possible to gain weight on a deficit diet. To be told that isn’t possible, that we must be forgetting the ten extra doughnuts we are eating every day, is tantamount to gaslighting. But weight isn’t the focus here. What matters is health, and as we know, having a steady blood glucose line with relatively minimal peaks and troughs is a big part of the picture.

When it comes to food choices, it’s easy to get into a right old pickle about it, particularly if you’ve had any sort of disordered eating. The information out there is massively confusing, with the UK government’s advice pushing you firmly towards plenty of carbs, whole grain if possible, some protein, and not too much fat, and other schools of thought advocating more or less zero carbs (meaning very few vegetables are allowed, and hardly any fruit) and tons of fat and protein. There’s a whole bunch of experts that say, whilst exercise is good for you, it doesn’t lead to weight loss, and all the fitness people swear it’s essential.

The thing about these little daily changes, though, is that they have been proven to work, across a broad spectrum of people, and are relatively easy to incorporate. And when they aren’t? Well, that’s when the 80/20 rule comes in. You don’t have to have a perfect adherence to still gain massive benefit.

So let’s look at some of those useful tactics and how to add them in.

Move after you eat

Remember this advice? Although you don’t want to give yourself indigestion by vigorous exercise after a heavy meal, moving for a good ten minutes after you eat helps take the glucose out of your blood and into your muscles, and also makes it available as an energy source.

The exact timing of when to move after eating is subject to differences of opinion (of course) but, depending on what you have eaten, within 90 minutes is fine. If what you have eaten is more carb-based, after 20 minutes is better.

If you have a strict routine, or a highly structured day, with a predictable lunch hour, then if you were in the habit of going out for a walk and then having lunch, you might be surprised at the difference doing these the other way around might have.

The point I want to emphasise is around how we make choices. I am not saying that every time you eat something you have to go out for a walk afterwards, not at all. It’s a great habit, but it isn’t necessary to do it all the time. But what I am suggesting is that when you have the choice, there are options that are better than others, some of which might be a little counter-intuitive, and sometimes you are weighing up the pros and cons of different actions.

A case in point was last week, when I was looking after my mum. I had spent the morning doing various things for her, and I was fasting, which I do more often than not these days - the extended-overnight-fast version. It had been about 17 hours since the previous night’s meal, and I was thinking of when to have lunch. I also needed to pop down to the local town to run some errands, a walk of about 20 minutes.

I just wanted to share my thought process with you, and I hope it’s useful:

Fasting = great, because lots of benefits accrue that we’ve talked about before.

Food = great, because nourishment.

Walking = great, because exercise, and blood sugar control.

So the choice at this point was whether to run the errands (fasted exercise) first, or eat first and walk second (move after you eat).

What do you think I chose? And what might you have done?

Because it had been a good long fast (additional benefits kick in at 17 hours), I decided it was better to save the walk for after food. My blood glucose would have been pretty stable because of the fasting, and then, depending on what I ate, might have spiked afterwards, and moving would take care of that. Much better than extending the fast and then sitting after food would have been.

It’s surprising how the effects of these simple choices accumulate.

Add a Green Starter and Eat your food in the right order (?)

These two “hacks” are similar but not the same. In my opinion, one is much easier and more enjoyable to implement than the other, but your mileage may vary.

So, the principle is very much the same behind these two suggestions, and it’s based on creating a sort of sludgy barrier (nice) with the fibre in the “green” starter or with the vegetables. This barrier stops the carbohydrates that are contained in the rest of the meal from passing so quickly through the intestinal wall, thus reducing the spike.

So the “right” order is fibre first, then fats and proteins, and then carbohydrates. In the pictogram from Monday, she suggests instead of eating a tuna salad sandwich, you might eat the tuna and salad first, and then the two pieces of bread afterwards? Really? If you were happy eating the tuna and salad, and didn’t feel the need to balance it out with the bread, would you even bother with the bread afterwards? Similarly, you wouldn’t eat a bowl of bean chilli and then eat the rice afterwards? If you didn’t need the rice to mop up the chilli, again, would you feel the need to add it in at the end?

She does point out that when a meal has a lot of mixed ingredients, you wouldn’t attempt to separate the rice out from the chilli, but even where the components are separate, I feel it would detract from quite a lot of the pleasure of eating - it’s often the mix of foods that is so appealing?

However, I do find it easy enough to put a lot of vegetables on my plate, and eat a good portion of those before everything else. Definitely, if you are having pasta with broccoli, have plenty of broccoli, and eat a good amount of it first, and it will really help with the blood glucose. And for that reason, I find myself employing the “green” starter tip way more often,

I say “green” because it’s essentially any kind of vegetable starter (maybe not sweet potato fries), raw is ideal, cooked is fine. So think how the French have crudités, or a simple salad drizzled with oil and vinegar, or how the Italians have antipasto, or the Spanish have olives - you get the idea. You can move straight on to the main body of the food afterwards, and you can also do this somewhat in advance.

So if you were going out to eat at a restaurant, you could order a side salad and eat most of it first (and save the rest as an accompaniment, if you like), or if you were going to a dinner party, and you weren’t sure how heavily vegetables would feature, you could munch some carrot and celery sticks on the way. Houmous is fine as part of this starter, but tricky to eat on the go! Or have them before you go if it isn’t a two hour long journey.

Or of course you can do none of this and just enjoy whatever you fancy. It’s all about the balance. But regularly starting your meal with salad or vegetables is a simple way to really flatten the blood glucose curve, and to up your fibre and polyphenol intake. Your gut microbiome will thank you!

Consume Some Vinegar Before A Carbohydrate-Heavy Meal

A good add on to the previous blood sugar levelling tactic is to add vinegar to your salad or vegetable starter. As mentioned before, it doesn’t matter if you also add oil, as long as you don’t add a load of honey, or another form of sugar.

Alternatively, if you prefer, you can put a tablespoon of vinegar into at least a cup of water and drink that before your most glucose-heavy meal of the day.

There is probably as much information as you ever wanted to know about vinegar and blood sugar here https://www.glucosegoddess.com/vinegar-guide

The takeaway is that ACV has some additional benefits, if it is raw and unpasteurised, but that any vinegar will have a good effect on blood glucose - lowering the spike by up to 30%. Beware of flavoured vinegars with added sugars, but you might like to try some fire cider (not really cider) with additional spices infused. I think this makes an actually tasty drink, and again it is easy to take this sort of thing with you, to assist with a meal out that might otherwise create bothersome spikes!

Take care of your tooth enamel by ensuring adequate dilution, and even using a straw if you want to be super sure, and only do this once a day. They say “you can’t out-train a bad diet” and you certainly can’t “out-vinegar” one either!

Let me know how you get on. Maybe it’s an acquired taste, as a drink, but the vinaigrette dressing is quite accessible. And if you like lots of vinegar on your chips? All the better.

Eat a savoury breakfast

This is one of Tim Spector’s favourites, and one that many report to be a big challenge, for several reasons. Part of it is cultural - we are used to at least some sweetness to our breakfasts. Some of it is to do with what we feel capable of eating first thing in the morning - and the easy digestibility of carbohydrates makes them easy to eat even when our appetite hasn’t fully kicked in. Part of it is practical - cooking something for breakfast takes more time than toast or cereal do. Cost is also a factor. UPF bread and cereal is cheaper than eggs.

So, how might you incorporate a savoury breakfast, and what exactly is meant by “savoury”?

This is where label reading is a thing again. Granola is generally sweetened, and muesli with dried fruit in it is also very high in (natural) sugars. Flavoured yoghurts often contain added sugars. Oats are an interesting one, because they are starches rather than simple sugars and are often touted as “slow release” energy. That is, however, questionable, and whether or not they spike your blood glucose will depend on how you metabolise them, the quantity you eat, and what else you have them with. This is where “test and measure” with a glucose monitor can be very handy!

I don’t know about you, but I found it mentally really challenging to move away from oats in the morning. Even though nuts and seeds are nutritionally way more dense than grains, it still felt like the breakfast was a bit “light” without the oats. I persevered though, mostly spurred on by the very level line that an oat-free breakfast produced, compared to an oat-based one. I now find that yoghurt with nuts and seeds, cocoa powder, magnesium powder, and a swirl of peanut butter with maybe some cinnamon, works really well. Very portable, too, and can be made the night before. You can definitely add chia seeds, or ground flaxseeds, and use different combinations of nuts and seeds to keep the gut microbiome happy! Any other supplements that I’m taking, if they come in capsules, and aren’t very bitter, I open up the capsules and add the powder into the mix as well.

I found the idea of a cooked savoury breakfast more challenging, but considerably easier if I delay the timing, and fast all morning and so have breakfast at lunchtime. An omelette or scrambled tofu with plenty of veg and a vinegar-dressed salad to start is amazing for keeping the energy level and avoiding spikes. The veg can be cooked ahead of time, and then it’s very quick to throw a decent breakfast together.

We used to think that getting the glucose in early in the day, when you’ve got the whole day ahead to use it up, made sense, but actually, spiking your blood glucose early on can lead to it being less regulated for the rest of the day. Fasting and then breaking that fast with something more protein and fat based can keep your insulin levels very stable, and that makes for a very happy body!

Maybe you already do this, and the trend is certainly going in that direction. Let me know how it works out for you!

FAST!

So I think I may have mentioned (!) that fasting is a great way to stabilise your blood sugar - perhaps counter-intuitively. Certainly, if you are used to a diet based mostly on carbs, and you find yourself having to eat every two hours, then you will almost inevitably find yourself feeling shaky and light-headed and maybe a little weak when you prolong your fasting periods. Your body is used to burning carbohydrates as the main source of fuel, but unless you are an athlete in intense training, then your body will be dealing with an excess of sugars in the blood, and it does this by storing them for future use. Either in the muscles (remember, HIIT encourages this), in the liver (not completely ideal) or as fat.

When easily-digested carbs are not incoming, either because you focus more on fats and proteins, or because you are fasting, the body has to turn to an alternative fuel supply, and that’s the stored energy in your liver, and your fat stores. Once you are past the shaky “where is the sugar?” moments (maybe a matter of a couple of hours, drink some water, and/or eat some nuts), you will find that this stored energy can be released readily and steadily, without the lows you might have experienced before.

For this, and a lot of other reasons, fasting is really worth trying.

How would it fit into your life, though?

Remember, not only isn’t it necessary, it isn’t even ideal to be completely consistent with this. Adaptation means that over time you would receive fewer benefits if you always fasted for the same length of time, and did it every day.

If you are still cycling, fasting every day is NOT a good idea, and as Dr Mindy Pelz writes in “Fast Like a Girl”.

You can follow her protocol even if you are menopausal (and it’s a good one, because it involves some feasting, too), or you could just let the randomness of life take effect.

I love fasting when I’m at home, because I can just eat whenever I judge it to have been long enough, and I can busy myself with Thorny Rose and other fun things!

When I’m at work, though, I *hate* the idea that I would be with a client and desperately wanting food. It might be that their training session got a bit intense if I got a bit grumpy. So the solution I go for when I have a series of morning clients is to bring the yoghurt-based savoury breakfast I mentioned before, and always have a handful of nuts and a thermos of herbal tea available if I need them. Knowing that they are there makes me less stressed just in itself!

If you work in an office, would this work for you? A portable, savoury breakfast that you can eat whenever you like? Or, how do you feel about having your last meal of the day somewhat earlier? This is another change I have found very challenging, but again, once you are used to burning fat rather than carbs, it does get easier.

Let me know how you get on, with this and other suggestions, and if you have found some novel ways of incorporating change into your day, do let me know!