This is our first Q&A episode where we are answering YOUR questions about weight loss, emotional eating, nutrition, fitness and whatever else you are struggling with.
Lots of people stay on track all day but blow their progress by overeating at night. They’ve exhausted their willpower, they’re tried, they can’t stand up against the strong cravings and the inevitably undo their daily progress by overindulging at night. Today we address that issue and give 7 specific strategies for overcoming nighttime overeating.
Featured Question from Sharon: “The evening time is when I get into trouble! I always crave sweets & I get bored and end up going totally overboard, even after being good all day. What do you do to keep from blowing your day’s progress by losing control at night?”
Practical Solutions: In this episode we cover 7 specific strategies to help you avoid the self-sabotage of nighttime overeating. I even give specific healthy dessert ideas that you can build into your evenings to provide satisfaction without blowing your progress! We talk about nutrition habits, mindset tricks & lifestyle adjustments that can all be POWERFUL tools to help you reduce or even avoid nighttime overeating.
People think that calories are king when it comes to fat loss and if they can just eat fewer calories and burn as many as possible that they’ll lose weight. Unfortunately, that is NOT true and abiding by that model can leave you hungry, tired, fat and frustrated. I dunno about you but that’s not exactly what I’m going for!
The reality is this: Yes, calories matter. They are the energy currency of our body. If we’re taking in more energy than our body needs to run, we’ll store the energy for a rainy day – often as fat but also potentially as muscle. On the flip side, if we’re taking in LESS energy than our body needs, our body has OPTIONS. What are the options?
Slow down the metabolism so we decrease the energy requirements. Hang on tight to all that extra body fat because famine might be coming.
Break down muscle tissue for fuel.
Break down fat for fuel.
What determines which option happens? Hint: It’s not your calorie intake. It’s your HORMONES. That’s right. While calories DO matter – fat loss (or fat gain) – muscle loss (or muscle gain) – increased metabolic rate (or decreased) is determined by your HORMONES.
And when it comes to fat loss, there is one hormone that is absolutely KING. This hormone will keep you lean OR it will make you fat. And most people have NO idea what it has to do with fat loss or how to make sure its working in their favor. That hormone? INSULIN.
I never gave insulin much thought. I wasn’t diabetic and my blood sugar levels were within the normal range so I never imagined that I might have a problem with insulin. I think most of us probably think the same way – insulin is really only something you need to worry about if you’re diabetic. Here’s the truth: if you want to be lean or healthy, you need to understand and control insulin. If you’re carrying extra weight and are having a hard time getting it off, you MUST pay attention to insulin. It’s not optional.
Insulin became a problem for me (without me knowing it) because I spent years in the carbohydrate cycle. Maybe you recognize it? I’d wake up in the morning and have a bowl of cereal and some juice. Having not eaten since dinner the night before, my body would react to the rapid influx of carbohydrates in that meal, sending my blood sugar through the roof and giving me a burst of needed energy. Insulin arrives in response to my elevated blood sugar, as its job is to clear the sugar from the blood and take it to its storage place. As fast as my blood sugar rose, it plummets because there was nothing in my meal to keep it steady (like fat or protein). That energy I experienced? It’s gone. Not only that, but low blood sugar tells the body that I need more fuel. That triggers hunger as well as cravings for carbohydrates, as the body knows that is the fastest way to get that blood sugar back up. So now, only an hour or two after eating, I’m hungry again, I’m tired, and I’m craving more carbohydrates. That low blood sugar has also trigged a stress response from my body so now there’s this uneasy sense of urgency – “I gotta have sugar NOW!”. So, I’m human. I’d go get a sugary granola bar or snack out of a box of crackers. Annnnnnd we’re right back in the damn cycle! As if being hungry, tired, moody and craving sweets weren’t bad enough, we’re storing fat all the while!
Here’s how insulin works: When you eat foods that raise your blood sugar – think carbohydrates & processed foods – insulin is deployed. Insulin acts as an usher – whatever sugar isn’t immediately needed for fuel is going to be ushered out of the blood by insulin and taken to storage. We talked in detail here about what happens when our short term storage space is full and how that leads to fat storage.
The storage function of insulin is why we consider it an anabolic hormone. Its role is storage or build up of extra fuel. The fat loss process is a catabolic process. In fat loss we are breaking down stored fat. You cannot have an anabolic and catabolic process happening at the same time. So when insulin is around your body is NOT going to burn fat because the signal insulin sends to your body is, “Hey! There’s excess energy (via sugar) hanging around – we’re gonna go find a place to stash it – don’t release any energy (via stored body fat) because we’re already got too much!”
You are either in fat-storing mode or in fat-burning mode. You’re always in one or the other and you cannot be in both. The determining factor? Insulin. Carbohydrates control insulin and insulin controls fat storage. Your dietary choices determine whether or not you’re allowing insulin to work for you. You’re either eating to trigger fat storage, accelerated aging and inflammation or you’re eating to allow insulin to help you burn through your fat stores.
We now understand why we want to eat to control insulin, but lets talk about what happens we don’t. I already talked about the carb cycle and that’s one example – when we don’t eat to control insulin we’re chronically hungry, craving carbs, and experiencing energy swings – periods of high energy followed by periods of low energy. Here’s a quick run down of how high blood sugar and excess insulin will impact your health if you don’t consciously eat to control them.
Chronic high insulin levels cause your cells become resistant to it. It’s always around, so they stop responding. You know how after listening to loud music for a while it doesn’t seem so loud? The same thing is happening to your cells. Insulin is always around sending these loud signals and your body just gets used to it and begins to ignore it. When your cells stop responding to insulin, not only does your blood sugar remain high, but your body perceives that it needs more insulin and keeps producing more and more, creating a cycle of increased fat storage, impaired fat burning and excess insulin production. Plus, remember that insulin tells the body there is plenty of fuel available. That message turns OFF fat burning. When we’re always producing more insulin as is the case with insulin resistance, our body never gets an opportunity to turn fat burning ON.
When insulin resistance prevents glucose from getting into your cells, your cells think there isn’t enough glucose in your body and so they initiate a process called gluconeogenesis. Gluconeogensis is the process of generating more glucose and dumping it into the blood stream for energy. Of course this energy isn’t needed and likely gets stored as fat.
Chronically elevated blood sugar is bad news, but so is the chronically elevated insulin that comes along with it! This can lead to systemic inflammation, heart disease and impaired blood flow.
Your pancreas will eventually get tired of over-producing insulin. When this happens, you may become “insulin dependent” – requiring injections of insulin to help control blood sugar.
Excess insulin wreaks havoc on your hormones. It can decrease your body’s production of growth hormone, which is essential for energy, repair, metabolism, immunity, libido and much more.
Insulin resistance decreases certain thyroid hormones slowing your metabolism while increasing fat storage and decreasing your energy levels.
Elevated insulin decreases sex hormone synthesis, which negatively impacts your menstrual cycle, fertility, mood, sex drive and more.
Chronically elevated insulin encourages fat storage. The more fat you have, the more of the hormone leptin you produce. Just like you can become insulin resistant, you are likely to become leptin resistant. Leptin is responsible for signaling the brain that you’ve had enough to eat. When you’re leptin resistant, your brain has a hard time receiving those signals and don’t experience that “I’m full” feeling.
Elevated insulin prevents glucagon from doing it’s job. Glucagon is a hormone that is required for fat to be allowed to leave fat cells and travel to be burned as energy. Glucagon will not operate in the presence of elevated insulin.
Scary stuff, huh? The reality is that this is what’s happening to your body when you eat a high carbohydrate diet rich in processed foods or you don’t move your body regularly. It’s compounded if you’re eating poorly AND not exercising.
The GREAT news here is that most of us have the power to control our blood sugar, moderate our insulin release, make our bodies highly sensitive to insulin and become a fat-burning machine!
When your body is highly sensitive to insulin, it signals your genes to create more receptor sites for insulin making you even MORE sensitive to insulin! When you exercise regularly, you repeatedly deplete the glucose stored there, allowing your next meal to refill those stores instead of being stored as fat. Your body becomes highly efficient at utilizing nutrients and drawing on fat stores for additional energy needs.
So, the take away? Your diet and lifestyle choices tell your body to get fat and stay fat, or get lean and stay lean. Whatever choice you make, your body is going to compound it. So where to start?
Eat to control your blood sugar. This means avoiding processed foods and grains. Build your meals around healthy fats, protein and vegetables.
Aim to get at least 3 high intensity workouts in each week. This will work to deplete your glycogen stores and teach your body how to be energy efficient
Take it one meal, one day at a time. You’ll feel the difference.
For detailed information on carbohydrate strategies for fat loss including more on fruit, wheat, oats, gluten plus strategies for improving your carbohydrate tolerance, check out the comprehensive carbs & fat loss ecourse! Follow the link below and use the coupon code Primal10 to get lifetime access for only $69 (including troubleshooting help from me on demand!) https://www.udemy.com/carb-strategies/?couponCode=Primal10
For more specifics on what carbs are the right carbs as well as the right TIMING for carb consumption, check out episodes 007 & 009 of the Primal Potential podcast via the link below. In episode 007 we talk about carbohydrate timing – the right times and the wrong times for carb consumption to keep you in fat burning mode. In episode 009 we talk about carbohydrate spillover – how and when carb consumption leads to excess body fat.
Carbs aren’t evil. But the way we eat them might be making us fat. In this episode we talk about how carbs have the potential to make us fat. We get into carbohydrate spillover, or the conditions under which carbs are actually converted to fat and stored as body fat. Fortunately, we talk about how to avoid that! We talk about how you can enjoy carbs without having them contribute to weight gain!
The Challenge: The Standard American Diet is rich in carbohydrates – almost every single meal and snack is dominated by carbs. The building block of ALL carbohydrates is simple sugar. When we break down these carbs they have the ability to raise our blood sugar and our insulin. This keeps us out of fat burning mode. Because we consume carbohydrates ALL the time, we encounter something called carbohydrate spillover – we don’t need these carbs for energy, there is no short term storage space available and so they are turned into fat and stored as such. In this episode we talk about what causes carbohydrate spillover and how we can avoid it while still enjoying carbohydrates!
We talked about how carbohydrates are chains of sugar of varying lengths and sizes, right? Straight chains, branched chains, all chains of sugar molecules – glucose, fructose – tiny little sugars. Well, it makes sense that when we metabolize these carbs they break back down into their little building blocks. Enroute to storage, this sugar enters the blood stream. The hormone insulin is released when sugar enters the blood and insulin is the USHER that takes the sugar to be stored. Now, if sugar hits your blood stream because you just drank a Gatorade during your 26 mile marathon, that sugar is probably going to be used immediately for energy, but for the rest of us, we’re probably not mid-workout or being chased by a tiger so that sugar needs to be stored. Insulin has a few drop off options for the sugar. The first place its going to try to take it is to the muscle. Storage space there is limited, but its easily accessible for your next workout or the next time you get chased by a bear. So, if you’re eating carbs regularly and not exercising regularly to tap into that fuel, chances are that the storage space in the muscles is all full. Next stop? The liver. Again, easy access in case your body needs to generate fuel but limited storage. And I’m talking seriously limited. About 400g between the muscle storage and liver storage combined. And that is not per day. That’s TOTAL capacity. Like I said, if you’re not working out regularly or your eating carbs on a regular basis, chances are that both of those storage sites are FULL. No vacancy. But insulin has another storage option. And this is what we call “carbohydrate spillover” – its also called lipogenesis, meaning essentially, creating fat. And this is where most of us live after every carb rich meal…
The excess glucose is converted to fat. That fat either continues to circulate in your blood (this is where we see things like elevated triglycerides) or it is stored in your adipose tissue – aka body fat. And, lucky us, this storage space is UNLIMITED and it is NOT easily accessed. Once it gets stored as body fat your body considers this its emergency fuel reserve and doesn’t give it up without a fight.
The Solution: We have to do the following: eat the right carbs at the right times in appropriate amounts. We need to get active so we can tap into our short term glycogen stores so that when we DO enjoy carbohydrates in the right amounts at the right times, they can replenish our muscle storage sites instead of initiating lipogenesis (fat creation) and being stored as body fat! This isn’t a complex process that will remove our enjoyment of food or require us to spend hours in the gym – it’s really simple once you understand how it works and how it can keep us in fat burning mode all the time!
Our control of our blood sugar and our insulin response is the primary determinant of our energy levels, our cravings, hunger, focus, mood and much more. Here’s the bottom line that you need to understand: your body cannot and will not burn fat when insulin is high.
Think about it – insulin is deployed when there is fuel that needs to be stored, right? There’s extra sugar (glucose) in the blood that needs to be taken away and stored. So insulin tells the body “hey, there’s plenty of fuel here, we are now in storage mode” – that message turns OFF any fat burning machinery. Why? Because burning fat generates extra energy for the body and insulin has signaled the body that there is already an excess of energy. No more is needed!
In order for your body to go into fat burning mode, there has to be two conditions:
The right hormonal environment
Less fuel available than your body needs to operate
Most people only focus on #2. They eat less and create hormonal chaos in the body without realizing that for your body to break down fat, the hormone glucagon MUST be in action. Glucagon kind of works as the opposite of insulin. Where insulin is deployed in response to excess fuel and facilitates storage, glucagon is deployed when there isn’t quite enough fuel and facilitates the breakdown of body fat to provide fuel for the body.
Practical Implementation: Eat the right carbs: Carbohydrates from whole food sources like berries, apples, citrus fruits, potatoes, sweet potatoes Avoid the wrong carbs: Wheat, grains, oats, processed foods & simple sugars Eat carbs at the right time: At your dinner time meal or post workout Eat them in the right amounts: Not to exceed 1/2 cup Pair them properly: Always have your carbohydrates with fat or protein (chicken, beef, fish, butter, avocado, etc) Take care of your short term storage to avoid having excess carbohydrate being converted to and stored as fat: This boils down to getting active. The most effective activity is going to be high intensity intervals, lifting heavy weights, or both. This doesn’t require hours in the gym. In fact, these workouts can usually be done in 20 minutes or less. We talk about how beginners can get started in the episode and one of my favorite links for workouts is below!
Resources: Looking for regular coaching, accountability and more tools and resources than you can imagine? Join me inside The Consistency Course.
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PCOS. Polycystic ovarian syndrome. Cysts in your ovaries. Endocrine (hormonal) disorder. I had it. I beat it.
I’ll be the first one to say that PCOS is a super frustrating diagnosis. I was diagnosed when I was 16 at my first OBGYN appointment. I remember the doctor telling me that I’d probably always struggle with my weight because the hormonal disturbances caused by the disease make weight loss extra hard. Over the years, doctors put me on various medications that they claimed would help me lose weight and perhaps improve my PCOS. None of them worked. I was frustrated. They had no answers.
Then there were the infertility challenges. I am, quite frankly, not willing to share that with the world yet. Just typing that sentence makes me incredibly emotional. Fortunately, I don’t believe those will ever be a challenge for me again because I overcame PCOS. Without the help of doctors. Without the help of drugs. With a TON of research, persistence and hard work. But I have the benefit of an educational background in nutrition & biochemistry. Most people don’t have that. I’ve tried to write this post before but it’s such a complicated topic that it always ended up in the drafts folder. Until today. I’m just going to keep typing until I’ve got my thoughts out and then I’m hitting “publish”. Come what may. I know it’s a sensitive topic.
PCOS is a super complicated disorder so forgive me if I oversimplify, but we’re gonna talk nuts and bolts. PCOS is often caused by estrogen dominance. I am convinced that was the case in my situation. Now, estrogen dominance doesn’t necessarily mean that you have an overabundance of estrogen in your body. It MIGHT mean that. But it could also mean that your estrogen is too high relative to its counterbalance hormone, progesterone. So your estrogen levels might be “normal” but if your progesterone levels are low, you are considered “estrogen dominant”. You might also have an imbalance in the TYPES of estrogen. Yup, there are several different types of estrogen – some good, some bad. You need to have appropriate ratios of these estrogens. Or maybe you are producing estrogen correctly and you have the right ratios but you are impaired in your ability to metabolize estrogen so it can be removed from your body. What happens then? It accumulates. Or, as if those weren’t enough options, your body could be producing too much estrogen. That happens in many overweight or obese people (men and women) because our body fat cells actually can produce estrogen! Talk about a compounding problem!! We’re not done though….your body might not be the problem. You might be CONSUMING an excess of estrogen. Wait, we can consume estrogen?! Yup, sure can….
Some of the most obvious ways we “consume” estrogen are birth control pills and hormone replacement therapy. But there are also environmental estrogens and estrogen-like compounds in TONS of things to which we expose ourselves DAILY. They can be in the water we’re drinking, leaching out of the plastics we eat and drink out of, in our cosmetic products, cleaning products – even in the foods we eat.
Fortunately for us, there are specific things we can do to reduce our overall estrogen load. These include changes in our diet & lifestyle. These are the changes I made to go from more than 20 cysts in each ovary to absolutely zero. These are the changes I made to go from never having a menstrual cycle to having a cycle that is like clock work. And, as I made these changes, I lost 140 pounds.
Consume estrogen detoxifiers.
Certain vegetables are natural estrogen detoxifiers. They improve our body’s ability to metabolize and excrete estrogen so we get rid of the excess and prevent estrogen accumulation. I’m talking about cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, etc. I started adding 2-5 cups of cruciferous veggies to my diet every single day.
Get off birth control pills.
If you have an issue with hormonal balance, birth control is only going to compound the problem. This is pretty obvious. There are better ways. Use a condom or whatever else you need to do to be safe but your health is a priority.
Skip the soy.
Soy contains phytoestrogens which have estrogen-like effects in your body. If PCOS or estrogen dominance is an issue for you, stay away from soy.
Eat organic.
Conventionally raised proteins (beef, chicken, etc) are often treated with hormones to accelerate their rate of growth and maximize profit for the rancher. Do NOT willingly introduce those hormones into your system. That is a very common way we introduce excess estrogens. This is also true for fruits, vegetables & dairy. Pesticides & herbicides can have estrogenic effects. Make it a priority.
Don’t use plastic products.
I’m talking mostly about eating and drinking from plastic products (bottles, tupperware, etc). Plastics contain estrogenic compounds that transfer to our foods. This is compounded when we heat plastics. At an absolute bare minimum, do NOT ever heat your food or drink in plastic containers.
Wear gloves when you handle cleaning products.
We’ve talked about the estrogen-like compounds in chemicals. Avoid them.
Get a water filter for your kitchen and your shower.
Check out your city’s water supply quality report. It is incredibly common for hormones and hormone-like compounds to be found in our water supply. Play it safe and get a filter.
Balance your blood sugar.
Our hormones are all inter-related. When one is out of balance it impacts the rest. When our blood sugar is out of control we are more likely to store extra body fat. Extra body fat produces more estrogen. The easiest ways to control your blood sugar are by cutting out processed foods, wheat, oats & grains. This step, along with cruciferous veggies, had the most significant impact on my overall hormone balance.
Bonus tip: control your stress levels. When we are chronically stressed, our body will use the hormone progesterone to manufacture more of the stress hormone cortisol. Use progesterone in that way obviously lowers our overall progesterone levels and that alone can create (and worsen) estrogen dominance because estrogen & progesterone need to be in balance.
Listen, I know that PCOS is frustrating. I get it. I thought I’d never lose the weight. Yeah, it’s hard. It’s harder than it should be. It’s harder than it is for people who DON’T have PCOS. But it’s not impossible. There is hope.
Plus, you can check out the Hormones & Fat Loss ebook! 50 pages of diet & lifestyle strategies to help you naturally optimize your hormones and get into fat-burning mode!!
We have the power to turn on fat burning via our food choices. That’s pretty powerful stuff. What’s more powerful, in my opinion, is understanding how we’re constantly turning fat burning OFF via our food choices without even knowing it! There is one particular hormone, insulin, that loudly signals our body to turn off all fat burning processes. And many of us, especially those of us who are carrying extra weight, are allowing insulin to shout that message to our bodies allllll the time without knowing it! Today I want to explore how and why insulin sends that message and how we can eat to ensure that insulin does NOT send that message. Our control of our blood sugar and our insulin response is the primary determinant of our weight loss, energy levels, our cravings, hunger, focus, mood and much more. Here’s the bottom line that you need to understand: your body cannot and will not burn fat when insulin is high.
Remember that when we eat carbohydrates, they must be broken down into their smaller building blocks so that our bodies can use them for fuel. In the case of carbohydrates, these building blocks are sugars. To be used for fuel or to be stored, this sugar travels through the blood stream. Insulin is deployed in response to high blood sugar because it is the usher that helps take the sugar to its ultimate storage space. Think about it – insulin is deployed when there is fuel that needs to be stored, right? Those conditions make insulin signal the body, “hey, there’s plenty of fuel here, we are now in storage mode.” That message turns OFF any fat burning machinery. Why? Because burning fat generates extra energy for the body and insulin has signaled the body that there is already an excess of energy. No more is needed! Your body is efficient. The presence of insulin signals the body that there is EXTRA fuel. Your body won’t allow fat burning when there is extra fuel because that would be inefficient and it would flood you with extra energy that there wasn’t any use for. The presence of elevated insulin levels turns OFF fat burning machinery in your body. Get it?
In order to turn on fat burning in your body, two conditions must be met:
The right hormonal environment
Less fuel available than your body needs to operate
Most people only focus on #2. They eat less without regard to their hormonal balance. They don’t realize that the hormonal environment is what determines whether or not your body will allow fat burning. If you just create a caloric deficit by eating fewer calories, your body could respond by burning muscle and/or by slowing down your metabolism and signaling the body to hang on even tighter to your stored body fat! There’s another hormone that has to be in play for fat burning to be allowed. And guess what? That hormone, glucagon, can’t do its job if insulin is hanging around. Glucagon works opposite of insulin. Where insulin is deployed in response to excess fuel and facilitates storage, glucagon is deployed when there isn’t enough fuel and facilitates the breakdown of body fat to provide fuel for the body. Remember, since insulin signals the body that there is an excess of fuel, glucagon can’t break down fat under those conditions!
A lot of people will assume this means that we shouldn’t ever eat any carbs if we want to lose weight – that’s just not true – we just have to make sure that we’re eating the right carbs at the right times in the right amounts. So how do we do that? We’ll get there! In our next post we’re going to look a little more closely at insulin before we dive into specific strategies for how to turn on fat burning via the foods we eat.
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