Months ago I shared a quiz to help people identify whether or not they are “carbohydrate sensitive”. The vast majority of people are. Fortunately, you can absolutely, positively improve your carbohydrate tolerance.
You are probably carb sensitive if you’re one of those people who feels like you gain weight at the mere sight of carbs. Or if you struggle with cravings & weight loss seems SO hard.
Many people feel like being carb intolerant or highly carb sensitive is just their lot in life but it doesn’t have to be.
In today’s episode I will introduce you to 3 specific strategies you can begin to implement today to improve your carbohydrate tolerance.
When you improve your carbohydrate tolerance, fat loss becomes easier, energy increases, cravings decrease, health improves and so much more!
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3 Ways To Improve Your Carbohydrate Tolerance
In today’s episode I’m taking a deep dive into food, exercise & lifestyle strategies that will improve your carbohydrate tolerance, improve your insulin sensitivity and make weight loss much easier.
The three strategies include:
- Adjusting the quantity, quality and timing of your carbohydrate consumption
- Exercising more
- Reducing stress
When it comes to achieving these goals of accelerating fat loss & increasing energy while decreasing cravings, we have to understand the role of muscle tissue in carb metabolism and insulin sensitivity.
There are 2 primary issues at play.
- We have to make sure there is room within our muscle glycogen stores. If they are always full, that will reduce carb tolerance and increase carb spillover into the fat tissue.
- We can increase the number and sensitivity of glucose transporters in the muscle tissue.
We need our muscle tissue to be more responsive to insulin. We can make this happen.
This responsiveness is related, in part, to glucose transporters. They live in our muscle tissue and are the doorways through which glucose enters the muscle tissue.
When we have more glucose transporters, our muscle tissue is more responsive and efficient to glucose.
In some people, there just aren’t that many doorways. They also might not be very responsive. The factors we need to consider are: how many are there & how responsive are they?
When the glucose transporters (doorways) aren’t responsive or there aren’t that many of them, it’s like a pile-up outside the door.
That results in blood sugar & insulin staying elevated for longer which impairs fat loss.
Imagine you have a people trying to get into a building. What are the factors in making sure that the people get in quickly?
- How many people are there?
- How many doorways are there?
- How easy are those doors to get through?
Your glucose transporters are the same way.
Do you want a huge traffic jam of sugar, hanging out in the blood, keeping insulin elevated while waiting to get into the muscle tissue? No! You want to clear it fast.
Your ability to do so depends on:
- How much sugar there is (how much you ate and what type of carb)
- How many glucose transporters there are in your muscle tissue
- How sensitive they are
Today’s episode explains how you can control #1 while improving #s 2 and 3!
Resources
E-Course Carb Strategies for Fat Loss
How To Track Without Counting Calories
Episode 058: Understanding Fat Loss & The Insulin Effect