Know Your Treatment Options
Stay in contact with your doctor to discuss your treatment options if you are noticing weight gain. There are many different medications that can help with managing diabetes, so discuss any concerns you have with your doctor to make sure you are on the best medications for your needs.
When making changes to your diet and activity level, it’s important to continue to measure your blood sugar levels to stay within your goal range and to see how these are affecting your blood sugar.
How Much Exercise Should I Get Per Week
It’s recommended to do at least 150 minutes of moderately intense activity per week. Exercise can include:
- Walking
- Doing work around the house like gardening or vacuuming
It’s also recommended to do strength training exercises a couple of times a week.
Research shows that exercise, even without weight loss, improves blood sugar levels and helps with insulin resistance.
When increasing your exercise time or starting a new exercise program, first discuss how this will affect your medications and blood sugar levels with your doctor before starting. Since exercise can affect these, you may need to make adjustments to your medications or have some snacks with you to prevent low blood sugar levels.
You Dont Have A Slow Metabolism
Unshiftable weight gain is not all part of getting old. Its a symptom that begins with consistently high insulin levels.
More than 1 in 3 Americans have insulin resistance. Yet this widespread epidemic is largely unknown because big pharma cant make any money out of the solution.
What is insulin resistance?
When you eat a carbohydrate-heavy meal, your blood gets flooded with sugar molecules . Our cells want to feed on that sugar for energy but cant without the presence of insulin.
So the pancreas releases insulin and when the cells have absorbed the sugar, the cells send a signal to the pancreas to stop producing insulin.
Insulin not only helps feed your cells, but also takes the energy-rich sugar and stores it in your liver and muscles. If you dont burn that stored sugar, the liver turns it into fat.
Normal blood sugar levels are comparable to one teaspoon of sugar per 1.33 gallons of blood . However, the average American consumes 31 teaspoons of sugar a day.
Over time, a high carb/sugar diet causes our cells to become resistant to insulin which means the cells are unable to properly absorb sugar from the bloodstream.
Because the cells arent getting enough sugar, they dont tell the pancreas to stop producing insulin.
So the pancreas keeps on producing insulin in an attempt to feed the cells. Excess insulin instructs your liver to manufacture fat while your appetite soars and your metabolism dives.
Leaving you feeling tired with a fatty liver.
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Instead Of Thinking About The Effects Of Insulinor Any Of These Hormonesas An On
Your body is constantly adjusting its hormonal dials, not based solely on food intake, but also on thousands of other inputs and processes you arent even aware of.
The upshot: When your insulin levels are high, youll burn less fat for energy than when your insulin levels are low. But you wont stop burning fat altogether.
Youll preferentially burn carbohydrates for energy instead.
It Starts With Finding A Way To Eat Fewer Calories Than You Need
A calorie is a unit of energy, which is in the food and drink we consume. Your body uses energy for everything we do from breathing and sleeping to exercising. When you eat, youre replacing the energy youve used, which helps you to maintain a healthy weight.
As a general guide, government recommendations are that men need around 2,500kcal a day to maintain a healthy weight, and women need around 2,000kcal a day. But most people need different amounts of calories based on how their bodies work, how active they are and any weight management goals.;
Weve put together some 7-day meal plans to help you lose weight. They’re all clinically approved, nutritionally balanced, calorie and carb counted, and can help if you want to lose weight:
- Mediterranean diet plan
- Lower-calorie diet plans, like 1,200 or 1,500 calories a day
Evidence shows that the best approach is the one that youre likely to stick to. So the key is to find a plan that you enjoy and fits in with the rest of your life. Everyones different and what works for some may not for others.
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Wheres All The Sugar Coming From
You dont have to have a sweet tooth to be eating too much sugar.
Processed foods are Americans main source of sugar. These foods have been altered from their natural state so they look and taste good when theyre stored on supermarket shelves. Fat, salt and most importantly sugar are added in large quantities to most processed foods. In other words, theyre the opposite of the untouched, natural foods our grandparents lived on.
Its easy to find foods that are made with the worst ingredients you can eat refined sugars and white flours. Bread, pasta, soda, fast food, gourmet coffee drinks and cereal bars may taste good, but the amount of sugar in our food is making us fat, diabetic and miserable.
Peter Attias Ted Talk On Insulin Resistance
Dr Peter Attia is a surgeon from America who developed pre-diabetes many years ago and successfully went into remission. He has dedicated his career to answering our question and co-founded the Nutrition Science Initiative.
He speaks about his experience and his belief on the relationship between obesity and insulin resistance in his TED talk.
Peter poses the question about whether its insulin resistance which is driving obesity and weight gain:
Most researchers believe obesity is the cause of insulin resistance. Logically, then, if you want to treat insulin resistance, you get people to lose weight, right? You treat the obesity. But what if we have it backwards? What if obesity isnt the cause of insulin resistance at all? What if obesity is a coping mechanism for a far more sinister problem going on underneath the cell? Im not suggesting that obesity is benign, but what I am suggesting is it may be the lesser of two metabolic evils.
His analogy of banging your shin into a coffee table illustrates the importance of understanding cause vs effect. Banging your shin on a coffee table leaves you with a bruise. The bruise is not the problem but rather a natural response to banging your leg. If we assumed bruises were the problem and targeted the treatment of bruises, we would end up not treating the root cause people banging their legs on coffee tables. In this analogy:
bruises = weight gain People banging their shins on coffee tables = insulin resistance
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The Role Of Insulin In Weight Gain
Insulin is a hormone present in most biological life from insects to humans. Hormones are chemical messengers targeting specific cells.
In humans, insulins primary role is to regulate nutrient storage .
Consequently,it helps to store energy gained in times of abundance for times of foodscarcity. The storage hormone encourages fat accumulation and signals cells to takeup glucose from the bloodstream.
Hormones deliver their message by binding to a cells receptor. With this in mind, insulin functions in the body as a key opening the cell by matching its lock the receptor. Once insulin opens the door, glucose can enter the cell.
A rise in blood sugar levels is triggering insulin production and release from the pancreas.
Then, after the stomach and intestine have broken them down into smaller parts, different macronutrients have different effects on blood glucose and insulin levels.
Amino acidsfrom proteins have a minimal impact on blood sugar while elevating insulin. Onthe contrary, fatty acids have minimal effects on both blood glucose andinsulin.
Sugars from carbohydrates, which are chains of sugars, are significantly spiking blood glucose as well as insulin levels .
On the other hand, insufficient insulin can cause glucose to build up in the blood.
For example, thats the case when the immune system mistakenly destroys the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas , which results in type 1 diabetes.
Are There Any Foods Or Medications You Should Avoid While On Ozempic
Here are a few things to keep in mind if you are on Ozempic.
First, youll want to limit how much alcohol youre drinking while taking Ozempic, especially if you are diabetic. Alcohol can have an effect on your blood sugar, and there is a risk that it may drop too low in combination with Ozempic, especially if you are drinking on an empty stomach. Alcohol can irritate your stomach, too. This might make you feel worse in combination with some of the GI side effects from the medication.
Youll also want to exercise caution if you are taking any oral medications. Since Ozempic slows down gastric emptying, this can potentially impact the amount of oral medication your body is absorbing. And while trials havent shown this to be significant with Ozempic, youll want to make sure your provider is aware of any other medications you are taking before starting Ozempic.
If you are looking to combine Ozempic with other weight-loss medications, including over-the-counter supplements and herbal preparations, youll want to discuss that with your provider first, as well.
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Insulin Resistance: The Real Reason Why You Aren’t Losing Weight
Many people have weight loss as one of their key resolutions. Sadly, 35 percent of people also give up on that goal before the month even ends. It’s not necessarily lack of time or willpower that causes you to struggle with weight loss year after year. The real reason that you may have struggled to lose weight is insulin resistance, or a condition I call metabolism dysfunction.
So you may be thinking, “Why is it so hard for me to lose weight?” I’m doing “everything right,” and yet still weight loss is difficult. Perhaps you’re already following a strict diet and working out several times a week, but to no avail. The weight still won’t come off — or, worse, you are gaining weight for seemingly no reason at all! You have become resigned to being overweight.
Weight problems aren’t a permanent and immovable fixture for the rest of your life. If you’re finding that weight is easy to gain and hard to lose, it’s not your fault! Weight problems aren’t just about overeating or under exercising — they’re about metabolic changes that are collectively known as insulin resistance. Lab tests conducted in my practice have confirmed that over 89 percent of my patients have this real and often undiagnosed issue. So the good news is that the right combination of diet, exercise, and will to succeed you can reverse your MD factor and finally find success in losing weight and keeping it off for good.
Are There Any Medications Like Ozempic That Are Currently Approved For Weight Loss
In addition to Ozempic, Novo Nordisk also manufactures a similar medication called , which is currently approved for weight loss.;
It isnt cheap the average retail price of Saxenda is over $1,500. However, you may qualify for a manufacturer savings card where the medication could cost you as little as $25 for a 30 days supply if you have private or commercial health insurance.
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Weight And Type 2 Diabetes
In type 2 diabetes, the pancreas still makes insulin, but the insulin doesn’t work in the body like it should and blood sugar levels get too high. Most kids and teens are overweight when they’re diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Being overweight or obese increases a person’s risk for developing type 2 diabetes. Also, weight gain in people with type 2 diabetes makes blood sugar levels even harder to control.
People with type 2 diabetes have a condition called insulin resistance. They’re able to make insulin, but their bodies can’t use it properly to move glucose into the cells. So, the amount of glucose in the blood rises. The pancreas then makes more insulin to try to overcome this problem.
Eventually, the pancreas can wear out from working so hard and might not be able to make enough insulin to keep blood glucose levels within a normal range. At this point, a person has type 2 diabetes.
Insulin resistance gets better with a combination of weight loss and exercise. For people with type 2 diabetes, getting to a healthy weight and exercising regularly makes it easier to reach target blood sugar levels. And, in some cases, the body’s ability to control blood sugar may even return to normal.
Insulin resistance can happen in people without diabetes, but it puts them at a higher risk for developing the disease. For overweight people without type 2 diabetes, losing weight and exercising can cut their risk of developing the disease.
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Reduce Doses Whenever Possible
Along the same lines, look for every opportunity to reduce your insulin requirements. Cutting back on carbohydrate intake is one way to accomplish this.
Eliminating carbohydrate-containing drinks is a good place to start. So is cutting out between-meal snacks. At mealtimes, reduce your portions of carbohydrate-rich foods such as potatoes, rice, bread, pasta,;and cereal. Instead, increase your portions of lean meats and non-starchy vegetables.
Physical activity can also help lower your insulin requirements by enhancing how well your insulin works. Extra walking throughout the day may allow you to lower your dose of long-acting insulin.
Moderate exercise after meals may allow you to significantly reduce your rapid-acting mealtime insulin. Talk to your healthcare team about making these kinds of adjustments.
Also, look for ways to cut back on your stress levels. Emotional stress makes your body resistant to insulin. Learning to relax can go a long way towards reducing your insulin needs. It can also put you in the right frame of mind to eat and exercise the way you should.
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Leptin And Insulin Resistance
Closelyaligned with hunger and appetite, the hypothalamus also functions as aswitching point that tightly regulates body fat. It does so by using thesatiety hormone leptin, which increases with body fat.
Hence, leptin acts as a natural counterpart to insulin. While insulin is a hormone encouraging fat storage, leptin triggers the reduction of body fat .
The higher leptin levels, the smaller the appetite and cravings. On the other hand, high insulin levels inhibit leptin secretion .
Usually,both fasting leptin and insulin levels are high in obese subjects.Consequently, that indicates insulin and leptin resistance.
Moreover,also the response to food intake in obese people causes different effects.While leptin levels are rising in lean people, they are falling in overweightsubjects.
Given that their brains do not get the signal of being full, obese people are less likely to stop eating.
Hence, overweight people are starving while carrying hundreds of thousands of excess calories with them, which they also cant excess due to persistently high insulin levels.
Furthermore, constant exposure to high leptin levels can cause leptin resistance in the brain.
This kind of self-regulation shows a similarity to insulin resistance, which is commonly associated with leptin resistance .
Benefits Of Losing Extra Weight
There are so many benefits to losing extra weight both physically and emotionally.;
Extra weight around your waist means fat can build up around your organs, like your liver and pancreas. This can cause something called insulin resistance. So losing this weight could help the insulin you produce or the insulin you inject work properly.
And as you start to lose weight and get more active, you and your healthcare team may need to look at your medication, especially if you treat your diabetes with insulin or sulphonylurea. This might mean reducing the dose or making other adjustments, but talk to your healthcare team about it. For some people, needing fewer diabetes medications is a great motivation for losing weight.;
Although getting type 1 diabetes has nothing to do with weight,;losing any extra weight will help you reduce your risk of complications;and could mean injecting less insulin.
And if you have type 2 diabetes, losing around 15kg could even put you into diabetes remission.;This could mean coming off your diabetes medication completely a life-changing possibility. This is even more likely if you lose the weight nearer to your diagnosis and quickly; it’s a myth that losing weight slowly is better for you.;
Most people say they also feel better in their mood, have more energy and sleep better.
Douglas Twenefour, our Deputy Head of Care and dietitian
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Professor Roy Taylors Work At Newcastle University
Professor Roy Taylor is a professor of medicine and metabolism at the University of Newcastle. He and his research group have focused on understanding if, and how, you can reverse type 2 diabetes.
On the research groups university website, they have stated that type 2 diabetes can be reversed with major weight loss:
It has been possible to work out the basic mechanisms which lead to type 2 diabetes. Too much body fat within the liver and pancreas prevents normal insulin action and prevents normal insulin secretion. Both defects are reversible by substantial weight loss.
Heres our first interaction between weight loss and insulin function. Professor Taylor is saying that if you lose weight, you can also return insulin action and secretion to normal.
- Insulin action: refers to insulin sensitivity, i.e. proper insulin action means theres little or no insulin resistance in the body.
- Insulin secretion: the ability of the beta cells in the pancreas to release insulin into the blood.
The research group goes on to highlight one further critical point. The insulin-secreting function of the pancreas decreases once fat levels go above a persons individual fat threshold.
This threshold varies from person to person and is highly associated with genetics and heritage . This is what they say:
Professor Taylors research paper provides an explanation for the whole cycle, which he has called the Twin-cycle hypothesis.