Improve Your Insulin Sensitivity
Whether it be building muscle, losing fat or improving overall health, it all hinges on this one extremely important hormone. Insulin is your body’s James Bond, the secret agent that dictates your physique’s course of events. In other words, when insulin talks your body listens, and reacts accordingly.
In today’s blog we are going to show you the 6 STEPS that you NEED to follow if you want to increase your fitness level, improve your physique and your overall health and well-being. Insulin sensitivity can mean the difference between fast and slow, meaningful and mediocre, or fit and flabby.
So What Is Insulin Sensitivity?
Insulin sensitivity refers to how well your body responds to the hormone insulin, and is directly related to how productively processes the carbohydrates that you consume. Those with a high sensitivity (quick response) have better blood sugar regulation, allowing the body to store glucose in the muscle tissue rather than in those fatty love-handle/muffin top areas.
On the other end of the spectrum, low insulin sensitivity may result in the overproduction of insulin, causing the body to play catch-up to control increasing blood sugar levels and force the storage of glucose as fat in the body.
This eventually becomes a position of insulin resistance which can lead to a number of conditions like type-2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, so it’s important to keep your body-insulin connection strong and healthy!
So how do you enhance your insulin sensitivity? If you’re looking to build muscle mass, and therefore eating in a calorie surplus, you’ll have a greater tendency to gain more lean muscle with less body fat.
If you’re dieting, you’ll feel much better, with fewer energy peaks and troughs, and the ability to maintain correct muscle glycogen levels.
Follow these 6 simple tips & make sure your body and insulin work well together for the best results!
1) Eliminate all Refined Carbs
Eliminating your refined carbohydrate intake is critical. One of the primary reasons why people develop diabetes over time is due to an overconsumption of refined carbs/sugar intake in their diet, which causes their pancreas to continually pump out more and more insulin.
The higher the amount of refined carbohydrates you consume, the greater the chance that your cells will become resistant to insulin, which will lead to poor insulin sensitivity.
Refined carbs include most sweeteners, white flour, snacks, and soft drinks.
2) Eat Some Healthy Fats
One of the main ways to boost your insulin sensitivity is by optimising the rate at which your body processes carbohydrates and directs them to your muscle tissue, this is done by eating an adequate amount of healthy fats.
Diets that are loaded with trans fatty acids tend to encourage poor insulin sensitivity, while on the flip side plenty of monounsaturated and omega fats leads to a stronger insulin sensitivity. The best sources of healthy fats include organic butter, avocados, organic coconut oil, nuts, and fatty fish or fish oil.
If you can consume a small amount of these fats every day, making sure not to over do it, you’ll be one step closer to promoting an iron bond between your body and its insulin.
Fish oil is an excellent source of omega-3 fatty acids which helps you get your daily dose of healthy fats into your diet.
Make sure to get a quality pharmaceutical grade fish oil.
3) Prioritise Your Fibre
Eating more fibre in your diet isn’t just good for digestion and regularity. Fibre-rich meals also slow down the release of carbohydrates into the blood stream, allowing for a more effective insulin response.
Most high-fibre foods such as, vegetables and fruit also provide the body with numerous vitamins and minerals to further improve your health and help prevent disease.
Remember, fibre is also very beneficial for fat loss because of its ability to help remove unnecessary toxins from the body as oppose to allowing them to be stored as fat!
4) Perform Depletion Workouts Every So Often
From the training side of things, one thing that you can do to enhance the rate at which your body shuttles glucose into the muscle cells is by performing glycogen depletion training sessions every now and then.
By depleting your muscle glycogen levels, you’ll create a large “vacuum” effect into which glucose can move. When you’re in a highly glycogen-depleted state, your body will instantly suck that sugar right up and put it straight into your muscles, keeping far away from your body fat cells.
Don’t perform depletion workouts every time you’re at the gym, as this may seriously interfere with your training objection. But every now and then, it’s definitely a good idea. Especially if you know you’re going to be having a carb-loaded meal later on in the day, this type of workout is should consist of higher reps and plenty of volume which can help your body prepare for that hit of carbs better.
Yes it’s going to hurt, but think about all that glucose that you’ll be burning.
5) Your Insulin Loves You Lean
Getting lean itself is another important way to increase your insulin sensitivity. The leaner you are the greater your ability is to gain lean muscle mass. The primary reason for this is that you can send more of those excess calories to the muscle cells, where it provides energy for muscle building and growth, rather than being stored as fat.
generally speaking the leaner you are, chances are that you’re probably eating healthy and not over-consuming refined carbs/sugars, but the point is that the leaner you get, the more sensitive your insulin becomes. This means your body will operate faster, you will be able to be more flexible with your nutrition, and your insulin-body connection will be at its strongest.
6) Keep Active All Day
The last step to strengthen your insulin sensitivity is making sure to participate in some sort of physical activity periodically throughout the day. Most of us hit the gym regularly, but they succumb to long periods of inactivity during the rest of their day. If you do this, you’re asking for trouble.
It’s all about matching your energy expenditure with the carbohydrates you consume. You should already be eating smaller meals more regularly throughout the day, and even performing short periods of light physical activity such as walking or riding a bike to the coffee shop on a work break as this will help you to maintain your body’s insulin sensitivity and ensure that your blood sugar levels don’t fluctuate too much.
Make sure that you put these 6 tips into practice and start moving your body into an optimal insulin sensitive position.
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