“Learning to eat for stable blood sugar is of paramount importance.”
—Dr. Casey Means, Author of Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health
Hi Healthy-Eating Action-Taker (HEAT),
For the upcoming biweekly nuggets of 🍏Nutrition No-Brainer, we will be doing a Mini-Dive Series, sharing the swift science behind each of the 5 Nutrition No-Brainers:
L – Limit High-Glycemic Choices
E – Emphasize High Quality Protein
A – Add Healthy Fats When Cooking
S – Stick to Whole Foods
T –Trust Nature’s Sweetness
Let's get into it.
🍏 Nutrition No-Brainer #1
L — Limit High-Glycemic Choices
Choose foods that won't spike your blood sugar.
Because stable blood sugar leads to stable energy, mood, and results.
Why does this matter?
High-glycemic foods cause blood sugar spikes, but what actually happens inside your body when that spike hits, doesn't only involve "feeling tired".
And if you think you're eating "healthily" already?
In her book, Good Energy, Dr. Means puts it starkly:
"Between refined sugars, refined grains, and high-starch foods, 42 percent of our calories are coming from foods that convert directly to sugar.
Those calories are giving the body nothing of what it actually needs to function — so no wonder we have insatiable cravings and are so hungry."
42 percent. Most people have NO IDEA.
What Happens in a Glucose Spike?
- Blood sugar rises extremely high: triggering the release of insulin (high levels and lasting quite long too).
- Insulin signals cells to absorb glucose, yet only so much is actually needed.
- So any EXCESS glucose gets stored into fat cells = fat gain.
- Insulin then causes a sharp fall in glucose = The Crash (sometimes with blood sugar levels falling far below the PRE-meal baseline = meaning you end up worse off than BEFORE you ate.)
- Over time, with repeated spikes, your cells start developing Insulin Resistance: they stop responding properly to insulin's signals = meaning even more glucose gets left circulating and stored as fat instead of being used for energy.
The Crash triggers 3 Main Problems
⚡ Energy
Overloading your body with glucose (the spike!) overwhelms your mitochondria, which are the the energy factories inside your cells.
Every repeated spike forces your mitochondria to work beyond capacity.
In doing so, they release harmful molecules called free radicals. These are unstable molecules that, in their drive to stabilize themselves, latch onto other structures inside the mitochondria and surrounding cells = damaging everything they bind to in the process. To an extent, the body can resolve these through antioxidants.
But when these accumulate faster than your body can handle them, oxidative stress sets in. This further damages the mitochondria themselves and the cellular structures around them.
Damaged mitochondria can't convert food into energy properly. They become inefficient, things back up, and the whole system slows down. You end up not even getting the energy (ATP) you need.
So the fatigue you feel has never been a mere motivation problem.
It's actually your energy machinery (mitochondria) gradually worn down by the same glucose spikes, over and over again.
(Good Energy by Dr. Casey Means, pp. 37, 41, 200–201)
😤 Mood & Irritability
A landmark PNAS study in 2014 tracked 107 married couples over 21 days and found that those with the LOWEST blood sugar pushed twice as many aggression pins into a voodoo doll representing their spouse.
(Remember that even though Insulin brings the glucose spike down, the Crash can mean a LOWER blood sugar level than pre-meal)
The lead researcher's conclusion was straightforward: glucose is the brain's fuel, and the self-control needed to manage anger and frustration requires energy — energy that can only come from STABLE blood sugar.
Likewise, UNSTABLE glucose levels directly disrupt tyrosine: a neurotransmitter in the brain responsible for managing mood. When blood sugar is volatile, so is the chemistry regulating how you feel and respond to the world around you.
And the consequences aren't limited to irritability either.
Every additional 18 mg/dL of fasting glucose is associated with a 37 % increased rate of developing depression.
It's not just a bad mood after a bad meal but the actual chemical infrastructure of your emotional regulation getting nefariously disrupted by WHAT you ate.
Your blood sugar level can determine your patience and your mental health.
(PNAS, Bushman et al., 2014; Jessie Inchauspé, Diary of a CEO interview (Glucose Goddess: The 10 Glucose Hacks!); Good Energy by Dr. Casey Means, pp. 56–57)
🍪 Cravings & Hunger
Intense cravings are not random. They are a direct biological response to the Crash that follows a blood sugar spike.
When blood sugar plummets, the body enters a state of confused panic, thinking it is starving (since blood sugar got so LOW!) and then urgently seeking food to stabilize itself.
The craving you feel is due to the body "sounding an alarm", and isn't a lack of discipline.
This damage doesn't reset after one meal. CGM (continuous glucose monitor) research shows that bigger crashes reliably predict
‼️ greater hunger later in the day,
‼️ earlier return to eating, and
‼️ higher total calorie intake
across the full twenty-four hours.
One spike doesn't just affect one meal:
It creates a crash → more eating if succumbing to cravings→ another spike → another crash → REPEAT.
Hence, the first meal of the day (and anything eaten on an empty stomach, like with snacking) carries incredible influence over the entire cycle.
Whatever you choose in that moment sets the blood sugar tone for everything that follows, determining whether the crash-and-cravings cycle takes hold or never starts at all.
(Good Energy by Dr. Casey Means, pp. 123, 150)
🩸 What's happening to Your Bloodwork
Constant HIGHS (glucose spikes) and LOWS (blood sugar Crashes) lead to a LOT of silent damage: the kind you won't always manifest any symptoms or realize it until a doctor flags it.
High triglycerides, for example, are almost always a signal that the body is being overwhelmed by too much sugar, refined carbs, or alcohol, with the excess being converted and stored as fat in the liver rather than used for energy.
Fortunately, the reverse is equally true.
Switching to a higher-fiber, LOWER-GLYCEMIC diet has been shown to produce significant drops in LDL cholesterol, post-meal glucose, post-meal insulin, and blood triglycerides.
These are the exact numbers your doctor monitors, and STABLE blood sugar moves all of them in the right, healthy direction.
(Good Energy by Dr. Casey Means, pp. 103, 203–204)
💃 The Long-Term Results of STABLE Blood Sugar
When your metabolism is STABLE, the benefits ripple across every dimension of your life:
💚clarity of mind,
💚balanced weight,
💚healthy skin,
💚stable mood, and
💚freedom from the fear of physical or mental decline as you age.
🤰For those of childbearing age, stable blood sugar even supports the natural state of fertility that is so often disrupted by metabolic dysfunction.
The bloodwork reflects this too and optimal targets to work toward are:
- Fasting glucose: 70–85 mg/dL
- Fasting insulin: 2–5 mIU/L
- Triglycerides: < 80 mg/dL
- Hemoglobin A1c: 5.0–5.4%
And perhaps most powerfully: maintaining blood sugar in a healthy range over a lifetime means never walking into a doctor's office and being blindsided by a type 2 diabetes diagnosis. It's a condition that develops gradually over years and decades.
❇️ STABLE blood sugar is a quality-of-life foundation: one that directly influences your energy, your mood, your bloodwork, your brain, your weight, and your long-term freedom from disease.
(Good Energy by Dr. Casey Means, pp. 14, 127, 134)
Additional Resources:
0: So which foods are high-glycemic and which are low-glycemic?
Do review the first intro to 🍏Nutrition No-Brainer #1 for the list of foods to prioritize for STABLE blood sugar.
1: If you still want/have to eat high-glycemic foods (sometimes unavoidable due to multifactorial causes: traveling, business meeting, unexpected trip, celebration events etc),
this is my most popular guide on how to reduce the glucose spikes from such foods:
👉 Click Here to grab the 🍪Sweet Hacks Guide
2: Wondering what to cook and how to incorporate more veggies in your meals?
I share my personal recipes that follow all 🍏Nutrition No-Brainers that you can try at my Instagram:
👉 Click Here to check out Emz' homemade recipes @emzhung
3: And if you want to find comparisons of glucose level-responses between different types of foods, you should definitely check out the Glucose Goddess Instagram!
✅ The Nutrition No-Brainer Principle to Remember
🍏Nutrition No-Brainer #1:
L — Limit High-Glycemic Choices
Choose foods that won't spike your blood sugar.
Because stable blood sugar leads to stable energy, mood, and results.
❣️DEAD-Simple Step to Try Today:
Eat your first few bites of any meal on the protein and vegetables, and THEN intentionally eat your carbs last.
Whichever type of carbs on your plate tends to be more high-glycemic compared to the rest of meal components.
(If it's a combined food like a sandwich or lasagna that mixes carbs with everything, do hack #2 or #3 from the 🍪Sweet Hacks Guide to reduce the glucose spike~)
Try this for 7 days, and notice how much more stable your energy and satiety stays afterward.
Reply to let me know how it goes!
See you at the Mini-Dive for Nutrition No-Brainer #2,
-Emz
Founder of 🍏Nutrition No-Brainer
PS… just updated my all-inclusive landing page that holds the main discovery touch points of the 🍏Nutrition No-Brainer world~
👉 Check it out at emzhung.com.
PPS...Sorry about the send delay...I am based in Havana, Cuba at the moment and blackouts are notorious for leaving us without wifi Internet for a good while every time it happens...so I try to share as soon as it's back up again~