Everybody knows that too much sugar can mean gaining weight, and most people understand that limiting sugar can help you lose it. What's not so well known is that too little blood sugar at the wrong time can also push you towards gaining weight. Understanding why that is can help you avoid that physiological state and enjoy greater success when you're losing weight.
Blood Sugar Basics
When your body takes in calories by digesting food, some of those calories enter your blood in the form of glucose sugar. According to Dr. Walter Willett in "Eat, Drink and Be Healthy," foods that break down quickly add more glucose in as shorter time span than foods that break down slowly. Your body's response to these rapid floods of blood glucose are the key factor in blood sugar levels and your weight.
Weight Loss Basics
If you eat more calories than you burn, your body stores the extra as fat. You gain weight. If you burn more than you eat, your body gets the extra energy by burning the stored fat. You lose weight. In terms of that mechanic, blood glucose doesn't matter as much as total calories. However, low blood sugar can stimulate you to want to eat more food, which will increase your total daily calories and reduce your chances of losing weight.
Low Blood Glucose
After the "sugar rush" of a sugary or starchy snack, your body suffers from a "sugar crash" of very low blood sugar in comparison to the insulin dispatched to your blood to process the sugar. This makes your body crave more food in general, and more sugar in particular. Those cravings make it hard to stick to a diet plan. In addition to low glucose from a sugar crash, you might also experience these cravings when fasting or skipping breakfast causest your blood glucose levels to drop to an abnormally low level.
Bottom Line
If you keep your blood sugar levels stable, you won't have the between-meal cravings that make weight loss so challenging. However, it's worth noting that consistently high blood sugar levels probably mean you're eating too much to lose weight. Stable blood sugar should be at moderate or low levels to be the most beneficial.
References
- "Eat, Drink and Be Healthy"; Walter Willett, et. al; 2004
- "You: Losing Weight"; Dr. Michael Roizen & Dr. Mehmet Oz; 2011
