Beauty, Wellness, Recipes, Food
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One month of wearing a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) and using an app called Levels gave me an inside view of how food is metabolized in my body.
Everyone should use one for at least 2 weeks to see how what they eat is affecting blood sugar levels. Our blood sugar levels greatly influence the likelihood of disease, weight gain, hormonal stability, alertness, and stamina. When you see a graph of your blood sugar levels throughout the day, you want the range of fluctuation to be tight so that it looks more like slow, gentle rises and gentle dips. If it looks like an EKG, it’s trouble. The opportunity to get continual information provided me many insights and confirmations. I learned that stress caused sharp spikes. The order I ate made a significant difference as well as the fasting windows (periods of no eating or snacking) between meals. When meals were glucose stable, snacks were unnecessary. FYI, snacking keeps glucose levels elevated throughout the day - bad for weight loss, pre-diabetes, and above normal A1C. Here are the takeaways that you can use to further customize your daily eating to bring down A1C levels, reduce insulin responses, reverse pre-diabetes and diabetes, and to lose weight.
How did Jolie perform? I loved testing out the jolie meals at the cafe and for the food delivery programs. I know the science, but there is always a chance that when you see the data things don’t measure up. Sign of relief - the jolie meals provided stable blood sugar: minimal, very gentle rise and fall. This is great news if you are pre-diabetic, diabetic, lowering A1C, losing weight, or on your longevity journey like me. I did do some head to head comparisons of jolie versions of juices and smoothies versus other places. Jolie juices and smoothies, won by a landslide in the competition for not raising blood glucose. As to the delivery programs all stars were the Soup Cleanse, 10 Day Reset, and Broth Cleanse. The Optimized and Paleo programs kept blood sugar lowest; in the jolielife and vegan programs blood sugar was kept low and stable by eating the veggies first and beans, rice, quinoa, oats last. For eating at the cafe: For breakfast or a snack your best choices are the energy bowl, frittata, smoked salmon toast on glow Bread, avocado toast on glow bread, the bunny muffin, and the chocolate love bar. Salads, no surprise, are great lunch choices with our no sugar housemade dressing. The bunless jolie burger and garden tacos are good choices too. Keeping glucose low in your blood will reduce A1C levels, improve liver function, curb energy crashes, speed weight loss, and reverse diabetic conditions. Eating jolie will make it easy for you to do all that. Love, Julia xo  Metabolism - the cellular actions that convert glucose to energy - is dynamic and largely under your control. Do not believe that metabolic decline is inevitable. So many clients and friends come to me suffering from low energy, stubborn weight issues, menopausal weight gain and feel hopeless.
Have you too heard that after 40 or after menopause metabolic slowing is inevitable? It’s not true. Just like physical conditioning interrupts the decline of the body; metabolic conditioning keeps energy up, weight healthy, and inflammation low. Metabolism is essentially the generation of energy within the body from the environment - air - and food. The factors which inform metabolism are physical activity, stress, sleep, food composition, food order, and eating frequency. When energy is available and steady, you have optimal metabolic health. With optimal metabolic health your experience: Stable energy Sharper memory Exercise endurance Less anxiety and depression Stable mood Clearer skin Fewer wrinkles Improved fertility and sexual health Stronger immune system If this is not you, then it is time to change how your metabolism is running with conditioning practices. But how do you change your metabolism? Sleep more. Lack of sleep slows down metabolism by hormonally favoring glucose storage over use. This means when you consistently get less than 7 hours of sleep, your body is primed to hold onto fat, create more fat, and burn less of what you eat. You can’t catch up on sleep, so the primary way to make sleep work for your metabolism is to consistently get 7-8 hours of sleep a night. The effect of sleep is cumulative so consistency is important. Exercise. You have energy stored in your muscles. The pathways that move energy from blood to muscle and from fat cells to muscles benefit and become more efficient with regular activation. Daily exercise keeps these processes online, so that they are more accessible to you even when not exercising. That way when you eat, instead of a spike leading to fat storage, your body will store energy in your muscles; then when you need glucose instead of the valley of hunger and tiredness, your body will draw fuel from the stored energy, glycogen, in your muscles. Use your stress tool box. Stress is normal when it is situational. Chronic, all day, frequent stress is not what your system evolved to manage. For that reason, you have to be intentional in bringing your stress down by stimulating your parasympathetic nervous system. Your natural de stress pathways are activated when you exercise, do yoga, breath deeply, spend time outdoors, have social connections, or enjoy a cup of tea. Not activating relaxation keeps you in a metabolic straight jacket - cortisol favors fat storage, hunger, high insulin. Food wise you condition your metabolism by avoiding foods and food sequences which create glucose spikes. Key ways to do this is to start each meal with vegetables, eat your starches and sweets at the end of your meal, and always avoid consuming sweets or carbs on an empty stomach. Love, Julia xo |
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