Happy, happy new year to all of my blog readers!!!
Can you believe it’s already the second weekend of the month? It still feels like Winter Wonderland and I am so not ready for Christmas and the holiday season to be over and for reality to set back in, am I right?
However, much to my dismay, time does not slow down and therefore neither can we! We all made our resolutions, now it’s time to stick to them. I wanted to tell you about my upcoming webinar called Master Your Metabolism. I feel like the word “metabolism” is a word that we throw around a lot but what does it actually mean?
For me, in all of the research I’ve been doing, I really think that mastering our metabolism comes down to mastering the hormones in our bodies. One of those hormones is called insulin, and it is one of the biggest drivers of our metabolism.
Insulin is dictated by how much sugar we consume. Most of us are probably trying to eliminate or cut back on sugar after this crazy holiday season! The only way to control insulin in your body is to control the amount of glucose in your body, and the only way to control glucose in your body is to limit the amount of sugars we eat!
One of the essential oils that is ideal for helping support us to get over sugar cravings, especially this time of the year after maybe we’ve indulged a little bit extra in some sugars and sweets and extra yummy, delicious things, is to use peppermint oil.
Peppermint oil seriously helps with sugar cravings. Put a drop of it in your water, put a drop of it on your finger and then place it on your tongue, for some people even just the smell of peppermint actually helps to reduce their sugar cravings.
Peppermint oil helps with sugar cravings. Put a drop of it in your water, put a drop of it on your finger and then place it on your tongue, for some people even just the smell of peppermint helps to reduce their sugar cravings. Click To Tweet
The other thing that insulin regulates is fat storage. Glucose in your blood stream is toxic, and when you eat foods that have sugar, fat, and protein, your body basically says, “Sugar is toxic, I need to metabolize this right away. I either need to burn it up, shove it into cells, or you need to pee it out. We need to burn this sugar.” Because fats and proteins are NOT toxic to the body, it just says, “Let’s store those. Store those for later.” That’s why, when we eat carbs and we eat fat, we store fat and we burn sugar and we cause insulin resistance. So, insulin is one of the most important hormones for metabolism.
Now you might be thinking, what are some ways that we can reduce insulin? I already mentioned using peppermint oil to help us with that. Another thing we can do is give our bodies a break from eating. This means that you space out your meals more. Even if you’re not controlling your carb intake, if you just go longer between meals, you’ll give your pancreas a break. It will be able to burn off all the sugar from your last meal and give you enough time to prepare for your next.
Basically what happens is, if you eat a little bit, your body will create an insulin spike. If you eat again right away, you have another insulin spike. And if you eat again, it’s another insulin spike. So, this idea that we need to be snacking to keep our metabolism revved up, or that we should be eating six small meals a day, it’s actually doing more harm than good.
You would be better off eating a satisfying meal and then going anywhere between three to six hours until your next meal. This webinar is all about how to master this and how to allow that insulin to spike and then go really far down.
Another thing I want to talk about is fasting. Did you know the word “breakfast” really means breaking fast? Research shows that we can actually go quite a long time without needing to eat. Most of us don’t think about how overnight we are actually fasting. One thing you can do is start to observe what your eating schedule looks like. What time do you have your first meal? What time do you normally have your second meal? Do you have a snack? Are you feeling hungry? When is the last time you ate during the day? Think about the time from your first meal of the day to your last meal of the day. How many hours of the day are you actually eating? Then you can start to think about how to begin shortening your eating-hour window and extending your overnight fast. For example, maybe you start with finishing dinner at eight o’clock. If you finish dinner at eight o’clock, see how far you can go in the morning without eating. Maybe just have a cup of coffee, or a glass of water.
Most people say for health purposes, if you can at least have a 13 or 14 hour fast overnight, it’s optimal for health. If you’re new at this, start with 10 hours. Then push it to 12 hours, then 14 hours, then 16 hours. Some people get to 18 hours, or even 24 a couple times a week.
By extending that time between meals you will be able to control your hunger, your insulin, and your fat storage. In other words, making sure that most of your fat intake is being burned off and not stored! They call this intermittent fasting or time-restricted eating.
In this webinar I will touch on many more ways we can go about controlling our hormones and which oils we can use to help.
*Updated: Watch my webinar below!*
*Note that I have a slight disclaimer if you are a type 1 diabetic or if you’re taking medications. Some of my tips might not necessarily apply as easily, but are certainly doable with some medical support. There are many clinics and resources out there to support people who are trying to control their insulin resistance and using diet to do that instead of medications. The most important thing to remember is to stay safe!
Enjoy!
Kathi