The Insulin Factor: Can’t Lose Weight? Can’t Concentrate? Can’t Resist Sugar? Could Syndrome X Be Your Problem?. Antony Haynes
been told that too much protein isn’t good for us either? It’s hardly surprising there are a lot of confused people.
What the headlines – and often the articles themselves – fail to explain is that there are good and bad fats, good and bad carbs, and good and bad proteins, all of which should ideally be eaten in balance with each other for optimum health. They also make an assumption that we are all the same, which is evidently not the case as each of us requires a different balance of nutrients to achieve good health. Take twins for example: they can have up to a twenty-fold difference in needs for some nutrients.1 Imagine how different it could be between people who are not related!
To help you start to get to grips with some useful nutritional facts, this chapter looks at carbohydrates and fibre, the Glycemic Index, and then proteins. Lastly you’ll find out what proportions of carbs and protein you should eat to reverse Insulin Resistance.
There are two questionnaires to help you figure out what kind of carbs and proteins you are eating. The carbohydrate questionnaire is the first.
The Carbohydrate Questionnaire
Scoring the questionnaire
Each ‘yes’ answer scores 1 point.
Do you regularly:
1 Eat sugar or hidden sugars in food or drink?
2 Eat packet foods such as breakfast cereals?
3 Eat white flour products (e.g. bread, pasta, biscuits, cakes) and/or white rice more than 5 times a week?
4 Crave sweet foods?
5 Smoke cigarettes?
6 Drink more than 2 glasses of wine or beer a night?
7 Drink more than 3 cups of tea a day?
8 Drink more than 2 cups of coffee a day?
9 Drink fizzy drinks on most days?
10 Feel dizzy or irritable after 3 hours without food?
11 Get nauseous if you go without food, especially in the morning?
12 Get the shakes if you go without food for too long?
13 Get headaches if you miss a meal?
14 Need to eat frequent meals?
15 Pee a lot during the day and night?
16 Have excessive thirst?
17 Have cold hands and feet?
18 Get tired?
19 Get anxious and stressed?
20 Work harder than most people?
21 Wake up in the night feeling hungry?
22 Are you addicted to carbohydrates/sweet foods?
Total Score = /22
Interpreting the questionnaire
A high score in this questionnaire means you consume too many refined carbohydrates and this contributes to and increases your risk of Insulin Resistance. As you make changes to your diet, you should see your score reduce. Reading this chapter will help you understand why the wrong carbs are the major cause of Insulin Resistance.
| 0–5 | Excellent! Keep your carb balance at this level. If you scored 5 or just under, see if you can score even lower by following the Insulin Factor Plan. |
| 6–10 | This suggests you have a blood sugar problem, which is caused by your diet. To resolve this as swiftly as possible you should to follow the Insulin Factor Diet Plan and the Insulin Resistance Supplement Plan One. |
| 11–15 | Too much! This strongly indicates a blood sugar and insulin problem, and that your diet is the major culprit. You need to follow the Insulin Factor Diet Plan and the Insulin Resistance Supplement Plan that your Insulin Resistance Questionnaire indicated in chapter 3. You should also redo this questionnaire in four weeks’ time to check your progress. |
| 16+ | Much too much! There’s no doubt that your diet is a significant causative factor in your Insulin Resistance. You may benefit from doing the Insulin Resistance Blood Test. You need to follow the Insulin Factor Diet Plan and the Insulin Resistance Supplement Plan that your Insulin Resistance Questionnaire indicated in chapter 3. You also need to consider testing and balancing your adrenal hormones (see chapter 9). Use the questionnaires to monitor your progress. After four or five weeks, if there is no marked improvement despite changing your diet you should see a qualified nutritionist (see Resources). |
Carbohydrate groups
Most foods actually contain a mixture of carbohydrates, proteins and fats; it’s rare for any food to contain only one of these macro-nutrients. Some foods are dominant in carbohydrates, some dominant in protein and some in fat. Carbohydrate dominant foods consist of cereals, grains, starchy vegetables and fruits. Legumes (beans and pulses) also contain predominantly carbohydrates even though they are often referred to as a protein food. Meats, fish, poultry and eggs have little or no carbohydrate content, whilst dairy products can contain the carbohydrate lactose (milk contains more than hard cheese) and soy products can contain carbohydrates, depending on the type (e.g. tofu, soy milk, tempeh). Nuts and seeds have little or no carbohydrate (the cashew nut contains the most, with 18 per cent of its weight as carbs). Non-starchy vegetables also contain some carbohydrates but in much smaller amounts than their starchy counterparts.
The most simple carbohydrates are known as simple sugars or monosaccharides. These are the fundamental building blocks of carbohydrates, just as the amino acid is the building block for proteins. When you eat a simple sugar or refined carbohydrate it requires little or no digestion and is absorbed quickly into the bloodstream. This elicits a rapid and excessive insulin response, and it is for this reason that refined carbs are so bad for you. The human body is not designed to handle REGULAR intake of refined carbohydrates with impunity.
A system has been devised to measure how rapidly different carbs affect your blood glucose. This is called the Glycemic Index, which is a measure of the amount of insulin the body needs to produce to lower the glucose levels after eating that food. The higher the GI the more insulin is produced.
The Glycemic Index and Load
The Glycemic Index (GI) is a numerical system of measuring how fast a carbohydrate triggers a rise in circulating blood sugar – the higher the number, the greater the blood sugar response. So a low GI food will cause a small rise, while a high GI food will trigger a dramatic spike. A GI of 70 or more is high, a GI of 56 to 69 inclusive is medium and a GI of 55 or less is low.
The Glycemic Load (GL) is a relatively new way to assess the impact of carbohydrate consumption. It takes the Glycemic Index into account, but gives a fuller picture than the Glycemic Index alone. A Glycemic Index score tells you only how rapidly a particular carbohydrate turns into sugar – but it doesn’t tell you how much of that carbohydrate is in a serving of a particular food (i.e. the GI is a qualitative measure, whereas