How To Balance Your Blood Sugar Levels to Reduce Endo Symptoms

Do you have frequent energy crashes and struggle with fatigue?

If so, you may be struggling to balance your blood sugar.

Blood sugar can affect pain, fatigue, inflammation, and hormonal imbalances. If you’re ready to take control, in today’s article, I’m breaking down the key strategies for getting your glucose levels back on track.

Balance Your Plate
To balance our blood sugar, we need a combination of fiber, protein, healthy fats, and complex carbs to stagger the release of glucose the blood stream.

To ensure that energy is released in a nice, paced manner, we want to get the majority of our carbs from low starch veggies, like asparagus, leafy greens, tomatoes, zucchini, etc. and then we want to slow down that release further with the addition of protein and fat. The natural presence of fiber in the veggies will also ensure that the glucose isn’t released too fast.

Generally, in my training, the aim is to try to cover 50% of your plate with low starchy veggies, 25% of your plate with protein and the final 25% split between healthy fats and starchier complex carbs. For fat, we’re looking for at least two golf ball sized portions, and for starchier carbs, like whole grains or root veggies, it’s around a small handful. However, if you’re a very active person, you may need more than this, so adjust according to your needs and your body. This is a great visual example.

You’re looking to feel satisfied and energized after your meals for 3-5 hours following. If you’re not quite there, try increasing your fat/protein and use a blood glucose monitor to observe how you respond.

Avoid Hanger
Low blood sugar is just as stressful to the body as high blood sugar, so if you’re finding yourself getting hangry, shaky, irritable or you’re starving before you’ve even started cooking, you’ve waited too long.

If you find you need to eat between meals, snack smart. Pair carbs with protein and fat, like an apple with nut butter and yoghurt or a home-made trail mix of dried fruit, nuts, and seeds.

Eat A Fat and Protein Rich Breakfast within Sixty-Ninety Minutes of Waking
It’s very hard to stabilize your blood sugar levels once they’re off kilter. The key to kicking off your blood sugar levels on a nice straight track for the day is to eat a breakfast that is rich in protein and fat, to keep you full, satisfied and to really stagger the release of that lovely energy-giving-glucose from whatever carbohydrates you consumed.

Savory breakfast likes eggs, sweet potato, and greens, drizzled with olive oil, and topped with seeds are usually a great way to achieve this, but if you’re more of a sweet breakfast kind of person, just remember to emphasize fat and protein.

Minimize Refined Carbohydrates and Added Sugar
I’ve left this one until last as I know it’s probably the hardest for many. Unfortunately, added sugar and refined carbohydrates break down super quickly in our guts, releasing a surge of glucose into our bloodstream.

It’s not that these foods are ‘bad’, they can certainly have a place in our diets, but we want to try and keep them to more special occasions rather than daily staples if we can. My advice is to start with the other strategies, and you’ll find you naturally lean less heavily on these kinds of foods and can slowly reduce your intake.

These are the foundational strategies but if you have other complications like chronic stress or gut health problems like SIBO, you may need to do some further work to get your levels back into check.