Flexibility is key to great diabetes management and your life

What is metabolic flexibility? It is the ability of your body to switch from using blood sugar or glucose for fuel to burning stored fat for fuel. This ability to switch to different fuel sources helps maintain energy production with fewer blood sugar spikes, fewer cravings and improved stored fat burning. If you need to eat every few hours to keep from getting hungry and all the unpleasantness that goes with it, you are likely metabolically inflexible.

The benefits to this flexibility mean your body can use fuel from food you have just eaten or from fuel that has been stored (fat). This is why it’s a great idea to go for a short walk after your meals.

We are born with metabolic flexibility. Back in the day, we went for long periods of fasting and then limited periods of feasting. Today, most of us have access to food all the time. We are also exercising, doing high intensity interval training or other exercise that requires a lot of energy expenditure. Your body needs to adapt to get the right amount of fuel for the energy your body needs.

This imbalance in flexibility leads to rigidity in your system. If your body can’t adapt and change, in the case of obesity or type 2 diabetes, you will run low on energy and experience fatigue. Your body will keep “looking” for food. This leads to distractions and cravings, constantly wanting more food – especially the quick energy hit from sugar. The result is weight gain.

It is our modern diet and sedentary activity that leads to eating a lot of carbs and with greater frequency – like 3 meals and snacks (essentially eating all day). This constant eating is hard on your digestive tract and keeps you wanting more carbs. It also keeps your insulin levels high with so much sugar in your system.

This maintains and increases insulin resistance. Frequent spikes up and down decrease the sensitivity to insulin in your cells. The result is you feel extremely hungry or thirsty, experience frequent urination, tingling in hands and feet, fatigue and frequent infections.

What can you do?

1. Eat low-carb meals. Talk to your doctor about how many carbs you should eat a day. This could range from 20 grams per meal which means you have to choose very carefully what to eat, up to 50 grams or more.

2. When you eat makes a difference as well. Eating late at night creates problems with digestion and absorption, interference with many vital processes in the body that happen only at night and in certain stages of sleep. It also affects how much blood sugar is circulating in your system. People who eat late at night frequently have high fasting blood sugars in the morning. If possible, stop eating or drinking anything with calories in it 3 or more hours before bed. If that sounds hard, start slow and work your way up.

3. Regular exercise, from walking to strength training, will help with metabolic flexibility as your body needs to adjust its fuel sources with the amount of work you are doing.

This is about flexibility and rigidity in one area of your life. We’ll talk more about the importance of flexibility in other aspects of your life that can make your life easier.

Dr Elaine

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This information is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace the medical advice of your doctor or healthcare provider. Please consult your healthcare provider for advice about a specific medical condition.

This episode was produced and marketed by the Get Known Service