Insulin resistance can make it hard to lose weight - and make you more likely to develop type 2 diabetes. If you follow a healthy diet and exercise regularly, yet still struggle with your weight, it's possible that you could be insulin resistant.
Exercise is one of the fastest and most effective ways to reverse insulin resistance. Eat a balanced diet emphasizing vegetables, proteins, and low-fat dairy. Moderating your carb intake can help with weight loss and decreasing insulin resistance. Lose weight, especially around the middle, if possible.
If your cells become too resistant to insulin, it can result in elevated blood sugar levels, which can lead to weight gain, prediabetes and type 2 diabetes. Losing weight with insulin resistance is more difficult because the body stores excess blood sugar as fat.
“Eating enough protein while following a lower-carbohydrate diet can be an effective way to feel full, control blood sugar, improve insulin sensitivity, and ultimately, reduce or prevent belly fat,” Norwood says.
Insulin resistance is the leading cause of a slow metabolism. Excess insulin builds up a coating on every cell in the body and brain so that sugar cannot get into the cell to be used for energy; instead the sugar gets stored as body fat.
There are some signs of insulin resistance that your doctor may look for. These includes a waistline over 40 inches in men, and a waistline over 35 inches in women. Skin tags or patches of dark velvety skin called acanthosis nigricans. A blood pressure reading of 130 over 80 or higher.
A minimum initial prolonged fast of 36 hours to 3 days may be needed to start the process of reversing insulin resistance. For morbidly obese patients Fung uses initial fasts of 7 to 21 days. The longest known medically supervised fast is over 1 year in a male weighing more than 460 lbs.
This fat (also called visceral fat) is especially dangerous because it causes the liver and other organs to become fatty and inflamed. Visceral fat also causes Insulin Resistance, so it becomes a “chicken and the egg” situation since Insulin Resistance also causes this belly fat to accumulate.
Foods to avoid for insulin resistance
soda, juice, and sweet tea. refined grains, including white rice, white bread, and cereal with added sugar. ultra-processed snack foods like candy, cookies, cakes, and chips.
Insulin resistance usually develops slowly and does not cause obvious symptoms. It can make you feel tired and low in energy, however. Since many people blame these effects on other factors such as lack of sleep, insulin resistance can go unnoticed for years.
Experts believe obesity, especially too much fat in the abdomen and around the organs, called visceral fat, is a main cause of insulin resistance. A waist measurement of 40 inches or more for men and 35 inches or more for women is linked to insulin resistance.
Usually, when a person does not lose weight on the keto diet, it is because they have not achieved ketosis. The most common reason for not getting into ketosis is not cutting back enough on carbs. According to a 2019 article on the ketogenic diet, carbohydrates should represent only 5–10% of a person's calorie intake.
Intermittent fasting diets have certain therapeutic effects on blood glucose and lipids in patients with metabolic syndrome and significantly improve insulin resistance. It may be considered as an auxiliary treatment to prevent the occurrence and development of chronic diseases.
The underlying cause of insulin resistance appears to be inflammation that can either be increased or decreased by the fatty acid composition of the diet.
As previously stated, the shape of a PCOS belly differs from other types of weight gain. It often appears large and bloated but can also be small and round, depending on genetics and other factors. The PCOS belly involves the accumulation of visceral fat in the lower abdomen and typically feels firm to the touch.
Moderate-intensity stair walking for as little as 3 minutes can lower glucose and insulin concentrations, and 10 minutes of stair walking can improve insulin sensitivity, according to study findings.
Insulin resistance improves promptly for most people when they begin a ketogenic diet, and the effect appears to be attributable to the ketones per se (Newman, 2015), not just the reduced intake of carbohydrate. If an individual loses a substantial amount of weight, insulin resistance can be further reduced.
Red Flag 1: Skin Changes
Dry patches of skin, yellow patches around the eyelids and skin tags are all diabetes indicators. Skin wounds or sores that have trouble healing, blisters and shin spots are also signs that your insulin is imbalanced.
Not everyone with diabetes is insulin resistant, and not everyone with insulin resistance will get diabetes. Dr. Bridenstine explained that insulin resistance is a broader term: If your body is secreting higher levels of insulin to adequately regulate your blood glucose levels, then you have insulin resistance.
Prediabetes means your blood sugar levels are higher than normal. But they have not reached levels high enough to be diagnosed with diabetes. Prediabetes is caused by insulin resistance. Prediabetes and diabetes occur when the pancreas doesn't make enough insulin to maintain normal blood glucose levels.