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This is Primal Potential and I am your host, Elizabeth Benton. Through education, motivation, and implementation, we will bridge the gap between knowing and doing so we can master fat loss naturally and help you reach your highest potential. Let's get started.

Hey everybody and welcome back or welcome to the Primal Potential podcast. I am your friend Elizabeth Benton and I'm glad you're listening to this episode because I think it could be one of the game changing ones for you guys but really for me.

And my inner science geek is getting a little bit excited about our topic and you guys know I love to talk about insulin and the powerful role insulin plays in fat loss. I even have a course all about smart carbohydrates strategies for fat loss because I find that people are in one of two camps either they don't understand carbohydrates at all and the differences between them and the way that carbohydrates influence our ability.

Or inability to burn fat or they're just completely carb phobic because they do understand and they think mistakenly that that means we should avoid all carbs all the time and I am going to link to tons of episodes that I've done on the topics of carbohydrates and insulin over in the show notes for this episode at Primal Potential.com because we're not going to get into the nuts and bolts of carbs and insulin to the whole world.

I'm not going to get into the nuts today because we've done that many many times before but if you are curious if you're thinking I don't know that I understand that yet please go over to Primal Potential.com go to the show notes page by hitting the podcast tab.

You'll see this episode there and then under the resources section you will find links to previous episodes do not miss them right.

Believe strongly that and science really supports that insulin managing insulin and taking full advantage of insulin because insulin is not the bad guy is really the magic bullet of fat loss but not just fat loss of energy of reducing cravings of health over all right.

So we really want to make sure to check out those episodes people who get this when they finally understand insulin how we can manage insulin through our diet and lifestyle choices its role in fat loss.

It changes their food choices it changes the way they look at food and dramatically improves their overall results which is not just fat loss energy cravings moods sleep stress it's a big freaking deal.

But here's what happened I had a bit of an aha moment related to insulin and blood sugar and even though this is slightly different from the normal cadence of podcasts here I want to talk to you about this aha moment I had and what I'm going to do about it how I think it's going to help me crush my goals and how I'm going to use it to help you crush yours.

So here's what happened most of you guys know that I did this five day fast and this has nothing to do with the fast but I sort of had this aha moment during it maybe it was the mental clarity or something like that and I am so excited at the end of the fast probably end of day four maybe we bought a blood sugar monitor which in itself isn't very interesting right we understand what we're looking at there.

But it prompted me to consider something that I have been overlooking for myself keep in mind when we got the blood sugar monitor we had been fasting for over four days I hadn't had anything like MCT oil I hadn't had kombucha since day two we just wanted to see where we were at where our blood sugar levels were at so the following morning I checked it that night the following morning I checked it upon waking right truly fast.

Truly fasted not just because of the fast but certainly more normally an overnight fast and it was a typical healthy fasting level and then I decided to check it about an hour after drinking my cup of black coffee and you might be thinking well gosh it's just black coffee that zero calories no carbs but here's the thing guys stimulants can increase your blood sugar

because they trigger your adrenal glands it's kind of a stress response in the body is it the equivalent of eating a donut no and does it have that effect for everybody no absolutely not right.

But I need to know and understand especially since I'm in this year of push towards my goals especially because I drink a lot of coffee does it create a blood sugar response for me.

Now before I get on with with more of this message I want to first say this if you run out and buy a blood sugar monitor don't do that yet I want you to listen all the way through first to the get the full spectrum of what I'm saying but let's say hypothetically you go out and you buy a blood sugar monitor and you test first thing in the morning upon waking and then you don't have any black coffee or anything at all and you test an hour later it will have gone up right so I don't want anybody to think because I understand the assumptions that can be made here.

I don't want anybody to think that I am saying any increases due to the coffee if you test your blood sugar immediately when you wake up and then an hour later in hour later you've been moving around you've so you put some physical stress on your body by moving maybe some emotional stress of like rushing through your day there is a difference between your blood sugar as you roll out of bed and your blood sugar an hour later when you've been moving around and getting you know some work done and things like that.

So I want to be clear that if you go up by a few points over your first hour awake and you've had black coffee it doesn't mean that the coffee drove that increase.

So I just want to make sure everybody is is on the same page about that but as I did this I had an aha moment of I am investing so much time and energy and paying attention to the food aspects of controlling my blood sugar and managing my insulin response but I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do that.

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