Amy and I recorded a whole episode on a book we keep coming back to, Glucose Revolution by Jessie Inchauspé, who goes by the Glucose Goddess. This is our written version of that conversation, so you can read it slow and come back to it.
Why Glucose Matters, Even If You’re Not Diabetic
Here’s the thing most people get wrong. They hear “glucose” and think “that’s a diabetes thing, not my problem.” But blood sugar runs the show for everybody, diabetic or not. It affects your energy, your cravings, your sleep, your mood, and your waistline. You do not have to have a diagnosis to feel the effects every single afternoon.
So no, “I’m not diabetic” does not get you off the hook. This applies to all of us.
Why Blood Sugar Matters
The health problems piling up
Look around and the numbers are rough. About 1 in 8 American adults has diabetes, and more than 1 in 3 has pre-diabetes, with roughly 8 in 10 of those folks having no idea. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in this country. Add in rising obesity, fatty liver, and the everyday hormone and inflammation problems people carry around, and you start to see a pattern. A lot of it traces back to how our bodies handle sugar.
Conditions connected to blood sugar
Blood sugar problems don’t stay in one lane. In women, the clearest connection is PCOS, which is tightly tied to insulin resistance. Gestational diabetes is a blood sugar condition of pregnancy, and steady eating helps you manage it.
In men, the metabolic stuff tends to cluster: enlarged prostate, low testosterone, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure often travel together with insulin resistance.
And across the board, the everyday signs show up first: fatigue, brain fog, poor sleep, and low-grade inflammation. Getting your blood sugar steady takes a load off all of it.
What Happens During a Glucose Spike
When you eat sugar or fast carbs by themselves, a banana, juice, candy, bread, cereal, or plain starch, your blood sugar climbs fast. The higher and more often it climbs, the more you run into glycation and oxidative stress. That’s a fancy way of saying wear and tear on your cells that stacks up over the years. It’s the pattern, day after day, that does the damage.
The Insulin Overshoot and the Crash
Here’s the part you can actually feel. When your blood sugar rockets up, your pancreas answers with a big wave of insulin to bring it back down. That wave can overshoot, and your blood sugar comes dropping back, sometimes lower and faster than feels good.
That drop is your afternoon in a nutshell: fatigue, hunger, sugar cravings, brain fog, mood swings, straight up hangry. And once you feed it sugar, it asks for more. You’re not weak. You’re on the roller coaster. Some folks call this reactive dip dietary hypoglycemia, and the fix is to stop setting off the spike in the first place.
Why You’re Stuck in Storage Mode
High insulin sends one loud message to your body: store fat, and hang onto the fat you’ve got. While insulin is up, your liver and fat cells are in storage mode, not burn mode.
This is why people eat “healthy,” exercise, and still feel stuck. If you’re spiking all day, your body never gets the window to actually let go of fat. You end up with stubborn weight, more inflammation, and a liver that’s too busy to do its other jobs.
Blood Sugar and Your Hormones
When insulin runs high for a long time, it gets tangled up with your other hormones. Insulin resistance and hormone resistance tend to show up together, and that can touch your thyroid, your testosterone, and your estrogen and progesterone balance. Here’s the frustrating part for a lot of you: your lab work can come back “normal” while you still feel awful. Steadier blood sugar is one lever you actually control.
Your Liver Takes the Hit
Your liver is the workhorse in all this. Keep spiking your blood sugar year after year and you push it toward fatty liver, higher triglycerides, and worse cholesterol numbers. A liver that’s stuffed and overworked also detoxes less well and drags your cardiovascular risk up with it. Take the pressure off, and it can get back to doing its job.
The Fix: Eat Your Food in Order
Here’s the whole trick, and it’s almost too simple. Eat your food in this order:
- Vegetables
- Proteins
- Healthy fats
- Starches
- Dessert
Same plate, same calories, eaten in that order. In controlled studies, people who ate vegetables and protein before their carbs had noticeably smaller blood sugar spikes than when they ate the same meal in reverse (Shukla et al., Diabetes Care, 2015). What you get out of it: smaller spikes, less insulin, steadier energy, better fat burning, and fewer cravings. No timers, no waiting between bites. Just build the plate right.
Why Vegetables Go First
It’s the fiber. When vegetables hit your gut first, that fiber slows how fast sugar gets absorbed later in the meal. It coats the intestinal lining, keeps your blood sugar rising slow and gentle instead of sharp, fills you up so you eat less, and feeds your gut in the bargain. That’s a lot of work from a plate of green beans eaten in the right order.
Snacking Without Spiking
The between-meal graze is where a lot of people undo their good work. Sugary snacks, chips, crackers, and soda all afternoon keep you on the roller coaster.
If you genuinely need to snack, and some folks do, keep it to vegetables, protein, or healthy fats. No naked carbs. That alone smooths out the back half of your day.
Breakfast Sets the Tone
Breakfast is where most people spike first thing and then chase it all day. Skip the sugary cereal, the fruit by itself, and the fruit smoothie. Those all hit fast.
Go savory instead: eggs, vegetables, an omelet, some green beans, a little protein and fat. It takes some getting used to if you’re a cereal person, but a savory breakfast keeps you even all morning instead of crashing by ten.
A Word on Smoothies
I know, the green smoothie feels like the healthiest thing you do all day. Here’s the catch. Blending shreds the fiber structure in the fruit, so the sugar absorbs fast, almost like drinking juice. If you love your smoothie, eat your vegetables first and then drink it. You’ll blunt the spike quite a bit just by changing the order.
What About Keto and Carnivore?
People ask us about these constantly, so here’s our take.
Keto does cut glucose spikes, which is why folks feel good on it for a while. The problem is it’s hard to stick with long term, and a lot of people plateau.
Carnivore also flattens spikes, mostly by removing carbs entirely. But it strips out whole food groups, and we don’t see it as sustainable for most people.
Our preference is simpler and easier to live with: a balanced, whole-food diet eaten in the right order. You get most of the benefit without white-knuckling a restrictive diet.
What This Looks Like in Kids
Kids ride the same roller coaster, they just show it differently. Load them up with sugary cereal and an hour later their blood sugar is in the tank, they’re hangry, and they can’t focus at school. The energy crash is the piece to watch. A steadier breakfast, savory and with some protein, tends to hold them together better through the morning.
A Few Extra Tricks
When you can’t eat a full sit-down meal in order, these help:
- Apple cider vinegar before a meal. A couple teaspoons can take the edge off your spike (Shishehbor et al., Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice, 2017).
- A 10-minute walk after eating. Gets your muscles to use up some of that glucose.
- Make a third of your plate vegetables. A simple visual target.
- Deconstruct your sandwich when you travel. Eat the lettuce and tomato first, then the protein, then the bread last.
What You Can Expect Over Time
Eating this way, consistently, tends to pay off. For a lot of people that looks like weight loss, less day-to-day inflammation, steadier energy, and fewer cravings. Better triglyceride and cholesterol numbers, easier hormone balance, and a liver that works the way it should tend to follow. It supports your long-term health in a way a crash diet never will, because you can actually keep doing it.
Want to Go Deeper?
If this clicked for you, go straight to the source:
- Glucose Revolution by Jessie Inchauspé
- The Glucose Goddess channel on YouTube, where she posts her tips and demos
- Her free “10 Hacks” PDF
And if you’ve got questions or want help figuring out where to start, reach out. That’s what we’re here for.
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Sources
- Shukla AP, et al. Food Order Has a Significant Impact on Postprandial Glucose and Insulin Levels. Diabetes Care, 2015.
- Shukla AP, et al. The impact of food order on postprandial glycaemic excursions in prediabetes. Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism, 2019.
- Shishehbor F, et al. Vinegar consumption can attenuate postprandial glucose and insulin responses: a systematic review and meta-analysis of clinical trials. Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice, 2017.
- CDC, National Diabetes Statistics Report, 2024.
- CDC, Heart Disease Facts, 2024.