How protein and fiber can counter insulin resistance

Both protein and fiber can help you have healthy blood sugar levels.

They do it in two ways: Protein and fiber help you feel full so that you don’t overeat. They also break down slowly into glucose, which helps prevent your blood sugar from spiking.

Eating more fiber and protein, compared to carbohydrates, can be especially helpful if you’re facing insulin resistance.

What is insulin resistance?

Insulin is a hormone made in your body. When you digest food, it’s broken down into glucose that enters the bloodstream.

When that happens, your pancreas releases insulin. That allows the glucose to leave the blood and enter the cells of the body where it can be used for energy.

Insulin resistance happens when cells in your body don’t respond to insulin as well as they used to. As a result, some glucose never gets to the cells where it can be used as energy. Instead, it stays in the blood, leading to high blood glucose levels.

Insulin resistance can begin as early as your mid-40s or even sooner, depending on your health and family history.

How can protein and fiber influence insulin resistance?

Regardless of whether you tend to have high blood sugar levels, your blood sugar level will go up after a high-carbohydrate meal. The difference is that your blood sugar level won’t stay high unless you have prediabetes or diabetes.

That’s because your pancreas will release enough insulin to trigger your cells to take in and use the glucose.

What is the best order to eat food to lower blood sugar?

If you eat the fiber in a meal first, followed by protein and then carbohydrates, you can slow digestion so your blood sugar won’t climb as high. Protein takes longer to digest. During digestion, your gut releases hormones that slow the movement of glucose from your stomach into your blood.

Can eating too much protein cause insulin resistance?

Not necessarily. It depends on the type of protein you eat. Protein can stimulate insulin to varying degrees.

Many people think reducing or eliminating carbohydrates will improve their blood sugar. But the body can turn protein into glucose just as it can turn carbohydrates into glucose.

Can fiber reverse insulin resistance?

Fiber alone can’t reverse insulin resistance, but it can help improve how sensitive your cells are to the effects of insulin. Fiber feeds healthy bacteria in your gut. That reduces inflammation and helps the body use glucose more effectively.

Types of fiber

Fiber is a complex carbohydrate. There are two types: soluble and insoluble. Both can help counter insulin resistance, but soluble fiber is especially helpful.

Soluble fiber:

• Dissolves in water
• Feeds bacteria in your gut to keep it healthy and slows digestion to prevent spikes in blood sugar.
• Examples: citrus fruits, apples, vegetables, beans, oats

Insoluble fiber:

• Doesn’t dissolve in water and instead moves through your digestive tract unchanged
• Helps prevent sharp increases in glucose levels and reduces inflammation
• Examples: nuts, seeds, quinoa, eggplant and fruit skins

How much fiber and protein should you eat each day?

Fiber: Aim for 25 to 28 grams of fiber per day, and drink plenty of water.

Sources include whole grains, oats, legumes, fruits and vegetables.

Protein: Aim for 1.2 to 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight each day. On average, that’s 75 to 90 grams a day. Some people need more, including athletes and pregnant people.

Sources include meat, fish and plant-based proteins such as tofu, edamame, tempeh, beans and lentils.

If you’re facing high blood sugar levels, know that there are steps you can take to reverse insulin resistance.

What causes insulin resistance?

Many factors can lead to insulin resistance:

• Family history of high blood sugar or type 2 diabetes
• Being over 50
• Lack of exercise
• Excessive abdominal fat
• Polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (formerly known as PCOS)
• Being overweight

Any one of these or a combination can cause insulin resistance, which may eventually lead to diabetes.

However, some people have mild insulin resistance and never develop diabetes.

Does having prediabetes mean you have insulin resistance?

Yes. When your fasting blood sugar is consistently between 100 and 125 mg/dL, that’s a sign you’re experiencing insulin resistance and may be in the prediabetes stage. Some people remain in that range for a long time without consequences or return to the normal blood sugar range.

But if you have prediabetes and don’t exercise more, eat more healthfully, lose weight — if needed — you may develop diabetes.

Can diabetes be reversed?

Once someone is diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, it’s not reversible, but it can be put into remission. That means blood sugar levels can return to normal, nondiabetic ranges and can stay there with lifestyle modifications. This can happen sometimes without taking glucose-lowering medicine.

However, your tendency to have high blood sugar remains, so your blood glucose levels may return to the diabetes range.

How prediabetes and diabetes affect your pancreas

The pancreas tries to compensate for insulin resistance by releasing more insulin to move more of the glucose out of the blood into cells. If too much glucose is left in your blood, the glucose levels in your blood can go up.

Over time, the pancreas loses its ability to produce as much insulin and eventually produces little to no insulin.

Once you have prediabetes, your pancreas still produces insulin, but the vital organ is struggling to compensate for insulin resistance. By the time someone is diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, their insulin production may already be reduced by roughly half or more.

Ways to reverse insulin resistance

Lose weight, if you’re overweight: Losing 5% to 10% of your body weight can lead to improvement. The slower you lose weight, the more sustainable the loss may be. Even losing half a pound every couple of weeks can improve insulin resistance.

Exercise regularly: Aerobic exercise and strength training are important. When we digest food, glucose first goes to our muscles. If there isn’t much muscle tissue, glucose will be stored in the liver or fat cells. That’s why you should strength train at least a couple of times a week to build or maintain muscle.

Eat a high-fiber, high-protein diet with minimally processed food and no sugary drinks or candy.

Get enough sleep: Aim for seven to nine hours a night.

Reduce stress: Stress can affect insulin. The fight-or-flight response raises blood sugar levels, so prolonged stress can contribute to high blood sugar.

Evidence has consistently shown that combining these healthy habits may improve insulin resistance more than focusing on individual foods that raise glucose or insulin levels.

The goal isn’t to eliminate rises in blood glucose. Instead, the goal is to restore appropriate insulin sensitivity, so the body doesn't need excess insulin to control glucose levels in the blood.