The Insulin/Cortisol Seesaw: Control It to Lose Bellyfat

*A note to all of you science-minded types reading this – yes, I am purposely omitting some of the more complicated information to make it more accessible to those who need it the most. But if you already know that, this isn’t for you anyway.

Roughly 95% of the clients that we see at All Strength Training come in with primarily aesthetic-minded goals – everything from “flatter abs” to “drop 50 pounds” to “can you get rid of this?” Oh, on that last one it’s important to visualize the client grabbing whatever the afflicted area is and trying to shake it in our face for several seconds, sometimes without breaking eye contact. Weird visuals aside, the point is that we see a lot of people whose main goals are something to the effect of “I want to look better both in and out of clothing”. And out of those 95%, every single one of them is not satisfied with the current condition of their midsection.

The good news? The cause for most of your bodyfat storage in that area is pretty straightforward for the average person – poor blood sugar management combined with too much stress. The bad news? People have a hell of a time figuring out how to fix it on their own, partly because there is a surplus of really, REALLY bad information circulating out there that makes even the most well-intentioned effort to lose some of that trunk fat doomed from the start.

The Culprits: Get to Know Your Hormones

For most people, the way it works is this – poor insulin management tends to create an excess of bodyfat in the sides of the trunk.  Insulin is the hormone produced by the pancreas to help regulate blood sugar after food has been consumed.  Some foods create a larger spike in insulin than others – fat, for example, has basically no impact on blood sugar whatsoever, whereas simple starches such as white flour and cane sugar create an extreme spike in blood sugar, and therefore insulin.  This is not all that unfamilar even to the most uneducated dieter, but there is a little bit more to it than that, which we will touch on later.

Along with insulin, the other major hormone that influences bellyfat, specifically through abdomen, is cortisol, a hormone produced by the adrenal glands in response to stress.  Cortisol is sort of a low grade adrenaline, designed to be released in situations of “fight or flight,” but is also released during any stressful event, from a simple weight training session to a fight with your girlfriend to your 30th late-night viewing of Predator on TBS.

Insulin and cortisol are what are known as “seesaw hormones” – when one spikes in the short term, the other drops, also in the short term.  Allow me to demonstrate a scenario to make this easy to relate.

Is This You?

Our example subject, let’s call him Bob, is an upper-management type who works long hours and doesn’t sleep well.  Bob wakes up after having hit the snooze button one too many times (stress), as is often the case, and runs out the door without eating breakfast (stress).  He will, on the way to work, grab a large caramel frappachino with extra foam (big spike in blood sugar).  He’ll get to the office just in time to lecture a few of his employees for having missed critical deadlines (stress) before diving into a meeting that will last all morning (big drop in blood sugar coupled with more stress).  The meeting will run long so he won’t have time to go out for lunch, so he’ll grab a sandwich out of the vending machine and two leftover donuts from this morning’s meeting (big spike in blood sugar).  Around 3pm he’ll sneak out to grab another big foamy coffee/milkshake combo from the Starbucks across the street to keep him going for the rest of the day because he can’t keep his eyes open anymore (drop in blood sugar followed by spike in blood sugar).  Then he’ll work two hours of overtime trying to get caught up on paperwork (more stress) before going home.  On the way he’ll grab some fast food (big spike in blood sugar) before hitting the sack and tossing and turning for a few hours (more stress).

Look familiar?  Some of you will read that paragraph and laugh, but a large percentage of you read that and thought to yourself “how long has he been following me?”  This is, in fact, a pretty typical day for most modern-day office workers.

In our scenario above, Bob has, in a matter of less than two years, seen his waist size balloon up from a 34 to a 42, and his doctor is now lecturing him on the possibility of needing to go on Metformin to improve his blood sugar.  How did that happen?

For most modern Americans, the day starts off in one of two ways – either A) they skip breakfast, going about their daily stresses with no food to support their bodily functions, stressing the body out more because blood sugar is now low, resulting in hypoglycemia; or B) they eat foods such as lowfat yogurt with blueberries  and a bowl of granola cereal, leading to a substantial spike in blood sugar because all of those foods are low fat, low protein, high carbohydrate foods.

In either of the above situations, you start your day off with low nutrition, unsteady blood sugar levels and lots of stress.  By mid-morning you’re after stimulants such as coffee or Red Bull, either because you haven’t eaten in 14 hours or because what you had for breakfast was so starchy and sugary that blood sugar plummeted after less than 2 hours.  Cortisol shoots up, which makes you crave more sugar, then stress shoots up again from lack of adequate nutrition and the next drop in blood sugar.  Up.  Down.  Up. Down.  Starting to make sense yet?

What You Can Do

The good news is that the changes you need to make to control that seesaw effect are, for most people, straightforward.  Not always easy to implement because you might be breaking habits you’ve held for months, years, maybe even decades, but they are straightforward.

#1 – Improve meal composition.  Most meals you eat should contain moderate amounts of protein (6-8oz for males, 3-5oz for females on average), 1-2 cups of fibrous vegetables, and either good fats (coconut oil, various nuts, avocados, etc.)  or complex carbohydrates (brown rice, sweet potato, quinoa, etc.).  You don’t have to be terrified of eating carbs, but there has to be balance to the rest of the meal, as things like protein, fiber, and fat digest more slowly and will help regulate blood sugar more effectively than eating carbs alone.

#2 – Eat more frequently.  Not for the reason most people think, however – the idea that eating every 2 hours “stokes the metabolism” has been scientifically disproven.  What eating planned meals more often will do is keep you from getting so hungry that you will eventually tear the glass door off of a vending machine to get to a Mars Bar.  If you’re never letting yourself get that famished, you make better choices when you do eat.  Simple.

#3 – Eliminate unnecessary stressors.  Especially if you have a history of eating the way I described above, you have to take additional steps to reduce extra stress that you can control.  Late nights out?  Stress.  Not giving yourself enough time to get to work?  Stress.  Overdoing your training with things like two-hour weight training sessions or long-distance runs?  Stress.  All of these things will be working against you and your new nutritional habits.

For 90% of people, this is exactly where I would start them out of the gate.  It might not be glamorous, but it’s the stuff that produces results right away, and is also going to act as your support structure for when you want to get fancy with blood testing, supplement protocols, and training programs.  If you don’t have that foundation first, your body will crumble.