Let’s say you eat a banana at 8am as your quick breakfast. A banana is a healthy food. It has potassium, magnesium, vitamin C, manganese, B6, folate, and fiber, and yes, even a little protein. It also is a fructose or fruit sugar. This is fine and can help us when we need a little fast energy or when you have a sweet tooth. Through digestion, the sugar goes into our blood. The pancreas is quickly called on to produce insulin, the transporter of sugar. Without insulin, sugar is stuck in the blood where it becomes toxic. So this is an important step.
Before I continue the banana metabolism journey, let’s spend a little more time understanding insulin. Insulin is a hormone produced by the pancreas as I mentioned. Like all hormones, it communicates with the body and other hormones to keep us safe. When insulin is secreted, cortisol, our stress hormone, is called on the scene, as well. So you eat a banana and now you have two hormones out to take care of you—insulin and cortisol.
These two hormone friends work closely together to keep you safe. Whenever cortisol is raised, your body is designed to move more into fat storage mode. That just means that it wants to help you store more glycogen because it doesn’t know if you’ll be able to be fed again anytime soon.
When you are storing glycogen, your body will not burn fat. You will crave more easy sugars to digest for immediate use. This is the opposite of what you want to do for weight loss. To lose weight you want to teach your body to burn fat for fuel.
Ok, so you ate your banana, and in about 20 minutes or so, insulin will have transported the sugar out of your blood and into your cells to be used for energy. Most likely, you’ll use up that energy, but because of the spike in cortisol, your energy will crash and you’ll be looking for another quick sugar to consume. And this, is the sugar rollercoaster. And yes—it began with a healthy banana.
So a banana is a wonderful food and an excellent sugar. But it’s not a great breakfast. It’s a much better dessert. For breakfast, think about “setting the craving tone” for the day. Do you want to be on a sugar rollercoaster all day, or do you want to eat, forget about food for a few hours and then eat a balanced meal without strong cravings?
What will you eat for breakfast so that you don’t spike your cortisol by requiring lots of insulin and have cravings throughout the day? Think protein. Think fat. Think fiber.
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