Instead of giving the right amount, your body is in a panic and just sprays it everywhere. This results in blood sugar that is too high. The next mechanism in the process is your pancreas. To bring the blood sugar back in balance it dumps a large amount of insulin into your bloodstream so that your cells can remove the sugar from your blood (maintaining homeostasis). This is a messy process. There are several problems with this. Because of the large amount of insulin released, your body will anticipate that this is going to happen again and so about 3 hours later will release a similar amount of insulin.
The problem herein lies if you do not have a similar amount of sugar in your blood (often it is much less), the insulin level is too high and results in low blood sugar causing you sleepiness (you have a hard time keeping your eyes open). If you eat nothing at all at that time, your blood sugar really tanks leaving you HANGRY or anxious. Yuck! This can also happen in your sleep causing you to wake up in the middle of the night resulting in regular sleep disturbances.
Rules to live by (unless you are metabolically flexible! This means your body can easily switch between burning sugar and fat.)
- Eat within 30 minutes of waking.
- Eat at least every four hours.
For most people, you’ll be able to keep up with your pancreas. You’ll have more energy and sleep better. Our bodies are complicated, but the solutions to feeling better are not!