Managing your blood sugar level is an essential part of maintaining your health. Eating the wrong types of food can spike your blood sugar levels drastically, leading to serious consequences if left unchecked. In this article, we'll look at some specific eating habits that should be avoided in order to keep your blood sugar at healthy levels and prevent long-term complications from arising. Read on for more insight into making sure you don't inadvertently do damage to your body by following unhealthy dietary practices. Here are some things to avoid:

Skipping breakfast

Skipping meals can be stressful to the body. Without food early, the body adapts by mobilizing resources internally or may change your behavior to consume caffeine for a boost. If you find yourself overeating, relying heavily on caffeine or eating meals way too fast later in the day, your blood sugar was likely out of balance. Skipping breakfast may not be the best choice in this case.

Eating too late at night

How our body handles food, and particularly carbohydrates, changes depending on the time of day consumed based on how our body functions in rhythms. Eating within 3 hours of sleep can cause a significant blood sugar spike and insulin compensation, while making you less likely to be hungry for breakfast!

Skipping fiber in the diet

Dietary fiber from plants help to regulate insulin (the main hormone regulating blood sugar) while it also slows digestion and absorption of dietary carbohydrates, mitigating the large spikes in blood sugar.  

Starting the day with refined carbohydrate or added sugar

When you consistently begin the day with foods that quickly raise blood sugar levels, the body has no choice but to compensate by releasing the hormone insulin, lowering blood sugar. However, this start to the day favors the up and down cycle of blood sugar swinging, usually reflected in the familiar energy peaks and crashes many feel day to day

Overeating

Eating beyond our capacity to digest is usually a result of eating too quickly, being habituated to finish everything on the plate or being distracted while eating. One of the negative effects to this practice may create a significant destabilization of blood sugar

Being sedentary

Movement is so important in regulating blood sugar because the contraction of our muscles and coordination of various body systems require blood sugar as fuel. Therefore, the more we move, the more we move blood sugar out of circulation and tend towards oxidative balance.  

Why is maintaining balanced blood sugar so important? How can what foods you eat play a big role in this?

Blood sugar balance is a reflection of an individual’s metabolic health. Metabolic health describes how well someone generates and processes energy in the body. Food is absolutely critical.

Food is the most consistent input we have to affect our metabolic health. It matters because negative changes to metabolic health directly contribute to the development of some of our biggest premature and preventable killers: diabetes, metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease, to name a few.

Metabolic health is supported by consistent choices that keep blood sugar in a stable and healthy range while minimize large blood sugar swings. These choices include food primarily with the support of movement, proper sleep, and managing stress.