Have you ever experienced a sugar rush? Chances are you have many times. It feels great during the rush, but there will always be a crash right after. Believe it or not, preventing these wild fluctuations in your blood sugar can make the difference between eating for physical hunger and out of control overeating.

The Challenge

In college, I had to take several classes that included the anatomy and physiology of the digestive system. One important fact I learned that is key to keeping blood sugar in balance protein, carbohydrate and fat all have a different path of digestion. The breakdown of carbohydrates starts in the mouth. It then travels to the stomach where it doesnt do much but pass to the small intestine where it is broken down further and sent into the blood stream to fuel the body.

The breakdown of protein and fat does not begin until they hit the stomach. I wont bore you with the details of this breakdown, but the result is that protein and fat leave the stomach much more slowly than carbohydrate. They then enter the small intestine to complete digestion and enter into the bloodstream.

Lets go back to the initial question I asked at the top of this section. Have you ever experienced a sugar rush? Lets say you have a candy bar during the day. It is mostly sugar, or carbohydrate. It will empty from your stomach pretty quickly and finish digestion in the small intestine, making its way into the blood stream and giving you a blood sugar spike. All of a sudden you have plenty of energy, but what happens soon after? For every blood sugar spike there is a plummet. When a large amount of digested carbohydrate is sent into the blood stream, the body reacts by telling the cells to take it in quickly. The result is low blood sugar. You may feel shaky, nervous, irritable, and very hungry.

This kind of hunger will take you to the kitchen, where you eat everything in sight, and dont stop until you are so full you are sick to your stomach. Usually this binge takes place and youre in this full state before you even know what happened. Does this sound familiar? You really dont have any control when your blood sugar crashes like this. Therefore, you want to avoid this situation.

The Solution

As Im sure you already know, one of the most important keys to enjoying your food without guilt is to maintain a steady blood sugar. But for some this is easier said than done. Although you may be familiar with this, I am not talking about using the glycemic index, or avoiding simple sugars, or any other recommendations you have been fed over the last few years. It comes down to simple biochemistry.

The way to keep your blood sugar stable all day long is to eat when you are hungry, and eat protein and carbohydrate together. I am not talking about a high protein diet, please be sure to understand this. But one of the reasons why high protein diets worked (albeit temporarily and with possible damage to important organs) is because protein helped keep blood sugar stable. This is in sharp contrast to the days that we were eating a fat-free, very low protein, high carbohydrate diet. Most of us wound up consuming a lot more simple sugar by following this diet. And, as it turned out, Americans began to gain even more weight during the fat-free craze!

When you eat protein with carbohydrate, it will all empty out of your stomach slower and into your bloodstream in a steady stream, instead of a large rush at once. For example, chicken with rice, eggs with toast, cheese with fruit. What if you want a piece of chocolate cake? Thats fine, just eat it soon after consuming some protein, after dinner, for instance.

So what about fat? Doesnt it empty out of the stomach slowly as well? Yes, it does. But studies have shown that protein is a much more effective buffer of carbohydrate than fat. One other note, studies have also shown that protein powder does not provide the same buffering as protein in regular food. You may find a smoothie with a scoop of protein may not keep your blood sugar as steady as you would think.