5 Tips to Keep Blood Sugar Low
Blood Sugar & INsulin
“Keep your blood sugar low.”
“Check your A1C.”
“Try this sugar-free snack for healthy blood sugar.”
You hear stuff like this all the time, but why does it matter, and what does it mean?
Well, it matters because chronic high blood sugar can lead to several issues, such as heart disease, kidney issues, and diabetes.
According to the CDC, about 1 in 10 Americans has Diabetes, with about 95% of them having Type 2 Diabetes specifically, while 33% of American adolescents have pre-diabetes. Huge problem, right? Especially when only 0.5% of the population had diabetes before 1950.
Lifestyle and habits definitely play a role in diseases such as these, but what we eat and how we eat may be the most vital piece of the puzzle.
For anyone unfamiliar with how blood sugar and insulin work, let me briefly explain the process:
Glucose (sugar) is what your body uses as its primary fuel. If you’re not directly eating it (where my keto people at?), your body will create it through a process called neoglucogenesis. When you eat, your blood sugar levels rise, and your pancreas releases a hormone called insulin, which helps move the sugar in your blood to either be used as energy or stored for later use.
All is good and well when your blood sugar stays in a healthy range. However, when your blood sugar levels remain too high, too often, your pancreas has to release more and more insulin to try to control it. If this goes on for long enough, your cells will stop responding to insulin as well, which means your blood sugar stays high, even though there’s plenty of insulin hanging around. When this happens, it’s called insulin resistance.
When you’re insulin resistant, your pancreas can’t keep up with insulin production, and your blood sugar stays high, which may lead to damage or some of those diseases I mentioned above. This is why we want to remain insulin sensitive, which is the opposite of insulin resistant. To achieve this, it is essential to maintain stable blood sugar levels. A short spike at the appropriate times is good, but we don’t want to stay there.
So how do we do this? The simplest and most impactful way is to ditch the junk—stop eating so much processed sugar and processed carbs, and avoid getting a sugar high throughout every waking hour of the day. Add in an active lifestyle, and now you’re cookin'.
However, I wanted to provide you with five specific tips that you can implement to help keep your blood sugar levels in check.
1) Eat in Order
The order in which you eat your food matters. Dr. Louis Aronne from Diabetes Care conducted a study that showed patients who consumed their vegetables and protein before eating carbs had lower glucose levels post-meal at the 30-, 60-, and 120-minute marks by significant amounts (29%, 37%, and 17%) [1].
Not only does eating protein and veggies before carbs help with your blood sugar, but it also makes you feel fuller sooner, causing you to eat fewer calories per meal, potentially.
Two quick things on this:
1) I understand that sometimes this may be hard to do, depending on what you’re eating. If you’re chowing down on a burrito where everything is mixed in, then you’re out of luck. It’s not the end of the world if you eat everything together, but as a rule of thumb, eat in this order when you can.
2) I recommend eating this way for every meal except if the meal is directly before or after a workout. If you’re about to go for a run or hit the weights, you may just want some of that sugar floating around in your blood so that it can be immediately snatched and used as fuel. And after a workout? Your muscles are usually screaming for carbs, which are essential for recovery. It’s probably best to eat that baked potato before you dive into the ribeye and asparagus.
2) Insulin Resistant Starch
Cook it, cool it, reheat it—this is how you create a process called starch retrogradation.
When you cook a starch, such as rice or potatoes, and then let it cool in the fridge for at least 24 hours [2], some pretty cool science happens behind the scenes. Some of the digestible starch in these foods gets converted into resistant starch. Even once you reheat it, the resistant starch stays high.
Why is this important? Because typically carbohydrates that cause a rapid spike in blood sugar are digested quickly and don’t satisfy you for long, leading to hunger shortly after. Increasing the level of resistant starch makes the food more like a high fiber/protein, says Jennifer Kerder, RD, LD [3]. This means that you’ll experience a lower blood sugar spike, and you’ll be satiated for longer.
Another cool perk of this is that you’ll ultimately benefit your gut bacteria. When you eat a food high in resistant starch, it passes through the stomach and small intestine mostly undigested and ends up in the large intestine, where it acts as a prebiotic and feeds the friendly bacteria in your gut [4].
Lastly, starch retrogradation actually results in food having fewer calories. According to Kristine Dilley, RDN, LD, resistant starch has about 2.5 calories per gram versus 4 calories per gram in regular starches [4]. Cool, right?
Whenever I cook a large batch of rice or sweet potatoes, I’ll put the leftovers in the fridge and reheat them in the toaster oven over the next few days. This same process occurs with sourdough bread. I freeze my sourdough and take it out one slice at a time when I’m ready to eat it.
Give this one a try—it’s a super easy routine to get into. To the meal preppers out there, you may already be doing this without even knowing it.
3) Post-Meal Walk
A simple yet highly effective way to manage blood sugar is to take a short walk after eating a meal. Several studies [5,6] have shown that when this is done, blood sugar levels are significantly improved. Although most experts recommend at least a 10-minute walk, UCLA Health reports that even 5 minutes of walking has a measurable effect [7].
Of course, taking a walk after every meal is not typically conducive to everyday life, but you should make it a habit whenever you get a chance. Use the last few minutes of your lunch break at work to get some steps in. And you aren’t just constrained to walking, necessarily; it’s more about movement. Instead of plopping down on the couch after dinner, get up, do the dishes, tidy up the kitchen, and take a few minutes to prepare for the next day. This will have the same effect on your blood sugar as going for a walk.
4) Get Low
Personally, I’m all about efficiency—less time, same impact. A recent study demonstrated that performing 10 bodyweight squats every 45 minutes over an 8.5-hour period of sitting is more effective for blood sugar regulation than a 30-minute walk [8].
This is one that everyone can do. It takes less than 20 seconds, it gets you out of your chair, and it builds some strength. If you work from home, this one’s for you.
Similar to post-meal walking, it’s less about doing something specific, such as squats or going for a walk, and more about moving frequently, even if it’s for short spurts of time. We weren’t designed to be as sedentary as we are. Move, and move often, is something I always tell people. Creating a lifestyle that incorporates low-intensity movement several times a day is much easier than setting a timer every 45 minutes to do squats. But at the end of the day, do what you gotta do; just make sure you’re moving.
5) Blueberries
If you read my post on the benefits of blueberries, you may remember this one. Adding blueberries to your diet (always check with your doctor before adding new foods) may help reduce glucose and insulin spikes, which means better blood sugar regulation [9].
I eat blueberries or wild blueberries every day for their brain-boosting and antioxidant benefits, but if I eat a high-carb meal, I eat them immediately afterward to help stabilize my blood sugar.
Take Action
Due to the high blood sugar epidemic in our country, this is something we should be paying attention to as individuals. Again, if most of our diet consists of one-ingredient nutritious foods, then most of our work is done for us. But adding in a few tricks like this never hurts. Because of the health experiences I’ve had, I’m more in tune with my body than most, but I genuinely feel a difference when I’m taking actionable steps to manage my blood sugar.
Give some of these a shot and let me know what you think!
References
[1] https://diabetesjournals.org/care/article/38/7/e98/30914/Food-Order-Has-a-Significant-Impact-on, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4876745/
[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26693746/
[3] https://www.uhhospitals.org/blog/articles/2025/01/improve-your-gut-health-with-resistant-starch#:~:text=You%20can%20also%20increase%20the%20resistant%20starch,response%20*%20Heart%20health%20*%20Weight%20loss
[4] https://health.osu.edu/wellness/exercise-and-nutrition/cooling-pasta-changes-starch
[5] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-07312-y
[6] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5610683/#S5
[7] https://www.uclahealth.org/news/article/taking-walk-after-eating-can-help-with-blood-sugar-control
[8] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/sms.14628
[9] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33922965/
