Regulating Your Blood Sugar

My whole nutrition philosophy is built around regulating our blood sugar, managing our glucose, and protecting our insulin. In the past, I’ve said that we teach the original diabetic diet, and what I mean is we protect blood sugar and insulin. We need to have this in check at the foundation of all health. No matter how good the foods you eat, you still need to understand this concept. So many healthy eaters come to us saying that there is still something missing and find that missing puzzle piece here. 

Dangers of Dysregulated Blood Sugar

1. Hypoglycemia or low blood sugar. When our blood sugar is low and consistently low, this can cause us to burn stored glycogen as energy. This storage is mostly found in our liver and muscles, so it will fatigue us quickly to burn from here. 

2. Hyperglycemia. If we’re eating too many carbs or carbs by themselves, we can cause hyperglycemia, which is when glucose is too high in our bodies. This can cause resistance to insulin over time. 

3. Insulin resistance is the effect of chronic hyperglycemia and/or eating too many carbs or carbs by themselves. This is where our pancreas has desensitized to releasing insulin because glucose in the blood has become too frequent. 

4. Cortisol dysfunction can be caused by dysregulated blood sugar and create issues with the circadian rhythm and more. 

Symptoms of the above include weight gain or challenge losing weight, energy inconsistencies (like sometimes anxious energy and sometimes really fatigued), mood swings (having a hard time managing your reactions to things), sleep disorders, and lots of other unexplained health issues that could have started with dysregulated blood sugar. 

The CCN Food Philosophy Explained

Our food philosophy supports the whole human, not just physically and looking for “results” but on a cellular level, an emotional level, and more!

1. Eat within the hour of waking up.

2. Eat every four hours after.

3. Always combine your macros.

4. Keep meal sizes consistent, and eat real food whenever possible.

5. Eat five colors a day.

6. Move your body for 30 minutes four times a week, at a minimum.

7. Drink half your body weight in ounces of water.

Our philosophy becomes more expansive and comprehensive the longer you do it. We have designed an entire masterclass around macros (registration opens in February) because we want you to fully understand the science behind it and become your nutritionists. At the very least, we would love for you to adopt the idea behind combining your macros every time you eat.

Within four days of following this philosophy, you WILL feel a difference. The first few days of any change are always difficult, but not any more difficult than feeling poorly all the time. It’s hard not feeling good. It’s hard to change. Pick your hard! 

As we work our way through Winter, we invite you to journey with us to support your nutrition needs with the 30-day Fresh Start Healthy Heart Challenge. When things become hard, we lean on our people and there will be an incredible group of people to support you along the way, including myself and my team.  

Inside this challenge, you’ll get LIFETIME ACCESS to:

• Individual Metabolic Assessment by the Cara Clark Nutrition team – the questionnaire you'll complete after registration

• 2-week Cleanse meal plan

• ​1-week meal plan based on individual caloric needs

• ​1 week quick and flexible meal plan

• ​Food exchange list & other important references

• ​Grocery shopping list & meal prep guide

• ​Weekly email check-ins

• ​Food and exercise logs

• ​NEW Workouts!

• ​Overall wellness, tips & activities

• ​Facebook online group support & accountability

• ​One month of expert nutrition guidance

PLUS THIS BONUS – Our Quick Guide to Macros
Teaching you how to balance and combine macros is the goal of creating our challenges, but more so, we want you to understand what they are and what they do in your body. This is why we're including this Quick Guide to Macros with this year's Fresh Start Healthy Heart Challenge. 

Once you have a better understanding of macros, you will better understand the idea behind intuitive eating and how combining macros leads to a more intuitive understanding of our bodies, our energy, and our capability.

In the 10+ years my team and I have offered challenges, we’ve met countless women who thought they had tried everything and still “failed”. 

But with this challenge, failure simply isn’t on the menu.

Sure, this Fresh Start Healthy Heart Challenge is meant to reprioritize your nutrition journey — but it’s also meant to be a resource to you for months and years to come.   

We’ve designed this challenge to give you 30 days of fresh seasonal recipes — but you’ll have these materials for life.

You can work at your own pace. You can pause and restart. You can lather, rinse, and repeat as often as you want or need to.

You have nothing to lose except for the unhealthy habits that aren’t serving you.