How To Avoid The Blood Sugar Roller Coaster Without Giving Up Carbs

You might be familiar with the unforgiving blood sugar roller coaster: You have your fill of sugary, starchy sweets; you feel happy as can be for about 90 minutes; then you experience the quintessential blood sugar crash, leaving you exhausted, irritable, and hangry—so you reach for another sweet treat, and thus the cycle continues. 

Carbs get a bad rap for sparking this blood sugar roller coaster, but that doesn't mean you should avoid them completely. According to holistic nutritionist Kelly LeVeque, it is possible to enjoy carbs and keep your blood sugar stable and happy. "If you're eating foods wrapped in fiber like vegetables instead of carbohydrates that are flour-based like toast, you can elongate that meal and lower the blood sugar curve," she tells me on this episode of the mindbodygreen podcast. 

Essentially, "cellular" just means whole: According to LeVeque, whole carbs have sugar and starch wrapped around their fiber cells (hence the term cellular carbs). Meaning, the carb isn't broken down into a refined product (that makes it "acellular"). 

"Whole brown rice is a cellular carb," she explains. "Rice flour is an acellular carb because it's been pulverized out of its fiber cell." The kicker here is to balance them out and perhaps eat more cellular carbs than acellular carbs. Meaning, instead of reaching for cauliflower crackers, opt for the raw cauliflower head instead—you'll get your fill of satisfying carbs without embarking on the blood sugar roller coaster ride. Rather than reaching for lentil pasta, whip up a pot of whole lentils. Instead of chickpea flour, open up a can of chickpeas—you get the idea. 

OK, we know it's a bit unrealistic to stick to whole carbs all the time—sometimes a lentil pasta primavera is just calling your name. LeVeque gets it, too, and even she indulges in an alternative pasta from time to time. "Chickpea pasta is still my choice of pasta; just don't think it's like eating vegetables," she explains. "You can have insulin in your body if you're mowing down bags of cauliflower chips at a time." 

The solution? Indulge in acellular carbs mindfully, understanding that they have a different effect on your body's glycemic response. For LeVeque, she likes to go through a checklist of sorts:

"First, you want limited ingredients," she says. "Look at the ingredients and make sure there are no emulsifiers, gums, or added oils." Then look at the balance between the protein, fat, and net carb content on the label. "That's how you determine what this is mostly, so you can have an understanding of what's going to happen to your blood sugar," she notes.