Postpartum Insulin Resistance: How Lizzie Lowered Blood Sugar And Lost 10 Pounds While Eating Carbs
Hey my friends, really glad that you are here!
I want to share how our client Lizzie went from insulin resistant to insulin sensitive, lost 10 pounds, and regained the energy to lift her kids again in just three months.
And she did this without cutting out carbs.
Lizzie first came to work with our team for out of control blood sugars postpartum. Her blood sugar was spiking pretty much no matter what she ate. She had a prediabetes level A1c at 5 point 8 and felt stuck between a rock and a hard place.
She felt like she had to choose between two bad options:
Good blood sugars but feeling hungry all day
Or feeling satisfied but seeing insane high blood sugars on her glucometer
She knew her postpartum insulin resistance and prediabetes could improve, she just did not know how to actually make that happen in her real life.
Who I Am And How We Help With Insulin Resistance And Prediabetes
If you are new here and we have not connected yet, my name is Isaac Pohlman. I’m a registered dietitian and a fellow person with type 1 diabetes.
We help our clients improve their blood sugar for good by digging down deep into what is going on inside your body. We are not giving out one size fits all, cookie cutter recommendations. We are not telling you to cut out carbs or fast.
Instead, our root cause blood sugar approach has three main parts:
Identify Your Sweet Spots
We help you find your sweet spots for things like carbs and the keys to lowering your body stress so we can uncover the unique reasons behind your blood sugar imbalances. That is how you get unstuck and see improvements in blood sugar and health quickly.
Revive Your Metabolism
We use personalized nutrition and realistic lifestyle shifts that support balanced blood sugar AND you feeling great in the process. You’ll figure out how to eat and support your body without obsessing over every bite of food, and you have less confusion, overwhelm, and frustration of trying to understand what steps are best for you.
Achieve Carb Freedom
We address things like mineral imbalances and other root causes that are so often overlooked with insulin resistance and prediabetes. When we take care of those, you’ll be able to eat carbs without the guilt of spiking your blood sugar.
That is exactly what we did with Lizzie.
If you are ready to reverse your insulin resistance while still eating carbs, you can apply here to get support, guidance, and accountability from a team that has both been where you are!
Lizzie’s Postpartum Blood Sugar Struggles And Prediabetes A1c 5.8
After having her baby, Lizzie’s postpartum blood sugars felt totally out of control. It did not matter what she ate. She either:
Felt satisfied and saw her blood sugar go sky high
Or kept her blood sugar in range but felt hungry all day
On top of that, Lizzie had already tried a long list of diets and protocols to reverse insulin resistance naturally:
Low carb
Keto
Paleo
Candida diets
Mediterranean
Nourishing Traditions
Whole 30
GAPS
AIP
JJ Virgin diet
She also worked with a holistic nutritionist and local dietitians covered by insurance who basically handed her packets and said “figure this out.”
When she was diagnosed with insulin resistance again, her doctor recommended keto. But she had already tried keto two different times. Each time it ended the same way. She did not feel good, it was not sustainable, and every time she came off keto and tried to eat “normally again” she packed on the pounds.
So she felt stuck and defeated, but she still believed it was possible to heal. She just knew she would not figure it out by doing more of the same.
She wanted to actually understand what was going on inside her body and how to approach healing for herself, especially as a mom in a real postpartum life. That is when she reached out.
Here is what we did inside The Pohlman Method to create clarity for Lizzie and reverse her insulin resistance 👇
Step 1: Building Satisfying Dense Meals For Stable Blood Sugar
The first thing we did was incorporate more satisfying, dense meals that would both:
Balance her blood sugar
And keep her feeling satisfied
Across the board, when it comes to stabilizing blood sugar and feeling full, it takes more food and more meal density (meals that keep you full for hours) than most people realize.
I would say about 95% of the people we work with who have high blood sugar and strong cravings are simply not eating enough or not eating dense enough meals. That was true for Lizzie too.
We worked on “densifying” her whole day of nutrition. Here is a simple way to picture it. Let us say meal 1 is:
A bowl of cereal
Even if it is organic and high fiber
With some protein powder mixed in
And milk
Now let us compare that to meal 2:
Steak
Brussel sprouts
Mashed sweet potatoes
Let us pretend both meals have the same macros. Same protein, same carbs, same fat. Which meal do you feel would keep you satisfied and give you more stable blood sugar?
It would be the steak, Brussel sprouts and sweet potatoes.
That is the idea behind meal density. These meals give your body more volume, more micronutrients, and more staying power. They are like putting dense dry logs on a fire, which burns for hours without having to touch the fire.
Versus the cereal example is like feeding it only twigs, newspaper, and gas. If you build a campfire like this it burns up fast and dies down and you constantly having to come back for more to keep the fire going.
For Lizzie, we wanted her “internal fire” to last. We wanted:
Blood sugar to stay stable between meals
Hunger and cravings to calm down
Energy to last
As we increased meal density through her whole day, her energy improved, her postpartum blood sugar spikes calmed down, her appetite normalized, and this set the stage for weight loss that did not come from a restricted diet or going hungry.
Step 2: Light Exercise And Walking outside To Improve Insulin Sensitivity
The second thing we did was incorporate light movement, especially walking with her kids, to help her body process carbs more effectively.
Most clients who come to us with insulin resistance are very reliant on their body’s ability to produce insulin in order to regulate blood sugar.
In fact, Lizzie’s fasting insulin was around 25, which is high (normally you want this between 2-5).
That tells us her body was really leaning on insulin to take care of the blood sugar rises from meals and from daily life. When insulin is that high all the time, it is a sign of insulin resistance.
Movement, especially, movement outside gives us another lever because it helps balance the hormones responsible for insulin sensitivity and weight loss (something known as your circadian rhythm).
Also, light exercise like walking:
Helps move glucose into the muscles without needing as much insulin
Improves insulin sensitivity over time
Supports weight loss, stress reduction, and sleep
For Lizzie, adding in simple walks with her kids helped her:
Process carbs better so she did not see such big spikes after meals
Regulate stress more effectively
Get outside in the sunshine
Boost her energy and support healthy weight loss
Instead of pushing intense workouts that did not fit her life, we met her where she was at and used movement as a gentle but powerful way to reverse insulin resistance postpartum.
Step 3: Supporting Her Body On Busy, Stressful Postpartum Days
The third area we focused on for Lizzie was everything outside of food.
Most people can take care of themselves on calm days. You can eat well, do some movement, go to bed on time. Where it falls apart is on the days that are busy and stressful.
That was Lizzie’s real life. She had two kids under two with a lot of needs. Her home environment was stressful because they were staying with family while trying to get their own place set up. There was a lot on her plate.
We could not remove the stress, but we could help her body tolerate it better.
So we focused on things like:
Finding small pockets of time for herself throughout the day
Taking short breaks and walks
Leaning on her husband for support when possible
Getting outside and doing simple grounding activities
Reading or resting while the kids were napping
The goal was not a perfect self care routine. The goal was helping her nervous system calm down enough that stress was no longer constantly pushing her blood sugar higher.
When your stress response calms down, your:
Blood sugar becomes easier to control
Cravings go down
Sleep improves
Energy comes back
And you can maintain results even on the days that are very stressful.
Step 4: Using Thyroid And Mineral Testing To Address Root Causes
The last big piece was looking at Lizzie’s labs through a root cause lens. Her conventional lab work already showed:
High thyroid antibodies suggesting Hashimoto thyroid autoimmunity
High insulin levels like we mentioned, which explain the insulin resistance and prediabetes level A1c
High inflammation with elevated CRP
We then ran a mineral profile and saw that her iron levels looked low on paper. For many people, that does not always mean they truly lack iron. It can mean they lack the minerals and nutrients that allow the body to use the iron it already has.
So instead of just throwing more iron at the problem, we focused on giving her body the minerals it needed to actually use the iron and support healing.
With mineral balancing we targeted:
Better blood sugar balance so her body did not need to pump out as much insulin
Better immune regulation so the Hashimoto autoimmune activity calmed down
Reduced inflammation so the CRP came down over time
This mineral work is a big part of why she could reverse insulin resistance naturally and stabilize her postpartum blood sugar without going back to restrictive keto or low carb diets.
Lizzie’s Results: Insulin Sensitive, Lower A1c, And More Energy In Three Months
As a result of working on these areas together inside The Pohlman Method, Lizzie saw some big shifts in just three months. She was able to:
Normalize her fasting blood sugars which she describes as a “night and day” difference
Bring her A1c out of the prediabetes range
Do all of this while still eating carbs
Lose 10 pounds without trying and without restrictive dieting
Feel confident that this weight loss was sustainable, not something that would bounce back when she stopped dieting
Regain energy to do the things she loves, like backpacking her kids
And in her own words to anyone considering this work, Lizzie said:
“If you have found Isaac’s program, then you need to do it! There are so many approaches to insulin resistance and diabetic issues that if you Google it, it hits you in the face like a two by four. If you have done the work to find this program, then you need to do it, because not only does it mean you need that support, but this approach is going to be more nutrient dense and more holistic than anything else you have probably found so far!”
That is what I love most about our clients. They do not just get results during the program. They leave with tools, lifelong habits, and an understanding of their own body that they take with them for the rest of their life.
Ready To Reverse Insulin Resistance And Balance Blood Sugar Like Lizzie?
If you are stuck in that same place as Lizzie was with postpartum insulin resistance pre diabetes level A1c, blood sugars that spike no matter what you eat, or feeling like the only choices are restrictive keto or out of control numbers, you are not alone, and it does not have to stay this way.
If you are ready to reverse your insulin resistance while still eating carbs, like Lizzie did, you can apply here to get support, guidance, and accountability from a team that has both been where you are!
From there we can have a one on one conversation and see if we are the best team to support you with your blood sugar and your health goals!
