Insulin Resistance Explained
People typically think of insulin resistance only as a blood-glucose problem, something that shows up as pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes. But, that’s just one expression of insulin resistance.
In reality, insulin resistance is the central metabolic engine driving most chronic diseases of the western world:
Atherosclerosis, Coronary Artery Disease, Obesity, Hypertension, Fatty Liver Disease, PCOS, Neurodegenerative Diseases, Retinopathy, Neuropathy, Erectile Disfunction, Blindness, even certain Cancers
Today, we’re going to explain insulin resistance through the lens of blood glucose metabolism, because it’s the most familiar and the one most people can track daily through blood glucose (BG) meters. But understand this clearly:
Being insulin resistant and the longer you live with insulin resistance, you increase your risk for all of these conditions, not just diabetes.
Where to Start
Let’s start with what healthy glucose metabolism actually is.
Healthy glucose metabolism is the ability to:
Take carbohydrate energy into the body
Use it efficiently
Return blood glucose levels back to baseline within 2-3hrs and without requiring excessive insulin.
In a healthy system, glucose is not an enemy, it is simply fuel.
What happens after you eat?
When you eat carbohydrates: fruit, potatoes, beans, rice, your blood glucose rises. That is not pathology. This is a completely appropriate physiological response.
The real question is not whether glucose rises.
The question is:
How high does it rise and how efficiently does the body clear it and how long does it stay elevated before returning to baseline?
There is so much misguided information online recommending a flat blood glucose curve. Wanting to do everything we can keep our blood glucose as flat as possible, all the time. Not only is this a fundamental misunderstanding of blood glucose metabolism, there is no evidence that doing so prevents diabetes.
In an insulin-sensitive body, when glucose enters the bloodstream, the beta cells of the pancreas release a measured amount of insulin in response to that blood glucose fluctuation.
Insulin’s job is to escort glucose to tissues that can use it.
Skeletal muscle burns glucose for energy or stores it as glycogen.
The liver stores some glucose as glycogen and critically, gets the signal to stop releasing its own glucose because food is coming in.
As a result, the post-meal rise is controlled and predictable.
In a healthy individual:
Fasting glucose typically sits between 70–100 mg/dL.
Glucose may rise up to 50 points after a high-carbohydrate meal.
Returns below 100 within 2–3 hours.
This is called the post-prandial glucose curve.
The Key Principle
Healthy glucose metabolism is not about avoiding carbohydrates.
It’s about having insulin-sensitive liver and muscle cells so glucose can be cleared efficiently.
When those tissues are lean and responsive:
carbohydrate tolerance increases
insulin requirements decrease
metabolism becomes stable, predictable, and calm
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The Big Misconception
Ask ten people what causes insulin resistance and you’ll hear the same answers: Carbs. Sugar. Insulin.
On the surface, that logic feels reasonable.
Carbohydrates raise blood glucose and people with insulin resistance tend to have high blood glucose, so carbs must be the problem.
There’s also the popular narrative:
“You ate too many carbs, forced your body to make too much insulin, and eventually insulin stopped working or made you fat.”
This is an outdated theory known as the carbohydrate / insulin model for obesity and while it seems reasonable, it’s just not what is taking place.
Insulin resistance is not caused by carbohydrates, and it is not caused by high blood sugar. High blood sugar is usually a late-stage consequence, not the cause.
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The Real Mechanism: Excess Energy in the Wrong Place
Insulin resistance is best understood as an excess energy problem, specifically, excess fatty acids stored in the wrong tissues.
Here’s a scientifically accurate definition:
Insulin resistance is the result of excess accumulation of fatty acids inside tissues that are not designed to store large quantities of fat, especially the liver and skeletal muscle.
The key words are excess and large.
Your body is designed to store fat in adipose tissue. That’s normal and protective.
But when people consume too many calories, too often, especially in a high fat, high saturated fat, and low-fiber food environment, fat spills into places it was never meant to go.
Liver (hepatic fat)
Skeletal muscle (intramuscular fat)
That’s where the real problem begins.
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How Fat in the Wrong Place Becomes “Carb Intolerance”
This is the part most people don’t understand: People don’t become insulin resistant because they ate a banana. They become insulin resistant because their liver and muscle cells became “metabolically congested.”
What does “metabolically congested” mean?
Your body stores energy in two major forms, and they behave very differently.
1) Carbohydrate energy is stored as glycogen: a small, short-term “checking account”
Glycogen is the storage form of carbohydrate energy.
Liver glycogen: roughly ~100 grams (about ~400 calories)
Muscle glycogen: roughly ~400–500 grams (about ~1,600–2,000 calories, depending on body size and training)
2) Fat is stored as triglycerides: the long-term “savings account”
Fatty acids are stored inside of the cell in what is called a lipid droplet (three fatty acids bound to glycerol).
Adipose tissue: the primary storage location. Approximately 100,000 calories
Liver and muscle: secondary storage locations, but they are not designed to be major fat depots. Approximately 2000 calories
So you can think of it like this:
Carbohydrate energy is your checking account. It’s designed for quick spending and quick refills.
Fat energy is your savings account. It’s designed for long-term storage, intended for situations of energy scarcity and survival.
Our body’s prioritizes fat storage. From an evolutionary standpoint, fat energy is a dense and valuable fuel that we can store to keep us alive during scarcity and believe it or not, fat is actually rare in nature. Most foods in nature are high carbohydrate or high protein. Even wild meat is actually quite lean. So when fat energy shows up, the body tends to treat it like: “Store this efficiently. We may not see it again and we will likely need it to survive.”
So when you consume a higher-fat meal, especially a calorie-dense, higher saturated fat meal, the body flips into a storage posture and that begins with a very specific transport system.
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Chylomicrons: Fat Delivery Without Permission
After a fatty meal, triglycerides are packaged into particles called chylomicrons. Think of them as large cargo ships specifically designed to transport fat energy directly as soon as it enters the digestive system.
Their job:
Transport dietary fat energy through the bloodstream
Deposit fatty acids into tissues for storage
Unlike glucose, which requires insulin signaling with the cells, dietary fat doesn’t rely on that same permission system and can be delivered without any regulation.
No signaling needed. The chylomicron “cargo ships” simply deposit the fatty acids into muscle and liver cells to be stored in the lipid droplet.
Meal after meal, fat is delivered, and the lipid droplets grow larger and larger. Eventually, the cells become congested with an excess accumulation of fatty acids.
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The Turning Point: Protection Mode
Eventually, the cell reaches a breaking point.
“If I keep accepting energy, I’m going to be damaged.”
This is where the IRS steps in. No, not the tax agency, but Insulin Receptor Substrate molecules… IRS molecules.
Think of the IRS molecules as internal accountant and safety officers.
They detect excessive fat accumulation in the cells and say:
“We’re overstocked. We gotta shut the doors or we could damage the cell.”
They signal the insulin receptors:
“If insulin shows up wanting to deliver any energy at all, tell it we’re closed for business and to go somewhere else.”
Not as failure, but as protection.
Now you eat a banana, or oats, or rice and it spikes your blood glucose and it feels like carbs caused the problem. But, the loss of glucose control isn’t insulin resistance. Its the result of it, its the signal that lets us know that insulin resistance is occurring inside of our cells.
This is why carbohydrates look like the problem. Carbohydrates enter the bloodstream as glucose, insulin is released, and it tries to deliver the glucose into your cells.
The insulin receptors of the cell respond:
“Closed. Go somewhere else.”
Glucose lingers in the blood, blood glucose levels rise, and it looks like carbs caused the problem.
But carbohydrates didn’t create it, they simply reveal it.
If you haven’t been lucky enough to learn about what actually causes insulin resistance, then you will likely end up playing a very specific game.
”The Carbohydrate Avoidance Game”
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The Carbohydrate Avoidance Game
Also known as a low carbohydrate diet. Low-carb diets appear to “solve” insulin resistance because they remove the nutrient that directly raises blood glucose levels after eating.
So when you avoid carbohydrates your post meal blood glucose drops, your fasting blood glucose drops, and sometimes lower A1c (at least initially).
People interpret that as: “I reversed insulin resistance.” But what often happened is something different. It’s symptom control, not cellular repair. That is not the same thing as restoring insulin sensitivity.
It’s like turning off a faucet when the drain is clogged. If your kitchen sink is clogged and you stop running water, the kitchen stays dry. It looks like the problem is solved, because you were thinking the problem was an excess of water, not the clog in the drain.
The carbohydrate avoidance game is trying to answer a very specific question:
“How do I lower my blood glucose?”
But, the actual solution requires a much more valuable question:
“Why do my cells no longer tolerate carbohydrate energy?”
Answer that and you can begin to reverse engineer insulin sensitivity, instead of managing the symptoms of it.
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What Actually Reverses Insulin Resistance
1) Eat whole, fiber-rich foods
60–80% carbohydrate
10–20% protein
10–20% fat
Remember, not all fat is created equally
Research consistently demonstrates that saturated fat (SFAs) appears to be insulting to metabolic health outcomes while poly-unsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) and mono-unsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs) appear to be protective.
2) Restore a proper energy balance
Weight loss alone improves insulin sensitivity.
3) Muscle & Movement Matters
Muscle is one of the most valuable tissues in your body for blood glucose control. Muscle is a glucose “vacuum” and they can do three incredibly valuable things with glucose:
Burn it for immediate energy
Store it as glycogen (your short-term carbohydrate reserve)
Pull glucose into the cell with much less insulin when the muscle is active
Daily movement + resistance training is profoundly effective at helping to restore and preserve insulin sensitivity.
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What Happens When You Do These 3 Things?
Fat intake drops, chylomicron (cargo ship) traffic slows, muscle and liver cells burn the stored fat energy, and the lipid droplet shrink inside of the cells.
Eventually, the IRS notices, “We’re running low on energy” and they come to the rescue one more time. Ordering the insulin receptors to, “Open back up for business.”
That is insulin sensitivity restored.
Not managed. Not avoided… Restored
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To summarize
At its core, insulin resistance is an excess energy problem. This problem results in the disfunction of muscle and liver cells which starts a chain of events that disrupts proper glucose metabolism.
Insulin sensitivity cannot be measured simply by how low an individual can get their fasting blood glucose (BG) and A1c.
Insulin sensitivity is the ability to maintain consistent healthy fasting blood glucose levels and consistent healthy HbA1c values while consuming a carbohydrate rich dietary pattern.
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I Want To Help You Reverse Insulin Resistance, Permanently
I have personally reversed insulin resistance, losing nearly 200lbs. and reversing Type 2 Diabetes, High Cholesterol, and High Blood Pressure.
Over the past 8yrs, I have also personally coached over 1000 people to reverse insulin resistance, themselves. I have coaching people as young as teenagers and people in their 80s who truly believed that it was too late for them and I love it when I see them disprove that story, get off medications, and reverse multiple chronic disease diagnosis.
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