· Max Lowery · 10 min read
Blood Sugar, Insulin & Metabolic Flexibility: The Real Keys to Sustainable Weight Loss
Struggling with fat loss over 40? The key isn’t just calories—it’s controlling blood sugar, improving insulin sensitivity, and restoring metabolic flexibility. Learn how to overcome emotional eating and achieve sustainable weight loss that lasts.
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If you're a woman over 40 who's tried every diet, struggled with cravings, or felt stuck in an endless cycle of overeating and guilt—this article is for you.
Max Lowery, a behavioral change expert, has helped thousands of women break free from the diet cycle and achieve sustainable weight loss by focusing on blood sugar regulation, insulin sensitivity, and metabolic flexibility.
The Online War Between Insulin and Calories
Right now, the internet is a battleground between two camps fighting for the title of the "true cause" of fat loss.
On one side, you have the Insulin Model proponents. This is the crowd that says, “If insulin is high, fat burning is impossible.” You'll hear phrases like:
● "Carbs spike insulin and insulin stores fat."
● "As long as you're producing insulin, you can't burn body fat."
● "Keto is the only way to lose weight."
This narrative is especially popular in low-carb and keto communities. The idea is that by cutting out carbs and keeping insulin low, your body is forced into fat burning mode.
On the other side is the Calorie Deficit Camp—the louder, more aggressive voice on social media. These are the "calorie is king" advocates shouting things like:
● "It’s just calories in vs calories out!"
● "Eat less, move more. It’s that simple."
● "You can eat donuts and still lose weight if you’re in a calorie deficit."
People like James Smith champion this model, often simplifying the message to the point of dismissing any nuance or physiological complexity.
Insulin vs Calories: Why Both Models Miss the Full Picture
Here’s the truth: both of these models are oversimplified, and clinging to either extreme can leave you confused, frustrated, and stuck.
Yes, you absolutely must be in a calorie deficit to lose fat. That’s non-negotiable. If you're consistently eating more calories than your body uses, no amount of insulin manipulation will help you lose weight.
But also yes—your ability to maintain that calorie deficit is deeply impacted by your blood sugar stability, your insulin sensitivity, and your metabolic flexibility.
Because let’s be honest: the women I work with aren’t bingeing on pizza every night.
They’re eating healthy most of the time, but they’re also stuck in patterns of emotional eating, snacking when they’re not hungry, and dealing with intense cravings and energy crashes that make sticking to a plan feel impossible.
This is where the insulin and blood sugar piece matters—not because insulin “blocks fat burning,” but because unstable blood sugar makes staying in a calorie deficit brutally hard.
Understanding the Role of Blood Sugar and Insulin in Weight Loss
Let’s break this down in really simple terms. Think of insulin as a helper that shows up every time you eat something with sugar or carbs, like bread, pasta, fruit, or sweets. Its job is to help move that sugar from your blood into your cells so your body can use it for energy.
Now, some people on the internet say, “If insulin is high, your body won’t burn fat.” They mean that when insulin is busy dealing with sugar in your blood, your body won’t use stored fat for energy. That sounds scary, but here’s the catch: you can still lose fat even if you eat carbs, as long as you don’t eat too many calories overall. That’s the key.
On the flip side, there’s a condition called insulin resistance. It’s like your body stops listening to insulin. So your blood sugar stays high for longer, and insulin keeps being released. This can make your body store more fat, especially around your belly and organs, which isn’t healthy. It can also mess with your hunger, make you crave sugar, and give you energy crashes—like those 3 p.m. slumps where you feel like you need coffee or a biscuit just to stay awake.
So no, insulin doesn’t “block” fat loss, but if it’s out of balance—or if you’re insulin resistant—it can make it a lot harder to lose weight because you’re tired, hungry, and constantly fighting cravings. That’s why understanding blood sugar and insulin matters: not because they break the rules of weight loss, but because they can make sticking to a calorie deficit so much harder.
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What Is Metabolic Flexibility (and Why It Matters for Weight Loss)?
Let’s imagine your body is like a hybrid car. It can run on two types of fuel: sugar (from the food you eat) and fat (from the energy you store). When everything is working properly, your body can switch between burning sugar and fat depending on what’s available. This is called metabolic flexibility, and it’s very important.
Back when we were hunter-gatherers, our bodies evolved to do this naturally. Sometimes we had lots of food—berries, fruit, and honey. Other times, we had to go hours or even days without eating, and our bodies would burn stored fat to keep us going. This ability to flip between sugar-burning mode and fat-burning mode is what helped humans survive.
But today, we’re surrounded by food 24/7. We snack constantly, eat processed carbs and sugar all day long, and rarely give our bodies a chance to switch into fat-burning mode. This makes our metabolism “lazy.” It forgets how to use fat for energy and just wants sugar all the time.
This is what we call being metabolically inflexible. When this happens, you might feel hungry all the time—even after eating. You might have low energy, get cravings, feel shaky or hangry if you don’t eat every couple of hours. You feel out of control with food, and it's not your fault—your body is stuck in sugar-burning mode.
And here’s where blood sugar comes in: if your blood sugar is always going up and down, your body stays in sugar-burning mode. You’re constantly feeding it sugar, so it never learns to use fat properly. This makes it hard to stay in a calorie deficit, because you're always craving, always snacking, and always tired.
So the real issue isn’t just insulin or calories—it’s this loss of metabolic flexibility. If you can retrain your body to burn fat again, everything changes. Your hunger goes down. Your cravings get easier. You feel more in control. And losing weight doesn’t feel like such a constant battle.
5 Proven Ways to Stabilize Blood Sugar and Burn Fat
Eat Larger, Balanced Meals: Most women I work with are used to eating little meals or grazing all day. But constantly eating small meals keeps your blood sugar on a rollercoaster. Instead, try eating two or three satisfying meals a day. This means meals that are rich in protein, have some healthy fats, and include lots of vegetables. When you're full and nourished, you're much less likely to snack, and your energy stays stable for hours.
Prioritize Protein and Fiber: Think of protein as the building block for your muscles and fiber as the broom that keeps things moving through your body. Both also help slow down how quickly your body digests food, which keeps your blood sugar steady. Aim to have a source of protein (like eggs, chicken, tofu, or Greek yogurt) and plenty of fiber (like leafy greens, lentils, or berries) at every meal.
Limit Snacking: Snacking all the time—especially on things like crackers, cereal bars, or sugary drinks—means your blood sugar is constantly spiking and crashing. This keeps you in sugar-burning mode and out of fat-burning mode. Start by asking yourself why you're snacking. Are you actually hungry? Or is it boredom, stress, or habit? If you’re not hungry, find a different way to soothe yourself—like a walk, a chat with a friend, or a glass of water.
Increase Physical Activity: You don’t need to crush yourself at the gym to lose weight. Simply walking more—7,000 to 15,000 steps a day—can be incredibly powerful. Walking helps lower blood sugar levels, improves your mood, and burns calories without increasing your hunger. You can break it up into short walks after meals to help with digestion and glucose control.
Consider Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM): If you're someone who loves data or feels totally out of control with food, a CGM can give you real-time feedback on how your meals affect your blood sugar. But it’s not magic. It’s most helpful after you’ve already nailed the basics: eating well, reducing snacking, and moving regularly. Think of it as a fine-tuning tool—not a fix-all solution.
How Emotional Eating Disrupts Your Blood Sugar and Fat Loss
Let’s talk about one of the biggest reasons women stay stuck with their weight loss—emotional eating. It’s not about willpower. It’s not because you’re lazy. It’s because food has become a way to cope.
Emotional eating means eating not because you're hungry, but because you're stressed, bored, lonely, anxious, or overwhelmed. And here’s the thing—this habit doesn’t start in adulthood. Most of my clients can trace it back to childhood. Maybe food was a reward for being good. Maybe it was a comfort during hard times. Over time, your brain wires in this pattern: "I feel bad, so I eat to feel better."
But here’s the trap—emotional eating leads to guilt. You eat, you feel bad about it, then you try to restrict yourself. That restriction leads to more cravings, more binging, and more feeling out of control. It’s a cycle that keeps women stuck for years.
And it’s not just mental. Emotional eating wrecks your blood sugar levels. Every time you eat from emotion rather than need, your blood sugar spikes and crashes. This keeps you in sugar-burning mode, triggers more hunger and cravings, and makes fat loss feel impossible. Your metabolism never gets a break. You’re constantly feeding it, and yet never feeling satisfied.
Here’s the truth: no diet on earth will fix emotional eating. Keto, intermittent fasting, calorie tracking—they’re all band-aids unless you deal with the root cause. And most women have never been taught how to do that. They’ve never had the tools to identify triggers, build awareness, or learn to sit with emotions without reaching for food.
This is why you might feel like nothing ever works. It’s not that you’re broken. You’ve just never been shown how to fix the real problem.
If you’re ready to stop the cycle and finally feel in control with food, I invite you to join the Cravings and Fat Loss Masterclass. In it, I’ll show you exactly how to break free from emotional eating, regulate your blood sugar, and start losing fat in a way that feels sustainable and empowering.
Click here to join the masterclass now.
Conclusion
Yes, being in a calorie deficit is essential for losing fat. That’s just science. But what the internet often misses—and what almost no diet ever talks about—is that most people can’t stay in a calorie deficit for long because of what’s going on behind the scenes with their metabolism, blood sugar, and emotional triggers.
If you’re always craving food, feeling out of control around sugar, or thinking about your next snack before you’ve even finished your current meal, it’s not because you’re broken. It’s because your body is stuck in sugar-burning mode, your blood sugar is on a rollercoaster, and emotional eating has wired your brain to rely on food to feel better.
Most women have never tried to fix these root issues. They’ve tried cutting carbs, tracking calories, doing fasting windows, and white-knuckling through hunger. But if your metabolism is inflexible and your blood sugar is unstable, all of those strategies are just short-term fixes. Eventually, the hunger, cravings, and energy crashes come back—and so does the weight.
If you want fat loss to feel easier and finally stick for good, you need to go deeper. You need to get your body burning fat efficiently again, manage your blood sugar, and break free from emotional eating patterns that have been controlling you for years.
