Free It Starts With Food: Discover the Whole30 and Change Your Life in Unexpected Ways by Melissa Hartwig, Dallas Hartwig

muscles are still full. Some of the carbohydrate from the bagel is used for fuel, but the excess fuel is stored (or remains circulating in the bloodstream).
    At noon, you grab a small turkey sub (whole-wheat bread, turkey, low-fat cheese, and mustard), a small bag of baked potato chips, and a diet soda from the deli next door. Again, your carb-dense meal drives blood sugar and insulin levels up, and the caffeine in your soda also prompts a cortisol (stress) response, both of which serve to give you a short burst of energy. Even though there is some protein in the turkey, glucagon’s attempt to releasing stored energy is overshadowed by elevated insulin levels, so once again the sugar is used as fuel, while fat is stored and blood (and liver) triglycerides accumulate.
    A few hours later, all of that insulin has driven blood sugar levels too low—again—which means that by 3 p.m. you’ve hit the midafternoon trifecta: you’re tired, hungry, and mentally foggy. Luckily, you’ve stashed some healthy snacks for just such occasions and come up with a granola bar and a low-fat strawberry yogurt. Once again, your carbohydrate-rich snack serves to temporarily prop up your energy levels and mostly stave off your hunger.
    Work is busy, and you’re totally brain-dead by 4, so you grab a small iced coffee (with skim milk and a teaspoon of sugar) to get you through the rest of the day. The caffeine in the coffee provokes another cortisol response, which increases blood sugar to give you some energy. That works for a while, but by the time you head home at 5:30, you’re stressed, exhausted, and cranky.
    You resist the urge to call for pizza delivery and make chicken parmigiana, with low-fat cheese and whole-wheat pasta, and a side salad. To help you deal with the stress of your day, you also have a glass of red wine. Thanks to leptin resistance, you eat more than you really need, feeling stuffed when you finally put down your fork.
    Just two hours later, however, you find yourself craving something sweet. You forage for a pint of frozen yogurt in the freezer and settle in front of the television. By 9, half the pint is gone.
    You’re exhausted from your day, but because of your blood sugar volatility and caffeine intake (all provoking a stress response), as well as your poor sleep habits, your cortisol is higher than it should be. You can’t seem to wind down, so you stay up until 11:30, watching the news and sending a few emails. You don’t sleep well, tossing and turning for hours, until your alarm blasts you awake again the next morning.
_________________
    Thanks to overconsumption, leptin resistance, insulin resistance, weight gain, hunger dysregulation, and energy spikes and slumps, your day wasn’t quite so pleasant.
    What happens in the evening is highly indicative of aspects of your hormonal dysfunction. At the end of your day, leptin resistance and elevated cortisol (thanks to your volatile blood sugar levels and regular caffeine “bumps”) promote hunger and sugar cravings even after you’ve eaten a filling dinner, and make it hard for you to go to sleep (and stay asleep). But even though the day we just described wasn’t so great, it wasn’t that bad, right? You still ate pretty “healthy” food, you still feel pretty good overall, and maybe you’re just a few pounds overweight, so things must be OK.
    Or maybe not—because the hormonal disruptions are invisible . Due in large part to your diet, they are occurring beneath your radar. You aren’t necessarily aware of their effects today, but that won’t be the case forever. Let’s see how this eating scenario plays out over months or even years.
    After all, this is a “typical day” for most of us.
NOT SO HEALTHY HORMONES: THREE YEARS LATER
    You’ve gained fifteen (OK, twenty) pounds in the last three years. Your doctor says that your blood pressure is high, and that you also have pre-diabetes. You’re not sure how all of this has happened, because