Laura Schoenfeld: Actually, for most of my clients to balance blood sugar, I like them to have carbs spread out across the whole day. So really having them at each meal is going to be best. Now if they want to do a little bit of a carb-balancing strategy, that might be a little bit better, sometimes lower carb in the morning and higher carb in the evening can be helpful especially for things like sleep. We also tend to be a little bit more insulin sensitive later in the day. So when your cortisol is elevated and frayed after you wake up, you’re not going to be quite as insulin sensitive as later. So that can sometimes make carbs a little harder to tolerate for someone who’s got blood sugar issues in the morning. I wouldn’t necessarily go zero carb in the morning if somebody’s got blood sugar problems, but just maybe lower carb in the morning might be okay.
And definitely getting protein at every meal is going to be really important as well. But I wouldn’t say there’s any specific timing with carbs that is crucial for good blood sugar control. I really just like to see a balanced intake across the day that is adequate and appropriate for the amount of exercise the person is doing. So let’s say this person is fairly sedentary during the day but then does an hour of exercise in the afternoons. Then increasing their carb intake pre- and post-workout is going to be better than having lots of carbs in the morning when they’re more sedentary. Or if they workout in the morning then they can have more carbs pre- and post-workout then and that might mean that they have a little bit before going in the gym and then maybe their breakfast is higher carbs. So everyone’s going to be a little different, but basically you want to think about just providing somewhat of a steady stream of carbohydrates and not having it be super-high at any one meal or super low at any one meal. With the understanding that yes you can have a couple meals that are lower and higher than the other ones. Maybe breakfast is 20 grams and dinner is 50 or something like that.