Want to eat foods like rice, bread, and pasta without sending your blood sugar soaring?
👉 Learn About the Mastering Diabetes Fall Retreat: https://www.masteringdiabetes.org/retreat-fall-2026/
▶️ Watch the Full Video Version on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDaM_IxJ68s&t=1s
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What if you could eat the exact same bowl of rice, piece of bread, or serving of pasta—but get a dramatically different blood sugar response simply by changing how you prepare it, what you eat with it, and what you do afterward?
In this episode, Robby Barbaro breaks down four practical tools that can help reduce post-meal blood sugar spikes without eliminating carbohydrate-rich foods from your diet. But more importantly, he explains why these strategies are only supportive tools—the ultimate goal is to improve insulin sensitivity so your body can process carbohydrates more effectively in the first place.
In this episode, you'll learn:
- Why two people can eat the exact same plate of pasta and experience completely different blood sugar responses
- How insulin sensitivity influences what happens after you eat carbohydrates
- How cooking and cooling rice, potatoes, or pasta can increase resistant starch
- Why beans, lentils, chickpeas, and split peas naturally contain resistant starch
- How resistant starch may help slow digestion and support healthier glucose and insulin responses
- Why the order you eat your food can change your post-meal blood sugar response
- How starting with vegetables and plant protein before eating starch may help reduce glucose spikes
- Why even a short 5–10 minute walk after eating can help your muscles clear glucose from your bloodstream
- How muscle contraction activates GLUT4 transporters and allows glucose uptake with less dependence on insulin
- Why simple movements like wall sits, squats, or calf raises can also be useful after meals
- How barley and oats use beta-glucan fiber to form a natural gel that slows digestion
- How combining several of these strategies in the same meal may create a greater effect than relying on one alone
One example might look like this:
Cook and cool your starch, add lentils or beans, start your meal with vegetables, include barley or oat groats, and then take a short walk afterward.
Each strategy targets a different part of the glucose response—from digestion and absorption all the way to how quickly your muscles remove glucose from your bloodstream.
But there's an important distinction.
These tools can make individual meals easier to manage, but they don't replace the bigger goal: improving insulin sensitivity at the root.
Robby explains how following a low-fat, whole-food, plant-based approach over time can help reduce the accumulation of fat inside muscle and liver cells, allowing insulin signaling to work more effectively. As insulin sensitivity improves, you may find that you need fewer of these meal-by-meal strategies because your body becomes better at processing carbohydrate-rich foods on its own.
And instead of treating your glucose meter like a report card, use it as feedback. Track your fasting glucose and your response after meals, experiment with these strategies, and watch for trends over time.
The goal isn't to fear bread, rice, pasta, potatoes, or other carbohydrate-rich foods.
It's to create a body that can process them more effectively.
👉 Learn more about the Mastering Diabetes Retreat: https://www.masteringdiabetes.org/retreat-fall-2026/
The next retreat takes place October 29 through November 2, 2026 in Miami, Florida and is intentionally limited to just 12 attendees, with meals, guided movement, personalized coaching, and community built into the experience.
🎁 Get Your Free GUIDE: https://go.masteringdiabetes.org/optin-recipe-guide
Keep your carbs high and your A1C low.
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