Most women with insulin resistance have frequent symptoms like belly fat, strong cravings for insulin-resistant foods (mainly sugar and carbs), energy dips after eating, skin tags, dark velvety patches of skin, and irregular periods. It’s caused by a combination of diet, stress, sleep, and hormonal changes – in most cases, it will respond well to natural, lifestyle-based treatment before using medicines.

What you may experience is the mid-afternoon crash, the accumulation of midsection fat, and the constant demand for carbohydrates, all of which you might hear from yourself and others, especially if you’re getting older, but you’re not alone, and you may be on to the truth of it all. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that about 1 in 3 American adults is prediabetic, and an underlying cause of prediabetes is almost always insulin resistance. Insulin resistance is one illness that’s so sensitive to natural, root cause treatments that it can get a lot better before becoming diabetes.

Insulin Resistance Symptoms in Women

What Is Insulin Resistance?

Insulin is a hormone that helps sugar get out of the blood into cells for energy. The less responsive cells become to insulin, the more the pancreas needs to produce insulin to keep blood sugar levels controlled. This chronic excess of insulin is associated with weight gain, particularly fat around the abdomen, inflammation, and ultimately, in the future, undiagnosed prediabetes or type 2 diabetes.

Signs of Insulin Resistance in Women

Often the early signs of insulin resistance are very subtle. These are the most common ones for women:

  • Stomach fat that has not gone away with diet & exercise
  • Sweets and carbs are more likely to be the target of desire in the afternoon or after meals
  • Brain fog or energy low (30-60 minutes after eating)
  • Skin tags, particularly on neck, under arms or on chest region
  • Thickened skin on the neck, in the armpits and in the groin area (acanthosis nigricans)
  • Periods are irregular or heavy, and usually associated with polycystic ovarian syndrome
  • Having a hard time losing weight despite good intentions and a consistent effort
  • Increased hunger shortly after eating a full meal

If some of these sound familiar, there are simple blood tests that can be done to check fasting insulin or HOMA-IR, without needing a diagnosis; ask a healthcare provider about those before it’s too late.

What Does Insulin Resistance Feel Like?

Along with all this, many women report feeling or experiencing something when they develop insulin resistance – feeling more tired after eating and needing a snack of something sweet to get more energy after eating too many carbs. Some say that they wake up feeling tired, even if they sleep a lot; a feeling of being puffy or bloated; and their clothes feel tight around the middle, although the amount on the scale has changed little. It is more of an overall achy sensation that may be attributed to stress, ageing, or lack of sleep.

What Causes Insulin Resistance in Women?

There are multiple overlapping factors that contribute to insulin resistance and most women who develop Insulin Resistance will have more than one of these factors:

Hormonal changes, particularly perimenopause and menopause. Estrogens cause a greater responsiveness of cells to insulin. With falling estrogen levels, there’s a natural decrease in insulin sensitivity and an accumulation of fat around the belly. But as estrogen levels fall, there’s a natural loss of insulin sensitivity and fat redistribution tends to head towards the belly – and that’s why insulin resistance is much more common for women over 40.

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). Insulin resistance and polycystic ovary syndrome often go hand in hand, and they can further exacerbate each other, leading to irregular menstrual cycles, weight gain, and high androgens.

Chronic stress. This increases insulin resistance and raises blood sugar, continuing the spiral towards increased abdominal fat as cortisol goes up.

Poor sleep. Shorter and/or disrupted sleep over a few nights leads to a measurable decrease in insulin sensitivity in healthy adults.

Diet patterns. Refined carbs and sugars tend to cause blood sugar spikes and result in a greater feeling of hunger than is warranted due to their lack of protein, fiber, and healthy fats to control blood sugar.

Sedentary lifestyle. There is one large site in the body where blood sugar is removed, and when the body is not used: Muscle and Strength training. Blood sugar utilization diminishes with lack of muscle and strength training.

Natural Insulin Resistance Treatment: What Actually Helps

Luckily, the sensitivity of insulin can change drastically with lifestyle changes and, in some people, in just a few weeks.

1. Pair Carbs With Protein, Fiber, and Healthy Fat

Combining carbohydrates with protein and fat will help to slow the rise of the blood sugar, and prevent a sharp spike and then drop in insulin, which leads to increased hunger and fatigue. That sudden feeling of fatigue and hunger for more sugar can often result in a rise in blood sugar and cortisol caused by failing to eat a snack consisting of the right food combinations. For more tips and tricks on staying chemically balanced, read our snacking for hormonal harmony feature.

2. Move Daily, and Prioritize Strength Training

Movement, particularly resistance and strength training, stimulates the development of the muscle tissue that your body can use to get rid of excess sugar from the bloodstream. After eating, anyone can safely walk for 20–30 minutes, which has been proven to significantly reduce the effect of a carbohydrate load on blood sugar.

3. Manage Stress Intentionally

However, chronic stress, and all the positive food and exercise decisions made in opposition to it can be reversed. Some of the best ways to minimize unhealthy blood sugar on an ongoing basis encompass meditation, breathwork, spending time outdoors, or steering clear of evening stimuli like screen time.

4. Protect Your Sleep

Get 7-9 hours of regular sleep. One of the highest-leverage and most underused natural interventions is improving sleep, as poor sleep will increase cortisol and decrease insulin sensitivity the next day.

5. Look for the Root Cause

Insulin resistance may begin as the result of hormonal fluctuations, chronic stress, gut health, or nutrient deficiencies; a whole-body approach to root causes will reveal what the generic approach doesn’t. Both functional and integrative practitioners consider more than a single blood sugar reading, evaluating hormones, inflammation and lifestyle as a whole. In North Jersey, our offerings for functional medicine for long-term wellness and integrative medicine for chronic health conditions take you through how this sort of personalised, root cause based care works.

6. Track and Personalize Your Nutrition

Food effects in the manner of increasing blood sugar levels vary from woman to woman, meaning that one food may cause a spike for one woman, but hardly any for another. Using a continuous glucose monitor and nutrition guidance by a dietitian means you replace generic glucose monitoring guidelines with your own, which can be helpful. For information on how this sort of individual approach works in practice, read our article: Building a Personal Nutrition Plan.

When to See a Doctor

Natural remedies are effective, but still medical confirmation and monitoring of insulin resistance are effective. Request a fasting insulin, fasting glucose test, HOMA-IR or A1c test – particularly if you have a family history of type 2 diabetes, suffer from PCOS or are going through perimenopause and experience symptoms like those listed above. One of the best ways to ward off long-term metabolic and hormonal problems is to discover insulin resistance early and treat it with a lifestyle change, before it can go beyond the point of returning to normal.

The Takeaway

Insulin resistance is not alarming. It’s that feeling of drowsy afternoons, that unquenchable thirst and the persistent fat belly–a school of thought dismissed as stress or ageing, which it is. If you’re able to identify these factors early, though, you’ve got some of the best natural treatments you can: how you eat, how you move, how you sleep, and how you manage stress. Prior to a woman reaches a large problem, she can positively affect her insulin sensitivity and help prevent it, generally by treating her whole body.

For more on natural approaches to hormonal balance, blood sugar, and whole-body wellness, explore our Conscious Eating and Healing Ways sections.

Frequently Asked Questions: Insulin Resistance in Women

Initial warning signs may be a drop in energy levels in the afternoon, a craving for sweets, and the inability to shed pounds despite a tried and tested diet and exercise plan. Skin may change; as resistance starts to grow, there are tags or dark patches.

Many women say that it feels like a heavy, slow crash after eating, being extremely tired in the afternoon and craving something sweet – even shortly after a good meal.

Often, there are a number of factors that can contribute to hormonal changes around perimenopause and menopause, hormonal imbalances from PCOS, chronic stress, poor sleep, and diet patterns high in refined carbs.

Metabolically active, abdominal, visceral or belly fat is caused by insulin-resistance that can cause additional insulin-resistance, and can create a vicious circle that is harder to escape than just the act of losing weight.

For the majority of women, yes. Making dietary adjustments to reduce blood sugar surges, regular exercise, particularly strength training, stress-reduction, and improved sleep habits can have a dramatic positive impact on insulin sensitivity in just a few weeks to a few months.

The symptoms associated with PCOS and thyroid problems, as well as perimenopause, such as fatigue and weight gain, make it crucial to have a blood test to determine for certain–do not just go by symptoms.