Nourished & Found

“But I barely eat any sugar.” It’s one of the most common and most disheartening things people say to me. You’ve done the obvious thing, cut out the sweets and the fizzy drinks, and yet your blood sugar is still creeping up, or your energy still isn’t right. It’s baffling, and it’s easy to take as proof you’ve somehow failed. You haven’t. The picture is just bigger than sugar. In this episode I ex...

You did the hard part. You came off the medication. And then quietly, a few weeks later, the cravings start whispering again, the afternoon energy dips return, and the old patterns you thought you’d left behind come creeping back. Nobody warned you about this bit. This episode is for the months after a GLP-1 medication such as Mounjaro or Wegovy, the window hardly anyone talks about, where the dru...

Being told you're pre-diabetic, often by text, with a link to a leaflet and no real conversation, can leave you standing in the kitchen googling the worst version of every fact at midnight. This episode is the steadying hand nobody handed you at the surgery. A pre-diabetes result is an early flag, not a life sentence, and it's one of the most responsive moments there is to do something with. But y...

Five Things I Do Every Day to Keep My Blood Sugar Steady This week I'm letting you into the five small habits that have quietly become the scaffolding of my days. None of them cost a penny, none of them need perfect conditions, and every one survives a chaotic, kid-filled, homeschooling kind of week, which is the only kind I have. I'm not handing you a rulebook, just showing you what genuinely wor...

Of the six things in this week’s episode, there’s one that always seems to make people tilt their head: eat enough. It sounds almost too obvious to count as a habit… of course you eat. But I put it in there on purpose, and it’s the one I most want to make the full case for, because it runs directly against nearly everything diet culture has ever told us. We’ve been trained to believe that less is...

In the episode I talked about gluten-free bread and your blood sugar, how the processed stuff is nearly always rebuilt from refined starch, and how “gluten-free” on a packet tells you what’s been left out, not what’s been put in. I promised I’d put the research in here, and I will. But first I want to go somewhere the episode didn’t have room for, because there’s a bigger question sitting under th...

I’m guessing this might be a pattern almost everyone recognises. A stressful stretch arrives, and your digestion, which had been behaving, falls apart. Bloating, cramping, digestion moving too fast or too slow. Nothing about your what you eat has changed; you go hunting through your diet for the culprit, find nothing, and feel baffled. Or you start eliminating different foods, only to find you fee...

Real questions from real people — in this second Q&A episode, Frances Norgate answers six of the best questions from a workshop she ran at the Organic Centre in Leitrim. Is porridge good or bad for you? How can the order you eat your food in change your blood sugar if it all mixes in your stomach anyway? Are you really a night owl — or is it your lighting? What is the nervous system, and what's it...

Just been told you're pre-diabetic? Before you spiral, this episode is about all the things that diagnosis does not mean. Frances Norgate, a Qualified Nutrition and Lifestyle Advisor, gently takes apart the five wrong stories people tell themselves in the days after that text from the surgery: that you failed (you didn't — it's largely a system-level problem), that type 2 is now inevitable (the nu...

We spend an extraordinary amount of energy on one question: what should I eat? And almost none on another question that might matter just as much: when? It’s an easy thing to miss, because a meal feels like a fixed object. So many calories, so much carbohydrate, so much protein, does this or that to your blood sugar. But it isn’t fixed. The same plate of food is, in a real and measurable sense, a...

There’s a particular kind of tiredness I hear about constantly, and it usually comes from people who did everything by the book (low-fat spread, the cereal with the heart tick, the fat-free yoghurt, juice with breakfast) for years, feeling somewhat virtuous about it. And who got more tired, not less, heavier round the middle, and eventually a blood test that drifted the wrong way (i.e. their HbA1c...

Your skin is the one organ you can actually see — and sometimes it's flagging your blood sugar before a blood test does. In this episode, Frances Norgate explains three skin signs genuinely worth being curious about metabolically — skin tags, acanthosis nigricans, and adult acne — and, just as importantly, how to tell them apart from skin issues that aren't a blood sugar story at all. Sharing her...

Why do you crash at 3pm? If you get an afternoon energy slump — foggy, tired, reaching for something sweet — the usual explanation is willpower. It isn't. This episode explains the blood sugar rollercoaster behind the afternoon crash: why a carb-heavy lunch sets up a mid-afternoon dip, why that dip triggers cravings and brain fog, and the simple, no-deprivation changes that can steady it. Practica...

Coming off GLP-1 agonists like Ozempic, Mounjaro or Wegovy and finding your hunger and cravings have returned with a vengeance? You're not imagining it, and it isn't a willpower problem. In this episode, I explain what's actually happening in your body when you stop a GLP-1 medication — why hunger rebounds, what the research shows about weight regain and muscle loss after stopping, and what genuin...

In our first-ever listener Q&A, I answer the blood sugar questions you sent in — the ones that came up again and again. We cover whether you can be slim and still have a blood sugar problem, whether you really have to give up fruit, and what a “normal” HbA1c does and doesn't tell you. We also get into what actually helps after coming off Ozempic, Mounjaro or Wegovy, whether stress moves your blood...

The order you eat your food in changes how your blood sugar responds to it — same meal, same amount, gentler rise. This episode breaks down food sequencing: why eating vegetables and protein before carbohydrates supports steadier blood sugar, what's happening in your gut when you do it, and exactly how to apply it at your next meal. A simple, no-restriction change with an immediate, measurable eff...

Being told you're pre-diabetic can feel like a countdown has quietly started — but does a raised blood sugar reading actually mean type 2 diabetes is on its way? In this episode of Nourished & Found, Frances Norgate answers the question most people are too frightened to ask their GP, and gives the honest version rather than the reassuring one. We look at what a pre-diabetes result really tells you...

Most people in the UK don't find out they're pre-diabetic in a conversation with their GP. They find out by text message, a few days after a blood test that was done for something else. There's no appointment with the practice nurse. There's no real explanation of what HbA1c is or what the numbers mean. There's often just a text, a link to a leaflet, and a feeling of being slightly stunned in the...

The HbA1c blood test is one of the most commonly used measures of blood sugar health, and one of the least well-explained. It's the test your GP uses to decide whether you're pre-diabetic, diabetic, or "fine." But what it actually measures, what it can't see, and how to interpret your own results — these are conversations that almost never happen in a ten-minute appointment. In this episode of Nou...

If your digestion gets worse during stressful weeks — even when you haven't really changed what you're eating — there's a reason, and it isn't always food. In this episode of Nourished & Found , Frances Norgate explains the gut-brain connection most people have never had properly explained to them, why your nervous system has more to do with your digestion than your diet does, and what actually he...

If you've been eating less than ever and your blood sugar still isn't doing what you'd hoped — or worse, your numbers are climbing — there's a good chance you're caught in a pattern that almost nobody talks about. In this episode of Nourished & Found , Frances Norgate explains why chronic undereating can actually push fasting blood sugar up, the cortisol mechanism behind it, and why women in their...

Frances Norgate had digestive symptoms for fifteen years before anything really worked. Bloating, severe constipation, sharp pains after eating, vomiting a couple of times a week. And a series of GPs who, working within ten-minute appointment slots, could only offer one medication per symptom. The tests came back showing nothing wrong. The symptoms kept going. In this personal episode of Nourished...

If you're sleeping eight full hours and still waking up exhausted, it might not be about how long you slept — it might be about what your blood sugar was doing overnight. In this episode of Nourished & Found , Frances Norgate explains why overnight blood sugar dysregulation is one of the most overlooked causes of poor sleep quality and persistent fatigue, even when you don't actually wake up in th...

If you're dealing with both unpredictable digestion and energy crashes — bloating after meals, afternoon slumps, foods that suddenly don't agree with you — your gut and your blood sugar are very probably talking to each other. In this episode, Frances Norgate explains why digestive symptoms and blood sugar dysregulation so often appear together, the inflammation and stress hormone mechanisms behin...

In this episode, Frances Norgate explores why commonly recommended healthy breakfasts — porridge, wholegrain toast, fruit, cereal — can trigger a blood sugar spike and crash cycle that drives afternoon fatigue, cravings, and poor energy for the entire day. Includes practical guidance on how to change breakfast composition for more stable blood sugar and sustained energy. What you'll take away: Why...