Sam Sulek May Have Insulin Resistance and Not Know It: The Warning Signs

Sam Sulek has gone viral for his eating habits. His comment that if you have trouble sleeping, you should eat a massive meal because it will knock you out is presented as humor. But from a metabolic perspective, it is almost certainly a symptom of something concerning.

Why Huge Meals Cause Drowsiness

When you consume a large caloric load, especially one high in carbohydrates, blood glucose spikes. In a healthy, insulin-sensitive individual, insulin is released, glucose is efficiently shuttled into cells, and blood sugar returns to baseline relatively quickly. The energy dip is mild and transient.

In an insulin-resistant individual, the process is dysfunctional. Cells do not respond efficiently to insulin, so the pancreas produces more of it. The combination of hyperglycemia followed by reactive hypoglycemia creates the severe post-meal crash that effectively sedates you. The more insulin resistant you are, the more dramatic this effect becomes. This is a direct application of the Tony Huge Laws of Biochemistry Physics—specifically the principle of dose-response non-linearity and receptor saturation. The system is overwhelmed, leading to a pathological overcorrection.

How a High-Calorie Bodybuilding Diet Contributes

Chronic caloric surplus, particularly when combined with high glycemic loads, progressively worsens insulin sensitivity. The body’s cells become increasingly resistant to insulin’s signal, requiring higher and higher insulin output to achieve the same glucose clearance. This is the metabolic pathway that leads from normal function to insulin resistance to pre-diabetes to type 2 diabetes.

Growth hormone, which is commonly used in bodybuilding, independently increases insulin resistance. It antagonizes insulin’s action at the cellular level, making cells less responsive to glucose uptake. When you combine a massively hypercaloric diet with growth hormone use, you are applying two independent drivers of insulin resistance simultaneously.

The Broader Bodybuilding Problem

Extreme caloric intake is normalized in bodybuilding culture. Eating until you physically cannot move is treated as dedication rather than metabolic self-harm. The short-term muscle growth comes at the cost of long-term metabolic health that most young bodybuilders are not monitoring.

Simple blood work including fasting glucose, fasting insulin, HbA1c, and a glucose tolerance test can identify insulin resistance long before it progresses to clinical diabetes. The earlier it is caught, the more reversible it is through dietary modification, improved insulin sensitivity protocols, and exercise optimization.

The culture of extreme eating in bodybuilding needs the same kind of harm-reduction approach that supplementation does. More is not always better, and the consequences of chronic metabolic abuse compound over decades in ways that are not visible in the mirror.

Interesting Perspectives

While the direct link between massive meals and postprandial somnolence is well-established in metabolic science, the broader implications for performance athletes are often ignored. The bodybuilding community frequently misinterprets this crash as a sign of a “successful” bulk or an inevitable side effect of high growth hormone levels, rather than a red flag for deteriorating metabolic health. Some unconventional biohacking perspectives suggest that the sedative effect could be partly mediated by inflammatory cytokines released in response to the metabolic stress of a huge glucose spike, not just hypoglycemia. Furthermore, the normalization of this state creates a blind spot where athletes prioritize macronutrient totals over nutrient timing and insulin sensitivity, potentially sabotaging long-term health and even the anabolic environment they seek to create, as chronic hyperinsulinemia can downregulate key anabolic pathways.

Citations & References