[00:00:00] You are listening to episode number 275 of Better Blood Sugars with Delaine, Maryland. Welcome to Better Blood Sugars with Delaine, MD where you can learn strategies to lower your blood sugars and improve your overall health. I'm your host, Dr. Delaine Vaughn. Ladies, if you know you're capable of doing badass things at work and for your family, but you're confused and frustrated with why you can't seem to stop eating the chocolate cake, this pot podcast is for you. Let's talk.
[00:00:28] Hey there, and welcome to the podcast.
[00:00:32] I am so glad you are here. I'm so glad you're taking some time for you, and I feel privileged that you're spending this time with me.
[00:00:41] So today we are going to talk about strategies, basic strategies for improving your blood sugars. What are the typical strategies I teach? What is the plan to moving forward to seeing better blood sugars? The women I work with, they want to fix their diabetes. They want to start seeing better blood sugars. They really want to come off of medications.
[00:01:04] They want the experience of going to their physician's appointment, their doctor's appointments, and not hearing that they need to add another med, but instead getting congratulations on improving your numbers and seeing better blood Sugars and your A1C getting better.
[00:01:21] The women I work with, they want to talk with their doctor about coming off of their meds. They want to start that discussion of coming off of their meds. They want. They're, you know, really wanting to leave the risks of type 2 diabetes behind them and start living their life, the life they've always dreamed of, without meds, without worries of their health, just the health that they've always wanted.
[00:01:48] The women I work with know this is possible, and likely you do, too.
[00:01:53] You know that it's entirely possible for you to live healthy, for you to see better blood sugars, for you to not be on meds. You know that that's possible. You've either seen it in others or even seen it on either my clients that have been interviewed on this podcast or seen it in me, because certainly this is my journey as well.
[00:02:15] You know that your body was once not diabetic and now it is, and you want to figure out how to get back to the healthy ones had. But you've struggled to see this result, these results, and this is what we are going to talk about today, why that struggle is there and what you can do differently.
[00:02:35] You have tried, like me, to do the things that you used to do in the past, live the way you used to Live in the past. You were healthy at that time. Why can't you replicate those results now? But you're just not able to see those results. You've tried the keto diets. You can only be consistent for three to four days. And it's not seeming to fix your blood sugars and your diabetes long term.
[00:02:58] Lots of women will try fasting. They'll do, you know, 14 hours of fasting and then they break. And of course they are so good for so long, so then they eat all the foods. This may all sound very familiar to you. And many women hear this or experience this and they believe it's evidence that they can never get back to being healthy. They can never get back to having that goal that they had for themselves of being healthy. They can never get back to that way that they were once before.
[00:03:29] Lots of women start to make this mean that changing my diet isn't going to do it. I'm never going to get there. I can't have this thing that I've always dreamed of, that part of my life is over. And again, I want you to hear that I really understand this because I was totally there also.
[00:03:47] I was at that place where I started to see, you know, I had been pre diabetic, I'd been gestationally diabetic. And we know, we medical providers in the literature, it tells us women who are gestationally diabetic are pre diabetic. They will go on to develop type 2 diabetes after the gestational diabetes, diabetes. We know that there's a, you know, it's some studies like the low end of it is like 50% of women with gestational diabetes will go on to develop type 2 diabetes. The high end is more like 80% of those patients who have gestational diabetes will go on to develop type 2 diabetes. We know this. And I was there and I knew it. I mean, I was a physician at the time. I knew that this was on the table for me.
[00:04:37] I was not ready like you, I believe, like I was healthy at one time. Why can't I be healthy again? I knew I was not ready to start down this path of chronic medical conditions that were matched to chronic prescriptions and chronic doctor's visits. I did not want to start meds. That was not okay for me. It really was like a fork in the road for me. Do I choose the path of least resistance with meds or do I choose that path least traveled? And for me, I was not. I just was not. I was in my early to mid-40s, and I was just like. I guess I was in my early 40s, and I just saw that really as, like, I need to make a decision and give it the old college try, like, the best effort I could give it to changing the way I lived my life before I went ahead and went on the meds, that was the fork in the road I was at. And my brain, I was like, God, I'm not that old.
[00:05:40] I. But I was seeing my A1C rising, and I was seeing my weight go up. I was seeing all of these things that I had done in the past to keep those at bay. Like, right. Like, all of the things I had done in my 30s and my 20s, to lose 10 pounds, to lose 5 pounds, to be healthy, those weren't working in my early 40s, and it was very, very scary to me. I was trying to go back and do all the things I had done, and they weren't working. And I was really coming to this fork in the road of do I go on meds for the rest of my life, or do I really put my all into changing my diet and my lifestyle in order to resolve this health issue, this change in my biology that I was starting to see. And I don't know that it was really a change, but I was definitely starting to see the consequences of the choices I was making.
[00:06:36] This was really scary to me. One, I didn't want to be on meds. Two, I really believed that because I exercised regularly that I was healthy. I did not have in my brain that it was the food that I ate. I thought that I could exercise it off. And that is the most unhelpful thought that we as medical providers and that the diet industry or the food industry gives to people. There is no way to undo food that makes you sick. It's kind of like smoking a cigarette. And I use this analogy frequently. You can smoke cigarettes, but there is no amount of medications I can give you to, like, inhalers that I can give you to undo the damage that you did to your lungs. I can maybe ameliorate, like, dampen some of the damage. I can maybe help you along the way with some of the damage, but I can't undo it. The only thing that undoes the damage is not doing the damage. And it's the same thing with the food. But that's not what's portrayed in just the common knowledge about health. People are like, oh, it's a calorie in, calorie out, so you need to burn more calories and that's just not the fact that does not make you healthy. The food, feeding your cells, a Twinkie, your body has a certain response to that food, and that response is too much insulin. And that alone is disease causing. And that's what people aren't telling you. And right when I came to this fork in the road, for me, I was scared because what was I going to do? Like, am I going to call a doctor and say, help me do this? I was a doctor, I was a physician at this time, and I knew the things that they were going to recommend and I was doing the things they were going to recommend and I wasn't seeing the health results that I wanted. They, you know, the best case scenario is they're going to be like, let's check your thyroid and see if that's the problem. But almost always when I see patients, patients come to me gaining weight, not feeling well, feeling too tired, just in general feeling badly, and they're like, I think it's my thyroid.
[00:08:47] Nine times out of 10, I will check the thyroid and it's not the cause. And even when the thyroid is abnormal, we fix it and it does not fix the issue. It's not your thyroid that's making you gain weight, right? Like, it wasn't my thyroid, certainly that was making me gain weight. Maybe it's making it harder. But you have to change those foods that you're eating.
[00:09:09] A doctor might tell you or a doctor would have told me. Move more for me. When this was going on for me, I was exercising about two hours per day like I couldn't keep a job and move more. Like I couldn't do both. I was exercising. I gained nearly 10 pounds training for a marathon. That means I was running 20 to 30 miles per week and I was gaining weight. That was not an element of moving more. That was an element of the food that I was eating in insulin resistance. Eat less. Like, I would try this and I would eat less for the morning. By the time the afternoon hit, I was like so exhausted with my experience, the emotional experience of my day that I couldn't not eat the junk food. And then the stories about, I'll start tomorrow, I'll do better, you know, the next time I didn't eat that many calories, I won't eat dinner. Whatever. The BS story I told myself at just was not working. Eat less was not working for me. And part of it was because I was feeding foods to my body and my brain that caused me to want more of them. And that keeps you stuck counting Calories. That was the other thing that, you know, the diet industry will tell you or the health industry will tell you. You need to move more, eat less and you need to count your calories. I ate all sorts of things that were calorie free. Everything calorie free. I mean, I drank enough diet coke to kill a horse. It was calorie free, but it wasn't making me lose weight and it wasn't fixing my insulin resistance.
[00:10:47] And then of course doctors, the healthcare industry will tell you, have you considered the meds? Have you considered phentermine? Have you considered the wegovies?
[00:10:57] And of course that goes against like, I don't want to match my inability to lose weight with a med any more than I want to match my raising a 1C, my climbing a 1C with a medication. I don't want to be on meds. I didn't want to be tied to the medical community, to the health care industry for the rest of my life consuming what is not health. They portray it as health, but it isn't health.
[00:11:23] So I was doing all the things that the doctor said because I was a doctor and I knew what they were going to say. I was doing all of them and it wasn't working. I was not seeing the results that I wanted. And of course what this leads for women, this causes in women caused in me certainly is this deep guilt and shame.
[00:11:41] I felt like I was a strong woman. I do feel like I'm a strong woman. You know, I started running when I was 15 years old and I was proud that the only breaks I took from my running career were when I was pregnant. I became a nurse when I was a mother with a school aged son.
[00:11:57] I went through medical school with him and came down with twins during that time and had twins during my medical school career. I worked as a nurse during all of this. I really felt like I did. I was able to do really hard things. I completed a marathon, I trained and completed a marathon in my fourth year of medical school. As a mother of three and as a working nurse, I did all of those things. I felt like I could do hard stuff. I did not believe I was weak sauce. So what the hell gave, right? Like what gives here? Why was the hard thing that I wasn't doing or that I was doing not working for me? And then I felt like something must be broken in me. I'm guilt, I'm like wrong. I'm not doing it right. This deep shame and guilt set in and I'm going through this because I think that women experience this.
[00:12:51] Likely you have felt this way also. So I want you to listen. I want you to take note. Come back to me. I always used to say I'd be bored in medical school and I'd be shopping for shoes. And then something the professor would say would pique my interest, and I'd come back to him. So come back to me. Stop shopping for shoes. Come back to me.
[00:13:10] You believe it's not working because something is broken in you. And today I want to talk about it's not broken in you. It's not that you are broken or not doing it right. It's the strategies you've been using in the past do not work. It's not your thyroid. It's not about eating less. It's not about moving more. And there's no amount of calorie counting that's going to fix this. Phentermine won't even fix this. Neither will we go V. When you go off of those meds, you will gain the weight back. Period. End of sentence, my friend. You are not broken. You are entirely intact. The reason those things aren't working is because they don't work.
[00:13:49] Those techniques don't work for you or me or any other human being. They are faulty. The technique is faulty, not you. So today I want to talk about what does work. Eating more, eating less, moving more, counting calories is not what's going to work. Phentermine is not going to work. Statistically, you will lose 3.5% of your body weight over each year, over three years. And then you will max out at like, 10% of your body weight. So if you're weighing 200 pounds and you want to lose weight, you should expect you're going to lose £20 and that's it with the med. And when you go off the med, you're going to gain it back, and that's taking the med for three years. That's how phentermine works. None of the other. I mean, they work a little bit better. You're going to lose weight with Wegovy and you're going to maybe lose more weight, but as soon as you go off that med, it will. The weight will come back on. We know that. So those things don't work. Eating less, moving more, counting calories, checking your thyroid and taking meds do not work for weight loss or for better blood sugars. Again, you can go on meds for blood sugars. You can go on the Wegovy, which would be.
[00:15:02] Oh. Ozempic is the diabetic version of that right, you can go on them. You will lose weight and your blood sugars will get better until you stop taking them. And then all of it will be done. You're going to gain the weight back. Your blood sugars will go back up. Your A1C will go back up.
[00:15:17] The meds don't create health. They just treat the symptoms. So let's talk about what does work for the human body, for human biology. Humans are individuals that take individual attention to create these results.
[00:15:33] So how you put together a plan is going to be individual for you. But there are four main pillars that are going to create 90% of the results that you're looking for. Those four main pillars of health are food, exercise, rest, and stress management.
[00:15:50] You're going to get primary, like, you're going to get the majority, like 60 to 70% of the results from food and exercise.
[00:15:57] So food works. Like how it creates your health or how it damages your health is food creates insulin resistance. The food that you eat causes insulin resistance and therefore diabetes in the human body.
[00:16:12] Foods that you eat that have a high insulin concentration as a response to them.
[00:16:18] Those foods cause type 2 diabetes. High insulin in your body causes type 2 diabetes. High insulin in your body leads to insulin resistance. Insulin resistance is the root cause of type 2 diabetes.
[00:16:34] Eating food all the time creates a lot of insulin in your system, creating insulin resistance and diabetes. Processed foods with additives in them, chemicals and compounds. And I don't. I'm trying to think of ingredients in them that are unnatural to the human body. Those create insulin resistance. The food that you eat matters. The food that you eat literally fuels every single cell in your body. All of them, Every single one of them. How we believe in some. Like, there's this idea throughout our society that the food isn't that important. And how that's even possible, I have no idea. Literally gives each and every cell in your body fuel.
[00:17:23] And if you're giving it bad fuel, you should expect each and every cell in your body to be subpar, to be poorly fueled. It's like having cars and you're putting bad fuel in the cars and then you're expecting them to perform like race cars. That's not going to work.
[00:17:41] Shoot, they may not even perform like old Civics. Old Honda Civics. I used to have an old Honda Civic. It was a great car. I can't believe it survived me, but it did.
[00:17:52] Either way. Like, you can't put poor fuel into a car and expect it to run at top notch, at top speed, at top, the top way it could run, it's not going to. You have to be put good fuel in a car and then optimize some other things to get it to perform its best. It's the same for your body. You have to put adequate if not superb fuel in your body to fuel your cells. If you expect your body to run at its top level in a top notch way, getting clear about the food that you need to be eating is the top priority. There is no amount of exercise, there's no amount of sleep, there's no amount of stress management that is going to allow you to feed your cells poor fuel.
[00:18:43] Like there's no amount of oil changer, air filter changing or you know, changing your tires on your car that's going to compensate if you're feeding your car. If you're putting bad fuel in your car, it's not going to run correctly. And it's the same for your body. You put poor fuel into your cells, your body will run poorly. Boom. Period. End of sentence. Getting very clear on the food that you are eating is top priority if you're intending to fix your diabetes.
[00:19:14] I highly recommend, and I will offer this multiple times throughout this podcast, if you are interested in me evaluating the food that you're eating to tell you what's working and what's not working or what might be working most, like what is the biggest problem food that you're eating, set up a better blood sugars assessment call. You can do
[email protected] forward/delaine md and just click on the better blood sugar schedule. Like there's a two links. One of them is for a better blood sugars assessment call. Click on it and you get access to my calendar and you can schedule that, but you have to be very clear on the food that you're eating. If you are feeding your cells poor fuel fuel that will cause insulin resistance.
[00:19:58] And by fuel I mean food. If you are eating food that fuels your cells and that fuel is causing insulin resistance, you are never going to be able to see better blood sugars long term. You have to change that part. And if you're not sure what that means, set up a call. It's free. They're 45 minute calls on Zoom, they're free. There's no obligation. You and I just sit and talk and we look at these four pillars and how you can start to use them to improve your health.
[00:20:25] So next pillar that I like to talk about is exercise. And this is the second most important thing that you can do to improve your insulin Resistance your blood sugars and your health.
[00:20:38] Exercise builds bigger muscles. If you're doing it correctly, cardio will build muscle. You are going to get bigger benefits from building, from doing strength training to build bigger muscles. As far as your insulin resistance and your metabolic health goes, you are going to get more benefit from doing strength training and building bigger muscles than you will from doing cardio.
[00:21:02] Muscles are metabolically active tissue, and that means that they burn glucose. That's all they want to do, is burn glucose. In fact, they want to burn glucose so much that when they are active, they switch into a different biochemical pathway that then no longer relies on insulin and you start burning glucose despite how insulin resistant you are. Like, you can be so insulin resistant and it doesn't matter. Your muscle cells will click into this other pathway and they start burning glucose in a way that doesn't rely on insulin. So you can bypass all of your insulin resistance and still burn off glucose and the effect of using glucose without relying on insulin to do so. So this bypassing of the insulin resistance, that effect lasts for up to 72 hours after a single exercise, episode or event.
[00:22:00] Exercise is the second most powerful thing that you can do to start seeing better blood sugars and reverse your insulin resistance. Period, end of sentence.
[00:22:10] Food and exercise. I know it sounds so trite and so old that they are the most important things that you can do.
[00:22:18] Sleep is another thing that you must live in alignment with your biology. 10,000 years ago, we were not using alarm clocks. We were not cutting our sleep short. We slept as much as our body needed, and we need to start moving back towards that. I know it's hard. I struggle with this. I do not sleep as much as I need to. And I can see changes in my physiology when I'm not sleeping as much as I need to. My resting heart rate goes up. All sorts of things go a little abnormal when I'm not sleeping as much as I need to.
[00:22:51] Humans are not meant to live on four to six hours of sleep per night. And when we try to do it, we get sick. In fact, studies show that we can induce insulin resistance by keeping the diet steady, the exercise steady, and only changing the sleep that a human being gets. We can induce insulin resistance in as little as one week. So if you've been living a lifetime on poor sleep, you need to change that, because it's going to be very hard to fix your insulin resistance, your blood sugars, and your diabetes if you're not getting enough sleep.
[00:23:26] Lastly, stress leads to cortisol and cortisol leads to insulin resistance. So if you do not have an effective strategy for stress management, counseling, journaling, cognitive behavioral therapy, meditation, exercise, all of these things are quality. Stress managers that we know in the literature improve stress.
[00:23:47] If you do not have a strategy, this alone can significantly impact your insulin resistance. If you're doing everything else, you're eating clean, you've been exercising, you get quality sleep, and you're not seeing the results that you want to see on your blood sugars, you probably need to look at this fourth pillar of health and stress management.
[00:24:11] So I encourage you to start looking at what you're doing and then start rating what you're doing. Look at each of these four pillars. Diet. Like the food that we eat, the exercise we get, the sleep we're getting, the stress management that we're doing. Look at each of these four and then start to rate them.
[00:24:30] Out of 10 days, how many days are you doing well with this and what grade are you giving yourself an A, a B, a C or D? Start looking at what you're doing. If you're giving yourself a D or a C, 8 out of 10 days, that is the place you need to start getting some movement.
[00:24:49] Maybe you're doing, you're going to move up from a C to B work. Everybody thinks we need to be 100% imperfect. Likely you don't, but maybe we need to be better than a C or a D and move up into that CR, B or B or an A work in these four areas. Eight out of 10 days a week or eight out of 10 days a week? That doesn't even make sense. Eight out of 10 days. Okay, start looking at what you're doing and rating it and then start making subtle changes there until you get to the results that you're wanting. If you're struggling with this consistency, then you need to get clear on why you're not consistent. Do you need better coping skills with stress? Do you need better coping skills with how you manage frustration or annoyance at 3 o'clock in the afternoon when you're busy and your schedule is all condensed and feeling busy, do you need better coping skills there? And if you do, what does that look like? If that's the thing that's blocking your consistency, if that's the thing that's giving you a D or a C every day instead of a B, like, okay, let's figure out what that looks like and how do I get better coping skills there? So I'm not relying on M&Ms. That was my go to, so I'm not relying on M&MS. All day long in order to manage frustration, annoyance and irritation.
[00:26:12] Do you need to get better on food planning? Maybe. Do you need to get more food options? Maybe. Do you need to get more clarity on your fasting hours? Possibly. Do you need to set a very clear workout and exercise plan? Maybe all of these things are things that you need to look at and rate. What are you doing? You're staying up too late. Do you need to shut the television off? Do you need to start setting boundaries? There's all of these things are things that need to be looked at. What are you doing now and what can you do a little bit better to get you the results that you're wanting?
[00:26:44] These are the things that we talk about during a better blood sugars assessment call. I will look at your numbers, we will look at what you've been doing and then we will clearly decide what is the best step moving forward. This is also an opportunity that if you're interested in working with me, you're like done with this whole diabetes thing and you're really wanting to put this behind you. You're ready to do that, you're ready to like, whatever it takes. Like, I'm just ready to move beyond this. Like I was right. Like that's when I hired a coach was when I came to that fork in the road and I was like, listen, I am not interested. I will do anything to avoid going on meds long term. As a physician, I knew going on meds long term was not going to create health. And I truly valued that was part of my internal value system is being healthy. And I knew meds weren't going to get me there. And so I was willing to invest a lot, lot of money, a lot of time, like years of time it took me to create the health that I wanted and I was willing to do it because I was not willing to go on meds. If that's where you're at, there is help for that. So this call is the first step to that. But if you just want some clarity and some suggestions and like what you need to focus on, that is what you will get from a 45 minute better blood sugars assessment call. Go and schedule it again calendly. That's C A L E N D L Y.com forward slash Delane MD and then click. You can even put forward slash, better hyphen, blood sugars, hyphen. I guess it's blood hyphen sugars. But if you just put Delane md there is a Link to click right there where you can get on a better blood sugars assessment call. You get access to my schedule and you can get yourself scheduled. Go do that. Take advantage of the help that is available to you. You do not have to be sick with diabetes for the rest of your life. If you've been working on it and you're like, I've been doing those things, I'm not. I need help. I need that coaching help. I need to start working on my mindset. I need to start figuring out other ways to manage my stress. If that's where you're at, set up a call and we'll figure out what it looks like for us to work together.
[00:28:50] I hope you found that helpful. If you have any questions, make sure you're hollering at me. You can always send me a message. Delanelainmd.com Lastly, I will give you the med warning. If you have been medicated for your type 2 diabetes, recognize that you are medicated for the way that you have eaten in the past. If you change your lifestyle, change the way you eat, change these four pillars of health, the exercise, the food, the stress, the sleep. If you change those, you will need to change your medications. If you do not do that, you can get very sick. The kind of sickness that looks like hospitalizations, that is not why you're doing this. So make sure that you open a line of communication up with your provider, the one that gave you the meds for your diabetes, and tell them, I'm making some changes, I want to come off my meds. How do you want me to share my blood sugar readings with you and how can I expect to hear back from you about the meds you want me to change? If you do not do this, you can get very sick and I need you to open that line of communication up to keep you safe. If you are wondering what to eat. If you're new to this podcast and you're liking it, please rate it, please review it. And this goes for anybody who's not new who's been listening to a long time. That will help other people get access to this podcast. But if you're not sure what needs to be happening for your blood sugars to get better, go and download my 14 day guide. There is a 14 days to better Blood Sugars. You can find
[email protected] Better B E T T E R 14 day menu. It's a guide. It walks you through exactly what you need to eat for 14 days to see better blood sugars. It is incredibly powerful. You will see better blood sugars. So make sure you have that line of communication open with your doctor if you're on meds, if you're going to use that guide. But go and check out that guide. That will tell you what you need to be doing to start seeing better blood sugars. You will see it if you follow that guide. Within seven days, your blood sugars will be dropping hands down. If they don't, you call me and we, like, send me a message. We will set up some time. We'll figure out what's going on. I hope that was helpful. I will be back next week, but until then, I want you to keep listening, keep avoiding foods that are making you sick, and keep making choices for your health, your longevity, and your vitality. Talk soon. Bye.
