[00:00:00] You are listening to episode number 278 of Better Blood Sugars with Delaine, Maryland.
[00:00:07] 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 Vaughan. 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 podcast is for you. Let's talk.
[00:00:29] Hey there. Welcome to the podcast. I am glad you're here.
[00:00:34] I am glad you're taking some time for you and for your health, and I feel honored that you're spending it with me. I have started recording this podcast already once and my mic went south and so now I'm going to have to listen and record, which is always fun. Multitasking at top level. I want to talk about why we do this work as women. Why do we do this work of letting go of foods that make us sick and what it, you know, why it's important to us. One of the keys to doing this work is allowing yourself to feel the uncomfortable things. And of course, the holidays are coming. So I'm recording this in the end of November of 2024. This week is actually Thanksgiving.
[00:01:17] That food desire and disappointment of not having certain foods and frustration is going to be available to us as trying to not be diabetic. So I want to talk about that today. Making sure that you have all the skills really to get you through the holiday season is what I want to address this at. Certainly a lot of this comes from the Facebook group. So if you're not already a part of the Better Blood Sugars with the Line MD Facebook group, go and search it and find it. And you'll. It's there. It'll. It's available to you. You can join this and there's conversations like this in that group. And if you ever have any question, like, you can pop it in that group. And I get to it. Hopefully I get to it soon, but sometimes it slips and like I can't get into the group. Either I'm traveling or I'm busy, so bump it. But there's also a ton of really, really helpful souls in there that are happy to help you out. So go join that group. But recognizing like the feeling and the allowing of the feeling of the uncomfortable things is really, really not natural to us. In America or in Western societies, we are really, really good at feeling good.
[00:02:31] We practice feeling good. We seek out feeling good. We believe that we're really supposed to always feel good, or at least we hear that on a societal level. And when we don't feel good, we really think something is wrong. We think that there's something has gone south. We see this in relationships, whether relationships with family members or even relationships with if there's any difficulty in the relationship, we're like, oh, that's not a good relationship. It no longer feels good and we want to avoid that relationship. And of course, sometimes that is what needs to happen. But many times it's just like, oh, this relationship really is important to me. There is something on the other side of this, you know, difficulty about this relationship that I want to have. And so I'm going to continue to work at it. But a lot of times we're like, oh, something's wrong because I don't feel good in the relationship. And then we avoid it.
[00:03:28] When we think that we're always supposed to feel good, we're constantly striving to feel good. And then we make concessions about the things that are important to us in order to continue to feel good. We trade our goals, we trade our hopes, we trade our dreams just to create a good feeling, just to avoid a feeling of not goodness.
[00:03:47] So Aristotle is attributed with the saying of this with through discipline comes freedom. With discipline comes freedom. And discipline, for example, of saving money creates the freedom of having amazing travels, freedom of owning a home, freedom of security, of finances. Discipline with parenting creates really well behaved kids that you then have the freedom to go and travel or go and do anything with. I found this to be true with my kids not because I was a great disciplinary, although I think I was a totally adequate disciplinarian. But I was in training when all of my kids were little. And so my mother had my children when they were infants through toddler until they got to preschool age and then they went to a preschool. My mother was a fabulous disciplinarian and she probably like, I'm sure she honed her skills on me at some point because I needed a lot of discipline when I was younger. But my mom would lovingly, kindly discipline my kids to the point that my parents were able to take my kids anywhere and all of us benefit. I would, was able to take my kids anywhere. My parents had two businesses and I can remember one year and my kids were like probably two, two and a half years old and my mom and dad had their tax, their yearly tax appointment with their accountant and my parents took my kids there and my kids sat in an hour and a half long tax appointment and quietly just played with like something in their hands. They didn't do anything and they were quiet. And that was freedom that my parents had from, from disciplining my kids. Now if you think about disciplining, initially we're like, oh, of course you discipline your kids. But the fact of the matter is disciplining children sucks. It is not fun. It does not feel good. You have to be the hag. It's the unfun thing. You're the heavy. You're on their back. It's a drag for them and it's a drag for the adult. Like, the adult would rather sit on the couch and watch some TV and not have to get up and go and redirect a behavior. They would rather not have to take the markers or the thing, you know, whatever it is, the kid that the kid is playing with, it's not appropriate. They don't want to take it away, hear the kid cry, break into their peace and quiet. They don't want to do any of that. They would much rather lay on the couch, watch TV in peace and quiet. This makes tons of sense.
[00:06:14] Every parent would love to relax and have some peace and quiet on a Sunday instead of getting up and disciplining our kids. And I don't want anybody to feel like I'm judging parenting. I'm not. Parenting is a thankless job. It is not for the weary, it's not for the weak of heart. I'm not, I don't want anybody to hear that. I think that. And even what a well behaved kid is, is in the eye of the beholder. But for me, I definitely know that, like that disciplining component, it was work. It was not easy. You know, we certainly. It makes sense that we would like to sit and relax and have some peace and quiet. But leaning into the discomfort of being the heavy, of getting up and taking care of it, of being the hag, of being on their back, leaning into that discomfort and being willing to do that hard stuff opened up the freedom of taking my kids, at least for me, anywhere. In fact, I was at a restaurant and I was. My twins were. They were twins. They were, they were very small because they were born early and they were in their car seats, but they were still like, I think they were like 15 months old and I was at a restaurant and I was with other people. And this couple came up to me and of course they said, your kids are really well behaved. And I said, oh, thank you. You know, they are. They're really great. And they said, listen, we don't live in the same state as our kids, as our grandkids, so we don't get to see them. Do you mind if we can go and take your k over to this table? You know, it was just, I mean, it was an arm's reach from us. But can we have lunch with your kids so you can enjoy your time with these friends of yours? And you know, we would enjoy that because we miss our grandkids. That is the kind of freedom that putting an effort into the uncomfortable discipline really bought. And so understanding that discipline really does lead to freedom. And it's not just true with parenting and it's not just true with finances. It's also true in the realm of food and health. The discipline in our choices leads to the freedom in quality and quantity of years of life.
[00:08:15] Our life is going to be better and longer if we have some discipline in our health choices.
[00:08:23] But certainly discipline is the opposite of feeling good. And humans want to avoid feeling badly, which means they frequently are going to avoid discipline, that discipline component, even when it's going to yield the long term effects that they want that they're looking for. Humans do this a lot. So an example like we want to raise at work and that benefit is going to be long term. It's going to be many, many dollars, right? Like if I ask for a raise today, the sooner I ask for a raise, the more money I will make because if I get the raise, then I'm going to earn money, more money, longer.
[00:09:01] But and of course that money is going to give us the, the freedom of going on vacations, the freedom to purchase a house or a car to pay off debt, whatever it is. That raise is going to give us freedom long term.
[00:09:16] But we know that the conversation of asking for a raise, for most of us, we find that a conversation uncomfortable. And we avoid the discomfort at the expense of what serves us long term.
[00:09:28] So I always find this interesting that we're avoiding the difficult or the uncomfortable in a moment and we're choosing instead something long term difficult.
[00:09:39] When we avoid disciplining our children when they are young, we are choosing poorly disciplined kids for the rest of their teen years or they're even, you know, children that have struggles in adulthood because they, they never learn to discipline. They didn't have any adult disciplining the child. Therefore, they never learned as an adult to be disciplined in their choices. We are actually extending the difficulty, the uncomfortable into a longer phase.
[00:10:08] When we avoid the difficult conversation about a raise, we miss out on long term benefits of having more money in our paychecks.
[00:10:17] We become mesmerized by the instant relief of something that is like, of avoiding something that's uncomfortable at the expense of what we want. Long term, we'll avoid disciplining our kids and being uncomfortable in the short term for short term ease, but have years of discomfort. We avoid a difficult conversation with our boss. But of like we miss out then on weeks, months and years of missed income, right? We avoid the instant difficulty at the expense of our long term goals.
[00:10:49] So we do this certainly with our health. We avoid making the discomfort, the uncomfortable decision or we'd avoid desiring food and not eating food. And it's uncomfortable, right? If you're sitting in front of a box of donuts, most people find not eating those donuts is uncomfortable and we avoid like that discomfort and eat the donuts at the expense of feeling more comfortable for years and decades later being healthy, right? So we're making a choice in the moment because we think that it's so hard to make that uncomfortable, that difficult choice in the moment. And we believe that we're making it easier. But what we're actually doing is creating years of being uncomfortable, months, weeks, years, decades of being uncomfortable as we're unhealthy right now. We need lab draws, we need doctor's appointment, we need meds, and we need possibly specialists and possibly we end up with complications associated with type 2 diabetes, which are all vastly more uncomfortable than just sitting with a little bit of desire and avoiding that food in the moment.
[00:12:00] We avoid, we humans avoid hard choices about food at the expense, at the expense of our healthy life long term, the life we really always dreamed we'd be living.
[00:12:13] We avoid these hard choices and instead we let food and we let diabetes and we let our meds, we let that feeling of being out of control with our health. We let doctor's appointments, we let health risks, we let worries get in the way of living the life we always thought we'd love, the life we'd imagined we'd live. I turned 50 this year and I always joke that the older I get, the younger 90 looks. I think when I was, you know, 20, I, I remember thinking that, oh, 40 is going to be when I'm old right Now I've hit 40 and I'm almost done with my 40s and I'm like, oh, 40 is not old and 50 is not that old and 50 is not as old as maybe I thought my parents would were when they were 50.
[00:13:02] And seeing that allowing these foods, you know, this disease, meds, doctor's appointments, worries and risks get in the way of living my life in the way I thought that I would be living, right? I think when I was 20 I thought 40 would be old and I would just let go of all of those dreams. When I got to 40, I was like, it is not old and I am not willing to let go of living a useful life.
[00:13:30] Most of us did not ever really truly imagine what it was like to be on meds and be sick and needing to see doctors all the time dealing with the worries and of chronic health concerns. They having that as part of our life.
[00:13:45] I don't think most of us, even when we were young and we're like, oh, I'll be old then thought about that. And certainly when we hit the age we're like, actually I'm not ready to be that way. I'm not ready to be quote unquote old because it's really not as old as I thought it was when I was 15 or 20.
[00:14:01] Maybe you thought it was, you know, that, that like something that being sick and having those meds and having all those stresses were something for people who are older. But maybe like me, as you get older you realize 50, 60, 70, 80 and even 90 is not as old as I thought it would be. I'm not ready to be sick and my suspicion is neither are you. When we're avoiding doing those difficult things that our health requires, when we avoid doing the hard things of being healthy and we instead get the quick easy exchange, the quick immediate gratification at the exchange of our long term health, we are actually choosing long term hard.
[00:14:42] That instant gratification that we get from avoiding the immediate unpleasant thing, it is at the expense of our greater dreams and our goals.
[00:14:52] We believe that we avoid the hard in the moment and it makes it easier. But we really just prolonged prolong that hard thing and instead now we have all of the meds, the doctor's appointments, the lab draws the stress, the worry, the complications. Now that is something we've chosen instead of the difficult decision that we need to make in the moment. And of course this leads women. Ladies, listen to me. This leads you to want to quit.
[00:15:20] Your brain will tell you if you just quit it's going to be easier. This belief that I am choosing the easy because I'm choosing the thing that is easier. I am choosing to eat the donut right now because it's easier than fighting against it. Your brain is going to tell you that that is what I need to do. I just need to quit trying to be healthy and just take the easy route.
[00:15:44] And you're not realizing like the brain, this is a lie. This is a, you know, a thought error. Your brain is telling you it's going to be easy. But clearly, daily meds, regular lab draws, regular doctor's appoint, frequent worries, complications and specialists are not easier than just feeling the uncomfortable thing in the moment and not having the donut.
[00:16:07] We believe our brain will tell us quitting is the easier option. And ladies, it is not.
[00:16:12] Again, we do this in many areas of our life and certainly women, I hear this from clients in many areas with their health, they avoid looking at the blood sugars, right? And so this was a conversation in the Facebook group this week. Somebody posted in there that they're like, oh, I don't look at my fasting blood sugars because they're always the highest ones. And then people chimed in, they're like, yeah, I don't look at my fastings either because they're so high. So what I want you to know is your fasting blood sugar is actually the best indicator of your insulin resistance. It's the best home indicator that you have access to every single day to see how insulin resistant you are. It is also the last number to normalize. Normalize because you're not just normalizing the blood sugar, you're normalizing insulin resistance. Remember, this is also something that came out of that Facebook conversation. Insulin resistance is what you must fix to fix your diabetes. You do not need to fix your blood sugars. You are going to fix your blood sugars. But recognize you can fix your blood sugars and normalize, see lower blood sugars and never fix your insulin resistance. You are not fixing the cause of the diabetes, you're not fixing the disease of the high blood sugars. You're only fixing a number. You're fixing a symptom of your insulin resistance. That's all you're doing. And you can lower, you can eat sugar free foods, you can eat keto foods, you can eat all these diet type foods, these low carb foods that still have sweeteners in them that do impact your insulin. You can eat those, lower those diet foods, those lower carb foods, those diet foods, and you will see lower blood sugars, but you will not fix your insulin resistance with that food. So we have to recognize that we have to fix the insulin resistance. And the best indicator at home every day for you to see, for you to fix your insulin resistance is that fasting blood Sugar. But when you're so resistant to the uncomfortable, the discomfort of seeing a higher number and it makes you want to quit, that's when this needs to be cleaned up. Like we have to start seeing that fasting blood sugar is data for me to do something with versus it's not working. And no matter what I eat, my blood sugars are high.
[00:18:38] Recognizing that the fasting blood sugar will always be high. And it's not high because the food that you ate, it's high because of a cortisol response that occurs every single morning for every single human being. It's nothing you've done.
[00:18:51] What causes your blood sugar to be up or down is not just related to the food that you're eating.
[00:18:58] There's cortisol, there's stress, there's sleep, there's being sick with a freaking viral infection, a cold, whatever. All of these will lead to your blood sugars going up and they have nothing to do with what you eat. You're not broken, you've not done anything wrong. This is just biology. You have to allow your body to heal, heal from the insulin resistance. And there's no way to speed that up. You just have to start living in alignment with your biology. You must just let that happen. And the way that you know whether it's happened or not is if that fasting blood sugar is normal or not. And if you're not looking at it because you feel like you're done something wrong, then you're not able to see are you healing or not. This again is the discomfort that people will avoid. And again, it does lead many people to quit even trying this work again. I'm going to quit the difficult thing in the morning every day at the expense of having something difficult for the rest of my life versus if I can do the difficult thing of looking at my fasting blood sugar every morning. I don't have doctor's appointments and meds and lab draws and co pays and specialists and procedures and complications. I don't have any of that because I was able to do this one difficult thing, lean into feeling that one difficult thing every day. But our brain will tell us I need to avoid this one difficult thing at every, at all expenses, right? And what that expense that you're going to give is this long term disease that's associated with it. So that was again like get into that Facebook group. There's so much information in there. And you know, any questions that you have are available in there. In fact, I did a Facebook live on the the fasting Blood sugar. And that's all on that Facebook group. So it takes discipline to overcome the discomfort. That's where this idea of discipline is really, really helpful. It takes discipline to overcome this. This discomfort that we have. If you give yourself, you make an expectation. I expect myself to check my blood sugar every morning. And we do this with kids, right? Like, that's how we parented with our kids, right? I expect you to come into this tax appointment and sit and be quiet, entertain yourself quietly. I expect you to do that. We have to make this expectation so that we can start to build that discipline that we're expecting of ourselves. Meeting the expectation is what gives you the freedom of your health, the freedom of health we're talking about. It's experiencing all the things that are important to you. Living healthy nomads, no worries. Engaging in the activities that you always dreamed of, being the parent that you always dreamed of, or the grandparent that you always turned up, or the great grandparent that you always dreamed of being the partner you always expected yourself to be. Having the energy to engage in that relationship. Not being so tired that you feel like you have to go to bed every night, 8pm because you're just exhausted and you feel sick. Being the partner to travel with your partner, going to amazing places that you always dreamed about, that you guys always talked about having the retirement. You always envision being there for your kids as they grow and your grandchildren, great grandchildren as they grow. I think that's one of the most beautiful things about having a relationship with grandparents is you get to glean wisdom that you didn't experience from these really loving souls that have reached the stage of life where they're just like, these are the things that are important. And, gosh, to be able to be available because you took care of yourself and you did the healthy things. This is where discipline really does create freedom, and it requires this. Discipline really requires us to be less resistant to feeling uncomfortable. So as the holiday season approaches, I want you to. I want to encourage you to start practicing this art of being uncomfortable. You're going to have unlimited opportunities to be around foods that will make you sick and cause your blood sugars to go up. That's going to be just an endless opportunity over the next six weeks.
[00:22:53] And you have the opportunity to really, really practice feeling uncomfortable with the understanding that this experience of discomfort is the discipline that's going to lead to freedom that you're looking for. Of course, I'm not talking about. I want you to sit there and walk on hot coals. And be uncomfortable. I'm really talking about the mental discomfort. There's nothing physically harmful about sitting with desire of food and not eating it. When you're sitting with the desire of a pecan pie or an apple pie in front of you and your brain is like, girl, that looks good. I think we should eat it. It's your favorite. Actually, you should add some ice cream because this is amazing.
[00:23:36] That feeling is a feeling like it's a desire feeling. It's a feeling of movement. You're probably used to having a response to that that looks like eating food. So your body is going to want movement and you're going to feel uncomfortable, physically uncomfortable without moving into that.
[00:23:53] There is nothing harmful about that physical discomfort or the mental discomfort of unmet desire. There's nothing that's going to break you. You're not going to die from it.
[00:24:04] So I always recommend in the holiday season to determine what's really, really important for you. This is a strategy that I teach for people, for women during holiday seasons. Figure out what about the holiday season is really, really important to you, and then make a plan around that. So for me, my mom's stuffing is always really important to me. My grandmother's apple pie recipe is important to me. My grandmother's fudge recipe is important to me. These are the things that are important to me. And I know I'm going to want to indulge in that. So if you want pie, so say you want pecan pie and it's important to you. And you're like, I really do. It authentically aligns with me that I get to experience pecan pie on Thanksgiving.
[00:24:47] And then you ask yourself, but what's reasonable here? Because the fact of the matter is pecan pie is probably part of something that you really do want. But do you need three slices of it? Do you need three or four slices of pie? Maybe you want pecan pie, you want pumpkin pie, you want apple pie. But three slices seems excessive. Like even you can. Like even in that open, abundant, not I've got to restrict, but this abundant mindset. Like, I want what's important to me. You might understand that it's reasonable that three pieces of pie are probably an issue. So how do you want to do it? That's where you make your plan from. I want these things. They are really important to me. But three pieces of pie seem excessive to me. So I'm going to have three bites of each. Maybe I'm going to have a half a slice of each.
[00:25:37] This is the strategy. Yes, maybe There is going to be thoughts about, but I don't want to waste anything or how am I going to do it. That's just a strategy. That's just something you need to figure out. I'm going to take a small sliver and I'm going to leave the rest or I'm going to have three bites, two bites from my partners or my kids or whatever, however that works. That's just something you need to figure out. But I think starting with that question of what's reasonable here and then making your plan from that, that is a skill that can be practiced. But you have to be willing to be uncomfortable wanting three slices of pie. Because girl, I will tell you, when you get to Thanksgiving dinner and all those pies are laid out, your brain's gonna be like, nope, three slices of pie seems totally reasonable. And that again is you are making an instant gratification choice at the expense of your long term goals. And that's what you want to avoid. That's where plan comes in and that's where really honing the ability to be uncomfortable, to feel discomfort in wanting more pie is going to be helpful to you. You're going to always want more pie. There's not a alternate universe where you're going to live. An apple pie, pumpkin pie and pecan pie are not what you want. I don't know, maybe you don't like any of those things, but there's going to be something you want that you can't have and your brain's always going to want more. So at the end of the holiday season, you're going to have had enough opportunities to practice this, that you can be a ninja at this skill. Do not miss out on that opportunity. I really hope that you have a great holiday season, that you have a great Thanksgiving. Make sure to really give yourself the opportunity this week of Thanksgiving to fill up on the things in your life that you are truly thankful for. The family, the relationships, whatever it is. Maybe it's abundance and wealth that you've created. Maybe it's a great job that you have. Whatever it is, fill up on those things. Things allow your brain to focus and spend time with those things and make yourself a plan for the things that food wise are important. But from a place of what you know is reasonable. And live from that plan. Work on discipline, practice discipline. Understanding that discipline will create freedom.
[00:27:46] So before I sign off, I do want to give you typical warning that I give for medicated people who are type 2 diabetic and you've been medicated if you have been medicated for your type 2 diabetes, please be careful making these changes.
[00:28:00] The you have been medicated because of the way you've eaten in the past. And if you change the way you eat, you're going to need to change your medications and if you don't, you can get very sick, the kind of sick that looks like hospitalizations and ER visits and possibly even death. So I need you to not do that because you're not making these changes for those reasons. So I need you to call your provider that gave you the medications and I need you to tell them you're going to make some dietary changes and ask them how shall I share my blood sugar logs with you? And they're going to tell you, they're going to say call my nurse, they're going to say fax them, they're going to say email them, they're going to say load them to the portal, whatever it is, they're going to tell you. And then you're going to ask them, how should I expect to hear changes to my meds from you? How will I hear that message from you for what meds I need to change? And they're going to tell you that that is the open communication that you need to have in order to keep yourself safe as you're making these dietary changes. If you don't, you can end up quite sick. So I need you to be careful. I need you to watch your blood sugars closely. I need you to call your doc and set up a clear line of communication. If you're not sure what you need to eat to fix your diabetes, please go to ww.com better there is a 14 day guide there. You can download that guide. It is very powerful. So make sure you've made this phone call to your doctor. You will see better blood sugars. Absolutely. You will see lower blood sugars, nearly normal blood sugars at the end of 14 days.
[00:29:26] So download that guide and it will give you some clear information about what you need to be doing. If you've done the guide and you found that it worked, or you found that it didn't work and you're trying to figure out how you go forward, please set up a better blood sugars assessment call. You can always set that up by sending me an
[email protected] or you can go to my website@delane md.com and you can hit the work with me tab and you can set it up that way. But most women will find that it does work and they have a hard time extrapolating it or pushing it out farther than 14 days. Set up a call so we can do that. If you found strangely that it didn't work and that I have not heard about this happening. But if it happens for you, please set up that call so you can get some help. It's all free. None of this costs any money. It's all free. It just costs a little bit of your time. Lastly, if you're finding this podcast helpful, please rate and review the podcast. The more people that rate and review this podcast, the more the podcast apps put it in front of people to listen to. Nine out of ten Americans are insulin resistant. That means lots of people need to hear that they don't need to be sick for the rest of their life. That they can change the way they're eating and change their health. That's all I've got for you. Have a great Thanksgiving. Until next week. Keep listening. Keep making choices for your health, your vitality and your longevity. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
