[00:00:00] You are listening to episode number 287 of Better Blood Sugars with Ghislaine, 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 podcast is for you. Let's talk. Hey there and welcome to the podcast. I love that you're taking some time for you and for your health today, and I feel privileged that you're choosing to spend it with me. I have a new mic today, and hopefully it will behave better than the old mic, but this is the first time I'm recording a podcast with it. So today I want to talk about three simple questions to really challenge the thoughts in your head about the food that you're eating that's creating the health that you have. When it comes to our thoughts about food and our health, we've really been fed some doozy bumdingers thoughts by diet society by diet culture. They're really unhelpful. They're really not creating the results that we want.
[00:01:12] Being aware of them and seeing them and then learning how to challenge them effectively is really foundational to starting to see healthier choices you're making, to starting to see better blood sugars and really in general, just to being a healthier you. Before we get started, I want to remind you, if you are on medications for your type 2 diabetes, please be careful. If you're making the dietary changes that I recommend in this podcast and in these episodes. 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. Also, if not, you can get quite sick. So I need you to open a line of communication up with the provider who gave you those meds.
[00:01:53] You need to figure out how they want you to share your blood sugar logs with them and how they intend to share medication changes back to you. If you don't do that, you can end up getting really sick. Remember, type 2 diabetes is insulin resistance. It's not strictly about how much sugar is in your diet. It's also how much insulin your body is producing. Sometimes that is confusing and people don't know what to eat. If you're not sure what you need to be eating to make your blood sugars better and reverse your insulin resistance. I have help for you. You can download my 14 days to a Better Blood Sugars Guide. You can find
[email protected] better that's B E T T E R. Try it out, see how it goes. If your blood sugars don't get better, I'd be really shocked. But if they don't, set up a better blood sugars assessment call. If you do it and they do get better, but you have questions for how to apply those 14 days to the rest of your life, set up a Better Blood Sugars assessment call. This is a time you and I are going to sit down and have a conversation. It's like 45 minutes through Zoom and we see what you've been doing, what's worked for you in the past, what isn't working for you, what hasn't worked for you in the past, and how you can start making things going forward work for you to see better blood sugars. You can schedule that at calendly.com forward/delanemd forward/call. So going to spell that. It's C-A L E N D L Y.com-E L A N E M D forward slash C A L L calendly.com delanemd forward slash call. That's how you can get to my calendar and you can just schedule it. If for some reason you don't find anything that works for your schedule, just send me a message delanedelanemd.com and I will get you on my calendar.
[00:03:44] Okay, so most diabetics find that it's really difficult to change the way that they eat. You probably know you need to make some changes. You understand that the diet you've been eating is really what's causing your diabetes. And you even probably understand the risks associated. You understand the consequences, the complications. You understand that you could take meds, but you probably have this idea that taking meds is not necessarily going to make you healthy and what you want is health, not just better numbers.
[00:04:13] Most diabetics understand this, but frequently we have these thoughts that keep us stuck making decisions that don't serve our health. Thoughts like we maybe we identify as a sweet addict, or maybe we feel that it's impossible to eat healthy anywhere in our current food environment. Like there's just bad stuff everywhere. Or we've had thoughts like we've been taught that just a little bit's okay.
[00:04:36] Or maybe we have a thought like, oh gosh, I'm going to just suffer through until, like to my goal and then I won't have to suffer anymore.
[00:04:43] These stories and many others are what keep us stuck and struggling with this part of our health. This is why in the past we've struggled and not been able to create long term changes.
[00:04:56] These stories come from our culture, primarily our diet culture.
[00:05:01] If you think about how these stories set you up to fail, you'll realize why it's not serving you.
[00:05:09] When we tell ourselves that we're an addict to something, we're relinquishing our control. We're placing that control of doing that behavior outside of us. Because we're an addict.
[00:05:19] If we believe that a little is okay, but every time we have a little, we're creating evidence that it's not. We're believing a lie that we're telling ourselves in order so that we can keep eating this food.
[00:05:32] When we identify the actions that are going to create the health that we so desperately want in our life, when we identify those as suffering, you are setting yourself up to fail.
[00:05:43] It's no wonder with these thoughts in our head that we cannot remedy our type 2 diabetes and our insulin resistance. Changing these thoughts, changing these mindsets on these issues about our health is the first part and one of the most pivotal parts of improving your health and your blood sugars long term.
[00:06:03] How we start doing this, this is part of what we do in coaching. This is a big part of what we do in coaching. I challenge your thoughts and sometimes that's borderline offensive or like, no, these are. This is how it is. What do you tell. You don't know me, lady. You don't know what I'm thinking. You don't know what my experience is. This can really be borderline offensive. But there is a way to challenge these thoughts in a way that is very obvious, actually. I see where there is some flexibility here. It's not the only way to think at things, think about things. When we can start exploring those current thoughts and decide whether they're helping us move towards our goal or away from our goal, then we can start getting some wiggle room and deciding if that's what we want to believe. If you can see that the, the thought I'm a sweet addict, or the thought that a little is okay, or the thought that I'm going to suffer through this, or any other thought that's blocking you from your health progress, when we can see that they're optional and that they're causing a problem, then we can start to see that maybe it's time to stop thinking that this is particularly challenging Given that most of us have never been thought, we've never been taught to think about thinking. This process of thinking about thinking is called metacognition.
[00:07:23] Many of us believe that our thoughts just come and go and it's out of our control. Like thoughts float into our brain and they float out of our brain, and I have no idea where they came from or where they went.
[00:07:34] And it's true that there is some element of, you know, serendipity or just our brain offers something and we see that. I mean, we do this all the time. Our brain offers us an a thought, and we're like, that's not even true. That's ridiculous. I'm being ridiculous. That's typically how we verbalize it. And then we, you know, banish the thought and decide not to think of it.
[00:07:58] Sometimes there is a thought that floats into our brain, and sometimes thoughts float out of our brain uncontrollably also. But the skill of learning how to decide what to think and what not to think, it is a skill that can be practiced and sharpened and honed. And that's what I want to talk to talk about today.
[00:08:18] So thoughts are the basis of all of our results.
[00:08:22] I use the thought model in coaching all the time. I use the thought model. I don't think there's ever a time in my world that I don't use the thought model because I see it acting out everywhere in my world. And part of this, as I look at our brain, this is just the way our brain works. I talk about our brain being a prediction model and are being a prediction machine and how our brain takes in information through input, through our senses, and it makes a prediction based on that input, and it relays that input, that prediction to our output output part, which is our body, through the form of a feeling. Those feelings create actions. That's our output, and that gives us our results.
[00:09:06] The first part of that, the bringing in sensory information through our eyes, through our nose, through our mouth, through our ears, through our touch, through our five senses, bringing that sensory information and then making a prediction about that sensory information, that is a thought. That prediction is formed in the form of a thought. That's what it is.
[00:09:28] And our brain then relays that thought to our body in the form of a feeling. And that feeling drives our actions. Those actions give us our results. So if we're wanting to change our results, we need to change our thoughts. That's the heart of it all.
[00:09:41] So thoughts are the basis for all of our results. So if you're seeing A donut. And you're thinking, I'm an addict to sweets. And then you eat the donut. The root cause of this issue is not the donut.
[00:09:55] The root cause is the prediction your brain is making about the donut, which is, I am an addict to it. And how that feels for us is helpless.
[00:10:04] That's how it's relayed to our body.
[00:10:07] Sometimes it seems like the thought is very, very true. It seems like it's a fact.
[00:10:13] And when this is the case, we kind of have to learn the skill of thinking about what we're thinking and then how to get some perspective on us, on these thoughts, to give us some wiggle room around it. So we can start to work with the thought and decide whether we want to keep it and practice thinking it, or whether we want to let go of it and think something else. Because the thought is not giving us the results we want, we can hone the skill.
[00:10:38] Taking your thought. I think one of the first steps is really looking at what you're thinking and writing it down. When we don't write our thoughts down, they become very nebulous. Like clouds, right? Like nebulous clouds. Clouds form and dissipate. They're constantly moving. You know, you can look in the sky in the summer and like, oh, that. That cloud looks like a bird. And then a few minutes later, maybe it looks like a building or maybe it looks like a frog or whatever. Like the clouds change and they're nebulous. Our thoughts change and they're nebulous. At one moment, they look like one thing or they seem like one thing. They relay something to our body, but then they change if we don't write them down. That nebul. Nebulous effect of that nebulous, you know, aspect of our thoughts happen, and then we can't really work with the thought. We can't challenge it and decide if it's true.
[00:11:30] So the first step to any of this is writing down your thoughts. That's the start of it. And then I think it's important to ask yourself, is this the only truth in the world? Is this it? Is this the only truth in the world?
[00:11:44] There aren't a lot of things in the world that are the only truths. I mean, there's a lot of things that as human beings, we've managed to make different.
[00:11:54] I always, you know, breathing, right? Like breathing is one of those things. Like, it seems like a truth.
[00:12:00] But humans have actually developed apparatuses to go underwater and breathe air, even when we're underwater, right? So we don't need to be above or out of water to breathe air. We can do it underwater. We've developed tools to do that. But then there are things like the sun comes up in the east and I've yet to find a place where that is not actually a truth.
[00:12:22] Most of the things that we think are not actually the only truth. Like they're more like the I have to breathe air above water. Nope, that's not true.
[00:12:32] Asking yourself if there is evidence out in the world that this may be different. I really think this is such a powerful question because it really blows your mind open to see what's possible for human beings.
[00:12:43] Most of us, most of our thoughts about our lives are true on a spectrum. There are other humans who have a similar but slightly different thought about an almost identical experience.
[00:12:56] And still other humans have entirely different thoughts about the same experience.
[00:13:01] I mean, they could be entirely opposite thoughts from what we have about the same experience.
[00:13:06] I use cold weather. Like it's, I don't know, 38 degrees outside right now. And yes, since it's been 8 degrees most of the week, 38 does seem balmy and warm. Right. But lots of people love 40 degree weather. They think it's great, it's everything wonderful. I don't, I don't think it's warm enough. It's the same exact experience and our thoughts are entirely opposite about it. I also use gravity is a great example of this. Gravity is a force of nature similar to like the sun rises in the east, right? It's a force of nature that every human being experiences. What goes up must come down. That's gravity. This has been proven by physics. And it's a force of nature that every human finds themsel under the effect of we humans stay on the face of the earth because of gravity. It seems to affect all of us.
[00:13:56] This experience seems to be same for all of the humans. Unless you're on an airplane and then of course you're not affected by gravity, you're flying. Even though this is law nature, it has some flexibility. Now, yes, I know that flight is achieved using gravity, right? It's using the law of gravity, this law of nature. I understand how flight is achieved, sort of, but either way, our thought, our human thought of we don't fly is not true. We do fly. We fly in airplanes.
[00:14:28] If your thought about being about food, about being a sweet addict or about food, you know, being, you know, impossible to eat healthy, or if you have a thought about, you know, eating healthy food, being suffering.
[00:14:44] Right. If that's what your thought is, is leading. If these thoughts are leading you to feel like it's impossible to change your health, or worse, leading you to continue down unhealthy habits, you have to ask yourself, is this the only truth? I think that's the place to start asking yourself, are there other human beings out there that do not struggle to avoid donuts? Do other human beings not have this struggle that I seem to find?
[00:15:14] When you find in your brain, like think in your brain right now, do you know a human being who's like, donuts aren't my thing? Don't struggle with them at all.
[00:15:24] When you find in your brain the humans that do not struggle to avoid donuts, then asking yourself, how do they do it? What's different about them? Why do they not struggle? Is it possible to not be quote unquote addicted to donuts? Or even is it possible to just feel like you're a sweet addict but you don't struggle to not eat it? I mean, it's possible you can still identify as being an addict to sweets, but be like, yeah, I just don't do that though.
[00:15:55] In this moment. Think of the difference between the feeling of the helplessness right as we're talking about this right now, think of the difference between the helplessness with the thought of I'm a sweet addict and I have to eat the donut. The helplessness that's created with that and then the curiosity and maybe even light heartedness of I don't have to be addicted to donuts or maybe others. There are other humans that live through the world and they're not addicted to donuts.
[00:16:21] Think about the opposite, whatever it is with that thought, what are you feeling? That's not helplessness in that moment. Because this is really a huge part of the battle. When we can see that we're not tied to that feeling of helplessness that leads us to eat the donut because we don't have any control over it. When we can see that we don't, we aren't tied. That's not required. We get some wiggle room to do it different. If we can create some curiosity, some liberation, then we can ask ourselves, is it possible for me not to eat that donut? Like, how would that work? What would happen? How would that look?
[00:16:59] Questioning our thoughts is a powerful practice, especially in these area of our areas of our life where we really struggle.
[00:17:06] So I think there are three questions that are really great questions to pass any thought through. And this is frequently taught in like relationship skills, right? Like you have something to say to a loved one. Ask these three questions to get some guidance over whether you should say it. Okay, so you know, they're described as thought gates.
[00:17:26] Passing your thoughts through these and seeing what answers you get. Sometimes you're going to get no's to all of them. Sometimes you're going to get yeses but still decide to do the thing. Okay, so I think that when there's a no, you might want to consider is this at least as far as your health goes and your thoughts associated with your health, if there is a no to these answers to these questions, if your answer to these questions is no, you probably really need to question whether you're going to continue to think it or whether you want to find a different thought.
[00:17:56] Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind? So these are the three questions. Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind? Pass your thought through these, your any of your thoughts through these gates.
[00:18:11] Doing that is one of the best ways to learn to challenge thoughts that aren't serving you. And that's really what you're looking for, a way to challenge these thoughts. So when you find yourself at an ice cream shop. I love ice cream. It's my favorite. I don't identify as an addict, but I will tell you I love it. And that seems very true to me. But I don't feel obligated to eat it just because I love it. Okay, when you find yourself, When I find myself at an ice cream shop with my kids and I notice that every time I thought, man, I'm addicted to sweet things. Ice cream is my Achilles heel. I have no control over it.
[00:18:48] And then I made the decision to eat the ice cream. Even though my weight was not where I wanted and my blood sugars were not where I wanted them, I had to consider looking at this thought and deciding if I wanted to continue to think it.
[00:19:02] Do I want to continue to have this experience with my children every time I take them to an ice cream shop?
[00:19:09] I'm addicted to sweet things. I had this. I mean, with ice cream maybe, but also diet Coke. Like I would tell you, hands down, over and over, you could probably pull 100 people in my life and 95 of them would tell you they heard this out of my mouth. I'm a diet Coke addict. I would jokingly say to my mother, who hated this phrase, I'm a diet cokehead. She hated it. This was my thought.
[00:19:32] So my question had to be, is it true? Is it true that I'm truly addicted to sweets, to ice cream, to diet Coke. And my answer was no, it's not true. If there wasn't a zombie apocalypse and there was no ice cream, no sweets and no Diet Coke, would I die? Nope. Would I be harmed in any way? I wouldn't. I'd be fine. I'd be left wanting these things, and that was it.
[00:19:59] If this thought, I am an addict, leads us to eating foods that keeps us sick and it's not true, is there any reason to continue to hold onto that thought and spend time with it? But maybe you decide, yeah, it is kind of true. Then ask yourself, is it necessary for every time that I walk into an ice cream shop for me to think that I'm an addict to ice cream?
[00:20:21] Is it necessary? Do I need to keep telling myself this? Is there anything else in the world I could think other than this? Maybe a thought like, I would be fine without that food. I simply like it. I'm not addicted to it. These are also thoughts that are probably also true.
[00:20:39] Then asking yourself, is it necessary for me to think this? If the answer is no, you gotta consider, do I need to keep thinking this?
[00:20:46] And then lastly, asking yourself, is it kind?
[00:20:50] Is telling myself that I'm an addict to a food that's making me sick and I don't have that leads to lack of control and helplessness. Is that kind?
[00:20:59] I mean, I realize kind is in the eye. Kindness is in the eye of the beholder. But you've got to decide, is there any kindness that's coming from this? And if the answer is no, you've got a question whether you want to keep thinking this. Other thoughts are similar. Other thoughts that come from our diet mentality are similar. A little is okay. Is that even true?
[00:21:19] My experience when I had to tell myself a little is okay, was that it was not true. Because a little clearly was either keeping my blood sugars up and my weight up, or it was leading to more of the thing that was a little okay, and that turned into a lot and it created a problem.
[00:21:36] My experience is, is a little okay. Is that true? No. If I was having to say it, it wasn't true. For that food, is it necessary? No, it's not necessary to have a little of something that you've had so much of over the years that it's created illness in your bio, in your body, that it's created abnormal biology. It's not necessary to tell yourself that. It's not even necessary to tell yourself that a little is okay when you're desperately wanting a different result. It's not necessary to say that it's not necessary to say a little is okay, even if you believe a little okay is okay is true.
[00:22:14] And then is it kind? And I don't think it is kind to move ourselves away from our health goals and the goals that we set for ourselves. Why do you have those goals? Why is it important to you? What achievement will those goals bring? Like, when you achieve those goals, what is that going to bring to your life? Is it kind of block yourself from that?
[00:22:36] You can ask these situations or these questions of a lot of situations if you have a. I mean, like a great example is, you know, interactions with other people. Say, you know, a cousin is stealing from your grandma. Like, you believe that to be true. You have evidence, and you believe that true to be true. And you're trying to decide, do I tell grandma or not?
[00:22:55] Asking these questions, is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind? Is it true? Certainly you want to have some evidence that it's true before you decide to tell your grandmother that your cousin's stealing from her. Right.
[00:23:06] So deciding whether it's true, and if you believe it is, then ask, is it's ne. Is it necessary? Yeah, it may be necessary. If your grandma's on a fixed income and you believe your cousin's stealing from her. Yeah, it's probably necessary to say that even when it's not fun. But you love your grandma and you want to protect her. Right. And then you have to ask, is it kind?
[00:23:25] It's maybe kind to grandma, but it's not kind to your cousin. Right.
[00:23:29] No matter how these questions are answered, they almost always guide and inform you on how to proceed in a situation, and that's where you get some shifting in your thoughts and those thoughts leading to behaviors.
[00:23:43] When it comes to our thoughts about food and our health, using these questions to challenge the thoughts that we've held, that have kept us sick, that have led to our high blood sugars and our insulin resistance, Challenging these thoughts that are not helping your health goals is an effective tool to learning to do these things different, to behave in a different way.
[00:24:04] The suffering mentality. Is it true that eating a salad is sufferable?
[00:24:10] Is it true that eating grilled chicken and roasted veggies is suffering?
[00:24:16] Gain a different perspective. If you were a starving child from a country where safe and clean food was not available to them, would you find these foods sufferable?
[00:24:26] Can you find another human being in the world that doesn't think that?
[00:24:30] If you were from another country where clean food wasn't available, my suspicion is you would not find these foods sufferable at all if it's not suffering from them for them, Is it possible for it not to be suffering for you?
[00:24:45] And you know, is there any benefit to thinking getting healthy is suffering? Is it necessary to believe that eating healthy food is suffering? Again, my suspicion is no, it's not necessary and it's not helpful. Is it kind? Again, kindness is in the eye of the beholder. But I think if you have something wholesome and healthy and you're lucky enough to have a food that's wholesome and healthy and clean and it doesn't make you sick, calling it suffering to eat it is kind of unkind. But you get to decide that if you are finding that you're having a hard time breaking a behavior or a habit, like eating donuts when you see them because you have a belief that is keeping you stuck, look around. Can you find a human being out there doing it differently? If so, it's not necessary for you to do it that way either. Get a different perspective by asking yourself these three questions. Is it true? Is it necessary? And is it kind? Use these questions to produce evidence and thoughts that are different than what has been keeping you sick. These will lead to different results in a healthier you. Try that strategy out and let me know how it goes. As always, if you have any questions, don't hesitate to email me delanemd.com Lastly, I have an Ask if you're finding benefits from this podcast. If you're seeing results, leave a rating and a review on your podcast player. Nine out of ten Americans are sick with insulin resistance. People need to hear that they do not have to be sick and tied to the health care system for the rest of their life. The more people who like and review this podcast, the more new people this podcast gets presented. To please like it, please review it so others can hear this. Also, until next week when I will be back, keep listening. Keep avoiding foods that are making you sick and keep making the choices for your vitality and your longevity and your health. I'll talk to you later. Bye.
