[00:00:00] You are listening to episode number 227 of the Reversing Diabetes with Delane MD podcast. Welcome to Reversing Diabetes with Delane MD, where women who are confused and worried about their type two diabetes come to learn strategies to fix it. I'm your host, Dr. Delane Bond. Ladies, if you know you are capable of doing badass things at work and for your family, but you're frustrated with why you can't seem to stop eating the chocolate cake, this podcast is for you. Let's talk.
[00:00:28] Hey there. Welcome to the podcast. I'm so glad you're here. Thank you for taking some time to hang out with me today.
[00:00:35] I am learning new technology, which is always a process for me, and so bear with me as I do this. I'm definitely working on doing something different with the format of the podcast, and so that includes me doing more editing to it. So what you hear on the YouTube channel whenever I'm broadcasting this live is a little different than what you're hearing whenever you're listening to the podcast. So I think that's okay. But I definitely like doing the live broadcast that folks can get this information, that women can get this information before it comes out on Monday when I drop the podcast. So I want to talk today we are going to talk about the thing that slows you down the most from getting to your health, from achieving your health goals. I think this is something that we all experience, and I think as the holidays are here, I think that the thing that slows us down really becomes, I don't know, amplified. And so I definitely want to talk about that today, and hopefully you get some help from that as you go through your holiday month. So before we get started, I do want to remind everybody that nine out of ten people in America struggle with elements of insulin resistance. So that means a lot of people that, you know, are struggling with these same issues that you might be struggling. And what that means is I would love it if you would share this podcast with them or at least tell them there is hope and this is what you've learned and this is how you've learned it, that they might be able to see that the only answer that is available to them is not necessarily what the American, quote unquote health care system is offering them. So share this. You can share it through Facebook. You can share it on Instagram. You can rate the podcast. The more ratings and reviews that this podcast gets, the more the podcast algorithms put it in front of people. So share this with people. Lots of people out there need to hear that they don't have to be sick with insulin resistance and prediabetes and type two diabetes and all the diseases that are associated with insulin resistance. They need to hear that it is possible to live a healthy life. It is my mission in life to tell them that. So share this podcast with them. You can also follow me on Instagram and Facebook at delanemd. My mom gave me a squirrely name, so it's easy to find me. And then, lastly, I want to encourage you to join the Delaney MD Reversing diabetes Facebook group. You can find it by searching Delaney MD Reversing Diabetes. There is a load of really helpful ladies in there that are just a fun time. There's coaching that we do in there. There's the opportunity to get all your questions answered there. There's the greatest opportunity to share victories and to also hear the successes that other people are experiencing doing this work. So I love that group. The group is full of just a load of really amazing women. Go be part of that because it's really fun and helpful. So the Delaney MD Reversing Diabetes Group on Facebook. Go find it. Ask me to let you in. I don't know why I have to let people in, but I do. And I will get you access to that and you can start getting the help that you need to reverse your type two diabetes. I am offering free diabetes reversal assessment calls. These are calls where you and I hop on a call, on a phone, on a zoom call, and we talk about what your biggest obstacles are. We get you some clarity on your biggest obstacles and why you haven't been able to overcome them. So you can get can start putting the most energy that you can into those things that are going to make the biggest changes for you. So for women who are worried, frustrated, or confused why you can't fix your type two diabetes, these calls are for you. Okay? There's no cost. We can talk about where your obstacles are, what's been hanging you up. We can talk about how my group can help you with that, but that's available to you 45 minutes. You can go to WW dot calendly.com delanemd. So Calendly is Calendly.com D-E-L-A-N-E-M-D. And that will get you to my schedule. And you can just schedule it if you have to schedule really far out, send me an email delanemd, delane at delanemd and you and I will get it on the calendar beforehand. I also want to let you know there will be webinars in December. The two webinars I'll be having december 13 at 09:00, a.m. Central time, and December 27 at 09:00, a.m. Central Time. The earlier one, the one in the earlier part of the month, on the 13th, is going to be talking about sticking to your plans. It's going to be talking about mental awareness and how to avoid self sabotage. And then the 27th, later on in the month, we're going to talk about the basics and even some new information about reversing your type two diabetes. You'll be able to register through a registration link, but if you want to get registered early, let me know. Send me an email.
[email protected], and I will get you registered. Lastly, before we get started into the things that are slowing you down, I do want to warn you, if you are on medications for your type two diabetes, please be very careful making the changes that I recommend in podcast episodes. If you have been medicated, it's because the way you've eaten in the past, if you change that, you're going to need to change your meds. What that means is you need to call your doctor who's prescribed you these meds and you need to find out from them how they want you to share your blood sugar logs and your information with them so that they can then share with you what kind of medication change they want you to make according to those logs. So some doctors want you to call their nurse. Some doctors want you to email them. Some doctors want you to fax them. You need to figure out what your provider wants you to do so that you can stay safe as you make these changes. If you don't do this, you can end up very ill, the kind of ill that involves being hospitalized, being in Ers, possibly even death. Don't do this. Clearly, that is not the point of making these changes, right? You're trying to get healthy. You're not trying to get sicker. So please call your doctor or your provider and have that conversation to figure out how they want you to share your information with them, and they can share their recommendations for your medications with you.
[00:06:33] All right? So let's jump in. What is slowing you down? Lots of women come to me, and they ask very innocent questions, and they lots of times don't even see what they are doing. They don't even see what their brain is doing. These innocent questions sound like, is almond flour okay?
[00:06:55] Is keto muffins? Are they okay? Are keto this is my favorite keto wraps, right? Like the keto wrap shells. Are the keto tortillas okay? Or the other question that I get is, what are some good snacks that I can eat? Give me some ideas about good snacks.
[00:07:15] So whenever women come to me with these questions, frequently, like, 99% of the time, the same issue. Is that part of this?
[00:07:28] It is the issue that we're not willing to let go of something, right? So if somebody is trying to reverse their diabetes, normalize insulin resistance, eat less because they know that that alone helps improve their insulin resistance or lose weight. Right? If any of these things are what they're trying to do, but they're asking about what's a good snack? My immediate question is, why do we need a snack?
[00:07:54] If they're asking about, is this tortilla, is this considered okay? Is it processed well? Can you find the keto tortilla bush out in your backyard? Can you find the gluten free patch. Somewhere in nature, our brain is so committed to avoiding the unpleasant experience of not having those things in our life that we don't even see what it's doing when we ask these questions. And it is very innocent of our brain to want to help us to avoid unpleasantries. But when we can't tolerate a little discomfort, what we end up doing is looking to things like we look for a workaround some other way so that we don't have to do the obvious thing, the clear thing to lowering your A one C, to reversing your insulin resistance, to reversing your type two diabetes, or to losing weight. The very clear, no brainer, low hanging fruit thing that you always need to do is to stop eating the junk food, stop eating those foods, right? And I understand the innocent question of what's a good snack is. Like, I don't want to eat junk food. I want to eat a good snack. But the recognition, like, why do I want the snack in the first place? What am I getting with the snack? Am I not eating enough in my meals that there's hunger between meals? And do I need to fix the meals? Versus do I need to find a good snack? Okay, but the no brainer always answer is to stop eating the junk food. Stop eating the food. Right?
[00:09:29] You may have heard me say this because I put it out on social media, and it was in one of the podcasts, but somebody was like, well, yeah, but not smoking is one thing. We don't need to smoke. Not drinking is one thing. We don't need to drink, but we have to eat. And my answer to that client was, yes, we do have to eat, but we do not have to eat food that makes us sick, okay? So this idea of this is how committed our brain is to keeping that food in our lives that we don't even see that obvious thing. Yes, we have to eat, but we don't need to eat Snickers bars ever. Like, there's no requirement for Snickers bars in our life, right? So when our brain is asking these questions, can I have the muffin? Can I have the wrap? Can I have what's a good snack?
[00:10:18] Many a times, it's because our brain is not willing to do the thing, the obvious thing that needs to be done. And this is the thing that, of course, pulls us up. This is the thing that slows you down the most.
[00:10:28] I would offer that for, like, 85% of women with type two diabetes. This is the underlying issue. Yes, sometimes we need to know foods. We need to know some information, but usually it is never your hormones. In fact, out of all the years that I've worked, I have never diagnosed Hypothyroidism as any causative agent with type two diabetes. It's never like, oh, yeah, you're hypothyroid. That's why you have diabetes. You clearly eat carrots and celery and lettuce and chicken and salmon all of your life. You never eat anything else. But it's this hypothyroidism that's causing your high A, one C and your diabetes. That's never happened and it does not happen, okay? It's not your estrogen, it's not your progesterone, it's not your testosterone, it's not your budget, it's not your genes. It's not that your family or your spouse or your kids won't eat the food and have different foods preferences. And it's not the mix of macros that you're eating that is never the issue that's slowing you down.
[00:11:28] The thing that is slowing down 85% of women is they're not willing to let go of the food that's causing problem. Okay? I did this my own personal story, and I am doing this. I'm going to share my recent experience with a running coach and trying to work on my times in my running, but of course I did this. Like Diet Coke, diet Soda. There's an entire industry of diet sodas, the diet soda industry, that is built on this exact thing. I don't want to go without the soda, and I don't want to have to experience the negative consequences of it, right? So same thing when we're looking at the keto wraps or the keto muffins.
[00:12:17] I don't want to have to go without the muffin, and I don't want to have to be diabetic from eating muffin, right? Same thing with the I want good snacks. I don't want to have the discomfort of not eating the quote unquote good snack because that's uncomfortable to not eat when I want to eat, but I don't want to have the negative consequences of eating.
[00:12:39] So Diet Coke definitely was the same for me.
[00:12:42] My original, like, you may see this is the origin story of my Diet Coke problem. My original love was Dr. Pepper. When I was a teenager, I loved Dr. Pepper. I loved it. If you remember the commercial, I was definitely a Pepper. Wouldn't you like to be a pepper to Dr. Pepper and drink Dr. Pepper? That was me.
[00:13:03] I loved that stuff. And I drank it and I drink it a lot. And in fact, when I was about 20 years old, I went and saw my primary care doctor, and I don't know what we were talking about, but probably the issue of weight came up. And she was kind of asking me, what do you eat? And I was like, yeah. And I was telling her, and she was like, yeah, wow, that's a lot of Dr. Pepper. And I was like, maybe she's like, yeah, that's like 1200 to 1500 calories of Dr. Pepper per day. And I was like, oh, is that a lot? I knew it was a lot. Like, I was a child of the knew that you had to watch your calorie count in order to lose weight. That's what we were taught. So I was like, oh, that is a lot of calories. And she said the entertaining conversation between her and I was like, you know, some people don't even eat that many calories in a day. And my response to her was like, so if I stop eating any food, I can continue to drink my Dr. Pepper. Is that right? And she was like, that's not what I meant. Of course. One number one, it's no wonder I was insulin resistant and pre diabetic. And I had evidence. I have, like, symptoms. I had symptoms. I can remember that looking back, I was like, oh, those are symptoms of insulin resistance, even back then.
[00:14:15] But after this conversation, of course I didn't want to go without the Dr. Pepper, but I didn't want the negative consequences. So what did I do? I moved to diet sodas.
[00:14:27] I fell in love with Diet Coke. So pausing here for a minute and seeing what I was doing with the diet sodas, the Dr. Pepper had a negative outcome of too many calories.
[00:14:41] Not drinking the Dr. Pepper had an unpleasant experience of being uncomfortable with desire. That was unmet. And so instead of I tried to solve the problem so I didn't have to avoid that, so that I could avoid that discomfort. Okay, look for another option. I believe the Dr. Pepper was unhealthy because of the calories. So I traded in for a Diet Coke, right? And I started drinking Diet Cokes in the same way I was drinking Dr. Peppers over and over, just a super high consumption. And I did it because I was not willing to sit with wanting that sweet, sizzy deliciousness.
[00:15:19] And I thought that I could find a way to not give up the drink, find another option, and continue to comply with the to be able to comply with my desire for the sweet, fizzy deliciousness and not have the negative consequence of 1200 to 1500 calories. There was this trade off of sorts that I thought I was able what I needed to do is learn to live life without the Dr. Pepper, without the sweet, fizzy thing constantly in my life. That thing that was so tasty. I needed to learn to dampen that desire, and instead, I tried to find a way to keep it in my life, which never, of course, taught me to live without that thing. And the answer to my problem, the answer to the issue, because clearly, drinking Diet Coke is not healthy. There is no alternate universe where anybody's like, oh, all this Diet Coke is doing me so many great things in life. It's creating so much health in my body. That was not the reality, right?
[00:16:13] We do this all the time with the food, right? Like, oh, if you don't know what a keto brick is, please use your phone and Google keto bricks, because this is what people will eat.
[00:16:23] Because they're like, oh, I don't want the negative consequences of a peanut butter cup. I don't want the calories and the sugar and the insulin surge that occurs with Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. But I don't want to live without the tasty deliciousness of chocolate and peanut butter together. So I'm going to eat keto bricks, which are a thing, and I'm going to eat that and believe there's nothing unhealthy about that, where clearly there's nothing about a keto brick that is healthy, although they would probably promote that it is.
[00:16:53] What we need to learn to do is to not want the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, the chocolate and the peanut butter together. That's what we need to learn to do. Okay, but we're so resistant to being uncomfortable, we don't even consider that as an option. Right? I definitely did this with the Diet Coke. I believe that I should be able to continue to enjoy it. So where I've seen this come up recently is hilarious to me because it is so dramatic and intense in my brain in the moment. It is so all consuming in my brain. So I've been working with a running coach to try to get my mile, my times faster. I don't want to be setting any land speed records, but I'm coming up on my 50th birthday. Not this year, but next year. And I'm like, before I turn 50, I want to compete at the top level that I'll ever be able to. And it's now or never. It's time to shit or get off the pot and do this. So I hired a coach. And so she gives me these workouts. We only talk through email, we don't talk a ton, but she gives me these workouts, and she's definitely interested in hearing how the workouts go. So it wasn't the first speed workout I'd ever done, but it was one of the first in this session. So I did a speed workout, I guess it was Tuesday, and that speed workout was me running basically three laps at a certain pace. And then there was a recovery period where it was much slower, but the pace was very fast. It was fast for me. It was definitely pushing me. And so I did my first. I was going to do six of these sessions. Three laps recovery, three laps recovery, six of those cycles. The first one I did, I was like, that was intense. That was really intense. The second one I did, I started believing that I was like, I can't do this. There's no way I can do six of these. These are miserable. I was angry because my equipment, my watch, was not tracking me correctly. So it wasn't even giving me the right time, and I couldn't even tell if I was doing it right.
[00:18:56] The third one was so intense that I was already trying to figure out, how do I just stop this? And even the thought came to me, I do not want, like, okay, I don't want to run. I was wrong. I don't want to run faster. I think I'm just going to do what I've done all these years. It was good enough for all these years. It'll be fine going forward.
[00:19:17] It was shocking to me, and I was even aware that there was some kind of inaccuracy in my brain's perception of the intensity. Like, there was an exaggeration in my brain of how intense the experience was. I knew that even though it felt so uncomfortable that I was not going to die, but my brain was so intensely drawn to avoiding this discomfort, like, it was going to be there forever. It was never going to stop and it might possibly kill me. My brain was so fixed on avoiding that discomfort that it seemed like no matter what, I needed to figure out how to undo this, how to stop this.
[00:20:07] I finished the third cycle, the fourth cycle, I only did two of the three laps. I didn't do the third lap. The fifth cycle, I did all three. I wasn't trusting the time. I know it probably was not as fast as goal was. And then the 6th, the same thing. It was probably not as fast as goal was. Oh, and by the way, I was running initially, in the first two or three cycles, I was running those three minute recovery phases. And by the fourth, fifth and 6th, I was walking the recovery phases. It was so incredibly uncomfortable. And what I realized is my aversion to being that uncomfortable was so intense that my brain was not even thinking correctly. It wasn't even interpreting the experience accurately. It was so intense and I was just shocked at the intensity of it all. So I stopped. I mean, like, I finished the run as best I could. I probably did not perform as well as I wanted to, but I did finish out, and my watch said, Workout complete, and I was like, thank God, and I was done with it. And by the time I got to the car, which I was on the track at the gym, and I walked downstairs and I got into my car, and by the time I got there, I was like, wow, that was an amazing workout. I felt so much better. So not only was it, like, super duper intense, this discomfort, and I was so uncomfortable that I was like, I need to avoid this at all costs. No more. I need to stop. This is horrible. But that experience was so fleeting. It was so quickly fleeting. In the moment when I was experiencing the discomfort, I was looking to do anything that would keep me from having that experience further. I was looking to not I'm not doing this work. I'm not going to get to go faster. I'm just stopping. This is horrible. Something's gone wrong. I'll do it tomorrow whenever I'm less anxious about it and where maybe my equipment is working better. I had all of these aversion thoughts in my brain because the discomfort was so intense and I thought I needed to stop it immediately. And the killer of it is so short lived. Okay, so this is the stuff that happens on our head, right? These are the things that are going on in our head and our brain.
[00:22:37] The reason that the run was so miserable was because all of these things were going through my head. It shouldn't be this hard. It should be easier. My stupid watch should work, right? This isn't correct. I don't even know what I'm doing. Something's gone wrong. We do this with the food, right? Like, I shouldn't have to live life without a Dr. Pepper. We shouldn't have to live life without the beautiful taste of peanut butter and chocolate together. Like, it shouldn't be this way. I should not want it this bad. I should not be so lazy with my runs. I shouldn't want the Dr. Pepper or the Diet Coke so badly. I shouldn't want these things. Or even worse, if I want it this bad, I must need to have it, right? I want to stop so badly. There must be something wrong with me running this fast. I want the Dr pepper or Diet Coke. So much. I must need it in my body. I want the good snack so much. I must be starving and needing it, right? We have all of these things that tell us that shouldn't be this uncomfortable or that it should be easier, that we should be able to do this easier. And that is what makes it feel so miserable and uncomfortable and hard.
[00:23:47] Realizing that the thing that we avoid, the snacking, the thing that you're avoiding doing, like, I'm avoiding not snacking. I'm avoiding not having the sodas. I'm avoiding the running fast.
[00:24:01] These are actually the things that are going to get you to your goals. And the more you do them, the more you stop snacking, the more you don't have the sodas. Like, the more you stop snacking, the more you're going to lose weight and normalize your insulin resistance. The more I stop drinking the sodas, the more I'm going to no longer crave the sodas. The more time I spend running fast, the faster I'm going to be as a runner. These are exactly the things that we need to be doing to get to our goals.
[00:24:36] Okay, so how do we stop doing it? One, like, the realization when I feel the resistance, when I feel the pushing back, the I don't want to that is probably a green light to me saying, hey, girl, you got to go forward. This is exactly where you need to pour your energy. Being aware that your brain is just trying to be nice and avoid the uncomfortable part as a kindness to us is very sweet. That's great and grand, but it's not serving your goals. And being aware of that, like, oh, I need to say no, thank you. When my brain offers me this, certainly this is what we do in coaching. This is where coaching helps. So if that's something you're interested in, send me an email
[email protected]. We will definitely talk about what it would look like to get you set up for coaching in the group. We can certainly also, though, address we can do a reverse your diabetes assessment call and you get some clarity again about where is it that you do need to be leaning into this. This is the work. It is hard work. It is so hard. As I think about my run earlier this week and it was so uncomfortable. It is so hard. This is the work that has to be done.
[00:25:48] This is what gets you to your goals. If this is what you're ready to do, let me know. This is what I help women do. All right. I will be back next week. Definitely send me any questions that you have through my email
[email protected] and I will see you soon. Bye.
