[00:00:04] You are listening to episode number 257 of Better Blood Sugars with Delane MDD. Hey there. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you for taking some time to commit to your health today. Commit to you, and thank you for trusting me with that time as you listen to the podcast and try to glean some information. Today we are going to talk about vacations the month of July. So it's June 28. As I record this, this will be released as what I consider the first podcast for the month of July. And in the month of July, I intend to cover strategies for managing vacations. It's the season of vacations. It's a great time, and I hope that you're excited about that. But definitely there are some specific challenges that come up as we navigate vacation season. So I want to talk about that this summer.
[00:01:17] Today we are going to talk about a visualization process, primarily, a little bit about planning and protocols and goals and standards and some things along those lines. But I want to first start a discussion about visualizing who you are and who you are becoming.
[00:01:37] This is, I feel, like, one of the most important processes in determining, like, how we're going to live a healthy life, how we're going to live a naturally healthy life. There are a number of different ways to do that.
[00:01:52] Everything from exercising 4 hours a day and eating, you know, totally organic foods and raising your own foods and avoiding flour and sugar and all these other things. I mean, there's a hundred ways to live healthy, and then, of course, there's a thousand or maybe even a million ways to live healthier. Right. What is healthy, what's important to you as far as your health is concerned, is really unique and individual to who you are. So I want to talk about a way of determining that if we don't get clear on what this looks like for ourselves, for the unique individual that we are, what it looks like for me and what it looks like for you is different. What it looks like from five of my clients. Like, five different clients will have five different visualizations of what being healthy means to them. And so I think it's really important to get clear on what it means to you.
[00:02:54] And so there's a visualization process that I want to talk about today. Um, and I want you to think about this visualization process. I really do think it's something, you really have to marinate it, and you have to think about it and consider it. And I give yourself some space and time to figure out what this looks like. And so I want to talk about that today, and then throughout the podcast in July, we'll talk more about how to utilize plans with vacations. But I think this visualization process has to come first. So I remember the first time that these exercises, these visualization exercises were presented to me. I was very resistant to it. And the reason that I was resistant to it, I think there's a lot of reasons one could be resistant to it. Everything, excuse me, from it's not that important, like this isn't the important work. I need to figure out how to count carbs or whatever. Everything from that to this thought for me is that I had fought so hard to love myself, to think of myself in a positive way.
[00:04:06] And this visualization process is really visualizing who you are becoming. And so when the exercise was presented to me that I needed to ditch who I had grown, like fought like hell to love. I need to ditch this person and figure out who I'm going to become.
[00:04:25] That felt really uncomfortable for me. I had to work on that for a while.
[00:04:31] I think many of us grow up and have the experience of borrowing other people's opinions of us, but of course, we're not borrowing our loving grandmother's opinions of us. I always love, I'm so grateful, so deeply grateful for my grandmother. Like she's been past for 20, almost 30 years now.
[00:04:51] But she always thought I hung the moon and the stars. And she had this way of making me and every single other grandchild she had feel like we were the one, we were the most. She had this just amazing way of making us feel special and unique and like we hung the moon and the stars. And it's funny, my brother and I, we will still argue about who was grandma's favorite. And I think we still both believe in our soul of souls. Yeah, I mean, like, she loved you, but deep down, I was her favorite. We both believe that, and we have really strong rational thoughts reasoning behind that. Like, grandma did this for me, she didn't do it for you. And that means she loved me most. So we have this experience of borrowing others opinions of us, but it's rarely that opinion. When I think back to my childhood years and my adolescent years and my early adult years, it was not grandma's opinion of me that I was borrowing. It was the mean girl opinion of me, right? It was somebody else's dumpy thought about me that I was borrowing and taking as my own. And that's what I mean by borrowing, right? Like I built myself, like my self definition, who I was based on, somebody else's dumpy thought about me.
[00:06:12] And this is because our brain has this thing called negativity bias.
[00:06:17] Negativity bias is the tendency of our brain to overemphasize a negative experience, a negative interpretation of what's going on. So if you wear a new dress to a party, and nine people say, man, that part, that dress looks amazing on you is so awesome. And one person says, your butt looks big, your brain fixates on the one person that said, your butt looks big. This is negativity bias. It's just the way it is. So this is a hard wiring of a brain that 10,000 years ago, or however many thousand years ago, when we did not live in modern society, where there's safety built in, it was important for us that back then to emphasize, to overemphasize things that would cause problems, things that might harm us, things that might kill us, things that would even just make things harder. It was important to overemphasize those because resources, both energetic, like food, was limited. It wasn't available on every street corner. So you had to really start to get really. You had to ration your resources very carefully. Okay? And part of that was to see something that was going to be hard and recognize and maybe even overemphasize. That's the harder path. Maybe we don't do that. We had to have a way of seeing the things that were going to kill us. It's great that you want to walk out of the cave and look at the beautiful flowers, but you probably ought to look for the things that kill you before you smell the roses. Okay? So this is a hard wiring of our brain that kept us alive in primitive times, okay?
[00:07:55] For me, I had to fight really hard to get that negativity, those negative stories out of my brain, these horrible, you know, opinions that other people had of me. A lot of times they weren't even my opinion. It was somebody else's had put that in my brain. And then my negativity bias overemphasized the importance of it and defined me in that way. So for me, I had to fight really hard to start replacing those things with kind, supportive, dare I say, loving thoughts about me in my brain. The exercise of visualizing me becoming someone else. It was like going back to those days where I wasn't happy, where there was this negative thought process about me. It was going backwards and not being happy with what I had built and what I had, the love that I'd learned to give myself. And so I want to offer, I don't know, maybe that's not your resistance. Maybe it's something else. But if that's your resistance to doing this visualization of who you're becoming. Work. I want to offer a perspective.
[00:09:04] I like to think of it. You know, I like to. I definitely have, over the years, talked about using my relationship with my children as an avatar for my relationship with me and starting to, um, mimic that relationship. The self talk, everything when I'm talking to myself, the same way I would do it to my children or talk to my children. Similarly, I think of this, who we're becoming in a way that I think of my children.
[00:09:33] I loved. I mean, deeply, deeply, deeply loved the two year old version of all of my children.
[00:09:41] All of them. They were fun. I love my boys back when they had these chubby little arms that they would wrap around my neck, and they would hug me, and they were sweet, and they would just say whatever sweet things would come out of their mouth. I loved that. I loved my daughter when she'd let me put pigtails in her hair, and, you know, I loved it. I posted on instagram the other day, my kids second Halloween. I loved when my twins would let me choose their Halloween costumes, because I had a blast with that, right? I loved the two year old version of my children, all of them.
[00:10:18] But as my eldest boy is 26 and my twins are 16, I don't want them doing the two year old version things that they did then. They have become different people. They have become different human beings. And it doesn't mean that I love the two year old version any less. And I certainly adore and love the person they've become.
[00:10:42] But recognizing that part of maturing and growing and, you know, living this life here on this planet means that we're becoming something we. We change and we become.
[00:10:53] And so, versus, like, this whole, like, rejection of who I was, like, oh, my gosh, I work so hard to love this girl that I am, and now I'm rejecting that. I don't see it as a rejection anymore, but there was a time where that was hard for me. I don't see it as a rejection of that girl that I loved. I just see it as a. I'm growing into something else. I loved that version, and I love this version, too. So I don't know if that helps, but if there's any resistance to doing some of this visualization of who you're becoming work, I hope that seeing that, like, we're always in this process of growing and learning to accept and visualize that as part of the process and it also makes it more directed, like, we get to be more in a design phase instead of just a showing up phase. Okay. So when we're thinking about how to start visualizing who we're becoming, I want you to consider five years from now, so, five years from now, the woman that you will be, you've reversed your diabetes. Your blood sugars are normal. You no longer feel compelled or controlled by food. You no longer take meds for your blood sugars. You no longer take your blood sugars in the morning. But if you do, it's just because you want to see the rockin number on your glucometer. You step on the scale each morning, and you're. There's no worry about stepping on the scale. You feel neutral about the result. It's what's normal for you. You no longer stress or worry about going to the doctor and what they're going to say and how they're going to push new meds on you. You no longer have to go to the pharmacy to get refills or to try new meds. You no longer worry, I'm going to try this new med. Is there going to be a side effect? You no longer feel poorly because the meds that you're taking, you don't worry about how to handle late nights or how to handle girls nights out or barbecues or picnics, and you don't worry about vacations anymore. So I want you to think about that version of yourself, and if you get stuck on one part of that, it's just because you've probably not ever considered it.
[00:12:57] Allow your brain to be there. This is kind of a form of, like, daydreaming or dreaming, right? Planning can be a form of dreaming, and this visualization can be a form of that also. But allowing your brain to actually see what it sees for you in that future space, allow it to be there and get a full vision before you move on. So I want you to take a deep breath and pause. If you can't get a vision of what it looks like for you living healthy five years from now, if you can't get clear on that, I want you to pause until you do get clear on that.
[00:13:33] And then from that space of clarity, I want you to start to see. You'll see it. How does that girl, how does that version of you, how does that woman handle your vacations?
[00:13:47] There's a great. This is such a powerful exercise because there are only. There are some things that only you can know.
[00:13:54] And I always tell clients, this is why you making a plan for you is way more effective than me making a plan for you. When you make a plan for yourself, you know the unique obstacles that you're going to face, allowing yourself to visualize your healthy version of you living a naturally healthy life. No qualms, no questions, no ifs, no buts, no nothing. Living in that space in the future, you're able to see the unique obstacles that come up. I can't see that. Only you can see that. And then you get to decide how are you going to solve for those obstacles?
[00:14:32] So this, if you think about an analogy here, it's like wanting to go on a Disneyland vacation, right? And so you start looking at Disneyland online. And that's what you're doing right now. You're looking online, you're seeing the pictures of Disneyland. You see the sights, you see the rides. You remember that your daughter doesn't like roller coasters. You remember that your son doesn't like horror movies. You remember that you don't like Harry Potter. Maybe, or maybe you do. I don't know. Honestly, I've never been to Disneyland or Disney World, so I don't know what's there. But like, you're seeing the things online and starting to realize that matches, that doesn't match. That matches, that doesn't match.
[00:15:12] And so you either decide like, oh, some of these things aren't going to work and I'm going to need to find other attractions that we are interested in.
[00:15:21] That is the vision of the future.
[00:15:27] A lot of times, what you're trying to determine when you're trying to figure out how do you get to that goal or how do you get to that place. You're trying to figure out what clothes are you going to pack, what flight are you going to take, what car are you going to rent, what hotel are you going to stay in? And that's all stuff that actually needs to be determined at a later date.
[00:15:48] You need to figure out what's there before you can determine all of those how to's, okay? You need to figure out what it looks like for you to live a naturally healthy life on vacation before you can start to determine all of the tools that you're going to use to get there on vacation. Right? When you're on vacation, when I'm on vacation and everybody's eating all the things, right? Like, say you're on a cruise and it's like, you know, feeding troughs for miles and it's just a constant buffet and foods all, always, always available. And it's usually not fabulous food.
[00:16:25] Like when you think about the tools that you're going to use to navigate that environment, you're going to use things like exercise. You're going to make sure you're resting. You might do yoga classes. You might make sure you're meditating. You might get a massage. You might spend time at the pool. You might spend time with your kids doing some fun thing. You will likely fast, you will likely utilize the tool of eating protein and vegetables most days. Like these are tools that you're going to use in that environment. And that's great and grand, but you have to get a visualization of, again, the food for days, the feeding troughs, the constant buffet, the people being everywhere. You have to get a vision of what that environment looks like before you can determine how you're going to use those tools. Same thing with Disneyland. If what you're trying to decide for your family or create for your family is a great vacation, you have tools like the kids like movies. The kids like zoos. I like relaxation. I like a beach.
[00:17:31] How am I going to get all of those things in a way that creates that great vacation? And that, again, is like you get to Disneyland and you're looking online and you're like, oh, there's all these like roller coasters that look like a horrible idea. That's not fun. I don't want to do that. A better example might be is Disneyland. When I see everything online of Disneyland, I don't want to do it, which is why I've never been. I would rather go to Six Flags and ride roller coasters. But I realize that's not for everybody, right? So getting that visualization of what it looks like is so important so that you can start to determine how you're going to utilize the tools that are available to you. So dream about what it looks like for you to be a healthy version of you on vacation.
[00:18:19] Allow your brain to go there. How does this version of you, who's healthy, has normal blood sugar, stable weight, eats healthy food? How does she handle vacation? What is she doing? What's entertainment for her? What's relaxing for her? What is vacationing for her? What is she trying to get from the vacation? How does she use fasting? How does she use exercise?
[00:18:47] How does she sleep for her health on vacation?
[00:18:51] How does she relax? How does she manage restaurants? How does she manage airport food? How about road tripping snacks? How about adult beverages?
[00:19:03] How does she handle these things?
[00:19:07] That version of you has some answers for you. And allowing your brain to do this visualization exercise allows it to tap into the answers that you already have and then you plan on doing these things. This is where you put it into today. Seriously, like, you're not on vacation every day of your life. Chances are good that I'm finding you not on vacation. As you listen to this, I want you to plan trying these things out today to see if they work. That's how this happens, right? Like that's how we master the plan. We can't live on vacation every day, so we can't like master the art of navigating vacations with whole, you know, we can't master that if we're not trying and practicing it, but we can't practice it because we're not on vacation every day. So instead, bring that into your day to day activities. How do you handle it? When I go to a restaurant and I don't know what's going to be there, right? Like everybody wants to have all this control about what's happening in their life. Like, I can only go to this restaurant. I can't go to any restaurants because if I do, I make a bad decision. I can't go out with my friends. I can't have a drink. I can't do all of these things because if I do, I can't be healthy. That's how we think of it. That's the only way that we can have control, quote unquote, of our health, is by having this very, very narrow spectrum of experiences. The fact of the matter is most of us don't want to live like that. And that's why we throw them towel or like that. You know what? Living a naturally healthy life is not that important to me if I can't have a social life with my friends.
[00:20:42] And so while you're thinking of the tools that are going to help you on vacation, like the tools that you're going to utilize on vacation, start implementing them now every day of your life. Where's an opportunity for you to practice these tools? The more you practice them today, the better you're going to be doing it on vacation. Okay.
[00:21:04] See how these tools work for you. Make adjustments where they're not working well for you. Practice them a lot today, tomorrow, and the next day. I want to talk a little bit about plans and protocols and goals and standards. You know, that I frequently will recommend to make a plan. I think plans are one of the biggest gifts that we can give ourselves.
[00:21:28] Plans are a way that you don't get confused. Plans are a way that you like, can foresee unexpected things coming up, right? Like we say they're unexpected. Like, oh, it's unexpected. How can I possibly foresee that? The fact of the matter is, if you make a plan for road tripping, if you make a plan for lunch and your plan for lunch is like, oh, I'm going to have chicken and salad. Like, I'm going to have a veggie and a meat. Like, that's the, you know, that's the template I'm following. A veggie and a meat and some healthy oil, healthy fats.
[00:22:06] And then your lunch, you know, gets left in the car and it spoils. You can't eat it. You know what? Like, you didn't foresee that, but you already have a plan. A veggie and I meet some healthy fat. You just need to go somewhere else and find that, okay, this is the gift of a plan. You've already made a decision, and now you don't fall into decision fatigue. If you don't have any plan for lunch and you're like, well, I'm going to do the best I can. We say this all the time, right? Like, I'll do the best I can. And then we're like, whoop, lunch is coming around. I wonder if everybody else is going out to eat. I wonder where they're going to want to go. I bet they're going to want to go for pizza. Well, I can't eat pizza. That's going to be the worst. What else can I eat there? Well, there's nothing else I can eat there. Maybe I go for burgers instead. Do you see all the different decisions that you have to make before you get to your meal?
[00:22:58] Those decisions lead to what's called decision fatigue. And when you get decision fatigue, you will make the easiest decision possible, and I will guarantee you that food will be awful for your health.
[00:23:09] Learning to make plans, utilizing plans, practicing making plans, keeps you out of decision fatigue, and that's why it's such a powerful tool. Okay, so plans tend to be very specific versus protocols, right. And I kind of get used this example that involves both. Right. I'm going to have a chicken and salad and some healthy oil, like in my dressing. That's the specific plan. But you're following a protocol of protein, vegetable, healthy fat. That's the protocol. The protocol applies to a lot of different areas. The plan is usually something that's like, oh, making sure I have protein available. Yes, there's chicken. Making sure I have veggies available? Yes, there's a salad. And when we do that, and combine those two together, of course. Like, we can handle many different situations. Okay.
[00:23:57] Goals and standards are similar, but they are really referring to things that we want to achieve. Right. Like, we don't want to achieve chicken and salad for dinner. Right? Like, that's just a tool that we use. But goals and plan or goals and standards are things that we want to achieve. Goals are specific things that we want. They're frequently things that we've seen that we would like to have but haven't ever figured out how to implement them.
[00:24:28] And we haven't usually tied them to our identity. And this is the powerful difference between goals and standards. Standards are things that we do, and we tie them to our identity. We expect these behaviors of ourselves no matter what else is going on. So goals might be, I want to run a five k, right? But standards are. I'm the kind of person that just exercises every day. That's just who I am.
[00:24:56] Other standards that you already probably hold for yourself are you pay your bills on time, you borrow money, and you pay it back. So if you borrow $5 from a friend because you forgot your wallet, you pay it back. If you forget. I did this with my girlfriend a few years ago. Invited her to Wichita to my hometown. We grew up here together, but from Kansas City. And we were going to go to lunch, and I'm like, yeah, we're going to take you to the great restaurant. It's gonna be awesome. Totally had every intention of planning and then left my wallet or of paying, and then I left my wallet at home. So in that moment, like, she had to pay, and I felt really. I was like, oh, my gosh, I'm such an, you know, an idiot, is what I felt like in the minute. In the moment. But. And then, of course, the next time that we went out, I bought her lunch because that was. That's what we do if we borrow money or we want things to be equal between those that we love, right? So you borrow money, you pay it back. Another standard you likely have for yourself is you don't steal stuff. Like, if you see something you want at the grocery store, you don't just take it. You know that you have to pay for it. These are standards. Standards are things that we have that we expect of our behaviors, and they're usually tied to our values.
[00:26:02] The nice thing about the standards, we don't have to fight with ourselves to get us to do these behaviors. I don't have to argue with myself to not steal something at the grocery store because it's a standard about how I behave. It's about who I am. So I'd encourage you to start investigating what your standards are about the foods that you're eating, the exercise that you do, and the other things that you do for your health.
[00:26:26] Are, are you making standards for this? Are they still wrapped up in this goal and achievement? My encouragement of this is if you start moving this into the way, like your standards of who you are and who you identify yourself as, if you start moving it into there, you're going to have, you don't have to fight it anymore. You're going to start achieving those things. You're going to start just doing those things, behaving that way, the same way you do by not stealing something at the grocery store. Okay.
[00:26:56] I also want to encourage you to think about tools as far as fasting and exercise and resting and meditation. I will talk about that a little bit more throughout the month of July and future podcasts. I also want to encourage you to think about how you want to bring joy into your vacation. If you've previously used food to bring joy into your vacation, you're going to have to find a different way to bring joy into your vacation. One of my favorite examples of kind of when I cleared this hurdle was probably four or five years ago, I was on vacation and everybody else, there are kids everywhere and there are Oreos and twizzlers and chips. I mean, it was just a junk food festival and I knew I wasn't eating it and it was awkward. I didn't know what to do with my hands. You know, it was so strange and weird. And my daughter was sitting in this oversized La Z boy chair and she was watching a movie and I crawled right there next to her and she was, I don't know if she was eleven or twelve, she was little er than she is today. And her and I could just fit in that chair together and we snuggled up and we watched a movie.
[00:28:03] That joy that that experience brought to me was far exceeding any Oreo or any junk food that was available in that moment. So I want you to start to consider how you're going to bring joy into your vacation in a way that aligns with this healthy standard that you're considering setting for yourself. Okay?
[00:28:25] We'll be talking about that in the next couple podcasts, so stay tuned for that. That's all I have for you about vacations.
[00:28:34] For today's podcast, I really want to encourage you to start visualizing who you will be and who you are becoming so that you can get a clear goal of what that looks like. Like, how do I start utilizing these tools so I can be that woman? I want you to start considering that, and that's my challenge for you this week. If you are on medications for your type two diabetes, I do want to give you a warning. If you make these changes that I talk about in these podcast episodes with your food and your exercises or you're exercising, you will likely need to also change your medications. You've been medication medicated for the way you've eaten in the past. If you change that, you're going to have to change those medications. If not, you can get sick. The kind of sick that involves a hospital stay, an ER visit, possibly even death. You're not making these changes to your behaviors in order to die an early death. So I need you to call your physician, your provider, whoever gave you these meds, and get a very clear understanding of how they expect you to share your blood sugars with them and how they intend to share medication changes with you. If you don't do this, you can end up sick. So I need to encourage you to do that. Get that clear line of communication open with your provider so you know how to adjust your meds appropriately. If you're not sure what food changes to make, check out my 14 days to better blood Sugars workbook. You can find
[email protected] forward slash better it's 14 days of menus that clearly set up what you need to eat. You will see better blood sugars with this. They will drop. So again, be very careful if you are medicated. If you have any questions about anything we've spoke about today, you can always email me delaney lanemd.com. lastly, I have an ask for you. If you are liking these podcast episodes, if you're finding benefits from them, if you're getting help from them, please rate the podcast on your podcast player. Review it and rate it. The more times that people review and rate this podcast, the more people see this podcast. It gets presented to more people from the podcast players. Nine out of ten Americans have insulin resistant resistance, so understand that most of the people out there need to hear this information so they don't have to be sick for the rest of their lives. So that's all I have for you this week. Keep listening. Keep avoiding foods that make you sick, and keep making choices for your health, your vitality, and your longevity. I'll talk to you next week. Bye.
