Wellness Hustle

Wellness Hustle (00:44)
welcome back to another episode of The Wellness Hustle. We are so happy you are here. I'm here with Sasha, my co-host, and today...

We are talking about blood sugar and I am blood sugar regulation and I am just so excited about this topic. Me too because I geek on that. I love that topic so much. People who follow me on Instagram probably know that that's one of my favorite topics to talk about. Yeah. And so I am excited to learn. I don't know a lot about this topic. I just kind of want to hear like what are your clients, how you work with your clients with blood. Like just kick me off. How do we...

Let's get started. Like just talk to me about blood sugar regulation. How do you apply to it? with my clients and why? There's... Okay, where do I start? Usually we already talked about this. I like to see food and mood journal. And the first thing we see is the blood sugar.

is that regulated properly in your body and the way we see it and your mood. Also, I can see it the way you're like your eating patterns, but also mood will tell us a lot about if your blood sugar is balanced or if it's not. So you'll see that energy swings and mood swings, sometimes headache, waking up in the middle of the night.

All those can be signs of blood sugar, gesturberation, getting hangry. Constantly have to bring snacks with you everywhere you go because you might get snappy and hangry. Yeah, we all know people like that. I might be one of those people. no, no, Not anymore. Not anymore. So I have learned so much from this podcast personally. Thank you, Sasha. You're I've been kind of doing some of the things that we've talked about on this podcast, like, for example, trying to eat three meals a day, which was something that I have, I have struggled with eating three meals a day.

my entire life. typically skip lunch and then I don't eat until five o'clock, six o'clock at night and I'm usually starving. So I'm the person who carried around snacks with me and was just like riding on the thin line of potentially snapping at somebody at any given point. So you were like grazing more so. I was a grazer. lot of women are grazers. Pretty much most of my clients will come to me, they're grazing throughout the day. They're busy with bringing stuff in their purses and it's not the best choices. Sometimes we go

vending machines sometimes we drive through get something from Starbucks so it's a culture unfortunately we forget how to sit down have dinner together as a family you have kids be driving everywhere so it's a thing for sure yeah and the you can see it sorry you can see it and in the public health

right now and our metabolic health. Okay. Yeah

I, it's interesting that you say that because obviously we're seeing, think, and again, like always, we're not doctors. So, always go talk to a doctor and get your panels and all that stuff. But I do want to say that like, you know, I've been dealing with hormonal issues personally for the last year.

I came off of birth control in March of last year and it was my first time being off of birth control in 20 years. And so it really messed up my body, like in so many ways, physically, I felt it internally, mentally. And, you know, it came to my attention and just randomly on a podcast that I was listening to, they were talking about hormone regulation and someone just said, yeah, when you when you regulate your blood sugar.

It also regulates your hormones. That was all I knew. That's all I was, it was, I've ever heard about it. Right. Because there's a lot of hormones that go and play to regulate your blood sugar, your glucose levels. so, and then all hormones tied together. Yeah. Okay. So let's talk about what blood sugar regulation actually is. Like what is blood sugars role in the body and how do we regulate it? Okay. So the blood sugar comes in.

number one when you eat food. so food comes in form of

some of it's form of sugars. So your body will break it down and we'll put it into the bloodstream and we can only have so much in your bloodstream. The rest of it is gonna go into your liver and the rest of it is gonna go into your muscle and the rest is gonna go if it's too much. So we can only store 100 gram in the liver and we can store up to 400 or more, depends how much muscle mass you have. The more muscle you have, the more glucose you can store.

And the rest if you ate say a lot of cookies and you have way more than we can store It's gonna be broken down and it's gonna go into your fat deposits. Okay, and what exactly is glucose just the simplified it's blood sugar. So it's sugar. Okay, great. It's sugar same thing and when we store glucose it becomes glycogen, okay

So then if we say we need some energy, we can pull from the glycogen. So we can pull it from your liver. And then the muscle will use the glycogen within the muscle. So it will never go into your body. And then you have another storage, it's like far away, storage in your fat deposits, and it's hard for your body to pull it out. But when needs to pull it out, like,

when we completely out of sugar and everywhere else, then it's gonna pull out out of your fat. That's like very simple way and not very scientific way I'm describing it. that's what I Yeah, I think that that's helpful to people. I mean, when you think of people from a fitness perspective that are trying to lose weight and you're talking about this and it's like, okay, well, if the last place it's being pulled from, glucose is being pulled from is from my fat.

then that probably means that I'm hanging on to a lot of that fat as well. Is that correct or am I right? Okay. And if you constantly snacking and eating, that's the quick energy units, quick glucose. So the body is going to utilize that first. It's not going to go back. It's like, imagine you're paying for something. You're going to pull out your apple pay. Yeah. That's going to be a quick glucose, which you're eating. Okay.

The glucose you store in the fat, it's like wiring money from Russia to United States. A lot of paperwork, lot of effort. But if you're completely out of money everywhere else, you're going to do the effort. You're going to get that money. God, that is a great analogy. That is a great analogy. OK, so how do we increase blood sugar? Let's start there. How do we increase our blood sugar levels?

Okay, so we really don't want to increase the blood sugar levels, right? But there's two ways it will happen. One's when you're So everybody knows that you eat.

you're going to your blood sugar, hopefully not too much. And we talked about it in the previous podcasts and we'll talk about it more here, how you want to keep your blood sugar setting why. So eating number one and two stress will do that. So yeah, unfortunately, sometimes people have a hard time losing weight and this is why, because they are stressed. And what happens is unfortunately the way our bodies are designed back in the day when we were

chased by wild animals, we needed that energy. And remember I told you, we store some in the liver. So the body is not going to go into fat deposits and wire money from Russia to the United States. They're actually going to go to liver. It's going to be like your Visa card in your wallet, right? Really quick, grab that glucose from your liver and you're going to bring it back into the bloodstream.

and it's gonna circulate so you can run fast. But if you're not running, if you're sitting at your desk and you're stressed at work, so what happens with this blood sugar that is extra in your blood, it's gonna circulate, you don't need it, it's gonna get stored into fat.

Wait, okay. So frustrating. Okay. the blood, so the blood sugar, the glucose that is being stored in our liver. Yeah. Is that going back into the bloodstream for you to run when you're stressed. But if you're not running, if you're just stressed because of whatever happens at work, at home, it's being added into the fat. huh. I just had an aha moment for my own personal.

Because when I was 18, I moved to Southern California. I met my ex-husband and I was under a chronic amount of stress. It was crazy. I moved down there with no car. I couldn't get a job. It was 2008. So there were no jobs available. It was super, super stressful. And I ended up gaining so much weight, I mean, I was a hundred pounds heavier five years ago.

And so, and I think that, you know, I was kind of depressed. was like sitting at home a lot and my lifestyle had changed a lot. Yeah. So all of the things together. Wow.

how do people know that they need to measure? Like how would I have known that I needed to measure my blood sugar levels? Like regulated. Yeah. I'm saying measure. mean, you can measure it. can get like the continuous, my blood sugar monitor. Okay. And I played with that and it was really interesting.

but you don't have to do it you will know if you eat a meal and you get hungry within like a few hours couple hours you know you did not eat a proper meal to regulate your blood sugar okay you should be full for like at least four hours after your meal okay shouldn't be you know then so if you

start craving, if you start getting hungry, jittery hands, like you have to have to food. The way you just made direct eye contact at Jerry hands. have the shakiest hands you've ever seen. No, think you take it personally because it's, I was just talking. No, it's a hundred percent me. No, no, no. I do need to be called out on every time Sasha comes over to record a podcast. am seriously the shakiest, have the shakiest hands, but look at pretty good. That's an improvement. Yeah. You're good. You're doing good. Yeah.

You're making changes, you're doing good. Yeah, so shaky hands. Okay, so what are some of the other things? So you can wake up in the middle of the night simply because, say you ate a big dessert. Okay. And you feel good, you went to sleep, you fell asleep, but then you wake up in the middle of the night. What happens is your blood sugar jumped pretty high, but then what happens to their body? It doesn't go and correct it to where it wants it to be, always overcorrects.

So your blood sugar, if you have a big spike, it's going to drop down and the drop down that what wakes you up. So if you're waking up in the middle of the night, it could be due to blood sugar distribution. So if people are drinking late at night, does that, how does alcohol play into that out of curiosity? How alcohol is just a toxin. Okay. But if you do in sugary drinks on top of it,

then you have your sugar and your alcohol. So your body needs to A, get rid of toxins out of the body, this is what's on really hard. And then B, it's dealing with the blood sugar, dysregulation as well on top of it. So it's, yeah, it's two things instead of one. Okay, got it. Cause I just think like I've had situations where I've been drinking, usually when it was when I was drinking beer, I would wake up a lot in the middle of the night.

Well, that's you probably had to pee too. Beer makes people go to the bathroom very often. Not a fan. Also gluten, there's ton of gluten. That's another thing. Beer is all together. My husband will tell you. absolutely just, it's my least favorite thing. I would never put in my body. Just what I know. I just love beer so much. I don't know that I want to know.

the things because I can have a corona and that's pretty much it so like a single corona yeah because I mean you told me you have gluten intolerant so it's like the worst thing you can ever do for yourself so if people who have like blood sugar irregularity yeah do those people typically would you try to steer them away from gluten is that something because it's carbohydrates you break those down and they turn into sugars is that right or am I losing my mind right no that's right but gluten the is a protein okay

It doesn't do anything for blood sugar, but usually it is in some form of carbohydrate, It's in the bread, it's in the cakes and pastas, all of those things. So those have sugars because they're simple carbohydrates.

Yeah, it does make sense. actually had some orzo like Durham wheat orzo really organic this Italian wedding soup I made and I was waking up at 3 o'clock in the morning both days I had it And I had it for dinner. I wonder if that has anything to do that I'm always trying to connect the dots to personal experiences. So yeah Okay, yeah, you gotta figure out maybe you eat late at night and that will keep you up at night too, right?

One more thing I wanted to touch on is if you have a hard time staying on healthy diet, you're craving, you don't have enough energy.

That means you can probably look into your blood sugar regulation as well and balance your meals with more protein, more good fat, less of a carbohydrate. And that's gonna help you to stay on your healthy diet. And it makes so much sense because if you're adding more protein into your diet, then you're supporting your muscle mass. And if you're working out, your muscle mass is improving as well. And then your ability to store...

White blood cells and glucose is higher. Yeah. So then blood sugar regulation. Here we go. Here we go.

Okay, so on that note, why is blood sugar regulation the foundation of sustainable nutrition and how does it impact all the other areas of wellness?

And this is what I'm so passionate about. Unfortunately, not a lot of wellness professionals are talking about it. I think it's starting to get a little wave right now. People, see more and more people starting to talk about it, but it's been overlooked for so many years. We've been on a fat free diet for so many years. Then we were on keto, then we were on all kinds of different things. But the blood sugar, why it's so important.

is that when you're not balancing your blood sugar, you are just all on the willpower with your nutrition because you're craving, you're dropping, you're having energy, you're cranky. So when you can just get rid of that, I mean, that's easy. The healthy nutrition becomes so much easier, right? If you're not craving, if you're not cranky, if you have energy. And it's the only way that I know

that you can get there is by balancing your blood sugar. So when people say, it's not important, who cares? It is. To me, it's the foundation to healthy nutrition, to me personally. Because I tried all kinds of ways of eating healthy. I tried Paleo, I tried Keto, I tried fat-free back in the day, all of the things.

And I did the bodybuilding competitions, right? And that's very lean protein and you're not eating enough calories. So it's a whole nother animal. But if you are not balancing your blood sugar, if you are going up and down with your cravings and your energy levels, you're just not going to stay on that program. Bottom line, you're just going to crash and then you're going to eat everything around you.

I'm gonna bring the cave man back up, but yeah, it makes sense because we're built to eat a balanced diet that has helped me personally so much I've noticed such a difference in just the last two weeks of listening to what you shared But it almost creates a this ripple effect. It does because you sleep better

You sleep better, you have more energy, right? You have more energy, you have better workouts, better workouts, you have better gains. Yeah, we like gains. So yeah, you build better muscles, stronger, so you get to your goals quicker. You're staying on your program forever because for us, it's

fitness professionals, they don't want you to be on the program for a week or two or three right now. Hopefully that's why he does like, no people have, let's just have like a week of transformation or we go. No, what happens after? That's why I always want to teach my clients to create a lifestyle.

How can we get there? How can it be sustainable? How it can fit into your lifestyle where it's supporting you, but also you're happy about how you feel, how you look, because that's important too. A lot of people want to look certain way. yeah, so all of it plays a huge role. I feel like the blood sugar regulation is kind of foundation for everything.

It's so awesome. I want to jump into simple steps of how do people keep their blood sugar stable throughout the day. Because I just noticed such a big difference. I'm serious. The more we talk about it, the more I realize in the last two weeks, and when I say I've been...

Consistently eating three meals a day and just trying to keep them balanced and I haven't put a lot of thought into it I've really enjoyed it. I didn't have to detox anything. I didn't have to do any hard stuff. It was just like eat food eat meals So what are like the simple steps?

Well, I think you start with a savory breakfast. always say like, so let's start from the beginning. You wake up, right? Drink a lot of water and you start with savory breakfast. That's going to set you up for success for the rest of the day. So when people used to say, Oh, eat your sugars in the morning that way when you go to sleep, you're not going to get fat. No.

This is not how it works. If you start eating sugars in the morning, it's gonna set you up on that roller coaster ride from the get go, like from the beginning. So you're gonna crash, then you're gonna crave, then you're gonna crash, then you're gonna eat something you shouldn't be eating that's not supporting you all. So keep it clean, lots of protein in the morning. If you can, have some greens in there for fiber, like maybe.

I know it's funny for people to even imagine to have a salad for breakfast, but sometimes I will do like my omelet, right? With vegetables. Then you get your fiber from vegetables and eggs, fat from yolk. Have a little toast sourdough on the side if that's what you need, but it's gonna be okay because you have...

all the vegetables and protein with a little piece of sourdough. And that's going to set you up for success. So then you're not going to be craving at 10 o'clock when you're in the office to go to the vending machine or kitchen and pick up some chocolate chip cookies. And that's a big thing I've noticed is that my cravings have really gone away. Like I used to go over to my parents' house at the end of the day and I would, my mom was joking. She was like,

you're eating this out of house and home because they have all the snacks there. And so I would get there and I'd eat everything in sight and like, I'm not having that issue anymore. I haven't had all their snacks there. So it's been really, really nice. And I think just going back to what you were saying on starting with a savory breakfast, goes back to having, you know, a balanced meal of like protein, healthy fats and fiber. Right. And then after that, just if you need to snack,

your snacks they're like raw nuts yeah right like something that is without sugar don't eat like an apple by itself right have a peanut butter with it Sasha I'm just realizing I haven't had a bag of chips in a week wow I know that bag of chips that we bought together the store was the last bag of chips I've had

and I ate it that night. no. whole bag. See it? So you're only strong as your options also, right? So don't buy those things if you know you're going to eat it and you're going to eat the whole bag, right? Just don't buy it.

I know we've talked about to like, sorry to jump over, but I just had a moment of ADHD, but like the apple cider vinegar thing before I heard that multiple times. Right. It's one of the tips and it does help to remedy blood sugar. It helps your spikes. So your blood sugar is not going to spike as much. According to science, 30 % less. Okay. So that's kind of cool.

Also, it's very important to move your butt after you had a big meal. You know how Thanksgiving meal, everybody eats turkey and then fall asleep watching football on the couch. Yeah, hi. I've done it so many It's me. Yes.

That's the worst thing you can do. So you really want to get up and move. At least like clean your dishes, put things away, right? Do some air squats, go for a walk with your dog. Like I usually just stay home for a walk after dinner. Yeah, it's all you need is just quick.

little movement like 10 minutes is good enough, but it's gonna help you to balance a blood sugar. It's so interesting because our natural habits like that you should be doing just to be like, you know, when you're done with a meal, you have dishes to clean. Exactly. And so it's like that would be 10 minutes of like moving around the kitchen and cleaning up. And it's like, maybe just build into your routine that you do 10 to 15 minutes of cleanup afterwards. The little squats in between. Yeah.

Also, lift weights, the more muscle you have, as we know, more glycogen you can store, which is sugar. So that's really empowering, right? Yeah. And you're seeing those gains too, which we love, which I feel like my workout. So I've been consistent this week, and I know we've been talking about how I've been so inconsistent with my workouts.

out five times this week. It's Friday. High five! I'm pretty pleased about that. Every workout has been a great workout. think part of that is because I'm not drinking right now so it's just like easy to wake up in morning and go do it. I switched to waking up at 5 a.m. again so that was great and then yeah it's just like I eat a little protein meat stick before I go to the gym. I'm locked and loaded.

And then the last thing we want to talk to you guys about what you can do to minimize, you got to minimize the stress. Because if you're stressed, and I know it's easier said than done, but you could do certain things like little things will count. Like when you sit in traffic, this is something that I was trying to remember to do. When you sit in traffic at the light, try to work on your breathing. Like deep breath in, deep breath out, right?

If you don't want to do meditation, fine. I don't want to do meditation either, but I started to do yoga in the morning little bit, move around, maybe stretching, you know, maybe you can take a yoga class, go on a nature walk. We all know nature will calm us, you know, get the stress out of your...

body spend time with your animals if you have some animals not borrow somebody's animals because they definitely distress us most of the time. I did start doing meditation. I know we talked about that in another podcast, but I did start doing meditation. It's a breath work meditation. Yeah. And so I have noticed that that is also helping me stay very calm. That's awesome. So yeah, so those are the things that you can do to balance your blood sugar.

I mean, it's really when you look at it. It's such a simple thing. It's all simple changes for like a very like a big overhaul results. Yeah, like why not just eat the foods that the food that I'm getting to eat isn't like I said, just I made like a Italian wedding soup last week. I made a lemon chicken with some veggies like I've also just been enjoying being in my kitchen again. So I think it's like if you're

avoiding those center aisles and focusing on the produce and focusing on the meat and focus on the dairy if you can have it but yeah trying to find ways to eat like foods that are made by the earth god and what happened to your intended to eat. Well I had a client today and she was freaking out she's like

trying to be good but tonight I have to go to Cheesecake Factory with my family that's what everybody wanted to do and that's a real life situation. I'm like all right let's look at the menu. I'm like look there's a beautiful salad you can order and then you can order burger without the bun so that's like a big chunk of protein.

And she was so happy. Yeah. She's getting her burger. Okay. Who cares about the bun? You can ditch the bun once. You know what I mean? It's not a big deal. Have a beautiful salad, salad dressing on the side. Yeah. And there we go. And then sold. Quite frankly, I love a burger without a bun. I

Because I have to eat it that way and I just I love it. It brings me joy and it fuels me up and you got all the little veggies that come with it. Sometimes I get bacon with it. great. We went to we have a restaurant here called Land Ocean. We went to it yesterday and my dad and I did and my dad ordered a filet mignon and it comes with like a teriyaki sauce on it and obviously it comes with potatoes and all that stuff too and mushrooms. So my dad just said can you get rid of the teriyaki and

Can we get second veggie instead of the potatoes? And we're like, yeah, no problem. Yeah. Easy peasy. You can always ask. Yeah.

Okay, so just to make sure I have everything, we're looking for signs that our blood sugar needs to be balanced. Those things could be mood, irregulation, could be lack of sleep. It could be, remind me of some of the other ones. Hangry, headache. Headache. Okay, and then from there, kind of just realizing that like balanced blood sugar is the foundation for all sustainable energy. Also like the mental clarity that I had.

which for me, like focus is a hard thing. And I've been able, you know, again, like talk to your doctor, but I have chosen to come off of my ADHD medication and

I have felt better than I've ever felt again in the last two weeks. Another high five to Yes. I'm feeling really, really good. I think it's really important to pay attention to these things for your long-term health. If you're having people ask you questions or trying to diagnose you with things and you haven't tried to adjust your diet or you haven't had a conversation with somebody about your diet as far as your doctor or anything like that, I think it's really, really important to try to have that conversation.

Yeah, absolutely. And then just it's really small tweaks like meal composition, fibers and fats. Why did I say healthy fibers? It's always healthy for you. Healthy fats, fiber, protein. Awesome. Do you have anything else that we need to add for blood sugar?

think we covered a lot. I'm just curious what people think about it. If it was too much, if it was just enough information, you know, it's always interesting to get feedback from you guys. I would love to hear too. just DM us if any sort of feedback. Again, we're new at this and we

I'm so passionate about it. know Sasha is too. So anytime that we can share this information, we're just grateful to do it. Yeah, appreciate all the support you guys. Thank you for listening tuning in. Yeah We'll you on another time