Are you prepared to shift your perspective and make diabetes your ally instead of your enemy? Join me, as I share my 10 key strategies that have shaped my diabetes approach in managing this condition. We'll dig into the significance of positivity, consistency, your relationship with food, exercise, sleep, stress management, and the power of a strong support system. By the end of this discussion, you'll be better equipped to manage your diabetes, have a deeper understanding of the role of food, and appreciate the importance of your diabetes.
Visit My Diabetes Resources
Website: www.simplifyingdiabetes.com
Newsletter Sign Up
"More Than A1C" - My Signature Coaching Program
The Diabetes Nutrition Master Course
The Free 5-Pillars Of Diabetes Success - Give Away
Don't forget to check out Ancient Bliss an herbal supplement company.
Use Discount Code KEN20 for 20% off at check out.
Have a question, send me a DM or email. I'd love to connect and answer any questions you have.
You can find the show on any platform you listen to your podcasts!
Don't forget to click on that subscribe button and leave a 5-star review, so you're notified when new episode drop every week.
Questions about diabetes, don't hesitate to reach out:
Podcast Disclaimer: Nothing that you hear on The Healthy Diabetic Podcast should be considered medical advice or otherwise; please always consult your medical TEAM before making any changes to your diabetes management
Are you prepared to shift your perspective and make diabetes your ally instead of your enemy? Join me, as I share my 10 key strategies that have shaped my diabetes approach in managing this condition. We'll dig into the significance of positivity, consistency, your relationship with food, exercise, sleep, stress management, and the power of a strong support system. By the end of this discussion, you'll be better equipped to manage your diabetes, have a deeper understanding of the role of food, and appreciate the importance of your diabetes.
Visit My Diabetes Resources
Website: www.simplifyingdiabetes.com
Newsletter Sign Up
"More Than A1C" - My Signature Coaching Program
The Diabetes Nutrition Master Course
The Free 5-Pillars Of Diabetes Success - Give Away
Don't forget to check out Ancient Bliss an herbal supplement company.
Use Discount Code KEN20 for 20% off at check out.
Have a question, send me a DM or email. I'd love to connect and answer any questions you have.
You can find the show on any platform you listen to your podcasts!
Don't forget to click on that subscribe button and leave a 5-star review, so you're notified when new episode drop every week.
Questions about diabetes, don't hesitate to reach out:
Podcast Disclaimer: Nothing that you hear on The Healthy Diabetic Podcast should be considered medical advice or otherwise; please always consult your medical TEAM before making any changes to your diabetes management
Consistency matters, especially when we talk about diabetes, the more consistent you are with checking your blood sugars, being on top of your blood sugars, being able to predict what your blood sugars are going to do, based off of the food that you're eating, the water that you're drinking, the sleep that you're getting, the exercise that you're getting. What do you value when it comes to food? For me, the number one thing, the number one thing that I value when it comes to food, is quality. Welcome back to the Healthy Diabetic Podcast. I'm your host, as always, coach Ken Canis. Before we get started, please remember the nothing that you hear on this podcast. If you consider medical advice or otherwise, please always consult your medical team before making any changes to your diabetes management. Okay, I'm going to jump right in. Today I've been under the weather, so my apologies for those of you who listen every single week and expect the episode to drop every Friday. It's Saturday morning at like. I think it's like what time is it? It's freaking seven o'clock in the morning Recording this episode. I've been under the weather. It was really sick yesterday. The final edits and everything didn't get approved for today's episode. I decided to just sit here and do a quick one for you guys. Had it in my head, I was thinking about what I wanted to do today, since we're going to wait to release today or this week's episode with our guest, but I decided to just sit down and record this one for you guys because it's been on my mind for a while.
Speaker 1:I've seen a lot of posts on social media about different ways to improve your A1C, lower your A1C. There's so many different things and I really think about 10 things that you can really do to improve your A1C and improve your overall life with diabetes. So I'm going to go through all 10 of these thoughts that I have, these things that I constantly am talking about, these things that I've pretty much put into place in my own management style that I coach people on. So let's dive into this. Number one. You've heard me talk about this so many times. This mindset Having a good, positive relationship with diabetes is key.
Speaker 1:It is so important. Think about any time in your diabetes journey that you haven't been in this place, that you haven't had a good relationship with diabetes. What was your life like? Were your A1Cs good? Were your blood sugars good? Did you have fluctuating blood sugars? Most people that I talk to. I'm sure there's people out there and maybe you're listening to this I'm sure there's people out there that don't have the greatest relationship with diabetes but do just fine with their blood sugars. So I think that it's an important piece to talk about, because it is 100% the very first place that we have to start when we're talking about building our own unique management style.
Speaker 1:What is your relationship with diabetes? I want you to ask yourself that what is your relationship with diabetes? Number two goes into food. I've been talking a lot about food over the past six months, especially now that the diabetes nutrition master course is now out, and if you're interested in that, the link is in the show notes so you can just go to the website for that course. I've taken a long time. It's taken a long time to create that course because it breaks down everything that I believe that can help us improve our A1C, our blood sugars and our overall life with diabetes. So number two is nutrition.
Speaker 1:You have to ask yourself a couple of things. The first thing is what is your relationship with food? That is obviously the first place that we have to start. We have to start our diabetes journey with this thought process, of mindset and what our relationship with diabetes is. But we also have to do the same thing with food.
Speaker 1:Once we understand that, once we clarify that for ourselves, are you someone that uses food as an escape from emotions? Do you use food as an escape when you're out with friends? How do you deal with food? Are you someone that values food on a high level? For me, my number one value with food and I've talked about food values a lot over the past six months and that's also in the course but this thought process of food value is very important because it allows you to identify what do you value when it comes to food. For me, the number one thing that I value when it comes to food is quality. That is the number one thing. It's not price. Price is very important to me and price is probably very important to you. Price is not the very first thing that I go to when I go through the grocery store. I'm not looking at price first. Price is probably the last thing I'm looking at, because I have a whole process, an entire process, when I go through the grocery store and I'm looking at food labels and I'm trying to figure out outside of the norm or the bare essentials, or the things that I'm constantly consuming and eating. Maybe there's something else that, oh, I want to try this product, or I want to try this product, or I heard that this yogurt was really good. I'm going to look at the food label and that food label has to get through what I call my BS meter. At the end of the day, what does it take for you not to consume this product? What does it take for you to consume this product? That, for me, was a very big thing when I started identifying my food values. So nutrition is number two. The number three thing so we've got number one is mindset. What is your relationship with diabetes? We've got number two. What is your relationship with food and how do you value when it comes to food, depending on when you're diagnosed, depending on who you're diagnosed by? I've heard so many different stories and I know we just talked about three, but I wanted to go back to food for a second. When you think about food, it's important to recognize that it's not just about the carbohydrates, it's not just about the sugar. We should be looking at the quality of what we're consuming, because every carbohydrate is not created equally. I could have a really healthy carbohydrate that has 30 grams and then a white piece of bread that has 30 grams. The gram carbohydrate is the same, exact, but how that carbohydrate is going to affect one of my blood sugar and my digestive system and my overall health are two totally different things, so it's very important to understand that All right. Now let's go into three. Three is exercise. Number three is exercise. Exercise, I believe, is something that we don't do enough of or take into account of how impactful it is on our blood sugars. If you are an advocate-exerciser, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Exercise is one of the number one things, I believe, that can improve your insulin sensitivity, and that's what this is all about. We want to be able to improve and heighten our insulin sensitivity, and what better way than to exercise, move, every single day? Now, what do I mean by exercise? Because I think some people have this misconception about exercise, like, oh, I have to go run a mile, or I have to go run until I fall over when I'm exercising, or I have to do all this strength training. No, that's not what we're saying. We're saying movement. Whatever that is, for you, movement is going to be different than for me than it was when I was 20 years old. My body is going to respond differently to movement now than when I was 20 years old. Your body is going to respond differently if you're 10 years old, 15 years old, compared to if you're 60 years old. So movement is the key. It's not just about strength training, high intensity, low intensity, that doesn't matter in terms of the exercise piece, in terms of really focusing on increasing or improving your insulin sensitivity. Now, saying that, I will say I want to make this very clear that you're just going for a walk every single day for an hour. That's going to improve your insulin sensitivity and it will also improve your cardiovascular health because we're doing low intensity movement right. Cardio is walking or jogging. When we talk about, oh, I'm going to go out and do cardio, that is not going and doing intervals. That's not going to orange theory and running a 10% incline at 8 miles an hour for 60 seconds. That's not what cardio is. Cardio is low intensity exercise and it's important to understand that because we need to be able to have a good aerobic capacity, because that's also going to help with insulin sensitivity. Now, when I talk about exercise, when I coach people, whether it's a fitness client, weight loss client, diabetes client, whatever it is. When I talk about exercise, I'm focusing on the entire plan. We're putting together a whole entire program, not just, hey, I want you to go walk 60 minutes every single day. Not just I want you to go do strength training for 60 minutes every single day. I want you to go do high intensity two or three days a week. That's not what we're talking about. It's talking about putting all the components that we have under our you know, within our disposal, and we're going to do an actual plan that is going to work for you and your diabetes and your lifestyle. So number three is exercise. Number four is going to be consistency. This is one thing that I think that a lot of people don't understand or maybe realize, is the consistency of what we are doing constantly is very, very important. Now, what does that mean? What does consistency actually mean? Well, to me, consistency means having good, healthy habits. That's what consistency to me means. No matter what those habits are, their good healthy habits are going to ultimately improve your overall health. So consistency matters, especially when we talk about diabetes. The more consistent you are with checking your blood sugars, being on top of your blood sugars, being able to predict what your blood sugars are going to do, based off of the food that you're eating, the water that you're drinking, the sleep that you're getting, the exercise that you're getting. All these components really work together to improve your A1C and improve your overall health with diabetes. So we got. Four is consistency. Five is going to be hydration. I just spoke a little bit about hydration, but hydration is also a very big thing. That's important. Not enough people, in terms of human beings, we don't get enough water, and this is what I'm talking about when I talk about hydration. I'm not talking about sports drinks, I'm talking about water. Your body is made up of a significant amount of water and when you exercise, you sweat and you secrete water. So we need to make sure that we're continuously rehydrating ourselves every single day. If you're a young athlete I have been in this position so many times when I was a young athlete you get cramps when you're competing in a meat, a match, a game, whatever it is. That's because, most of the time, it's because that you're dehydrated and you can't just start consuming water the day of your competition. You have to be consuming water on a regular basis all the time, so you're not getting those cramps. That's just an example of why hydration especially for a young athlete is so important. So we got hydration, making sure we're drinking enough water. So, for me, I constantly tell my clients that I work with to always have a water bottle with them all the time. If you're at the house, there always should be a glass of water that is full or filled up, because you should be sipping on that water all day long. If you're at the office, if you're at work, you should always have a water bottle next to your desk. There's no excuses not to be hydrated. So make sure that you're getting hydrated. Number six is sleep. So sleep is something that we do not get enough of 100%. Think about all the times that you've woken up and you've gotten, let's say, even 10 hours of sleep, but you're still worn down. That next morning when you get up, it's because you're not getting consistent sleep. So we went back. We're going back to consistency, consistent sleep and, on top of that, uninterrupted sleep. So we can sleep 10 hours but have to get up two or three times and go to the bathroom, whether it's because our blood sugars are out of whack that night. It's happened to all of us. It's okay, but it's part of this process of understanding that sleep is so important. If you're sick, right, I was really sick yesterday, really sick, throwing up everywhere, coming out both sides. It was not pretty and I was able obviously, because it is the weekend, I was able to get a good amount of sleep after I was done throwing up everywhere. So making sure that we're getting good enough sleep and that uninterrupted sleep is very important. Number seven is stress levels. Making sure that we're able to lower our stress levels in some way is extremely, extremely important. There's nothing worse for the body, especially for weight loss, than stress and whatever stress that might be. So I want you to think about the things that you enjoy doing, because those things that you enjoy doing are going to help with relieving stress. For some people, it's exercise. For some people it's hanging out with friends. For some people it's watching TV with their significant other or their friends or whatever it might be. Whatever you really hone in on in terms of being in a de-stressed state. Those are the things that you have to lean on. I'm not telling you that exercise is the number one thing to relieve stress, because it's not For some people, it is For me. I love to exercise when I'm super stressed, especially being by myself with my thoughts. I never used to like doing that because for me, being alone with my thoughts used to be like, okay, well, I can't. All the negative stuff that's going on in my life right now is coming up, coming up, coming up. But what I've been able to do within my journey, and especially the place I'm in right now, is be able to be with those thoughts, internalize them, and not just internalize them, but ask myself one specific question that, for me, holds all the answers to negative emotions and turning them into positive emotions, and that's asking myself why. Why is this emotion coming up? Why is this emotion coming up? I ask myself that all the time when I have negative thought processes that enter my brain in whatever way. That is For me, that is one stress reliever that I really focus on when talking to myself. A lot of people like journaling. I think that's amazing. I don't like journaling because in my brain, when I'm sitting down and writing stuff down, it makes no sense to me, but it's just the way my brain works If I misspell stuff or if I'm writing my thoughts out on a piece of paper and then I read it back to myself and it doesn't make any sense. Then I get super stressed out that I'm not doing the exercise in the right way. That's just the way my brain works. I talk to myself, I like to talk to myself in the car and I like to turn on my phone. I'll just put my phone and talk to my phone like I'm talking to a normal person and having a conversation with myself. That really really helps me. I'd be curious to know what really helps you. What helps you with stress is that exercise is something else. Lowering your stress levels is very, very important. Communicating with people, whatever it might be how do you lower your stress levels? Because that is one thing that is going to really really raise your cortisol levels. If we know anything about diabetes which we all do on this show, and hopefully we do that cortisol levels is going to raise your blood sugar like crazy. We want to keep those cortisol levels low. Number eight what does your inner circle look like? What do I mean by that? I mean that your inner circle is the people around you that have your emotional support, whoever that might be, because those types of people that are in your life, whether it's your friends, your family members, your parents, your spouse, I don't care who it is. Those people are going to have your emotional support 100% all the time. Now there's two things, I believe, that are important with your inner circle the people that are in your circle, the people that you choose to deal with or choose to be around every single day. There's two different types of people. One, there's the people that have the emotional support which is talked about your parents, your family members, your friends, people that are really, really close to you. And then you have another aspect of your inner circle which, for me, is very important because it has allowed me to learn a lot about diabetes but also not feel so alone. When I was first diagnosed, for three straight years, I felt alone, isolated, depressed you name it Because I didn't have anybody to talk to. It's the other part of the inner circle is leaning on the diabetes community, because it is an incredible community. Unfortunately, it's rising like crazy because people are being diagnosed with type one, type two still, but diagnosis of type one, especially in adults, is rising like crazy. So leaning into this incredible community is a very important thing, right? So we've got inner circle. We've got the first part of the inner circle the people closest to you and then you got the second part of the inner circle, which is the diabetes community. Lean on those individuals. Number nine identify what you do well and what you need to improve upon. I think a lot of us can say really, really fast what we do not so well and I think a lot of us can't really articulate what we do well. Some people can. I know I have had a hard time with that in the past because I don't celebrate my wins, I don't celebrate the really good things that happen. I get an A1C of 6.1 or lower. That's a really good win. I overcome fluctuating blood sugars when I eat pizza that's a really good win, because that's a really hard to do consistently all the time. So celebrating these hard wins which is number 10, but we're gonna get to that in a second so identify what you do really well is really really important, right? And if you can't really articulate that, I challenge you to get a piece of paper and just write down all the things that you do well. Do you check your blood sugars manually, do you? Are you constantly on your phone looking at your CGM. Can you identify the things on your CGM that is spiking your blood sugar and not necessary from food? That's easy, right? We can always say, okay, well, I ate this and I didn't take enough. Or I ate this but I did take enough, so why did I spike? Well, it could be your pre-bolus, it could be the insulin timing, you could be insulin resistant. So many things could go into that. So being able to identify those things do you do that well or is that something that you need to improve upon? So this thought process of what do you do well and what do you need to improve upon is very, very important. I challenge you to identify both of those things, even if it's only two or three things for each of those. Right, I've got two or three things I do really, really well and I've got maybe three to five things that I need to be approved upon. And when you look at, when I look at the things and I coach people on this concept is when I'm talking about the things that you need to improve upon, it's not the things that my doctor says, it's not the things that coach Ken tells me to do. It's not the things that I see in the diabetes community. I look at the things that I know right now. I know have an impact on my blood sugars. Those are the things that I need to be focused on, because if I start focusing on here's the example right, if I start focusing on things that other people say that they don't do well and I'm like, oh shoot, you know what, you're right, I don't do that very well either, but it actually doesn't align with your values or doesn't align with, like what you want your management style to be, then it doesn't matter, right? Here's the example. I don't count carbs very well, I just don't. I don't count carbs very well and I think part of that is because I pretty much eat the same darn things every single day. So I've learned with failure and I've learned with success how much carbohydrates I should take with each meal of what I'm actually consuming. Now, if I'm out in a restaurant, I'm like you know what? I've never really eaten this before. I need to check. Then I'll go on my fitness power, I'll start doing some research about it, but at the end of the day, learning how to count carbs, I know how to count carbs, but doing that and putting that into my management style, and doing that really, really well is not part of my values. It's not part of my management style. I just I don't care, I'll count carbs if I need to, but outside of that, it's not the ultimate thing in my management style and I know other diabetes coaches, I know other diabetics that that's part of their management style, that's part of their values of being a diabetic is they count carbs and they count carbs with mathematics. They count carbs with all kinds of different strategies and tools. That's an example of understanding what you need to improve upon and what you actually need to improve upon for your own lifestyle, what you actually want. Okay, that's number nine. Number ten is celebrate the small wins. I say small wins because we're always celebrating the big wins. Right, you take your A1C from seven down to six point four. Six point five, that's a huge win, because that is you being strategic and working on things for three to four months or longer, so that's a big win. I think that it's important also to celebrate small wins, like I talked about earlier. Hey, I constantly have issues with dosing for pizza and this time, for some reason, it actually went really well. I only spiked up 30 milligrams per deciliter and it came right back down in range right or it usually goes way out of range and then comes back under range and I was able to keep my blood sugars in range. That's a huge small win and we have to continuously celebrate those small wins because that's also going to help with confidence, which confidence probably should be in this list, but it's not. So confidence is an important piece with all of this as well, and when you celebrate small wins, when you constantly build up these small wins, you can even call that habit stacking right. Habit stacking is a really good way to build up small wins as well, but when you constantly build up these small wins, you improve your confidence. So it's a really important thing. So that's my 10 ways to improve your A1C and your overall health with diabetes. I hope this was enlightening. I hope that you. I hope this list resonates with you. I'm sure you do a lot of these things. There might be some that you haven't thought about or isn't really in your management style, but I think all 10 of these for me I do really really well, I work really well within these and it's these 10 things have really helped me keep my A1C under 6.4 and the low sixes and the high fives. So it's something that I've seen work for multiple people, people that I've coached so it's something that I would encourage you to kind of look at. Go to number nine and what do you do well and what do you need to improve upon and start there and you can start crafting your own style. There is also before I let you go, there's also a PDF product that I have I'll leave it in the show notes that goes through my five pillars of diabetes success and part of this is part of that five pillars. In that five pillars, there's specific questions within each pillar that ask you specific questions about your management style and what you ultimately want. That helps you build out your own five pillars and also can help you build out these 10 ways to improve your A1C. I encourage you to look at that and again, I'll put that in the show notes. It'll be just the five pillars. The more than A1C coaching program, the 10-week coaching program, is still going. I'm going to shut it off here in probably another couple of weeks, maybe as we get into the new year, as more and more people sign up for it. I don't want to overload myself, so make sure that you go and click on the more than A1C link in the show notes. There's also the diabetes nutrition course. Everything going into Christmas for the rest of this month is going to be 15% off. So more than A1C coaching program and the nutrition program are going to be still is going to remain 15% off. If you're interested in that and you want some more information on either those products, services, please reach out to me. You can send me a message on IG, send me an email. There's also a link in the show notes to set up a free discovery call and let's just connect. Let's just connect and I can help you with either getting into one of the programs or just give you some insight. What are you doing right now that you could do a little bit better? We can talk about number nine and identify what you're doing well and what you need to improve. I'm an open book for all of you. I'm here to help the people that are struggling and I'm here to be, hopefully, a shining light on you to help you build your own unique management style. If you already have a really good management style. You have a good A1C, you have good blood sugars, you feel great about diabetes. Hopefully you're hearing something in these conversations that you can just pick out and take away and add. That's going to make your diabetes management even better. Thank you so much for listening. I thank all of you for continuing to listen every single week. Next week, we're going to have a really awesome guest he's been on before and we're going to talk a lot about exercise and we're going to talk a lot about how we really navigate our blood sugars during exercise. It's going to be a really fun conversation that I have that I had with this individual. Stay tuned for next week. Thank you so much, everybody. I will talk to you next week.