Agile Always by Officially Fenner

Agile Always: Simple Steps for a Healthier You in 2025 with guest, Ryan Adkins

• Robin and Rudy Fenner • Season 4 • Episode 2

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As we continue our journey into 2025, many of us are looking for ways to feel better, move more, and make healthier choices—without feeling overwhelmed. But what if getting healthier didn’t require drastic changes? What if a few small shifts could make a big impact on your well-being?

That’s exactly what we explore in the latest episode of the Agile Always Podcast: "Simple Shifts to a Healthier You."

In this episode, we sit down with Ryan Atkins, a certified holistic nutritionist and nutritional health coach, who shares her personal journey from health struggles to transformation. Together, we break down four simple, yet powerful, changes you can make right now to feel your best this year. 

·         Cut back on processed foods – Learn how small swaps in your grocery cart can lead to better digestion, more energy, and improved long-term health.

·         Balance your blood sugar – Discover why pairing carbs with protein and healthy fats can help you avoid energy crashes and weight gain.

·         Move your body daily – No need for intense workouts—simple, joyful movement goes a long way in boosting both physical and mental well-being.

·         Manage stress effectively – Practical strategies like deep breathing and mindfulness can help you take control of stress before it takes a toll on your health.

Ryan doesn’t simply provide a list; she talks through how you can take steps to start on this path – no matter when you start. Her insights will leave you feeling inspired, not intimidated, and ready to take control of your health—one simple step at a time.

Listen to the full to the full episode now, and be ready to write down ALL of her suggestions!

You can connect with Ryan on Instagram @ https://www.instagram.com/ryathegirl/ or https://www.instagram.com/rya_eats 

Here’s to small shifts, big wins, and a healthier, happier you in 2025! 



Thank you for spending time with us today! We hope you enjoyed our conversation, related to something we said, and learned something new along the way.

Please give us a like and subscribe to our podcast, so you don't miss ANYTHING!

Follow us on all of our social media via linktr.ee/officiallyfenner!

A special thanks goes to @yancylott for producing, editing, and creating the music for our podcasts!
xo,
Robin & Rudy


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Robin Fenner:

Welcome to Agile A lways by Officially Fenner. Today Rudy and I are talking about the power of four simple shifts you can make for a healthier you in 2025. We're helping everyone to thrive. Thriving in 2025 is a title everybody's using, but we're not using it just for January and February. We're going to use it all year long.

Rudy Fenner:

We're talking about taking back 2025.

Robin Fenner:

We want you to thrive the entire year and beyond. So, but today we're excited because we have a guest with us, Ryan Adkins. We're going to tell you a little bit more about her in just a few moments. But we do know that this time of the year can feel like a fresh start for so many of us, and it's a time when we look back on our habits and think about how we can feel and be our best in the months ahead. So today we're here to talk about the top things you can focus on for a healthier lifestyle, and this is not from a place of judgment, but from a place of empowerment. So this is what you are choosing to do. It's not what someone is saying. Here's what you should do. We're saying, kind of, here are things you can do to help yourself, but we want you to feel like this is something that YOU can take on and you're doing it for you.

Robin Fenner:

So this episode is about finding ways to feel your body and feel great. So, as I mentioned, we're thrilled to have Ryan Atkins with us. She is a family friend. She and our daughter worked together some time ago and she has been so gracious to join us today, she is certified in holistic nutrition and nutritional health coaching, and you became certified in holistic this area through AFPA, american Fitness Professionals and Associates Ryan, back in 2020, you said yes, and you've been doing this as working as a nutritional health coach over the last several years. So tell us how did you get into this? What made you go down this path?

Ryan Adkins:

So I feel like there were a few paths that led me to, you know, a certain fork in the road. One path was I was always that girl on a diet. I was never too, you know, never too big, but always a little chubby and always trying to lose weight, did gain a lot of weight and I guess I could just never lose the weight. I did all the things that you know people on Instagram or the fitness community said to do and it wasn't working for me and it it was really disheartening for you know me to not be able to improve myself. And then. So that was one path. And then another path was that my mom's her digestion stopped working in her early thirties. Um, she, she went, she like she lost a whole bunch of weight really fast, a whole bunch of hair, and so she started going to the doctors and nobody knew what was wrong with her. They just told her that her digestive tract stopped working. She saw 13 different specialists, she even went to John Hopkins university and nobody could figure out why her digestive tract stopped working. But essentially she could not have bowel movements without medication and they told she even went to John Hopkins University and nobody could figure out why her digestive tract stopped working, but essentially she could not have bowel movements without medication, and they told her that she would have to have medication for the rest of her life to just even have a bowel movement. And so as I got older, closer to my 30s, I started experiencing digestive issues and I was afraid you know that I was going to end up like my mom and not be able to have bowel movements anymore without medication. And so this was going on, and then, right around, it was around, I want to say 2016. No, it was probably the year before my husband's father's cancer came back and he had been doing so well for so long and it came back with vengeance. And he had been doing so well for so long and it came back with vengeance and within like six months, we lost him.

Ryan Adkins:

And during that time, that's when me and my husband really started digging into health and wellness. Like, what is causing cancer? Why is everybody getting cancer? Why is it at an all time high? Every single year, it just gets worse, and so that's when we started digging into the foods that we're eating, the things that we're putting on our body or in our body. I think that's when we gave up fast food. That's when we cut back on pharmaceutical drugs. We stopped. My husband stopped smoking cold turkey I was never a smoker and I never liked that he was but gave it up Cold turkey, cold turkey. We stopped eating out at fast food restaurants.

Ryan Adkins:

So we we started making these changes and that's when I really started digging in to how to support my health, and I believe it was um at the end of 2017 that I was like, instead of trying to focus on losing weight, which has always been my goal, I was like maybe I need to shift things to focus on being healthy instead, and my thought was if I'm healthy, I'll most likely be at a healthier weight as well. So that's when I started really digging into nutrition and I made a couple of diet changes and immediately saw results within a month just diet change. I wasn't even working out or nothing. A month in, I lost 10 pounds. I hadn't been working out or nothing. A month in I lost 10 pounds. I hadn't been able to lose.

Ryan Adkins:

I think the year before, I lost six pounds in six months. So 10 pounds in one month. My energy levels, my digestive issues had gone away. I felt amazing and I became obsessed. Obsessed Anything I could read or watch or listen to about nutrition. Obsessed Anything I could read or watch or listen to about nutrition. I did for like the next three or four years. That's all, that's all I focused on, and so I felt amazing. I ended up losing like 50 pounds. All my digestive issues went away, my energy levels, like I felt like a kid again. I felt like I could run around and hang out with the kids. I felt amazing, and so I really wanted to share this. I want other people to feel the way that I felt after just just changing my diet. That's all I did was change my diet.

Robin Fenner:

I, I love that story. I'm sorry for the father-in-law's loss and and all that, but I I'm just amazed, just I mean, I just listened to what you're saying and it really resonates with me, with us, I think, and I think for a lot of other people too. Just knowing those kinds of things, and when you had that, those issues, you just started digging to find out what kinds of things you could change to make a difference. You did it and and uh, now you're here to share it with everyone else.

Robin Fenner:

I'm thinking out loud, as I'm talking to you actually, but yeah, okay.

Rudy Fenner:

So first of all, my head's exploding. It's so much that just happened here. Let me just let me let me go back and just touch a couple things that you hit. That just kind of blew me away. So let me ask you this, I think from a father, brother, husband, boyfriend, son perspective, what do you think caused you to feel so? It almost sounds like I want to be careful, mildly obsessed with the diet thing. Why did we make you, why did people make you feel like that back at the beginning?

Ryan Adkins:

Before I got into nutrition.

Rudy Fenner:

Yeah, so. So so you were talking about that's one of the things that you were always on a diet. So I think there's things that we are unaware of that we do in our behavior that takes you guys to these places. Yes.

Ryan Adkins:

Yes, you know, I felt like I grew up in the 90s. Kelly's only a few years older than me, so I feel like she can relate, and I'm sure that you guys can relate from this. But you know, the 90s was skinny, skinny women.

Rudy Fenner:

That's all we saw.

Ryan Adkins:

And women. You know we've been told for so long that we had to be skinny or we weren't pretty if we weren't skinny. It's funny seeing like memes from the early 2000s of that show, Americans Next Top Model, with Tyra Banks being like oh, you're overweight or you're a plus size model, and the girl was like skinnier than me. So I'm like this is where I grew up, this is what I grew up seeing and I feel like probably my mother's generation, you guys' generation, you guys probably had the start of that and we got the end of it.

Rudy Fenner:

Yeah, yeah, I think that was that a lot, and I do think, if I'm thinking along those lines, we there was so much messaging that I think we were oblivious to we don't even know. We were burning down villages and never even noticed a small fire. You know what I mean right and and now, thank goodness, there's been more communication where, where women have become bolder about saying that's jacked up, okay, and and catching us in that insanity.

Rudy Fenner:

Um, that I was just curious about that. The other thing was this you said, you said, when you first started to make those changes, the first changes that you made out of the gate nutritionally do you remember what any of those were?

Ryan Adkins:

So at first I gave up gluten. Well, I try to give up as much processed food, but that's it's kind of hard to do. But I gave up gluten at first because I had a feeling that my mom might be sensitive with all of her issues. But I didn't really like dive deep in. I was just I just gave up gluten. And after a month of giving it up I went to a friend's house for dinner and she had Hawaiian rolls. You know I couldn't pass up on a Hawaiian roll. I had one and it wrecked my stomach to the point where I had to leave the dinner early. I had to go home with like the most upset stomach ever, like I don't want to go into too much details of it, but it was like no.

Ryan Adkins:

I can't be in public if this is what gluten does to me. I waited a week and then I tried it again and it did it again. So I knew like I must have some sensitivity to it. My body does not like processing this, but I still didn't feel that great just giving up gluten. So then the next month I made some, a few more changes to my diet, and that's when it really set off for me yes, so so the thing, the reason I caught my ear is you.

Rudy Fenner:

You, I think a lot of just right out of the gate that you've said a lot of what you are saying is surrounded by grace and the way you just described, just taking a single item and focusing on that item. That's allowing yourself to enter into this new, this off-r, if you will, but with grace, because we can focus on one thing and we can take that one thing out and just what you described. It's a tremendous impact that that one thing has. Right, that's, that's pretty, that's pretty, that's pretty fascinating. Yeah, that's, that's yeah.

Robin Fenner:

Well, yeah, so that that is, I mean, the gluten-free diet. A lot of people are sensitive to gluten and they find out these things later. And you know, it's so interesting because you talk about what happened in our generation. I don't remember as much of that. The fat shaming, skinny thing may have started then, but when you think about the food, the food then didn't seem to be the same as the food now.

Ryan Adkins:

So a hundred percent yeah.

Robin Fenner:

And I feel like food has changed. I hate to say it, but I think.

Ryan Adkins:

No, it's true. Yeah, a lot of the food that you see today wasn't even around a hundred years ago, and a lot of the chemicals within our foods weren't even around 70 years ago. Right so how are our bodies able to process this stuff it's never been exposed to before?

Robin Fenner:

Right, exactly, it's probably not supposed to process it either. So that kind of takes us to some of the things, the four things I think that you were talking about, that you kind of focus on, and one thing was the unprocessed food diet. So can you tell us about that a little bit? How can we shift to that? What does that mean?

Ryan Adkins:

Yes. So the American diet today, which a lot of people call the sad diet, the standard American diet, it is mainly processed foods and I think, statistically, americans, their diet consists 60% of processed foods. So we're not even eating that much real foods. We're eating primarily fake, manmade foods that are full of sugar and sometimes these ingredients that I don't even know what they are or know how to pronounce them, and yet I'm eating them and putting them into my body.

Ryan Adkins:

These are the things that are really causing issues for our health, and when things are processed they lose a lot of the nutrients that are naturally originally within them. So when we process foods, we lose those nutrients. So if our diet is primarily processed foods, we're not really nourishing our body with the nutrients it needs to function optimally. So having a diet that focuses primarily on whole, unprocessed foods, you know that's going to consist of fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, animal products, healthy fats you know those foods that don't really have a nutritional label on them. They don't tell you what's inside of them because there's nothing else, it's unprocessed. I love to say think about the food that God made us on the earth.

Ryan Adkins:

He made these foods for a reason. Food is our medicine. It helps. Food is either energy or medicine. That's what it is. That's the main purpose that we eat food. And so when we start digging into the foods that man created, those are the foods that are really harming us.

Ryan Adkins:

Yeah, so I can say, cause it's. You know, it's not possible to give it up a hundred percent. I mean, you can try, it's a little hard, but we have to live a little. So I always say doing like an 80-20 rule where 80% of the time you're primarily eating whole foods fruits, vegetables, meats, healthy fats and then every once in a while we have to live a little. We can go out, have a little something little processed foods. It's not the primary base of our diet, but it's okay to have and I hate to say in moderation, because I feel like we've used that too much. People think in moderation means all the time. Yeah, exactly, every once in a while it's okay. But trying to focus primarily on whole foods is going to be should be the baseline to any diet that's out there.

Robin Fenner:

Yeah, and one thing you said that I know, I've heard, and that was things you can't pronounce. So when you have goods and box things and what they tell you, what I've heard is you know, when you're shopping in the grocery store, make sure you're shopping the perimeter more yes and so you'll find those fresh items. You'll find, you know, pure processed items there. Uh, without words I can't even pronounce.

Ryan Adkins:

So yeah, but right look for those in the packaging right and those and those chemicals weren't around a hundred years ago. Yeah, like, look at our, our grandparents and how they're you know, they lived up to 90s, to 100. They're saying now that the newer generation is not going to outlive their parents. How crazy is that?

Rudy Fenner:

we're seeing it because there's a story almost every day about the wider number of young people diagnosed with different diseases and different ailments and then diseases are getting younger and younger you said something to you, said a lot that caught my attention. Diseases are getting younger and younger. Yeah, yeah, you said something to you, said a lot that caught my attention. I wrote down so many things Slow down, buddy, slow down I am. I was walking through in my mind when you mentioned the processed food.

Ryan Adkins:

And.

Rudy Fenner:

I believe part of you're actually so much that you're saying is confirming what my heart has said I don't even know if I've articulated it in some cases before, because in my, in my mind, if I ever have the time I'm going to, I want to write a book about nutrition and it would be entitled the Cost of Convenience, because I believe that, ultimately, we have allowed our lives to be overtaken by activity and the activity has overtaken time for preparation for anything, so everything has to be instantly ready, and when that?

Ryan Adkins:

comes to food, the when that comes to food.

Rudy Fenner:

The only way that happens is through a drive-thru or microwave, and all of those things require some level of processing and and and I think what you're saying is right you, you, you and I and I. I'm sorry, I can't remember if it was before we actually turned the recording on or not. You mentioned or you said something that just blew my mind that tied back to the convenience. It was. Oh the grace Because I think it is if we meet people where they are just like you do many of us.

Rudy Fenner:

You're right that 80-20 deal. You said 60%. I think there was some people like me that we were existing on 80% processed food. Easy, actually, and honestly it might even go higher. Uh and you're right to come from to to, to move from 80% to anything that's better is going to take some work, but it really takes planning, right? Yeah, and that's a question that I don't. I don't I mean with this. Let me just ask so for unprocessed food? I don't mean to stop, to stop you, robin with your questions, but with the unprocessed.

Rudy Fenner:

So if I'm to move from unprocessed to processed, what ideas or what encouragement would you give us for doing that? Because for some of us we are so microwave driven we don't have. There's some refrigerators with that one fresh thing in it and we're trying to figure out how to? How do we move into that space?

Ryan Adkins:

Right? Well, I always tell, when I coach people, I usually give them a. I call it a healthy meal. It just it shows like how your half your plate should be primarily vegetables, and then you want to include healthy fats and a protein in every meal, and then it has a food list on there and I usually tell them to go through and highlight their favorite foods.

Ryan Adkins:

So you guys make a list of some of your favorite fruits and vegetables that you you know you like and you know that you're going to eat, and then, when you are trying to make up some meals, look at those first. How can I include a fruit? Or how can I include a vegetable and a meat and a healthy fat? That's my dinner right there and it's going to take some time. I felt like for me before changing my diet. I was not a huge veggie eater. I ate green beans and corn and potatoes. I think that's pretty American of me and that was about it.

Ryan Adkins:

I did not like a lot of vegetables I would not eat. I would be that person who would pick them all out. I'll pick all the onions out, or whatever it was. And then, as I changed my diet, my palate started to change and I would become curious. Literally I would be at someone's house and he was cutting onions and I've never in my life had liked onions before and I became curious. I was like you know what? I kind of want to try them and ever since then I love onions and I eat them all the time to include more whole foods and less processed foods, because with the processed foods they're also highly sugary and that dilutes our palates to where fruit and vegetables don't even taste good anymore to us because they're not as sweet as the processed food that we're eating.

Ryan Adkins:

So you kind of have to do that switch over, and it kind of does take time, but I always what I like to do for me that makes it easier is I'm either meal prepping I love meal prepping, especially my lunches for work or I'll do a meal prep I used to have a name for it, but it's not quite 100% making the entire meal, but I'll prep the ingredients for things so like maybe I'll have stuff for a salad, all the stuff's chopped up and in containers, and then all I have to do is just grab a bowl, grab some lettuce, grab things I've already chopped up, grab the chicken I already cooked and throw it in.

Ryan Adkins:

So having some things like chicken or some veggies already pre-cooked and just chilling in your fridge can sometimes be a quick, easy way to way to. You know, let me just whip out dinner, let me just whip out a lunch real quick. There's already fridge and there's already chicken in the fridge, I can just pull it out. So sometimes pick it a day and just make it a whole bunch of something that's a great idea alleviate.

Robin Fenner:

I saw someone on social media one day and they had. They had a lot of kids, I think maybe 10, 12 kids, and they had this whole like a commercial refrigerator drawer or something. But they had everything prepped like that and they could easily make all the food. That's a great idea. I really want to try that. I haven't gotten to that point.

Ryan Adkins:

It does take time. You have to like schedule that.

Robin Fenner:

But yeah, yeah, yeah, and I guess I've gotten to the point where I'm not I'll make a salad every night, just because I don't have to cook it, I don't have to think about it ahead of time and I don't have to thaw anything out. So there's that.

Rudy Fenner:

But that's tremendous value in what you're saying, orion, because I'm telling you I will eat, absolutely perfect, but if my schedule gets into, a jam.

Rudy Fenner:

I will reach into somebody else's freezer, grab one of their frozen White Castle burgers out of the freezer and I will eat it like it is the greatest burger in the world, and that is. I will revert back to those habits. If I don't have the path and I'm, you know I tell Robin every now and then she will. Robin can eat a leaf and she'll say, oh, that was wonderful. And I'm looking at her like what in the world? I am a very active person and I eat. I need to have calories in. It just doesn't work, and so I have to plan what that is going to be, because it will go south in a second. You made such a good point earlier. Uh, to live a little and go back to those things I can not have.

Rudy Fenner:

I can not have a burger for six months, but it's six months in one day. If you take me past the right burger place, it's got the right quality of beef for me. I'm all in and I'm going to enjoy it. And I will revert back to those habits if I don't plan and if I don't put the right things in every day. Um, you said something too I wanted to you. You gosh, I want to say something real quick yes, kind of like what you're saying right now.

Ryan Adkins:

Um, I think one thing that people do when they are trying new habits or trying new diets is they'll try really, really hard and be 100% all week long and then something comes up and they eat a burger and then they feel like they failed and then they just oh, I ruined it, I'm quitting. I'm not going to keep doing this. What I like to say is you can try again tomorrow.

Rudy Fenner:

Yes, yes, yes it's okay.

Ryan Adkins:

It's okay that today your schedule you know this happened, that happened and you couldn't do what you wanted to do and you didn't get to eat the foods that you wanted to eat, and this is the only option. It's okay. You have tomorrow. You can just do better tomorrow.

Robin Fenner:

Yes, that's what I say about so much. Tomorrow is another day to get it right, so yeah.

Rudy Fenner:

Yeah, exactly, you said you mentioned sugar earlier and I am. I don't know how to connect these things to I used to. I there was a time in my life where I thought a lot of things were oriented to regions, oriented to race oriented, oriented to gender, and I've the more I grow, the more I find out. Actually. No, that's a problem for a lot, a lot bigger audience than you're trying to say. So I, I spent, I think, most of my adult male life as a pre-diabetic. My, my glucose was always three digits.

Rudy Fenner:

It just never came below it and I, I learned to live with that. And it was kind of ridiculous to to live with it when I really think about it, like, but that was dumb, but anyway, um, I, I started to change my, or at least think about changing taste and we went to a uh, a plant-based uh restaurant and it was one of the honestly from where I was nutritionally at the time.

Rudy Fenner:

It was like having a plate of wood. I just I was almost like, oh my gosh, this is a fail. This is not this is going to be disastrous, but what he taught me one of the guys that was there. He taught me something and I pulled it up real quick on the internet because it's scientifically supported. Taste bud sales undergo continual turnover, even through adulthood, and their average lifespan has been estimated as approximately 10 days. Taste bud sales undergo continual turnover even through adulthood and their average lifespan has been estimated as approximately 10 days, and that time you can actually retain your, retrain your taste buds to crave less refined foods and to really appreciate the vivacity of plant-based foods. Now I said that to say every day at two o'clock I am mocked by people at work because I have a cup and a third of grapes and blueberries.

Rudy Fenner:

And you would think I am eating the most delicious, scrumptious food of all time my taste has been. It has beat down the sugar demand so much until that is so bursting with flavor. Sugar demands so much until that is so bursting with flavor. And what I do is the season. As the seasons change and the fruit isn't as good, I'll take dried blueberries and mix them in as well, so that gives my blueberries an extra little kick.

Ryan Adkins:

And and everything tastes.

Rudy Fenner:

But but that's just to say. There are people who know me, who listen to me, say things like that and say, my gosh, he's an alien. That's not the same guy. He is not, that is not. But it's understanding that and being patient the grace that you mentioned and then knowing the science behind things like that and giving myself a chance to change.

Rudy Fenner:

And it just dramatically changed all that to a place that, if it's something really sweet now, if I drank, if I had a coca-cola now, I would taste it and you'd see my face get a little weird because it's like the sugar is in the forehead.

Robin Fenner:

It's like a baseball bat in the head it is, it is, that's how it happens that's amazing, amazing that kind of leads us into keeping the blood sugar balance and that was another one of your principles. So tell us, like I, I guess you kind of started a little bit about it, but tell us what you recommend. What do you say about doing that?

Ryan Adkins:

Yes. So blood sugar is actually my favorite topic. I love talking about blood sugar. Anytime I hear anybody say, oh, I have diabetes or I have diabetes, I'm like, please come and see me. I love talking about this. I can we can literally have a whole podcast just talking about blood sugar. But it is the baseline to our health and our everyday health. So I love it because it is so simple to control.

Ryan Adkins:

But we are not taught anything about blood sugar. Pretty much the only time you ever hear about blood sugar is you go to the doctor. They check your blood and they're like oh, your blood sugar levels are a little too high, you're pre-diabetic or you're diabetic, and they don't really tell you. You know ways to keep it balanced with the way that you eat they. If it's too high, they just prescribe you, you know, metformin or something. So they don't like with.

Ryan Adkins:

With blood sugar, you can change your blood sugar every time you eat, every meal. You can change your blood sugar every time you eat, every meal. You can change your blood sugar and it's, I feel, like the baseline to optimal health. If you could be doing all the other things, but if your blood sugar is not where it should be, it's still going to create inflammation in your body, it's still going to create free radicals in your body and it's still going to put you in a fat I mean a fat storing zone rather than a fat burning zone.

Ryan Adkins:

And I find, like a lot of people who are trying to lose weight, I think that's a big topic for a lot of people is weight loss, and now we have these shots and pills that are making people lose weight really fast and I don't think it's quite the healthiest sometimes, but we're just we're not taught that if your blood sugar is balanced, that you will have an easier time losing weight. And I think that's the issue for a lot of people who are trying to lose weight. They don't know that they have to have their blood sugar in balance and if it's not, they physically cannot lose weight when your blood sugar is out of balance. But it's it's so important to like our energy level throughout the day. Have you guys ever, four o'clock in the afternoon, felt like you needed a nap?

Robin Fenner:

crash time. Yeah, yeah, that's my sugar right, so let me or yeah, keep going I was gonna ask you this question. You talked about being able to change it every time you eat. Is it by counting like grams of sugar you're taking in a meal, or how do you do that when you mention changing it whenever you? Yes?

Ryan Adkins:

okay, so the food that we eat we blood sugar is from what we eat. Of course, we eat primarily protein, fat and carbs. That's what all of our food is made out of. Protein and fat do not affect our blood sugar at all. Um, fat has been shown to actually lower blood sugar, but carbs are the only thing that can affect our blood sugar. And when I I? I like to say it this way, because usually people when they think about blood sugar, they think about sugar and they think about sweets and treats. Um, when any carb can actually spike your blood sugar, so a carb is going to be fruit, vegetables, anything made out of grains. Those are all carbs. Every single carb digest into sugar in our body. So even eating something healthy like a banana could still spike your blood sugar.

Ryan Adkins:

If you don't know how to keep it balanced, the best way to balance carbs is to eat it with protein and fat. I always say never eat a carb by itself. Make sure there's always protein and fat in there to help keep a balance. And this is because protein and fat take longer for our body to break down. This is because our body uses more of it, so it slows down the breakdown of carbs into sugar and it doesn't get dumped all into our bloodstream at the same time. So always make sure that's like my number one rule. I have a whole bunch of hacks for blood sugar, but my number one is always make sure that's like my number one rule. I have a whole bunch of hacks for blood sugar, but my number one is always make sure there's protein and fat when you eat carbs, like if you I never heard that before, but that's really great to know.

Robin Fenner:

Oh my gosh Right yeah.

Ryan Adkins:

So like you go to Olive Garden and you get a pasta and this bowl is ginormous. It's a huge bowl of pasta that is going to cause a huge blood sugar spike, but you could still eat pasta if you knew how to hack it right for your blood sugar. So if you were to eat a salad before your pasta oh, fun fact, fiber, which is going to be in most vegetables and fruit, block the absorption of sugar. Block the absorption of sugar. So if you were to eat something which there are these new studies that have been coming out this past year on the order in which we eat food If you eat your carbs and your sugary foods first, they're going to break down, they're going to get absorbed into your bloodstream first.

Ryan Adkins:

If you eat the protein or vegetables first, then the carb lasts. That carb doesn't get all, it breaks down slower and all that sugar doesn't get dumped into our bloodstream. So if you were to, you wanted pasta or you wanted pizza for dinner and if you had a salad before dinner, that's going to be fiber and vegetables, um, and then ate your pizza or your pasta second and you had a much smaller portion. You're not going to create such a imbalance in your blood sugar levels that way.

Robin Fenner:

Wow.

Ryan Adkins:

I never heard that, I never heard it before.

Rudy Fenner:

We got to write this down.

Ryan Adkins:

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Yes, the sequence. So, um, in the studies they show that eating fiber or vegetables which is where you get your fiber from eating fiber first, protein second and then carbs last, has a smaller glucose spike than eating carbs first, then protein and fat, fat I mean protein and fiber. They've even combined some things in the studies, so they've done like you eat your protein and fiber together and then you eat your carb loss still showed a lower glucose spike. So eating the carb first just creates that huge glucose spike, but then eating the fiber and the protein first reduces that glucose spike.

Rudy Fenner:

Now for the slow people in the class. I want to really be careful. When you say fiber, tell me specifically what are you thinking when you say fiber?

Ryan Adkins:

So fiber like fibrous foods are going to be anything green, leafy greens, cruciferous vegetables so broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, brussel sprouts any of those Fruits like berries are also very high in fiber. Avocados are great fiber sources. Nuts and seeds things like flax seed or chia seeds those are also great fiber sources. Artichoke you can look through some processed foods like pasta or breads. Sometimes they add back in fiber or you can buy fiber supplements. I don't really recommend fiber supplements because I think they're nasty, so I just try to get them from food. They're gross. I don't like it. I'm not going to do it. Yeah.

Robin Fenner:

I get it Totally yeah.

Rudy Fenner:

So the crazy part about what you're saying, ryan, in my mind is blown now, because this is the sequence that I eat, but the reason I did it. I had no idea what you just said. I ate it because I noticed I ate less and fewer of the carbs. If I was sort of kind, of everything else from the salad.

Rudy Fenner:

Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah, I did it to eat less of the and so that is interesting because, um, my glucose I've been the thing about this is so this is going to sound so strange when I say it. I say all the time when you're diagnosed with a disease like cancer, you become a member of the Health and Wellness Witness Protection Program. As a result, they are scanning, testing, checking, scanning, testing, checking, and it never ends.

Rudy Fenner:

So I have data and readouts at a highly more available rate than the average person. I've been able to monitor closely glucose through blood tests, through their monitoring, for almost two years now where my glucose was at one time 120, 115, 115, 110, 115. It now the last. My blood test. Just a week or so ago it was 83. Yes, it was 83. Yes, it was 83 from 80. It had been 80.

Rudy Fenner:

And so it stays in those areas and that is a lot that I'm saying time because I have the results from what you described, without even knowing the reason, the reasons that you described it, for I've done that and I have seen I have absolutely seen those results and I believe that that 83 glucose has triggered a number of other positive effects on my health and everything about my being.

Ryan Adkins:

I love that. I mean I could. I love going into, like how our blood sugar works, the process of it, telling people these things, because I mean, most people don't know but when I explain it to them it's like mind blowing a little bit that this is the process, this is why my body storing fat this way, and so I I just love talking about blood sugar, like I can keep going if you want me to.

Robin Fenner:

Well, you know what? We'll dive into that, perhaps again, because there is so much to but wait.

Rudy Fenner:

I did have one thing. So before you leave this topic, let me just ask this what do you find is the thing that most of us, beyond what we've already said? Is there anything else that most of us you find don't know? About this glucose process about sugar and processing in our bodies.

Ryan Adkins:

Right. So I mean there's a lot. There's a lot of things that most people don't know about sugar and how it affects our body. Most people don't know about sugar and how it affects our body. With our glucose levels we have that range that our body has to be in at all times, and if we are outside that range, sugar is literally toxic to our bodies and our body turns off other processes to process that sugar away somewhere else in our body to keep us safe. So most people don't know how toxic sugar is.

Ryan Adkins:

There is no need for sugar like granulated sugar. There's no need for sugar in our diet whatsoever. We get enough sugar from fruits and vegetables that we should not be eating so much sugar. And one thing that I think nobody knows not a lot of people know and this one's a big one is that when we consume sugar and we create these blood sugar spikes, it turns off our immune system for up to five hours. So a lot of people say that you know the fall we always call the fall flu season, but a lot of health professionals call the fall sugar season. A lot of health professionals call the fall sugar season where you have Halloween, we have Thanksgiving, we have Christmas. We have lots of sweet treats this time of year. This is the time of year we get more sick.

Robin Fenner:

Wow, I'd never heard that. This is amazing.

Ryan Adkins:

And then one final thing that I love telling people and I kind of mentioned weight loss a little bit but when we have unbalanced blood sugar and we have high blood sugar over that healthy range, our body literally turns our ability to burn fat off when we have high sugar in our blood. So if you are trying to lose weight but you are constantly spiking your blood sugar, that ability gets turned off. And that's all based on our blood sugar levels. Even our energy, our brains function. Our brains are very sensitive to our blood sugar levels. So when we have too low blood sugar levels, that's usually when we become hangry, irritable, mood swingy. We can't focus or concentrate on our work.

Robin Fenner:

So it affects a lot of different aspects of our health and then what people do is grab the closest thing to them, which is something that's processed and probably has sugar in it.

Ryan Adkins:

You, know they're hangry and it's like, just give me something, yeah, yeah, so that's not helping and right. And what makes us hangry? When we have low blood sugar, our body releases a hormone known as cortisol, which is our stress hormone. So when you're stressed, your cortisol levels rise. If you have unbalanced blood sugar, your cortisol levels rise. So you're unintentionally raising your stress levels in your body. And cortisol one of its jobs is it makes us crave sugar and carbs carbs.

Rudy Fenner:

Yeah, okay, okay, I'm sorry, just one more, one more. So one thing I just realized that I'm I'm hoping for confirmation or clarification from you. I remember I mentioned to someone recently about eating fruit and I said you to eat more grapes and their response was well, I'm worried about the sugar in grapes. And I said nah, hang on a second. Um, help us understand that that is it is it. Are there occurrences where we have so much fruit until it negatively affects that glucose?

Rudy Fenner:

uh, just that whole thing. Tell me a little bit about that, I'm sorry yes.

Ryan Adkins:

So, um, I mean, too much of anything could be harmful. But, um, I recently listened to a podcast with, uh, this doctor her name's um, oh man stacy means, I believe and she she was the one who created the, the continuing glucose monitor, called levels, which is for people who don't have diabetes. They just are curious about their glucose. Um, and she said that one of the most the number one surprising food that spikes people blood sugar is grapes, and that's because I mean it does have a lot of sugar in it, um, and usually do eat grapes by themselves for the most part. So fruit and vegetables can still cause blood sugar spikes if we don't pair them with protein and fat.

Ryan Adkins:

But there are some fruits and vegetables that are lower on the glycemic level and have more fiber. So anything green is usually pretty low in sugar and higher in fiber. So I say greens, eat green as much as you want. And then berries, so strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, those are all very low actually on the glucose level, on their sugar levels, and they're high in fiber, so that fiber helps to block the sugar from the fruit. The same with citrus. So when you're eating fruit in its whole state, you're also getting that fiber which is going to block the sugar from the fruit. The same with citrus. So when you're eating fruit in its whole state, you're also getting that fiber which is going to block some of the sugar.

Ryan Adkins:

When we extract, like orange juice, they extracted the fruit juice, so there's no more fiber anymore. That's going to cause an even bigger glucose spike because we're missing the rest of the fruit which was properly made. You know a way to support our health, but you could still eat, you know all of it. I would say you know, add some nuts with it and then it wouldn't spike your blood sugar as bad. And then fruit is stored a little bit differently in our body than regular glucose. That's why a lot of animals eat a lot of fruit in the winter, because sometimes it can be stored straight as fats if we do consume too much of it. But I mean, fruit is the best option. Like you want something sweet, eat some fruit.

Robin Fenner:

Right right.

Ryan Adkins:

You're going to get other nutrients and phytonutrients from fruit.

Robin Fenner:

Fruit over cookies. Yes, well, you know cookies actually kind of a weakness I have a little bit, just because they're so easy to kind of just pick up. It's not like a slice of cake or something like that.

Ryan Adkins:

So well, I could tell you how to eat a cookie and it not spike your blood sugar.

Robin Fenner:

Okay, go.

Ryan Adkins:

So that order I was talking about earlier, about eating protein and fat first before your carbs. You can do this with your sweets. I say save them for dessert. So if you had a meal and your meal had protein and fat and fiber and then after that meal you ate a cookie or some M&Ms, it's not going to create such a big glucose spike as it would if you just ate them on an empty stomach as a snack.

Robin Fenner:

Got it.

Ryan Adkins:

Okay.

Robin Fenner:

That's good. That's good to know. I try to be careful.

Ryan Adkins:

But you still have your treats. Yeah, just save them, yeah.

Robin Fenner:

Try to be careful with them, but it's good to know I can be even more careful. Oh, that's good, all right, so I know there were two other parts of this piece that we were hoping to touch on before we let you go. This has been. This is fantastic, by the way, I just I'm sitting here, like I said, we're taking notes, so if we're quiet for a moment, it's because we're writing things down, not because we can't think of what to say next.

Robin Fenner:

But, this is such excellent, excellent information. Two other things that you mentioned that are part of your top four. They're different from the foods you talked about incorporating daily movement. Now, that's right up, kind of like Rudy's Alley, Mine too actually.

Ryan Adkins:

But tell us what your recommendations are about that. So one, we were just talking about sorry, sorry about that. We were talking about sorry, sorry about that. We were talking about blood sugar. So our muscles use the most of our blood sugar, so incorporating daily movement helps to keep our blood sugar more balanced. Also, when we have more muscle, we can utilize sugar much easier and better than people with less muscle. So just getting in some kind of movement is going to be great for your blood sugar Also. Hey, baby bear, sorry you guys.

Robin Fenner:

No, that's okay. We've got little ones too, so it's just fine.

Ryan Adkins:

Give me a few more minutes, okay? Here there's gummies on the table. Go get them. Go get those gummies. Can I open them? I'll open them for you.

Robin Fenner:

Okay.

Ryan Adkins:

So, including daily movement, and what I like to say we don't use it, we lose it, and we need to be able to move, and this is why I love working out today is so that in the future, I can still be able to sit up off of a chair or off of a toilet or be able to pick up my grandkids. But you don't have to. For optimal health, you don't have to be doing weightlifting or going to the gym, including, you know, start small Going for a walk every single day. I love walking and I think walking is very underrated. Walk has tremendous health benefits. So going for a 20 to 30 minute walk every day can have great health improvements, if that's the only thing you even did. So I say it doesn't matter what kind of movement you do, just move somehow every day.

Robin Fenner:

Good, good, okay, that walking is easy doesn't require any equipment, just good shoes. And I always say start small yeah.

Ryan Adkins:

When, what? After having a baby, you know, I wanted to get back into working out, but I did not have that motivation to do so, and so I just started with like 20 minute walks in the morning, and then it eventually led to longer walks and then I felt like I could do more at one point, like I feel like I can do something else now. I've been walking every day, so I started doing yoga and then eventually I worked my way back to going to the gym. But start small, do little things. What can you incorporate into your life that are easy? After dinner walks Great.

Robin Fenner:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, that's really good. And walking with a friend, you know, and before you know it, you're doing that, you're engaging with someone else and you don't feel like you're you know working out. Or or you're not distressed if you don't like working out, for example, you know right, right or? You're not used to it, you're just kind of it's an excellent way to start. You're absolutely right about that.

Ryan Adkins:

There's so many and any. I say I consider any kind of movement. You know that could be playing with your kids in the backyard or dancing in the living room. We have dance parties every night, so move your body somehow yeah, good, that's, that's how I try to do dance parties.

Robin Fenner:

Sometimes they don't always work out, but yeah, but we but we move, so that's a good thing. Um, okay, and then you mentioned managing stress, which is, yes, a biggie, a big one this was a tough one too.

Ryan Adkins:

So they're calling stress the new cigarettes. Stress is killing us and it is creating disease within us. But that's it's saying. Managing your stress is much easier said than done. Right Ways to manage our stress. The obvious one would be to get rid of your stress, but that's not always possible because that stress can be coming from your job or your family. But finding ways to be able to manage your stress is going to help with your overall health.

Ryan Adkins:

Like I mentioned earlier, cortisol is our stress hormone. It makes us crave carbs and sugar. It also tells our body to store fat in our midsection. So that's why we see these beer bellies, these people with huge guts and all their fat's just right in the middle. That's cortisol. That's stress. It hinders a lot of our body's functions. It turns off a lot of our body's systems. When we are high stressed it turns off our reproduction system. It turns off our immune system. So having being under stress, a lot is going to affect the rest of our body.

Ryan Adkins:

So some ways that you can manage your stress. It could be exercise, like that is stress relieving. For some people it could be walking, doing something that's repetitive. But like it's repetitive, as in, you're not really thinking about it, like walking. That could also be great for people with stress.

Ryan Adkins:

Um, I love doing some kind of deep breathing. That is one of the easiest ways to get us out of stress. So when we are stressed, we are actually entering our fight or flight mode, um, which was handy when we were hunter gatherers, but today's world we don't. We don't really need it, uh, and everything stresses us out. We're constantly in this state. The best and fastest way to get us out of this state is by doing slow, deep breaths. That will switch us to our parasympathetic state, which is our repair mode. So when we're stressed, we're in this fight or flight. We want to get into our rest and repair mode. So, doing deep breathing and you don't have to do it for very long Studies show that just as little as three minutes of just doing some really slow, long, deep breaths can support mental health and get you out of that stress state. Other things you could do I like to go outside and ground.

Ryan Adkins:

I put my feet on the grass, in the dirt, you know, touch my skin to the earth a little bit. I do it for like five minutes in the mornings. Yoga is a great way to also relieve stress Any kind of way you know. Maybe it's alone time. I found alone time for me. I need that sometimes as a mother. I think most mothers can agree. Give us a little bit of alone time, maybe a bath or something. Whatever way you can do to just calm the brain and release some of that stress is going to be helpful for your health.

Robin Fenner:

Yeah, yeah, that all sounds good, because there's just so much going on. It just seems like it's adding on and adding on, so I can see that being considered the new cigarettes and we need to address that, because we're looking at the whole body, the mind, the spirit, all those kinds of things and um, and definitely this is uh and yeah, and for stress too it's.

Ryan Adkins:

It's a lot of our minds, so our body, our body, doesn't know the difference between perceived stress and actual stress. So worrying, I feel like a lot of people worry a lot. Right, you are stressing your body out unnecessarily because you worrying that you might walk up onto a bear. Or are you actually walking up onto a bear? Our brain thinks, right, there, it's the same. We walked up onto a bear. We need to go into fight or flight mode. Yeah, so sometimes like trying to be more positive mindset, that can also be a huge supporting factor for our health yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, Okay.

Robin Fenner:

That's, that's there. Those are all all good and again, like I said, I'm I'm going I get we'll all have a chance to hear all this again because the podcast will be out. But these are all such good tips. I'm just making notes because I think that, um, there'll be wonderful to share with people who I know and all that. But so I want to ask you, as we get a little bit. So tell me, do you work with clients virtually? Tell me about how you, how you do that.

Ryan Adkins:

I do. I can do virtual one on ones with people I do the company I work through. It is a free service for the customers that shop with our company. So they come in, they just schedule appointments and I coach them or I help them shop. I also teach classes around my community on different topics. So, yeah I, I one day want to just do my own, you know, be out here coaching and teaching online. Yeah.

Robin Fenner:

That's my goal. Yeah, I'd love to have you here, our listeners. I don't think we mentioned earlier that you're in Oklahoma, but I'm like okay, how can we talk to her here? How can we get her here? Yeah?

Ryan Adkins:

I mean, I come to the East Coast all the time. I still have friends and family out there, oh good.

Robin Fenner:

I go to the East Coast all the time. I still have friends and family out there. Oh good, Well, maybe we'll be able to arrange something, Because one of the things that we want to do with what we're setting up now is to have some events and activities so people can get together. It's not always something that's online or whatever. Ooh.

Ryan Adkins:

I love that.

Robin Fenner:

Because we think community is really important. Yes, it is and everything is you know. So we want to bring people together periodically where we can, so we would. I would love to number one, connect with you when you come here. Number two, we'd love to have you back.

Robin Fenner:

If you don't mind to tell us more, because this is what you're telling us is such amazing, engaging, valuable information, and you tell it in a way that's very easy for people to get into follow, follow, understand and still, like I said, feel positive about yourself. You feel good, you don't feel like you're, you know, being kind of that. I can't do this you give us a starting point

Ryan Adkins:

And I absolutely love it and I feel like that's what's wrong with you know all the health and stuff on social media. It's like you can't eat this, you can't eat that, don't do that, and it's so confusing we don't know what to do.

Robin Fenner:

Yeah, yeah, but the way you present it, it's really something that I think almost anyone who wants to make a change can relate to, and I think that's terrific. Do you have anything else you want to add?

Rudy Fenner:

I'm just so sorry he's like I am, I'm talking, he's writing. He's talking, I'm writing but just to one thought that I had just so stuck when you talked about the stress and we talk about this at work and I've become the old dude back in the corner that lobs out these grenades to people every now and then and somebody was talking about something that we went down the path of.

Rudy Fenner:

uh, the fear of death is worse than death itself and that is that is applied in so many areas where we stress so incredibly over the moment and the moment almost never lives up to the stress right. And trying to understand that perspective and maintain that perspective can do so much to reduce the stress and anxiety. I'm noticing, especially now, in our current climate and in our world, so many of us are so excited and just overflowing with anxiety, yeah, things that, honestly, are highly unlikely to happen in the way that we dream.

Rudy Fenner:

It is a thing and it is a valid concern, but it is not quite what we've imagined, because we kind of all dream in color and it's kind of like whoa, I don't think it's going to happen quite like that, and so trying to tap down and I work around and live around a lot of people who are very emotionally charged, energetic, brilliant people, and that brilliance fuels their imaginations and fuels their excitement and thus the stress. So that is really. I think the nutrition that we talk about is really powerful and it's science-based fact. But that nutrition piece that you're talking about right there is gaining, gaining ground and it's gaining traction in terms of.

Rudy Fenner:

There is a scenario where I see where we will run into folks in the not too distant future that have nutrition perfect stress jacked up and it almost looks like a person that's nutritionally just void and right exactly to do nutrition.

Robin Fenner:

It's all about the stress, so that's it's true, okay, so, um, so, before we go, would you like to tell people how they can reach you if they have questions for you or want to, you know, get your advice, talk to you virtually or whatever, if they're not in Oklahoma and yeah, I mean they can follow me on Instagram and my personal one which I use the most, is Raya the girl.

Ryan Adkins:

It's Ryan without the N, so Raya the girl. And then I I do have one that was for nutrition After having a child. I haven't been doing it as much, but I my goal is to get back on it, and that one is called Raya Eats.

Robin Fenner:

Right, right, good, good, good, because I follow you on both, but I wanted everyone else to know as well. So, anyway, but this has been just an amazing conversation. I want to thank you so much for taking time today and really giving us food for thought, if you will, but it's really been good and we look forward to again, like I said, having you here with us having you again, if you don't mind, on the podcast. We'd love to have you come.

Ryan Adkins:

Yes, I would love to. I love talking about nutrition and we can get into more like topics yes, yes, so we can talk more about that.

Robin Fenner:

We were going to try to do gut health today, but I thought, oh, this is going on for some time. I thought we probably want to wrap it up and and give people something to look forward to. So we'll do that. So anyway, she's adorable. We love seeing her beautiful little girl thank you alright. Well, look, we're going to let you run. Thank you so much for being with us yes, and let's keep in touch. Let's do this again you have a wonderful rest of your weekend thank you, you guys officially.

Rudy Fenner:

Fina thanks you for joining us.

Robin Fenner:

Please subscribe and hit that like button.