The word “sugar” gets a bad rap—but not all sugar is unhealthy! In fact, your body breaks down all carbohydrates (not just the sweet ones) into glucose, a.k.a. blood sugar. In this episode Coach Allison discusses all things "blood sugar" with registered dietitian Catherine Staffieri (@cstaffieri_rd) from Nutrisense (@nutrisenseio). They also discuss how using a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) can be used as a weight and health tool--even if you don't have diabetes. Tune into learn how your diet, exercise routine, stress levels, and sleep patterns impact your blood sugar levels.
Thanks for listening, we hope you enjoyed it. Follow us for more tips, tricks, and support in our private Facebook Group, Boost Your Metabolism After Age 30.
Take our FREE quiz: What's Sabotaging Your Metabolism?
Follow us on Instagram @couture_fitness_coaching
Check at our website and blog.
Grab our free mini course - The REAL Reason you can't lose weight
Want to start boosting your metabolism today? Buy our $79 DIY, self-paced "Master Your Metabolism" course.
Want customized plan for boosting your metabolism? Learn more about our 1:1 coaching
Reserve your spot with a Couture Coach: Buy a 1:1 coaching package
The word “sugar” gets a bad rap—but not all sugar is unhealthy! In fact, your body breaks down all carbohydrates (not just the sweet ones) into glucose, a.k.a. blood sugar. In this episode Coach Allison discusses all things "blood sugar" with registered dietitian Catherine Staffieri (@cstaffieri_rd) from Nutrisense (@nutrisenseio). They also discuss how using a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) can be used as a weight and health tool--even if you don't have diabetes. Tune into learn how your diet, exercise routine, stress levels, and sleep patterns impact your blood sugar levels.
Thanks for listening, we hope you enjoyed it. Follow us for more tips, tricks, and support in our private Facebook Group, Boost Your Metabolism After Age 30.
Take our FREE quiz: What's Sabotaging Your Metabolism?
Follow us on Instagram @couture_fitness_coaching
Check at our website and blog.
Grab our free mini course - The REAL Reason you can't lose weight
Want to start boosting your metabolism today? Buy our $79 DIY, self-paced "Master Your Metabolism" course.
Want customized plan for boosting your metabolism? Learn more about our 1:1 coaching
Reserve your spot with a Couture Coach: Buy a 1:1 coaching package
Welcome everyone. Today you have just myself, allison, but I'm here with a special guest who I'm going to introduce in a minute. First, as always, I want to talk about how you can work with us at Couture Fitness A couple of different ways, and you can access these all from our website, couturefitnesscoachingcom. You can also email us info at couturefitnesscoachingcom, or also on Instagram, facebook, and you can find all of this down in the show notes as well. But we've got three main ways you can work with us. One we have a free course that you can sign up for from our website. If you feel like maybe your metabolism is just shot or it's working against you, that that's a great option to maybe figure out why you might be feeling that it's working against you. We also have a self-paced course. It's basically where we are teaching you kind of everything you need to know. You know, obviously to just get healthier in general, but also really if you feel like you need to do some work on your metabolism, it's everything you really need to know to do that on your own. Like I said, it's a self-paced course. It's all the information you would get if you were to work with us with our one-on-one coaching program, except you don't get a personal coach. And then our most high-touch program way to work with us is through our one-on-one coaching program and with that you are assigned a personal coach who checks in with you regularly. You get to join in on our calls and ask questions, like I said, very high-touch, very customized. So those are the three ways that you can work with us.
Speaker 1:I like to just get that out of the way right at the start, before we really get into the meat of this podcast. So today we're going to be talking about continuous glucose monitors. I know I feel like they've become very popular in recent years. I mean, it wasn't until probably three years ago or so that I had ever even heard of one, and now I'm hearing a lot about them. I know people who have tried them. So we're going to be talking all about those today. And I mentioned earlier, I have a guest here, catherine Staffieri. I hope I just said your last name right. So Catherine is with Nutrisense and she I'm going to just let her introduce herself, talk a little bit about what you do and then, if you want, you can also intro a bit about Nutrisense and your products. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me to talk about it today.
Speaker 2:I agree, cgms and continuous glucose monitors have definitely become more I guess a little bit more mainstream, I would say. A lot of people are just talking about them. More articles are being written, more people are talking about them. So I appreciate you giving me the chance to talk about it with your audience here today. And, as you said, I work for Nutrisense. I am a registered dietitian. I'm a nutrition manager for them. I've worked there for almost three years now.
Speaker 2:Nutrisense is a health tech startup in the wellness space and it's really a bundling of a CGM sensor, a proprietary app that we have built. It's amazing just to toot our own horn there. But, plus, what differentiates us from our competitors is the fact that every member, when you sign up for Nutrisense, gets one month of complimentary support from a nutritionist, either a dietitian or a CNS. So we really have a high touch level of support, accountability, motivation, education. That we really think makes all of this data that you're gathering applicable, because, as you know and as your audience knows, it's one thing just to collect a lot of data. It's another thing to actually use it towards your health goals, right? So that's really what we're aiming to do, and CGMs continuous glucose monitors have been around for a while. They've traditionally only been used in the diabetic population, but what we're doing is bringing it to anyone. Basically, anyone that wants to track their glucose has access to it now, which we think is really powerful and really interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I am a huge data nerd and I have not had. I haven't felt a need to use one, but I think for me it would be. I would love to just try one out for a week, just because I would love to have the data, just to see what certain foods do to me or what certain food combinations do. We'll get into more of that here in a minute. Or how does this meal, how is my blood sugar after this meal, a little bit different if I took a walk afterwards instead of sat on the couch and watched TV? So I would absolutely love the data, just from a curiosity perspective. Okay, so you mentioned glucose, so why don't we just start from total basics? Let's just assume what we know absolutely nothing about what glucose is, what a continuous glucose monitor even does. Why don't we start about what is glucose and how does that impact me?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so glucose is. I think a lot of people they sometimes think glucose is insulin, insulin is glucose. So let's just talk about what glucose is. Glucose is sugar. It's actually our most basic building block of energy that our body likes to use in order to power all manner of functions right, brain function, organ function, muscle function, right, we love glucose, and glucose comes from the breaking down of carbohydrates. So we take in carbohydrates complex carbohydrates, simple carbohydrates and the body breaks them down into that sort of I like to like the most basic Lego building block is really what glucose is and how does it impact you?
Speaker 2:It is your energy source. The body uses it, like I said, for all sorts of functions and it's really interesting. I think some people are like oh, I'm on a low sugar diet or I don't eat sugar. Well, you can switch over to ketones, just depending on the knowledge base of your audience. You can switch over to ketones for fuel, but the body really does like carbohydrates as well, and so I know we'll talk about that flexibility. But that's really how we use glucose most and, frankly, the brain really prefers glucose to ketones, but it can be interesting when the body uses both of them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so I know I feel like blood sugar and just sugar gets a very, very bad rap, and obviously consuming large amounts of sugar and avoiding other things is obviously not good. I think we all know that. I think we know eating a huge bag of Skittles all by itself as a snack is probably not the best choice, but not all sugar is bad. Like you said, the body likes glucose. We need. Our brains need it. If you've ever tried to start, maybe, a low carb diet, we hear this a lot People feel like they're in sort of a brain fog when they're not eating enough carbohydrates. So, yes, glucose too much is not necessarily a good thing, but you do need some. So maybe let's talk about, before we get into, what the device actually does, maybe talk about what can happen if your blood sugar or your glucose gets too high.
Speaker 2:Totally, totally, and I think that's really the powerful thing about learning about what is going on with your glucose. We have ways to track all kinds of things. You can download an app and track your calories. You can wear an Apple Watch. You can check your blood pressure every day. There's wear an aura ring, wear a whoop band. There's many, many ways to track what's going on in our bodies.
Speaker 2:But when it comes to our blood sugar levels, most of us just get the one fasting glucose number from their doctor once a year and I like to say, oh, that's so interesting? Not really, because that's how you did on a Tuesday morning in October. Yeah, yeah, one point in time. One point in time that does not help us see how you are doing on a 24-hour basis, that doesn't tell us how you're doing on a weekly basis. And when you really start to dig in and you understand all the factors that impact your glucose, you see why you need that continuous 24-hour information. Because what I like to tell people is they always say why me? Why do I need to know about this? I feel fine, like I'm fine, like I'm healthy, I don't have any diagnoses, my doctor says I'm fine. Why would I want to do this and I say you can think of it in the short term and the long term. In the short term, knowing what's going on with your glucose, it can help you feel better. We can all feel better, we can all sleep better, we can all have better energy. We can all make minor tweaks to our meals I'm not saying leaving out huge food groups we're not anti-carb at all but just minor tweaks so that you feel better. When you can manage your glucose, you will feel better.
Speaker 2:What we have seen is that when people are having very high swings or volatility or variability in there, we track variability in our app. When people have high variability, sometimes they say like tsunamis and not gentle ocean waves. We're looking for gentle ocean waves, we're not looking for huge tsunamis. When you have these big swings in your data, people don't feel great. They report feeling anxious, jittery, sweaty, uncomfortable when they're at that high, high peak. And we also have people that report when it crashes down. They get brain fog, they're hangry, they want to have a snack right away, they're tired, they're lethargic. No one wants to feel any of those symptoms and so when you are sort of wondering like something's off, I'm not feeling right lately I'm so tired when I shouldn't be, I just ate. Why do I feel like I need a nap? All those things that can be related to your blood sugar.
Speaker 2:So having the ability and it's one thing, I think a lot of people previously have just sort of taken their finger stick. They've bought a finger stick device at Walgreens or CVS or something, and they'll take their finger stick when they wake up. Then they'll take their finger stick before a meal. They'll then take a finger stick after their meal. You are missing so much data in between those moments of time in your day that can really show how high you spiked and maybe how low you crashed.
Speaker 2:So, honestly, I think the long term benefits of doing this and knowing what's going on with your blood sugar, the long term benefits is really longevity right, and that's so many people are talking about longevity now it's the reduction of your risk of chronic disease. High volatility in your blood sugar We've seen is leading to inflammation, systemic inflammation. We know all the things that that can be linked to increased risk of chronic diseases like heart disease, of cancers, of things like that. So starting this is really that preventative approach to your health which I know your audience is so interested in right so that we are trying to prevent getting to those unfortunate disease states later on in life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and those big spikes, I know, like you said, can lead to all kinds of bad things, and I think that's probably common knowledge. It definitely doesn't hurt to reiterate that point. One point that I like that you mentioned is we have no shortage of data. Now, right, If you're motivated enough to do put in even just a little bit of work, you can track your steps very easily. You can track your food and see exactly how much protein and how many calories you're getting. You can track your sleep. You can track probably other things that I don't even know that you can track. You can.
Speaker 1:There is no shortage of getting enough data on your, about how your body's functioning and your inputs and your outputs, and this is just another very, very useful data point that I think 10 years ago it's not something anybody probably thought they had access to, and thus I know this is probably and again, I'm not super knowledgeable on this topic, but maybe if you were a type one diabetic, it was something you were doing. I don't know if they had continuous glucose monitors, that they probably were tracking their blood sugar fairly regularly, but I have definitely, in recent years, talked to lots of just friends and acquaintances who are like oh yeah, I'm monitoring my glucose and have some sort of monitoring device, so it's becoming much more mainstream. So how do you think this glucose monitor can be useful if you don't have diabetes or something where it's critical to monitor your blood sugar?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I think, as I mentioned before, I'm a registered dietitian, was trained in sort of the standard dietitian way dietetics and nutrition, going through hospital rotations and doing sort of just general counseling, not really understanding like sort of understanding diabetes from a very clinical way of like, oh you have to count your carbs and then you have to dose your insulin and this is what diabetes is right and not really understanding the broader, bigger picture of how glucose impacts so much in our bodies right and that when you take in glucose and the form of carbohydrates, your body produces insulin. Insulin is a hormone and when as we're really learning, and a lot of women are learning as we're getting older is that hormones play such a key role in our health and wellbeing. And previously no one spoke about perimenopause, no one spoke about menopause. That was like, well, just put your head down and hope you get through it. Women are really taking charge of their health in a way that they never had before. So, yes, you can certainly talk about your weight and things like that as you're going through life, but what's really important is seeing what's happening endocrinologically with your endocrine system, with your hormones. It's just so interesting to see. And so by being able to see what's going on with your blood sugar. We can see how your body is producing insulin in response to that bunch of group, because they should be in lockstep right the amount of carbohydrate that is circulating your bloodstream. Your body should be sensing that, producing the proper amount of insulin, and your cells should be recognizing that insulin and putting the glucose into your cells to be used.
Speaker 2:If the system is not working. That's where we notice insulin resistance. Right, we will see in your data that there is. You are not coming back to baseline. Basically, your blood glucose is hanging out at very high levels for a long time again, leading to that inflammation. So it's very useful. I think, honestly, everyone can benefit from seeing this. You might have a recent diagnosis of something you might not even think is related to it. Again, you might have, like a hypertension diagnosis. You might have an autoimmune disorder, hashimoto's or something a gut health issue that you're dealing with. What's so interesting about using the CGM is that it's almost like a little window into your body and it's a really great way to see how your body's responding to its external factors of nutrition, exercise, sleep and stress. So really, anyone can benefit, I think, from that you do not have to have a diabetes diagnosis.
Speaker 1:I could not agree more. So let's talk about then. Maybe you're listening to this and you're like, hey, I'm curious, like I wanna see the impact of my daily living, whether that's the meals I'm eating or the activity I'm getting are impacting my glucose. Let's talk about how someone can, if their hands on one of your devices. Do you need a prescription? Can I just go buy it at Walmart, like how do I get one? And then how does it? How do I actually work the thing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think so. You can find us online at Nutresenseio and if I say it enough times, your phone will just pick up the algorithm and start sending you our ads, I'm sure. But yes, we are online. We have different subscription packages because we use the Abbott Freestyle Libre sensors. We aren't creating our own sensors. We are using and you might have seen their ads on television as well for the Abbott sensors. But what is proprietary to us is our app. So when you sign up for us, you will get two sensors, because they last for 14 days and our subscriptions are based on months at a time. So one month, three, six, 12. So you will get sent in the mail the sensors the Abbott Freestyle Libre sensors and you will download our app. When you activate your sensor, you will then get a dietitian or nutritionist assigned to you that will then guide you for 32 days to look at your data, to understand what's going on.
Speaker 2:I am wearing a CGM right now. I know there's no video, but I'm wearing a CGM right now. They are about the size of a quarter. It's a little disk. In the center of the disk is a little filament, not a needle, but a little filament.
Speaker 2:What you do is you insert that into the back of your arm and it lives on you for 14 days. It is continuously monitoring your glucose, not in your bloodstream, but in your interstitial fluid. That's just how far in the sensor goes. You can just start scanning. You use your phone and you scan the sensor on the back of your arm as many times as you want, but the sensor stores your data for up to eight hours. You really only have to scan three times a day at minimum. When you download our app, you can see that we slice and dice that data so many different ways. You can log your meals on top of that data. It will pull in any health information from your Apple Watch or anything like that. It will feed that data in and it'll show. You won't even have to log your exercise because it'll just pull that. In that way, you can start to overlay your lifestyle choices on top of your glucose data to see those trends, which is super, super cool.
Speaker 1:When you put the, is it something I can just put in myself? Do I need somebody to help me?
Speaker 2:No, it depends on how scared you are. I have no problem doing it, but I have a friend that says I wish a nurse could just put it in for me. There is an element of I don't know pushing it in. I'm not doing a very good job, but there's a spring-loaded thing to put it in there.
Speaker 1:But it's possible. You can do it all on your own. Then is there a bandage or something that's helping to keep it in for those two weeks? Can you get it?
Speaker 2:wet, you can get it wet. It is not approved to go in salt water. We do have some people that take a break during the summer or if they're going on a vacation, Although I do have a colleague who wears it surfing pretty frequently, so he just wraps it in waterproof. They have bandages for athletes, waterproof-type bandages, so he just wears that. You can wear it in the water, you can wear it in the shower. It lasts for 14 days and there's a little bit of adhesion on the actual sensor and then we have a Nutracex patch that you can put over it too to keep it safe. But I will say most I mean I've so many times I would say people forget that it's there. It comes popping off because they put a sports bra on and they didn't realize it was going to come off, or they banged into a ball or something like that. It's so non-invasive you truly forget that it's back there.
Speaker 1:Okay, it seems very easy to use. I assume the app makes it really easy to see. You can see. Let's just pretend I decided I go to a birthday party and I ate lunch before I came and then two hours later I ate only a piece of cake, so nothing else. I'm eating a piece of cake. I'm assuming I'm going to have a pretty good spike after that. Will I be able to see that spike like visually?
Speaker 2:Totally. I know, again, there's no video on this, but at least you can see what it looks like. So it's a line graph. Throughout the day we have a range that we like to see people's glucose typically stay in between 70 and 140. That's all customizable. Some people really feel strongly that they would like their glucose to only remain and say, the 60 to 120 range. All of it is customizable to your health goals. And then we give you an average glucose for the day over the 24 hours. We give you a fasting glucose, overnight glucose scores for your meals. All of that we really drill down. As much data as you put in we can give you to take away.
Speaker 1:I think that's awesome. So one thing we really encourage clients but just anyone, anyone listening to the podcast we are always harping on protein and I know that's something that can really really help smooth out blood sugar swings is just try to pair. There's a lot you can do. There's a whole lot we can go into about managing your glucose, and we're not going to really get super duper into that today. But one thing that is helpful anytime you eat, try to have some protein in there, try to have some fiber in there. Those things will help.
Speaker 1:And I think it would just be really interesting to see that in the data. Like, okay, I ate I don't know what, something that might and it's by itself, spike my, my blood sugar like a cupcake. Okay, I would like to see what. What did that look like? But then if the next day I tried to eat a cupcake but I paired it with a chicken breast, like, would that look different? Or I ate a cupcake and a chicken breast and then I went for a 15 minute walk around the block, like that to me would be so, so interesting Just to see how different food pairings and and things would Impact my blood sugar and I know we do have a lot of clients who are, you know, they're watching a lot of things. They're they're watching their calories, and that doesn't mean they're cutting calories. That might mean they're trying to eat more, but they're watching their calories. They're watching your protein and I think watching your, watching your glucose would be one another, just another, very, very interesting and helpful data points.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I think you're totally right and I think the people that get the most out of this are the ones that come into it, that are excited to experiment, that you know, they're certainly open to education and learning, but they're willing to make different types of changes, right, and that you know, sometimes people come in and they're like, okay, I'm not gonna eat any carbohydrates and I'm gonna look perfect, and don't? I look perfect and we're like, no, that's not the point. The point is, you know, show me, show me what Sunday night dinner looks like, show me what date night looks like. Let's find the ways to optimize these parts of your life that will always come up, that make your life enjoyable. Let's find a way to make it the best for your health and the best for your glucose. So we are not, we are not here to take anything away from you and frankly, I feel like we we end up liberalizing a lot of people's diets because they learn how to have pasta, they learn how to have potatoes or rice or sushi, things, that, or oatmeal, things that have been spiking them, that they didn't realize, and you know ways to really manage themselves. And again, it's that short term. Oh my gosh, I feel so much better, like I'm not. So you know, I sleep better after I have like some wine and sushi, because now I've learned how to manage it and you know, and, and you're absolutely right, you can do these tests where I had a member once who he was super into like the like Scientific testing of things, and so it was like at 10 am For five days he tested like different Refined carbohydrates.
Speaker 2:He was like today is white rice, tomorrow is white pasta, the next day is, like you know, potato all by itself and like you know 30 gram increments and like you know that was fun. But I told him I said, is that really? Are you really gonna be eating 30 grams of pasta at 10 am? Like that's not life. But you know what he wanted to see how his body responded to that. So go go get him. Like it is so much what you put in you can take out. But I think having the nutrition support to help guide you is very helpful, because we get lots of people in the health care industry that feel like they're very knowledgeable in this space and then they're like, oh, wow, I did not know what this was like. Can you help me interpret this. I'm not. I'm not aware of it, because there are some nuances for sure, okay.
Speaker 1:Well, I've just got one last question. I've heard a lot about a term called metabolic flexibility lately. It's definitely a hot term right now, so can you explain what that means and maybe how your device relates to that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we like to think of. Metabolic Flexibility is basically giving your body two different fuels to run on. We talked about, you know, glucose a little bit earlier, and the body can use glucose it generally likes, prefers to use glucose and to power cellular processes, but it can also use ketones, and, you know, ketones we can use when we're on, I guess, just on a very basic level we're on a very low carbohydrate diet. The body can use ketones as a way to fuel the body processes, and what we want to be able to do, though, is be able to go in and out, is to flex in and out of both Types of fuels, and so so that your body can be equally adept at using both of them.
Speaker 2:Sometimes, what we see when we're looking at a CGM is sometimes people come to us and they're like listen, I've been on a ketogenic diet, like a pretty strict one, for a long time now. I really, you know, eat very, very low carbohydrate. I'm pretty pretty regular about it and then they want to test out and see what happens to their body when they have some glucose. You, and sometimes the body, is so not used to it, right, it's such a strange sort of foreign substance to them that when they do have some glucose they experience some really kind of erratic patterns. So the body is like sort of what we say is like temporarily insulin resistant right.
Speaker 2:It's not used to flexing from using the two different fuel sources, and so what we wanna be able to do is to be able to have our bodies taking glucose, you know, from complex carbohydrates, and to be able to use that in a you know to efficiently use that right, so you're not having super high spikes and you're able to come back to your baseline of glucose once you eat your meal, whatever it is, or you and then you do your activities. That's what we wanna be able to see when you're taking in glucose, but also if you are following, maybe a lower carbohydrate diet for a couple of days or a week or whatever it is that you're flexing into using those ketones, and the body is also adept at using that as well. So that's really what we wanna see when we see metabolic, when we aim for metabolic flexibility.
Speaker 1:Okay, awesome. Well, that's all the questions I have. Do you have anything else that you wanna add to anything we've discussed?
Speaker 2:No, I would just say, you know, I think we touched on it a little bit, but you know, using these this tool, the CGM, and using our app, and everything is really about an individual process and an individual journey, and what this allows people to do is to take to take a really good look at what's going on in their life in terms of the food that they're eating, the exercise that they're doing, the stress that they might be under, the sleep that they're getting or not getting, depending on what's going on. But this is really an individual journey and so it's a really nice way to check in with your body, see how it's handling all of these external factors in your life, and that you're able to then make some steps to optimize them. So, even if you think like I don't have diabetes, I don't have prediabetes, we could all make changes in what we eat, how much we move our stress management to optimize our health even more.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, I definitely agree. So if you're listening and you're like, hey, I wanna try this thing out, where can people go to learn more? And maybe even, you know, get the device.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you can go online nutritioncom or nutritionio both of them work. And also I always say like if you just say it enough times around your phone, your phone will pick up and start sending you ads on Facebook or Instagram. And we have, like you know, we're on all the different social media platforms and I like it because sometimes people don't really understand or they're nervous about actually putting the sensor on in the back of their arm, and so I say, if you're nervous at all, just go check out. We have tons of videos of people putting them on. It doesn't hurt, it's not scary. You know you'll forget that it's even on there, I promise, after like an hour. So definitely go check it out. And you can also just see lots of different experiments that people have done. And we have a great blog on our website where you can just learn all the ways that glucose management can help all sorts of health goals.
Speaker 1:Awesome, sounds good. Okay, well, I'm intrigued myself, so I may have to check it out. All right, thank you so much for being on. Thank you so much for having me.