#68 - Can Taking a Break Actually Help Your Blood Sugar?

Your blood sugar isn’t just reacting to carbs, it’s reacting to stress, recovery, and whether your body has enough muscle to store energy safely. From the outside, taking a week off the gym can look like “falling behind.” From the inside, it can be the smartest move you make all year.

We challenge the idea that more workouts always means better blood sugar and explain why a planned break can actually move you forward. We share how we use deload weeks, keep daily movement high, and balance training with travel, family, and real life.  Brian also shares an exciting update from his personal life and it means for the podcast! All this, plus:

• What a planned deload week looks like and when to use it
 • The difference between dedicated exercise and everyday movement
 • Why recreational sports and walking help but do not replace strength training
 • Motivation versus discipline and how to restart after a break
 • How to plan travel weeks without spiraling and what it means to “play defense” on vacations

If you have been wondering if it’s time to take a break from the gym, we know you’ll appreciate what we share in this episode.

Ready to take control of your health and stop settling for “managed” diabetes?
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Brian & Cory
     Diabetes Remission Partners

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Transcript

Why Remission Is Still Possible

SPEAKER_00 0:02

If you have type 2 diabetes and you're tired of being told it's chronic and something you'll just have to manage forever, if your ailment seeds control but your medication that keeps growing or stays the same, and you know deep down you're capable of more than it, you're in the right place. This is the Diabetes Remission Roadmap Podcast for Brian Bitcher and Corey Jenks, two pharmacists who spent over two decades inside healthcare. And we started this show because we got tired of watching capable people stuck getting managed instead of rebuilt. Here's what most people aren't told. Type 2 diabetes isn't just a blood sugar problem, it's a muscle and energy storage problem. When your body loses strength and metabolic flexibility, blood sugar arises. And you can rebuild that. On this show, we break the script to say more meds are inevitable, you're destined to just manage, remission is impossible, and instead we teach you how to build muscle, eat in a way that keeps you full, and regain control of your health again. No extremes, no shame, just practical strategy to help you move toward remission and lead your health again. Let's get to work.

Choosing A Planned Week Off

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Welcome back to another edition of the Diabetes Orient Roadmap Podcast, coming to you once again live from Ohio. Brian and me hanging out here. And we had an idea for an episode that I think is really important because it's hitting home personally to me right now. Because this week I've been out here visiting, brought my kids, I haven't lifted weights, I haven't gone for a run, I haven't even done my normal rucking. And it wasn't because I was injured or unmotivated. It's kind of part of the plan. Because every few, every couple of months, I'll cycle off and take a month, not a month off. Oh my gosh. The week off from a dedicated exercise. Because we'll get into why, but I think this might surprise some people because we talk so much about spending time building muscle, getting stronger, and I'm actually actively not working on that right now.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

Yeah, that could be getting you closer to that goal though, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Yeah, and I'll say this before I left, I did one more workout at the gym doing my strength workout. And I do the same 50-minute steady strengthening workouts that we tell our clients to do. Yeah. And I just was tired. And I think everyone has things that make them tired in life, make them fatigued. Exercise is a stress. We can say that lack of sleep, which with my young kids, I don't sleep well. I sleep better than him. He does, yeah. That's why he looks so young and has all his hair. So all of these things can add up. We get to a point where maybe trying to push farther is actually being counterproductive to what your goals are. And normally, yeah, I'm lifting three times a week. I'm going on three rocks a week. I'm doing a run every week, but I back off because recovery is part of training. Yes. And now when I say that I'm taking a week off, Brian, have we been sitting around here doing nothing? I would say the opposite.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

Yeah, we've been very active doing other things, going for walks around my neighborhood, taking the kids, trying to do it a res game and had to walk back. But yeah, we've been very active walking around, playing some with the ball games. That's that's definitely been working up a sweat.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

Yeah. So yeah, we're moving around. I'm walking, we're swimming, and this is something where other times we're on vacation, we're going on the beach, we're playing on the beach, I'm doing yard work at home, we're connecting right now. So, more important than me getting up and getting an hour run-in is spending time with Brian and spending time with my kids and building those relationships. And I would say sleep is on that list, but it's just not in the carts for me right now. So while I'm not doing dedicated exercise, I'm still moving my body.

SPEAKER_00 3:19

Yeah. And I would say for me personally, just to go off on a tangent here for a second, is that I'm not as regimented as you are. I know that for a fact based on the exercise resume you just talked about. But I definitely will have dedicated workouts each, like every week and go for rucks, just not as many or not as long. That's why I'm so faster than you. When you can listen me, am I attacked? But for me, there's other things in my life right now that I enjoy, like softball, or I'm trying to work around the soreness of that and being ready and prepped. So I'm maybe doing more stretching, more recovery work, more

Movement Still Matters Every Day

SPEAKER_00 3:55

stability type stuff, more speed work. That's why I'm taking a like a little bit of a break off as well from lifting, just to make sure I don't get hurt around softball.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

And softball fills your cup. It definitely fills my cup. As I have been, I've actually been playing slow pitch softball in my hometown as well. And just as I hit a home run last week, my first over-the-fense home run in 25 years since I was 14 years old. Thank you. Bats are better than I also don't bag off lifting as much. Anyway, but I think when we go back, and we did an ex episode with Dr. Ben, it was our muscle master class episode, one of our most popular downloaded episodes. And he makes a big distinction between dedicated exercise and just movement. And I really think this is an important distinction because exercise is scheduled, it's intense, it's intentional, where I think movement is life and movement is walking around, it's playing with your kids. I would argue softball, tennis, golf, all of these things are movement, which are important. And so just because you're not maybe doing a dedicated exercise regimen doesn't mean you get off the hook of being moving your body. Yeah. Because I think a lot of times people say, if I can't get to the gym, I've failed. No, I think if you can move your body, it counts, it counts. Playing catch with your kids. All of these things are things that add up during the day.

unknown 5:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:09

I'll say this is I've heard people as well. People will put those other activities into the bucket of exercise. And I think that's a mistake. I don't think you should look at your pickleball games as exercise. I don't think you should look at whatever other things you're doing as exercise. Like your height, that just should be an activity that involves movement, that does get your heart rate up, but it's about so much more than exercise. Because then you might look at it as, oh my god, like and then you might actually not, then you might skip out on the actual regimented structured exercise that's gonna get you stronger and think that the exercise you're doing with the activities is gonna fulfill that role and it's not.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

And I think when we look at the big picture of blood sugar issues, diabetes, we talk about building bigger storage tank with building muscle. That doesn't change. But I think there's another piece of this where we're trying to remove the excess energies from the body, and

Exercise Is Not The Same

SPEAKER_01 5:55

that's there is we'll criticize the eat less move more generic advice because we think it's not useful. And but you can't just not move. And I think we've developed a society where you really don't have to move for myself. If I'm getting up walking the dog, doing tours in the morning, I'm at a thousand steps before I leave the house, two thousand steps before I leave the house here, less so as I've been hanging out, wake, waking up a little more slowly, reading books, hanging out, and that's okay, but I'm aware of that. And why would you even back off? And I think that we talk to a lot of people that are in our program, people that are thinking about being in our program that think that they gotta go really hard. They do like crossfoot style work or high-intensity exercise, and they get themselves hurt, and then they're on the shelf for two, three, four days a week, two weeks, and it's literally just getting their body back to baseline. But what we're trying to do here is when we train, our body adapts, and that's the goal is getting our muscles to progressively overload. Our body thinks, honestly, if you do it right, oh my gosh, I'm dying, I need to get stronger. Okay, great. But the problem becomes if you never recover, and part of that is giving yourself breaks between your exercise. Part of it is sleep, providing the right nutrition for your body to actually build the right tools and muscle. Yeah, avoiding seed oils. No, I'm a rapid fire Friday episode. Go back and listen to that one.

SPEAKER_00 7:13

But yeah, I agree. Recovery is an often overlooked aspect of exercise, and it's these dedicated, intentional off weeks that can really help move the needle in the direction if you feel like you've hit a plateau.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

Like, how do you know if you're in one of these? Your performance is lower, you might not feel as motivated. I've been a freakishly motivated exercise or in the morning since I was like 14 years old. It's just become like a ticking clock. And even last week I was like, I don't want to get up and do this.

Recovery Signs And Deload Strategy

SPEAKER_01 7:42

Quick pause for a second. If you're finding the podcast helpful and you want more practical ideas to help move your blood sugar in the right direction, come follow us on Instagram at Diabetes Remission Partners. We share quick tips, food and exercise insights, and blood sugar mistakes people don't even realize they're making. It's also where we can answer your questions directly in the DMs. So if you want more help between episodes, Instagram at diabetes remission partners is the best place to find us. And when you follow us, make sure to say hi. All right, back to the show. So what do you do then? And I think that if it's intentional and you're know yourself enough to get back to it the next week, my guess is you're gonna actually come back stronger. And really are the workouts that we prescribe to people, the minimum effective dose workouts, they're designed for maximum growth and maximum recovery. Because we're talking twice a week. So you're getting three to four days between each workout, yeah, because your body actually legitimately needs that time to recover. And I've seen variations of what we tell people to do that's literally once a week, and you can still get muscle gains. So I think that, and as myself, as I approach 40, my ego wants to say, I just need to go harder, harder, harder. When in reality, you might be surprised. And I think for those that train regularly, you're afraid to back off. I know we've had clients come to us doing Zoom uh dance class, all these things every day, and they're afraid if they stop doing it, their sugar's gonna spike. And I think that one, they're not recovering, their body's stressed, and they're not building the right muscle anyway.

SPEAKER_00 9:12

It's gotta go smarter, smarter, not harder, harder.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

Oh, wow, that's really that's deep there, Brian. And I think a lot of people that find themselves with blood sugar issues, they might they might be like a high achiever in other areas of life. We had business clients who were really good at business or other aspects of their life where they're really high achieving, and they think that when they start doing something, they have to go really hard and they struggle to actually stop and take a break and let their body recover. And really, I think for a life, this is a lifelong pursuit. And our egos don't like to say that we need to back off sometimes, but sometimes you push and sometimes you recover.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

Yeah. I want to go back to talk about motivation for a second. Because you say you weren't feeling motivated, and that you took that as a sign that

Motivation Versus Discipline

SPEAKER_00 9:55

maybe you need to take a week off. What do you do if you're on that cycle if you just don't feel motivated all the time? Because I think if you kind of use that as like, well, I need to take off because I'm not feeling motivated, that's what Corey said. No, only during certain periods of time. Because there are there is we don't talk, we talk about not having perfect discipline, but I think you do have to have an extent, a level of discipline where you don't feel like doing it, but you do it anyway because it's on your schedule. Yeah. If you're like you've been repeatedly doing workouts, and all of a sudden you're like, I just don't really want to do this. Maybe well, maybe when's the last time I took a week off? Oh, okay, it's been a while. So let me do that. Take a week off, you're intentional about it, and be like, all right, next week I'm gonna do it. But then you're like, you got out of that routine, so then you got to get back in that. And I'm gonna tell you right now, that first workout, you might not feel motivated to do it, and you just have to do it anyway. And that would be exact, that would be implementing some discipline.

SPEAKER_01 10:44

And this is where I'll we'll admit our bias as coaches, but last Wednesday I didn't feel great, feel like doing a big workout. And I have once a week I go to a coached workout, and I did more than I would have on my own. And so simply showing up with a coach to push me got me to where I needed to go. And I kind of looked, that was like the tactical day, and I looked at the strategic picture and

Travel, Family, And Staying Consistent

SPEAKER_01 11:05

also working within life. I think that's what we try to do as well is understanding that these are your routines, your exercises need to work in your life. This week I have a week of travel between being here, a golf trip with my dad. I'm not gonna have my normal gym access. It's not gonna be my normal routine, but I know I'm gonna be active. I'm playing golf with my dad. I'm active here with my kids and with Brian. So if I'm going to pick a week to strategically back off my lifting and back off my cardio routine, this kind of works because I know I'm gonna be walking. I know I'll be up in the mountains playing golf. I'll get up in the morning and do a nice walk in nature before I play golf all day. So if I kind of run my travel when I know I'm not gonna have the normal access, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:44

Actually, that makes you a better travel companion, but then you're not super focused on your regimen. You're like, well, hold on, I can't go do this with you because I gotta go work out. And I think I've been there in the past where I was so obsessed with working out and not missing, not missing a day, where I was like leaving my family from our beach place to go drive to a gym 15 minutes away, inconveniencing myself and my family just to get a workout in when I could have just been more active there or embraced the the different environment and done something, just done some push-ups and squats and taken a week off, but still been active. This past time in Florida, I didn't do that. We stayed at the place all the time. We played a lot of pickleball, played tennis. So yeah, I think that it can make you enjoy your vacations and and travels more if you plan these times around that.

SPEAKER_01 12:30

Yeah, and I also had vacations with my family where we're in a hotel, there's a gym there, and I'm in a close quarters with my children for few days and yeah, you do that. It's more of a stress reliever than an escape. And my wife and I give that back and forth. The same thing not being so adherent to a restaurant. I we were talking this morning at breakfast. Not my normal dietary routine here. And I've been in those situations where I just try to be such a stickler, and it's like a week without lifting will not erase your muscle, it won't reverse months of progress. I think the consistency over weeks, months, years, not that single week. Now it doesn't mean, like we say, you move your body, you don't just go and consume a bunch of donuts and also knowing yourself. If you are someone who goes and falls off for a week and it turns into six months, then maybe this is not the right plan for you. But it we're not talking about that routine itself, it's how your body feels. And also knowing that if you have just started doing something, soreness and fatigue is normal. Yeah, pain is not. But this is for those of you who have been at it for a while and feel like I'm doing so good. What happens if I take a week off? Is a dog gonna fall apart? And yeah, it's actually really heartening to hear from a lot of our clients who take a vacation and are like, oh, I was pretty good on my diet, I moved my body a decent amount and I stayed about the same. I call it playing defense. If you can play defense on these vacations and holidays, great, and you're back, you're not beyond where you started, and you can get back to it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:48

And if anything, taking a week off can like if you've been working out for a while, can actually improve your body's response to the stimulus again because it gets used to it, so for lack of a better word, recalibrates it, resets it your body's response to the stimulus of working out, so then you can actually improve your muscle gains, your muscle strengthening response. We're not talking gains here.

SPEAKER_01 14:11

It's okay.

Key Takeaways And Listener Requests

SPEAKER_01 14:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:12

So, all right.

SPEAKER_01 14:13

What we got, what are the takeaways here? I think the big takeaway is listening to your body, understanding that like taking a break from your strength training and fitness routine isn't the end of the world, but understanding the difference between exercise and movement, that movement must continue, even if you're not doing your dedicated exercise. An activity. Well, I have that as exercise and activity movement. Yeah. And speaking of taking a break, Brian, yeah, you're on a little bit of a I am. You have a little life situation happening where you're gonna be taking a step a break, you're gonna be a forced break, fourth child due, and I maybe just opportunity to invite some new guests into the podcast, take away one thing off my schedule.

SPEAKER_00 14:49

Yeah, so fourth child due here in about four weeks.

SPEAKER_01 14:51

Congratulations, thank you. I am sticking with three. Brian is is uh it's not a contest, but if it is a contest who has more kids, then you wouldn't be the winner because you would have four not three, but no, super excited for Brian. Happy for you. Thank you. And as you as a listener, you'll notice in the next few episodes that we have some really great guests lined up. And if you really miss Brian, let us know. I think he his ego could use that.

SPEAKER_00 15:17

I know my ego doesn't need it, it doesn't need it, but it doesn't need it. It'd be fun to hear. It'd be it's always great. I always appreciate the the gratitude that comes through the emails. That definitely is the fuel that keeps us going. All right. Well, in the meantime, enjoy your thank you.

SPEAKER_01 15:31

Brian was saying how his sleep is better than mine. Not for long. Not for long. Not for long. Enjoy it. Well you got it. But yeah, if you if something hit home from this episode, share it with us. Respond, send us an email, send us a DM. If you know someone who just won't stop going to the gym and they're like, need to hear this, send this episode to them. Remember to give us a rating and a review so that others can find this. And in the meantime, keep it simple, do what works.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

If this episode gave you clarity or hope, share it with one friend who's been stuck in the diabetes trap. That's how this mission grows. One person, one family, one story at a time. And if you haven't yet, leaving a quick review helps more people find the show and realize they're not stuck with meds forever. It takes less than a minute and it means the world to us. Thanks for being here and thanks for being part of this movement toward freedom.

Medical Disclaimer And Close

SPEAKER_00 16:14

Thanks for listening to the Diabetes Remission Roadmap. The ideas discussed here are for general informational purposes only and do not constitute medical or nutritional advice. We are pharmacists, but we're not your personal health care providers. Always consult your own physician or qualified clinician before changing medications, exercise routines, or nutrition plans. Results vary, and what works for one person may not work for another.