How to Lower Your A1C and Get Out of the Pre-diabetes Range for Good (Your Simple 6-Step Plan) | Ep. 48

In this episode, Soraya breaks down the exact 6-step lifestyle plan to lower your A1C and get out of the pre-diabetes range for good - no medications required, no extreme diets, no changing your entire life. 

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Transcript

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Every time you have a doctor's appointment, you're anxious because you know you're gonna get bad news. Your A1C is rising, you potentially need medication, if not more medication. So in today's episode, I'm gonna share how to naturally lower your A1C and get out of the prediabetic range without medication and with sustainable lifestyle changes. Welcome to the Fit and Fulfilled Show. If you're a busy professional woman who finally wants to prioritize your health and happiness, this is the place to be. I'm your host, Sarah Russell, certified macronutrition coach, mindset coach, and lifestyle transformation coach. And each week I share practical strategies to help you build sustainable habits, boost your energy, become obsessed with what you see when you look in the mirror, and feel confident and strong in your body. All without feeling stressed, burned out, or guilty. Let's dive in. So I first want to explain what A1C is because I really believe education is power, and the more you know, the easier it is to change your results. So your A1C is a three-month average of your blood sugar levels. Think of it like a 90-day report card for your blood sugar. So our normal A1C level is below 5.7%, the prediabetic range is 5.7% to 6.4%, and then the diabetic range is 6.5% and above. And that's particularly for type 2 diabetes. And the reason this is important to know, especially the three-month time period, is that your blood sugar levels, your A1C levels, are a reflection of 90 days of progress, of habits. What you do today can change your next A1C reading and help you get out of the prediabetic range and lower your A1C at your next doctor's visit. And studies have shown over a 50% reduction in diabetes risk just by making lifestyle changes. So you can control your A1C levels, you can lower your numbers, you can get out of the range with the simple steps that I'm going to give you. And none of them require you going on a crazy restrictive diet or working out every day. These are things you could implement into your day-to-day routine without feeling like you're changing everything in your life at once. The first thing you want to do to change your A1C levels is to change the composition of your plate. A lot of women feel like when they get a bad reading on their A1C and blood sugar at the doctor, the doctor says go on a Mediterranean diet, cut your carbs lower. And so a lot of women think that they have to cut out everything they like, eat just chicken breast and broccoli every day to get their numbers down. And while a lot of women do want to get their numbers down, I would argue everyone does because they don't want to deal with medication or health risks, it's a hard trade-off because you're like, yeah, I want to be healthy, but I also want to enjoy life. I don't want to be miserable every day eating food that I don't want to eat. But the cool thing is changing the composition of your plate doesn't mean eliminating all your favorite foods, it's just having a different setup. So you want to follow the plate rule that specifically works for lowering your A1C. And what this looks like is half your plate being non-starchy vegetables, a fourth being lean proteins, and a fourth being whole grain carbs. And so this can include all the things that you like. Say that you really enjoy pasta. You could have whole wheat pasta noodles, you could have turkey meatballs or even lean beef meatballs, you can have sauce, and you could have a side like a side salad or a side of vegetables like broccoli asparagus. So you're still eating things that you enjoy, but just reorganizing your plate. Whereas in the past, the majority of your plate might have been the noodles and the sauce, a little bit of protein and no vegetables. Now we're just taking and adding more vegetables, but still having the noodles and the sauce. And the reason this works specifically for lowering your A1C is when you're consuming more vegetables, a lot of non-starchy vegetables tend to be higher in fiber. On top of that, a lot of whole brain carbs, complex carbs, things like that are also higher in fiber. And so you're going to be having high protein and high fiber. That helps slow glucose absorption into your system, which means no blood sugar spikes, which means no crash, leading to lower blood sugar levels, which means a lower A1C at your next reading. So once again, you don't have to cut out your favorite foods, but you do want to reduce and cut back on certain things that can spike your blood sugar levels. Things like refined sugars, sugary drinks, fruit juices that are not actually pure fruit, pastries, which I love pastries, but just want to have them in moderation, white bread, and there's nothing wrong with white bread, but what's happening with white bread is it's stripped of a lot of the fiber. And so you're having the carbs without the fiber, which is gonna be a big dump into your system. It's not gonna be that slow absorption like it is when you have more high fiber foods. So if you like white bread, I recommend trying different other types of bread that have higher fiber in them. I really like Dave's killer bread. Any brand where you can get a little bit of fiber from your bread is gonna be important. And I guarantee you there's so many tasty brands out there. But if you're used to white bread, you just think, well, this is the thing that I like. But just try something new. Part of your journey when it comes to weight loss and health is trying new things and figuring out what works for you. Maybe you don't like chicken breasts and broccoli. A lot of people don't. But maybe you like chicken meatballs, maybe you like chicken sandwiches, right? There's different ways to make things that still align with your goals. So the key here is using the A1C friendly plate roll every single meal. So if you're having breakfast, for example, I really like overnight oats, which is basically a cold oatmeal. Not everyone likes that, but I really enjoy it. So with my oats, if you just eat oats alone, that's just a carb source. We want to mix it with protein, fiber, healthy fats, all this stuff. So I'll have my oats, I'll add Greek yogurt, which is a source of protein. I'll add peanut butter, which is a source of healthy fats. I'll add chia seeds, which is a source of fiber, I'll add banana, which is a fruit, and then I'll also have uh eggs on the side, which adds more protein to my meal as well. And then in the eggs, they'll be scrambled, I'll add spinach to it. So that's my vegetable. So I have my healthy fats, my protein, my complex carbs, my fiber. That's a very blood sugar-friendly meal. For lunch, following the plate rule, if you just want to keep it simple, that could be salmon, spinach, and rice. For dinner, if you're following the plate rule, if you like tacos, that's one of my favorite meals. I have it a lot. I'll have chicken tacos, so I'll use ground chicken versus like a really fatty beef. I'll use corn tortillas because they have a decent amount of fiber in them. I'll load a bunch of vegetables in my taco. For example, I will have tomatoes, pepper, so that's gonna be my non-starchy vegetables. Then I have avocado, so I'll make homemade guacamole that also has more tomatoes in it. So I have my vegetables. I have my lean protein from the chicken. I have my corn tortillas, which are my carbs that also have fiber. So this is how you just take things that you already like and just make them more balanced and more A1C friendly. Step two, which makes a bigger difference than most people realize, is the post-meal walk. Whenever you get a chance, you want to walk for 10 to 15 minutes at least after eating your meals. Research shows that walking after eating can lead to a up to 30% reduction in blood sugar spikes after eating. So muscles essentially act like a sponge for your glucose. When you move after eating, they absorb the sugar from your bloodstream before they can lead to a spike. This is a free, no medication needed way to lower and reduce your blood sugar spikes. All you got to do is move after eating. So if you work in an office, that could mean if you have an hour lunch break, 30 minutes, whatever it is, take half that time to eat, then the other half of the time to walk. If you're eating breakfast, go for a 10 to 15 minute walk before actually getting ready to start your day if you're able to do that. In the evening after eating, go for a brief walk. If you have kids at home, maybe make a family activity out of it. Like, hey guys, we're gonna eat, then we're gonna go for a walk together around the neighborhood. That's you bringing your family along with things, not taking away from family time, but also going for that A1C friendly walk. The third thing you want to do is add strength training to your weekly movement routine. Reason being, muscle tissue is the main place that your body stores and uses glucose for energy. So the more muscle you have, the more glucose your body can absorb, even if you're sitting at a desk all day. If you just make time to lift weights and strength train three to four times per week, this will make a big difference in how your body processes food and it'll make a big difference in your A1C levels. On top of that, if you struggle with insulin resistance, having more muscle mass lifting weights helps you improve your insulin sensitivity, which means your body will need less insulin to do its day-to-day activities. So if you're very new to strength training or lifting weights, you've never lifted weights before, or it's been a very long time, start slow and start at home if that's easier for you. So if you're starting at home, just take three pairs of dumbbells, maybe a five, ten, and a 15, and do a strength training workout for 30 minutes only three times a week. A lot of our clients who are beginners, that's what they start out doing. These are exercises they can do at home with little equipment, things that are very beginner-friendly. And that alone will make a huge difference in not only your quality of life, your strength, your A1C levels, all your health markers, and also it'll help you tone up and lean out if that's your goal as well. The next thing you want to do is focus on the timing of your meals because many people think that, and this is mostly true, how much you eat is the majority of what matters when it comes to weight loss. Like if you eat in a calorie deficit that day, whether you eat, you know, six times, seven times, eight times, you'll lose weight. But when it comes to your A1C levels and blood sugar, timing actually does make a difference. So the first thing you want to do is front load your carbs to earlier on in the day. Reason being, for most people, insulin sensitivity tends to be higher in the beginning of the day. So your body will have an easier time processing carbs. So save more of your carbs for the morning time, lunchtime, a little bit early on, and have a little bit lower carbs in the evening. I'm not saying go low carb. I'm saying that when you have a day of eating, you want the majority of your carbs to be happening in the beginning of the day. And then in the evening, you want to focus on more things like protein, healthy fats, things like that, which will help your muscles recover. So, for example, the meals I tend to have lunch, I have salmon, rice, spinach. For dinner, I'll have chicken tacos. The reason I have it in that order is because my lunch tends to be higher in carbs. I have the rice. Also, my breakfast is overnight oats. The oats make it a decent amount of carbs as well. But the chicken tacos, they are tacos, but since I use corn tortillas, they're pretty low in calorie and pretty low in carbs. And so that is pretty much my lowest carb meal of the day. It's also one of my higher protein healthy fat meals of the day because I also have the side of guacamole, which has avocado, which is a healthy fat. So that's the meal I choose to have in the evening. So just think about the three meals that you have during the day. Whichever ones are the higher ones in carbs, you want to have those more so for lunch and breakfast. The one that's a little bit higher in protein and healthy fats, you want to reserve that for dinner. I also recommend spacing your meals about four hours apart. Um, and the reason this is, is a lot of times what I see happen is women go a long time without eating. That's gonna raise your cortisol levels because you're very stressed, because you haven't eaten any food. And so then when you do eat, you're eating all these high sugar, refined sugar, fruity juices, all this stuff that are going to create blood sugar spikes and then crashes. So when you're eating at regular intervals, you're able to think clearly, have a balanced meal with protein, fat, carbs, and fibers. And you don't get to a point where your cortisol levels are high and then snack on a bunch of stuff that makes your blood sugar levels crash and spike and crash and spike. So we had a client one time, she was a medical doctor, a family medicine doctor. And what would happen is she was like, well, you know, every time I come home, I just eat, eat, eat. Like that's all I do. And I really struggle with eating at night. And, you know, I just can't control myself around food. I'm an emotional eater. So we kind of took a step back and figured out, okay, what are you eating during the day? What are you eating in the morning? What it looked like is she would start the day, she would be rushing to get ready, she would have a coffee, maybe she would eat lunch, but if she did, it was very small or something quick. So by the time she got home, she barely ate anything. Sometimes in the afternoon, she would have a quick snack, something available in the office. So no wonder when she got home, she was eating everything. Not only is she hungry, she has a bunch of cravings because she's not consuming enough fiber and protein, and then she's emotionally eaten because she's stressed out from work. So what we did is we're like, you think that the problem is that you can't control yourself around food. But really, what the problem is is that you are not eating earlier on in the day, and that's leading to all this stuff happening at night, which is why your A1C levels are creeping up. And she was very self-conscious about this because she's a family medicine doctor, but her A1C levels were almost in the pre-diabetic range. And she was like, How can I help my clients when I can't even help myself? Like I'm spending all my day helping other people, helping them with their health, but I can't even take care of my own health. So we kind of took a step back and said, okay, what we need to focus on first is creating a plan for eating so that you do not get home and the first thing you want to do is eat. We set up a grab and go breakfast that she could consume that takes five minutes when she goes out the door, something she could prep in advance and just grab and go. That was step one. So that helped her start her day with a more clear mind. She wasn't hungry when she went into the office. Then, second step we did is have her prepare her lunches. Because many times what would happen is she would work through lunch, which wasn't even necessary. She would put her clients and patients over herself a lot of times and take patients during her lunch break. Like they say, you have to put your own mask on first before you can help put on other people's masks. So if you want to be an amazing family medicine doctor, if you want to help patients, you need to first take care of yourself so that you can lead from a place of clarity. So we said, okay, you have your lunch break. That is your time. There's no patience. There's nothing you're gonna do during that time. So she started creating her meals and kind of bringing them into the office, had her time to sit down and eat, went for a brief walk after eating. This was completely new for her. She typically did not take a set lunch break, and especially did not go for a walk after eating. So this helped her once again. She was no longer hungry. She didn't have cravings because she had those balanced meals with protein, healthy fats, complex carbs, right? And so then when she came home in the evening at about five, six o'clock, she was like, you know what? I'm not hungry because I ate appropriately. Like I'm getting hungry, but I'm not starving. On top of that, she was like, I don't have all the cravings I had before. You know why? Because when you're eating enough fiber and healthy fats and protein, those things go away. So when she got home now, what she would do is one, she would go for a walk, right? She would actually have the energy to go for a walk. And then she would come back and eat her dinner. Sometimes she would make it fresh, sometimes it would be pre-prepared. Just by making this change alone, she was now way away from the pre-diabetic range completely, not even a concern anymore. She's lost 20 pounds so far in the last four months. And for the first time in a long time, she feels proud of showing up at work, telling her patients what to do because she's doing it herself. She's actually able to give advice from a personal perspective of, hey, I understand what it feels like to be busy, to have a lot going on. Here's some things you can do to start making these changes so that we don't have to put you on medication. We work with a lot of clients in the medical field who feel like they do a lot for their patients. They do a lot for their family, do a lot for everyone else, but they struggle to take care of themselves, especially when it comes to food and cravings and hunger. So this was a big win for her because she finally feels confident in what she's telling patients and how she shows up at work. So I'm telling you, if you struggle with your A1C, your health markers, your raw health, these small sustainable tips will help you change those numbers at your next doctor's reading because they are sustainable. The next thing you want to do, which is not talked about enough, is sleep. Sleep is so much correlated with A1C, way more than most people realize. Reason being, when you're not getting enough sleep, that's going to raise your cortisol levels. When your cortisol levels are high, that triggers your liver to release glucose into the bloodstream. So consistently not getting enough sleep can lead to higher blood sugar levels. So you want a target to get seven to nine hours of sleep per night. And you might be listening to this and say, Soraya, not possible. I cannot get that much sleep. Start where you are now. So if you only are getting five hours right now, next week aim to get five and a half. Then aim to get six, then aim to get seven. Work your way up to it slowly. We've had clients when they first came to us, they were barely getting four hours of sleep. Now they're up to six. Is it seven? No, but that's progress over perfection. Every hour counts. You getting an extra one hour of sleep when you are not getting enough is better than you exercising for an hour. Sleep has such a big impact on your health. And I tell clients all the time, if you are really, really busy and you have to decide between getting your sleep and getting in your exercise, choose sleep every single time because when you don't get enough sleep, that leads to higher cortisol levels, that leads to more overeating, that leads to more cravings, and that's going to reverse everything else we're talking about here. So prioritize your sleep, protect it with everything that you've got. If you focus on these things, meal timing, strength training, walking, eating a more balanced plate, reducing your stress levels, getting enough sleep, these will lead to a lower A1C reading at your next doctor's visit without you going on a crazy restrictive diet or trying to work out every single day of the week. So thank you so much for tuning in to the Fit and Fulfilled Show today. I hope you walked away with practical strategies you can start using to lower your A1C, enhance your health markers, and just feel overall better in your body. And if you found this helpful in absolutely any way, I ask that you please subscribe and share it with a friend who you think could benefit from this information as well. And if you're a busy professional woman who wants to lose 20 to 50 pounds and improve your health in a sustainable way without cutting out your favorite foods, then I would love to invite you to apply for our coaching program, the Fit and Fulfilled Academy. In the Academy, we help you with the right guidance, support, and accountability you need with nutrition, fitness, and mindset so you can achieve lasting results. All the details are down below. Next week, we're diving into a brand new topic that you're not going to want to miss. But until then, remember you deserve to feel as confident in your body as you do in your career. Take care.