The Dx2 Podcast
Two sisters discuss what they are learning about having a balanced wheel of life that rolls along as smoothly as possible.
The Dx2 Podcast
Stop Fearing Carbs And Start Choosing Them Wisely For Better Energy, Metabolism, And Balance
Ever been told to “cut carbs” and wondered why the scale drops but your energy tanks? We’re pulling back the curtain on carbs and sugar, showing how form and processing—not fear—should guide your choices. From a garden pickle saga to the science of insulin resistance, we explore why whole food carbohydrates hydrate, fuel, and stabilize you, while ultra-processed “franken foods” can sabotage appetite, cravings, and liver health.
We break down carbs as the body’s preferred quick fuel and fats as the slow burn, then share a practical framework: roughly 120 grams of carbs per day for many adults, front-loaded at breakfast and dinner with protein-forward lunches. You’ll learn why timing and pairing matter, especially if your metabolism is stubborn—think eggs and veggies with sourdough instead of avocado toast, cheese with protein instead of crackers, and apples dipped in a lighter peanut-yogurt mix. No food shaming here: the 80–20 rule keeps room for cookies, pizza night, and real life.
Expect a clear tour through the processing spectrum—whole, minimally processed, and ultra-processed—and how that impacts blood sugar, cravings, and inflammation. We call out hidden sugars and refined oils in fast food, decode misleading “keto-friendly” labels, and offer smarter swaps like chickpea pasta, veggie-loaded sauces, and cleaner tortillas you can make or buy. Along the way, we highlight fiber’s role in satiety and gut health, why variety in vegetables matters, and how a supported liver powers gluconeogenesis to tap stored fat when you need it.
If you’re ready for steady energy, fewer crashes, and a saner relationship with food, join us for a warm, no-nonsense guide to choosing carbs you can feel good about. Subscribe, share with a friend who fears carbs, and leave a review with your favorite real-food carb that never lets you down.
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Welcome to the D Times 2 podcast, hosted by Sisters Denise and Deborah. We are all about finding balance in the various parts of life. Using the Wheel of Life as our guide, we explore how to keep each spoke rolling smoothly. We discuss health and wellness, education and spirituality, as well as mental and emotional growth. Join us for real conversations, practical tips, and a few laughs as we share stories, insights, and strategies to help you create a life that feels balanced, purposeful, and designed by you. All right, hey Deb. Hey Denise. How are you doing? I'm good. How are you doing? Good. What have you been up to? It's summertime and our we have a garden. You have a beautiful garden. Thank you. It's doing quite well this year. Better probably than it's ever done before. Awesome. So we have we planted a lot of cucumber plants. I have seven cucumber plants. Oh my goodness. Now there are only two of us at home, but I have seven cucumber plants. I don't know, don't know why we did that. But anyway, so I've been picking them, preparing, like saving them so I can make pickles because homemade pickles are so good. Yeah. And it's probab i I let them sit in the fridge for probably four days collecting cucumbers I could make pickles. You wanted to have a good batch of cucumbers. Yes. I didn't want to just do, you know, two jars of them. I wanted make it worth my while to get all my stuff out. Anyway, so my husband and I are getting ready to leave for the weekend last Friday. And he asked me if I was going to be able to do anything with the pickles or excuse me, the cucumbers in the fridge. And I was like, well, yeah, I can pickle them. He's like, all right, well, why don't you work on that while I work on the lawn and we'll get them all done before we leave. So I'm working on them. But I know in my head that it's going to be not as easy as he thinks it's going to be. I switched ranges. So my oven is uh is an induction oven range. So it has to have stainless steel pans to work. And the canning equipment I have is aluminum. Oh yeah. Which doesn't work. And so, but we have a grill. And I've seen people use their grills to can. And so I thought, well, I will just try to warm the water up on the grill so I get it boiling so I can just do it. Like a gas grill. Yes. Okay. So it can use propane or natural gas. And we have it hooked up to the house so it's natural gas, which doesn't get as hot as propane. So I have about six inches of, no, about three inches of water in my steam counter warming up. And after about 20 minutes on the grill, it started to get tiny little bubbles, but it wasn't making any progress. Oh goodness. So I turned it off and my husband was watching me. He's like, What are you doing? I said, Well, this isn't gonna work this way. So I have to go. There are two options. I can either ferment them, which he's not a huge fan of, or change my whole plan and try to do it in inside. So I have a really deep stainless steel pan that will fit pint jars if I put towels under it because they can't cling against each other. Oh yeah. Anyway, so I had a bunch of quart jars filled with cucumbers and pickling stuff. And so I had to take them in and redo all the jars and find more jars. And it really wasn't quite the ordeal. I really don't think he understood what was going on in the house. The level of frustration that was in my heart. So I brought them in and changed them all out and got the water boiling and and cooked them and knowing it was not gonna be great, but just getting it done, right? And yeah. So I got them done and they're sitting on my counter. Yeah, I saw some sitting on your counter. Well never succeeded. Well, sort of. I forgot the vinegar, so I have to recan them anyways. So in the middle of all of this, he's like, you know, I could just go borrow this person's camp chef outdoor camping stove. And I was like, no, let me just try this. And so by the end of the whole canning experience and me talking to him about what I had to do, he had ordered a camp chef outdoor stove. So I was thinking you were gonna put stainless steel canning equipment on your list, but no. It is on my list. I said, I can either do this, buy new equipment, and have it all stainless steel so I can do it in the house, or we can buy an outdoor cooker. And he said, outdoor cooker buy on Amazon. I was like, well, that's part of it. I'm gonna buy the other stuff anyways. So now I have a two-burner camp chef stove in my on my patio so that I can can pickles. And I'm gonna have to redo the ones that I already did because I forgot the vinegar. You're gonna want the vinegar.
unknown:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:So do you always do them heat, like like heat traditional canning, or have you ever like just like lactofermented or like I don't know all the words. Like I lactofermented some green beans last year, some dilly beans, which are so good. That's what you gave to me. They were lactofermented? Yes. No, I didn't know. Yes. And they're good. Like I we grew up with dilly beans. We used to sneak down in the storage room and eat them as little kids after a while. They were so good. But I didn't have a sneeze, I don't have a pressure canner to do green beans, and so I vegetables, and so I lactofermented those. So you don't need any canning equipment. You just need really just salt and spices and let it sit on your counter for a few days and and then you seal it up and refrigerate it? Does it have you don't have to seal it up, you just refrigerate it. Okay. Yeah, and then you can eat them. They're ready in three days. I'm a chicken. I never ever ever do any of the heat canning processing, even jam. Like I make freezer jam. I don't do it. Like I don't know what my deal is. I just I don't know. But I make what I call quickles. So I have a little flip-top jar that I keep in the fridge, and I have made a brine that I have added, like it's got probiotics in it. So technically they're fermented probiotic pickles, but I just keep cutting out cucumbers and adding it in, and then I pull from the bottom when I have my pickles, and it takes a couple of days, but I love them so much. Yeah. And they're probably crisp. Yeah, they're yeah, they're good. If I have any, like if it was Friday and you needed to do something with your cucumbers, I would have just made a big jar of pickles and put them in the fridge. So that's what I've been up to. It was quite the frustration. But I got I I I guess something good came out of it. I got a camp chef that I've been wanting for we've been married for almost 31 years, and I've been wanting one for probably 20 of those years. So I finally got one. I don't do as much canning as I used to, but now I have what I need. I'm just so shocked you just said you've wanted one for 20 years. It's never crossed my mind to want one of them. You know, I'm your life is different than mine. I never had really seen them until we moved to Idaho, and people in our neighborhood set the set them up in their garage with tables, and they did all their canning in their garage on these camp stoves. Yeah. And I was like, that's way better than doing it in your kitchen where you get so hot. Yeah. So that's what I've been up to. How about you? Anything fun? You know, not a anything super fun. I've been like last week was really an intense draining week for me. So I took a couple of days. Same for my husband. It was just an intense week for both of us. So we kind of just relaxed and reset over the weekend. We got some good time together. We watched a couple of shows together and just took some naps, like really kept it low-key. Right. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. So nothing super fun, but oh, we did go take my dad out our dad. My dad. We took my dad out for dinner for his birthday. So that was nice. So what do you want to talk about today? Oh, I want to talk about something that I think a lot of people maybe are scared of, afraid of, and that's carbs and sugar. Carbs. Carbohydrate. Carbohydrate. Okay. So Deborah. What is the difference between a carbohydrate and a sugar? Because people use them exclusively. Are they exclusive terms? Every carbohydrate is a sugar. Every sugar is a carbohydrate. They are the same. So not every carbohydrate is a sweet. True. Okay. So people say I'm cutting carbs, and they really mean I'm cutting sweets. Candies, cookies, quotas, soda. Yeah. That kind of thing. But then they keep eating carbs in the form of chips and noodles and rice and pasta and potato bread and crackers and pretzels. So but in the body, the body sees it all as a form of sugar. So it could be a if you want to get science-y for a second. It could be a sucrose or a fructose or a glucose, but in the body, those are all types of sugar. They all break down to H12O. Yeah. So there are different macros. Is our carbohydrates slash sugar earth? Is that a carb, is that a macronutrient? So there are three macronutrients, large nutrients that we need to focus on, or that our diet is primarily made up of. So one of them is carbohydrates, one of them is fat, one of them is protein. Those are the three. So everything fits into one of those categories. So carbohydrates are a macronutrient. Do we have to eat carbohydrates? Like if I were to try to lose 10 pounds and I cut out quote unquote carbs, is that a good thing for me to do? One of the most commonly asked questions. Or I'm going on a diet, so I'm cutting carbs. I mean, you can and you will lose weight. Here's the thing: if you look at the word carbohydrate, carbs hydrate you. So they make you hold some water. Your body needs some of that water. Okay. If you cut them out, you immediately lose water weight. Ah, so I can lose 10 pounds quickly if I cut carbs, but it's mostly water weight and not really the fat in my body that I want to release. Right. Got it. Yeah. So you can maybe feel less puffy or something, and it's not always a bad thing, but it's not true. It's not like visceral fat or dangerous fat or toxic fat that you're actually trying to lose that you're losing. Okay. So perfect. You can cut carbs and lose weight, but it's not generally a long-term sustainable thing. So let me just talk, I'll talk about a couple of specific examples of people I bought with. So some people are exceptionally insulin resistant. So insulin helps your body use the carbohydrates. Okay. So if you're resistant to insulin, your body doesn't quite know what to do with the carbohydrates. So you can gain weight if you're insulin resistant. Because your body takes that carbohydrate and stores it away for later as fat in your body. So for people who are like that, cutting carbs or drastically reducing carbs can help them get an insulin reset so that then they become more sensitive to them. So as a short-term solution, yes, you can cut your carbs, but it's not a long-term strategy. Never beat a dead horse. That saying has been around for a long time for a reason. People that are drinking energy drinks all day long just to stay functional, that's what they're doing. They are beating themselves up like they were a dead horse. We got to stop doing that. The only energy drink that I recommend to my clients is update. It's clean energy without caffeine, so you don't have jitters and chaos and like the problems that caffeine causes in the body, and also helps to give you focus and a clear mind. It's really the one I use and the one I recommend. To get a discount off of your order, go to drinkupdate.com and use the code DX2. That's D times 2. That's us. So drinkupdate.com and then the code for your discount is DX2. So when you say cut your carbs, like when I have done that and and what I've read is cut your carbs means more cutting starchy carbs like breads and rice and cookies and crackers and potatoes. But make keeping some carbs in your diet like complex carbohydrates, whole carbohydrates like bell peppers or celery. So you're names you're naming vegetables and you're naming fruit, which ding ding ding, every vegetable, every fruit is a carbohydrate. But there are some that affect your body's glucose levels more than others, like bananas. So it's important to still watch what carbohydrates you're eating. Yeah, and it it matters l a lot what form the c carbohydrate is in. So I'm gonna stop saying carbohydrate, but I like to emphasize the hydrate part because people really lose that part. Yeah. Like they help you with how your body hydrates. So you cut them out, you'll drop water weight 100% of the time. But there's a lot of nutrients in vegetables. There's also good fiber in vegetables. So I think it's important for most people to keep those vegetables, the non, I call them the non-starchy veggies. Keep all of those in. So have all of the asparagus, have all of the zucchini, the mushrooms, the onions, the peppers, like the broccoli, the cauliflower, all of those in. And then be more mindful of the starchy ones, like peas and potatoes. As I say that, I'm thinking about Grandma Smith used to make peas and potatoes, and it was one of my favorite foods. And no wonder I had trouble with my home. It was cooked in cream and it was all starched. So it was a recipe to for disaster for disaster for my body. Be mindful of the starchier veggies, but usually I don't think people are having trouble with their weight because they're eating too many vegetables. That is not generally the case. Yeah. Or too much fruit. Yeah. That is most. It's the other stuff. So things that have been processed or ultra processed in some way, shape, or form. So we know what a carbohydrate is or what a sugar is. A carb or sugar. Synonymous. They are the same. They are the same. Yeah. When you talk about one, you're talking about the other. So the macros are protein, fat, carbohydrate. That's it. Protein, I think people know that they need protein for muscles. You also need it for all of your connective tissues, ligaments, tendons, skin, like all your hair, all of that needs protein. I think people generally understand that concept. And fats, some people are scared of fats, but it's it's I hope it's becoming more well known that we need fat to exist. We need it for our nervous system and our immune system, that all those things. So carbohydrates, why why do we need carbohydrates? So one thing I know we need carbohydrates, they usually have vitamins and minerals in them, which our body needs. They also have fiber, which keeps us full, but also helps our blood system, our stay level, we don't have ups and downs, crashes and highs. And the fiber also helps our gut, our digestive system work properly. That fiber also feeds the good gut bacteria. Yes. So you get more from your food. So what else did I miss that carbohydrates do for us? So one of the biggest things they are is an energy source. So your body really can run on two types of energy. It can run off of carbohydrates or it can run off of fat. Its preferred fuel source is carbohydrates because they are quickly and readily available. Okay, that's why you'll hear about marathoners, carb loading before a race, because it gives lots of carbs as instant ready access fuel. Yeah. Whereas fat is also like it's such a great fuel source, but you have to completely deplete your carbohydrates to access the fat. The fat in your diet or the fat in your body? Stored fat. Stored fat. Yeah. So f fat in your diet, like butter or olive oil or coconut oil, almond oil, all those, all those oils, those are also an energy source. Yes. It takes longer for your body to turn them into energy. Yes. And they also burn longer. Yes, they do. They're a long, slow burn. So I think of the carbs as the kindling for the fire and those good dietary fats as the logs on the fire. Yeah. So if you were to decrease your processed quick carbs and eat more whole carbs, more vegetables, more whole vegetables and berries and all those good things that we have around us, and your body uses those carbohydrates, and say you have, I don't know, 30% body fat, for instance. And you've eaten So you're a little higher by body fat than you should be. Yeah. And say, which means you're a little bit fluffy, you know? Yeah. Not super fluffy. I like fluffy, not fat. Fluffy. Yeah. And you and you're you've been cutting out your processed carbohydrates, chips, crackers, breads, those kinds of things. You're increasing your whole carbohydrates, your vegetables and whole fruits and things like that. How does your body use maybe your stored fat? When you've made that dietary shift? Yes. It's a little com complex, but it can use those whole real food carbohydrates right away. And then it knows like you're getting true real food fuel. So then it will more easily pull from your fuel stores, which is your stored fat. So a really cool thing about our body pulling that stored fat is it starts in your liver. Yeah. And so it's important that we have a healthy liver, that you don't trash it with lots of junk food. Yeah. So your liver does something cool called gluconeogenesis. It makes its own glucose from your stored fat in your body. So you had too much glue, too much carbohydrate, your body stored it as fat in your body. Your carbohydrate intake has changed. And so your body needs to pull from your own sources that it saved for later and make glucose. Isn't that cool? Yeah, it's amazing. The bot the body knows what's up. It knows what's to what to do. And if it's given the right environment, it will do it every time. Isn't that cool? Yeah, I think that is so amazing. You're out of this. All right. Well, I've stored some for later, so let's pull it out and use it. That's so awesome that the body does that. Yeah. That's actually, as you talk about the liver, that's one of the reasons people are getting fatty liver. They've never touched alcohol, which used to only like be considered the only way to get fatty liver. People get fatty liver because they've become more insulin resistant. They've had a lot of processed and ultra-processed foods, and the body doesn't know what to do with it. It's a foreign substance. Yeah. So the liver gets fatty, and the liver is kind of your body's filter. The filter gets clogged up. You have to clear the filter, get the liver working properly again, and then it will do these cool things. Processes that you're talking about. Let's get back to carbohydrates. Do you need different amounts of carbohydrates in different stages of your life? So it's I it's interesting to me because the body, like we do, go through stages or seasons, and a teenager can basically run off of processed carbohydrates and they can build muscle and they can have energy for days. Oh true. But that's because they have all of these other reserves like shored up that haven't been tainted and damaged in their body. So technically, yeah, you can do different amounts and quant you know, quantities and varieties of carbs at different stages in life. But a healthy way to think of it for like from youth onward is to think of getting around 120 grams of carbohydrates in the course of a day. Okay. That sounds like a lot of carbohydrates, Deb. Uh, it depends on who you are. So if you're, you know, let let me just finish breaking it down. So think of 120 grams of carbohydrates in a day, ideally about 30 to 40 per meal. So if you eat four meal or three meals a day and have 40 grams of carbs, you've reached your 120. Okay. But if you're gonna have any snacks in the day, you don't want 40 at every meal. So I kind of try to think of 30 to 35 per meal and then save about 10 for a snack somewhere. Okay. So, like for me yesterday, it was not a fantastic dietary consumption day for me. I was a little bit off the rails. I was exhausted. I just wanted basically to couch rot and do nothing. And my husband had brought home store-bought muffins the night before. So my breakfast was a blueberry muffin slathered with butter. It's absolutely the wrong thing for my body. But it was easy, it was immediate. I had it. So, but then, so that was too many carbs at breakfast. Yes. And then as a snack, I had one of my little bags of pop chips, pub chips. They're processed, but pretty clean. So I don't feel terrible having them from time to time, but it was all carbs. We won't go into the rest of the day. But at some point during the day, I went out to my raspberry bushes and I picked a handful of fresh raspberries. I did it in the morning, I did it later in the day. So ideally, that would have been my carbs for my snack. It wouldn't have been muffin carbs, it wouldn't have been pop chip carbs. But you want to think of 120 carbs through the day. If you're having a burger, the bun is usually about 40 carbs, 35 to 40. So if you're going to have a burger with a bun, you don't also want to put it with chips or potato chips or potato salad. That's also carbs. That's too much carb, too much fuel in one sitting. Your body cannot burn through that much fuel in in that amount of time before your next meal. Gotcha. It will be forced to store. Gotcha.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So whether you're a 20-year-old or a 60-year-old, keeping within those ratios will help. But if you're in the child rearing years, you need more carbs because you're making humans in your body, and generally you're then breastfeeding them. So you're kind of eating for two, and you need a lot of whole food carbs to fuel you through it and to fuel the baby and to grow the baby. So there's times where you want more, but like where we are in our lives right now, we're menopausal, post-menopausal. Ideally for us, our carbs would be consumed with breakfast and at supper, avoided during the middle of the day, and we would be having whole real food carbs. So some oats or some rice or a half of a potato. Think of like a half cup to a three three-quarters of a cup. That will keep you in the right grams. There you go. With your breakfast, and or some fruit, or a piece of sourdough toast, or something like that with your breakfast. Or eggs with veggies. Yeah. You just want some of those complex carbs. Yeah. Breakfast and supper. And then during the middle of the day, your body would prefer to have protein and fat rather than carbs thrown in there. There you go. Did that make sense? That makes sense to me. Okay. If our listeners have any questions, they can put it in the comments. We'd be happy to respond and help you walk through any of that. So I always think of breakfast kind of carbs, like I think of oats and I think of breakfast potatoes or you know, some zucchini and mushrooms and veggies sauteed in with my eggs. And I think of supper time carbs. So half a cup of cooked rice or half a cup of beans or on a taco or on a taco salad, those kinds of things. And then the non-starchy veggies like the lettuce and the asparagus and those kind of things kind of are neutral. They offset themselves. I have a son that's trying to lose some weight. He's not super heavy, but his pets are just a little bit tight. Then he's in law school and working at all over the summer, he works at a in a law position. And so like as an intern kind of so he's he has some nice suits, right? But they're getting a little bit tight. So he's trying to decrease the amount of food he eats. And I said, that's easy. Just eat your vegetables.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Fell off with those non-starchy veggies. Eat your vegetables. He loves carrots and he loves bell peppers and he loves cucumbers. And I was like, just if you eat those, you will stay full and you know, make sure you get your protein. And anyways, he he was so hungry because he forgot those things that I taught him when he was at home.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And a wrestler and trying to lose weight and starve himself. I said, just eat some vegetables. But anyway, so he's been able to incorporate those and feel better and still keep shedding some of that fluffiness that he has. So it works. It works. Vegetables keep you full. They keep you full. One super cool thing about the veggies, too, especially those fibrous veggies like the broccoli and cauliflower and Brussels sprouts, they tend to scrub the fat from your muscles. So if you think of like a marbled steak, that marbling is fat in the muscle. So when you eat lots of veggies, that helps clear that from your muscles and makes you more cut and defined and shredded in the best way without looking like a bodybuilder. So those are cruciferous vegetables. Yeah. So yeah, those those are those cruciferous vegetables are powerhouses. They're good, good. I guess they're all really good, but those are powerhouse veggies. Yeah. They're like you said though, they're all really good. They all serve a purpose. Yeah. So one of the things I recommend to people all the time is go for variety. Don't get stuck in a rut. So, like my husband Tom, if he goes grocery shopping, he's gonna get broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots every time. Because when he thinks of steamed veggies or sauteed veggies, that's what he thinks of. I'll make it with all like I make all sorts of stuff. And he loves my food and he loves how many veggies, but it never dawns on him to get them. So the variety, because they have different nutrients, they have different purposes. All over the place there are farmers' markets with all kinds of fresh veggies that you can eat. And you're more likely to find good variety, fresh good variety at farmers' markets. So that's kind of fun. Yeah. Farmers markets are a cool place to go to get locally grown, homegrown or small farm grown variety of foods. Usually pretty clean. Pretty clean, meaning not very many pesticides or fertilizers. Are there any other kinds of ways you like to add carbohydrates into your diet? Or do you ration them out? Like what do you generally do? I don't ration them out. I don't in my head think about how many carbohydrates I'm eating or vegetables or fruits. If I have fruit, it's usually an apple or some berries. Those are gonna be your lowest glycemic. Yeah, they have the lowest impact on your body, right? Negative impact. Good fiber. You also just said you don't usually ration your carbs. You don't really think about it. And that's a prime example of the difference between your physiology and my physiology. True. You really have never had a weight issue. You never really have had to think about that. And for me, that's one of the things I must think about, or else I get in trouble.
unknown:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:So so back to like what I eat. So I'll eat berries or apples in the morning, or maybe as a snack, I'll eat an apple with some peanut butter and chia seeds. That's a really good thing. I like to dip my apple in. Beautiful. Or almond butter and chia seeds. But for dinner, I've always made sure. This is funny. I've always made sure we have at least two vegetables with our dinner. We have a meat, a protein, and at least two vegetables. And that's how my kids grew up. And that's an awesome habit to have. Thank you. I think it uh it works well because that then you're getting your vegetables in the evening, right? Yeah. So that's how I that's how I eat my carbohydrates. So the pre the ma it sounds like the majority of your carbohydrates are coming from fruits and veggies. I didn't hear a lot about bread in there or pasta or I'm not a babies or cake, but I know you have dessert. We do have dessert. Yes. And I don't re when uh when all my kids were home, we'd have dessert on Sunday. Uh-huh. Once a week, we'd make something fun and have it on Sunday. I didn't keep it around a lot. As for breads, I don't really eat a lot of bread in my diet. It's not something I crave. Sometimes I'll have like avocado toast. But that's not something I normally will eat. Sometimes I'll have some crackers with cheese. Yeah. Which is a good combo because you have the carbohydrate and you also have the fat with it, but cracker's not ideal, but we paired it with something good. No, there's good sources of crackers out there. There's good clean, they're still processed, but there's like minimally processed rather than ultra processed. And like there's brands that I use because they're cleaner. So my cracker cheese snack, you said is you saw my eyebrows move again with that. I'm not at all critiquing the way you're eating, but again, your physiology is different than mine. Yes. You have been a healthy weight, healthy metabolism for your whole life. Okay. And I have had the opposite experience where it's been a lifelong struggle and challenge. So one of the things, if you have a more challenged or a more stubborn metabolism or more of a weight concern is to not put the cracker, the carb with the cheese or the fat. So don't combine the fat and the carb because they are both fuel sources. True. And your body can only burn one fuel at a time. So if you're giving it two fuel sources and you have a slow metabolism that doesn't burn a lot of fuel, it will force your body to store one of those. Interesting. Okay. So for me, I will almost never put a carb, like I don't have avocado toast very often because that's putting fat with carb. I will store, I will store. So I will have sourdough toast. I make homemade sourdough. I will have some sourdough toast every so often. And I usually will just have it next to some eggs and veggies. So I'm not putting fat with it. I'm putting protein with it. Got it. And if I have cheese, it's gonna be with something that's more protein and fattier and not with carbs. Gotcha. Does that make sense? Yeah, so like nuts and cheese or pepperoni and cheese. Some people do that like a little crust of pizza snack or whatever. But or I'll do, like you were talking about the apple with the peanut butter or almond butter. I'll do like I will do slice up an apple and take some plain yogurt or vanilla yogurt and stir peanut powder into it. So it's low fat that has that peanut flavor, and I'll have it with my apple that's the carb. So I will dip my apple into peanut butter yogurt, basically, and it's creamy and delicious and amazing, but I'm not putting the fat with the carb. Nice. Good to know. Yeah. So different bodies, different, different carbs. Different reactions. Yeah, different carb usages and different combinations will work. But back to that 120 per day, that's a really good guideline. You just have never had to use a counter to track that. I haven't. I probably should. I I probably should just as an experiment to see how many carbohydrates I'm eating in a day and how it compares to other things that I'm eating. Yeah, I think it's eye-opening for a lot of people because especially in the US, people are very carbohydrate heavy. Yes, and they think they're getting way more protein than they are. And it's usually they need to lower the carbs and increase the protein, and then they will feel amazing and look fantastic. Yeah. We have said a couple of times processed and ultra processed. So there are basically three stages of a carbohydrate. Zero processing. What does that look like for you? To me, that looks like the whole real food. Like I can pick a pot or dig a potato out of the ground. That's a whole real food carbohydrate. Or I can pick an apple off of a tree. That's a whole real food carbohydrate. Okay. Or take a grain of wheat, like a wheat berry, or a kernel of corn, which is also a grain. Yes, it is. Or a grain of rice, like rice, beans, those are you can identify them as the food they were when they came from the earth. Gotcha. Yeah. So that's a whole real food carbohydrate that haven't been tampered with or tainted in any way. Okay. So minimally processed. Let's talk about fruits. What is a minimally processed fruit? How would how would would that look like? An apple pie? Um yeah. So to me, minimal processing is something you can do in your home. So an apple pie. So you can make an apple pie or you can make apple juice. Okay. Okay, which is minimal processing, but you're changing the food. Okay. You're removing some of the fiber from the food and just keeping the liquid. What about jam? So it's summertime. I'm making raspberry jam. That's minimally processed in my house. Doing it in your home. Yeah. So even grinding the wheat to make the flour to make your bread. That's minimally processing. Okay. Or grinding the flour to make a pasta noodle. Yeah. It's minimal processing. Hasn't been heavily tainted or tampered with. Okay. So homemade mashed potatoes or sauteed, stir-fried carrots and celery and onions, and that's minimally processed. Yeah. So stuff I can do at home. So ultra-processed, let's talk about ultra-processed food for a minute, because I think that's where we get into the most trouble with our bodies. For sure. We eat a lot of ultra-processed food. So in my head, if I were just any average American, and I would, I'm at work, I'm hungry, I'd go out to lunch to McDonald's. So what in that McDonald's hamburger fries and drink is ultra-processed? The drink is ultra-processed. That doesn't look like a vegetable or a fruit at all. Or a grain. It is not whole food in any way, shape, or form. Obviously, depending on the drink you get. If you get milk, which people are not generally getting, it's like Diet Coke or Dr. Pepper. Yeah. Yeah. They have the best Sprite at McDonald's, I hear. Or it's the milkshake. I hear people say they have the best Diet Coke there. And I'm like, why do you like you've gone everywhere and taste tested all the Diet Coke to find the best one? It's crazy. But the fries are also ultra processed. So why would they be ultra processed? But I can make French fries at my house. Because they do weird stuff to the fry. It's not like just a cut potato anymore. No. They put dye in it and they they dye their fries yellow so they look appealing. They look like food, I guess. So they strip them completely down and then add to them to make them look recognizable, but it's not the same food anymore. No. So if I were to cut up a potato at home and make French fries, it would look different and taste different and have different nutrients, nutrient value than fast food French fries. For sure. They're also using like different ingredients. So most of what they're using is cheap crappy sugars and oils that are very damaging and inflammatory to the body. Whereas at home, you're usually using a more recognizable, like if you use sugar, you use sugar. It's not a combination of malt syrup and corn syrup and. Wait a minute, wait a minute. When I make French fries at home, I don't coat them in sugar. But McDonald's does. They add sugar. Sorry, fast food places do. They add sugar so that they are sweeter and more addictive-ish. They want to add the sugar and they want to add the salt and they want to add the fat because that keeps you craving it. So they add all three to everything. Yes. Yeah. So let's talk about the hamburger. I would say the bun. Yeah. Oh, you're talking about the whole burger. The whole hamburger. I thought you were talking about the meat, which they it's again, it's other stuff cut into it and added into it. And I don't know if you've ever watched them make a burger, but they dip it in a pan of like fat-like substance to give it like flavor and moisture. Like it's not at all what you would do at home in a healthy way. Yeah. And then the bun, they actually add a lot of sugar too. A lot. Did you know there's more calories actually in a fish filet sandwich than there is in a Big Mac? Really? Yeah. I did not know that. Yeah. People think, oh, it's fish. Yeah. It's healthier for me.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:But between the bun and then the breading on the fish and then the frying of the fish, interesting. It's absolutely tainted. So it would be better for me to pack a home lunch of something than to go out. Every time. Even if it's not like even if you're packing like the beef, jerky, and string cheese and carrot sticks, that's going to have more nutrients and be more helpful and less damaging to your body than driving through fast food. Awesome. So I think we've got the gist of what ultra-processed is. Yeah, like processed and ultra-processed. The ultra-processed is what's doing most of the damage. And I see people, like we talked at the beginning about people cutting carbs to lose weight. So they'll stop eating fruits and veggies and start eating keto packaged bread from the store because it doesn't have the carbs in it, but it's absolutely ultra processed and more of a problem than if they just ate the dang fruits and veggies. That's true. I was looking, I went grocery shopping last week and I was looking at the keto tortillas, though. They are fake food. Oh, and I was I was astonished at what is in what is in them. It's like not, it's not food. It's not. It's fake food. Yeah. It was interesting. So I I was looking at that and then I was looking online for like a carb-conscious tortilla recipe. And you can make them with chickpea flour. You've talked to me about chickpea flour before. You can make them with chickpea flour and almond flour and and just make them at home and actually have a healthy low-carb tortilla without a pig. It tastes way better. To tastes great without all the imaginary pretend, pretend real ingredients. Yeah. So I think we can make them out of egg whites, too. Like to be super low carb without any flour, you can make an egg white tortilla. My my point in saying that was you can go to the store and you can buy something that says that claims to be low carb or keto safe or whatever, but make sure you read those ingredients because low, low carb or keto-friendly does not equ equal actual healthy food. Yeah. A whole uh nutrient dense food. They're usually what I think of as franken foods. Like they are fake foods put together in a weird way that's not gonna function right in your body. Yeah. So it's good to have things that resemble real food as much as possible. It's okay to not do it all of the time. It's okay to have a McDonald's hamburger, French fries coke if you don't do it every day, all the time. It's okay. So I always think about the 80-20 rule. Yes. What you do 80% of the time gets you the most most of the results. But 20% of the time, I'm gonna have the chocolate chip cookie, or I'm gonna have the muffin for breakfast. It's the exception to the rule rather than the rule. Yeah. High quality foods, whole foods. And you can make them at home or you can buy them, but you need to not get deterred by the the fake, expensive alternatives and be somewhat savvy as to what what it is that you're actually eating. Like like the tortillas. Like I can buy because I just uh sometimes I make stuff from scratch at home, and sometimes I just need things to be a little bit easier. Yep. So I will buy tortillas that are like the egg wrap tortillas, it's just egg whites, but they're super flimsy, they don't hold up great, they don't taste amazing on their own. So when I go to eat it, I'll sprinkle some parmesan cheese or some shredded cheese in the pan and put that egg wrap on it and make a more sturdy, more tasty tortilla that's still lower carbs, still real food. Nice. Yeah. But I didn't have to make everything from scratch because I just don't have time all the time. I think that's the thing. We we get we want to eat better and sometimes we just don't have the time. So it's okay. It's okay to 20% of the time not have perfect food. Yeah. So we we live in a we're real people, real world. Yeah, real world. We're striving for for for perfection, but we're not perfect yet. And eighty eighty percent will get you there. Get a B. Get a B. That's what dad likes to say. Just get a B. Yes. I like to be an A student, but sometimes I settle for a B. Yeah. It's okay. Yeah. C's get degrees, but we want B's in our house. At least for sure. Yeah. Awesome. Is there any do you have a favorite, like a favorite carb-centric meal that you like to eat? Carb-centric? Yeah. Like if you're saying, because some days you're like, I'm just craving carbs. Or is that just me? I don't know. I just want carbs. Let's see. Some days I just want carbs, but I usually just grab a handful of crackers and eat that. What kind of crackers? Wheat thins. That's your go-to? Yeah. You want to know what my go-to for crackers? I have two. One of them is always the healthy option that I have. It's our simple Mills crackers. So they're an almond flour-based cracker. Nice. And they have amazing flavors. So if I feel carby, I'll have something like that. Or like yesterday, I keep have those pop chips on hand. It's a healthier option, but it's still not a perfect option. Gotcha. If I just don't care, I will have Ritz crackers or I will have Graham crackers. Ah. Those are both good tasting things too. Yeah. And sometimes that's just what I want. Yeah. So that's what I have. But it's not the majority of the time. And that's okay. Yeah. How about you? What's a carb heavy meal that you like? So one of the carb heavy meals that I'm going to say I like, but I make more often because my husband really likes is spaghetti. But I try to do it the smartest way I can. Oh, you add all kinds of vegetables to yourself? All sorts of veggies. And but also the noodles I use are usually bonza noodles, which are a chickpea noodle. So it's still like it's a chickpea ground into flour. So it still has some fiber in it, but it has a little more protein in it than a regular wheat noodle. But it tastes about the same and it cooks the same. Like you can't tell the difference in your food. So I'll use a chickpea noodle so it has a little more protein and a little lower carb. And then I will add, like I will shred zucchini, I will shred carrots, I will put yellow squash, I will put mushrooms, onions, garlic, like any veggie I can think of to cram in there, I'll cram in there. And then of course tomatoes. And then heavy on the meat. Yeah. So I try to kind of offset the carbs with the meat. And then sometimes I'll have a piece of garlic bread with it. But we usually start it also with a salad. So we're starting with, you know, leafy greens and veggies and then putting protein with the carbs. Gotcha. Yeah. So that's usually how I'll do it. If I'm just like, I want a carby meal, but I usually do it more for him than for me. Yeah. If I want a carb, I want a cookie. Like that's how like I want a cookie, I want a chocolate chip cookie, or a white chocolate macadamia nut cookie. So every once in a while, that's what I have. Okay, then that we're we're about the same. I'm not a huge pasta fan. Like it's just not something that I like to eat or cook. So if I want a carby something, it usually is a cookie or brownie or some ice cream or something like that. So that's my trait. That's my carb thing. So it's not a meal. It's a treat. That's a treat. Yeah. Yeah. I I prefer I actually prefer to have meat as my main thing with my meals. For lunch, well, for dinner. We'll mostly meat like a good steak or grilled chicken, especially in the summertime, or air fried chicken. I was angling for salmon last night. We were gonna cook salmon and asparagus and then some baby potatoes. Just air fry all of them, like do a one-sheet thing in the air fryer, and it's delicious. And Tom said, I'm not really feeling fish, and you're not gonna like what I want instead. So we had pizza, yeah, and it was heavy on the meats. So there was sausage and grow beef and pepperoni and ham and on a good hearty crust. Nice carbohydrates. Nice. Yeah. We'll have to do another podcast about some of our favorite ways to eat carbs, eat eat vegetables and fruits and how to cook them and incorporate them into our meals.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Because we have we have great ideas. To wrap up, do you have any I don't know, advice or suggestions or tips? I'll say reminders. My reminders that I think I'll give are one, remember that your body does prefer to run on carbs as its fuel source, but it wants real food carbs, not the package process, convenience carbs, the ultra-processed carbs. So it wants it. Carbs aren't the on carbs are not the enemy. Right. But mind your quantities in a day. So I really think people do best if they stick to 120 grams of carbohydrates, spread out throughout the day. That usually will keep people in a really healthy blood sugar level. They won't overdo with carbs, they'll add in, like if you add in lots of veggies, that goes a long way. A long way. Yeah. How about you? Awesome. Reminders, tips, insights. I I think it's I agree. It's important to get your carbohydrates. I think it's not, it's important to not be scared of them and to remember to eat, like you said, the whole whole whole versions of them so you can still recognize what the food is, not Doritos. Doritos. Yeah. Doritos and Oreos. Yes, that's not right. So I tell my clients all the time, it's not the potato that's the problem. It's the potato chip or the french fry. Yeah. It's not the apple that's the problem. It's the apple juice or the apple pie. Because they've been more processed. Yes. Yeah. So try to keep it whole. Try to keep it real. Keep it whole. Oh, keep it real, sister. That's it for me. Yeah. Thanks. See you next time. Thanks for listening to the D Times 2 podcast with Denise and Deborah. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. Be sure to subscribe and share it with someone who's ready to roll toward a more balanced life. Your support means the world to us. And just a quick note we're sharing our own experiences and ideas, not professional advice. Always do your own research and talk to a qualified professional before making big decisions. Until next time, keep your wheel rolling strong.