So you're pre-diabetic... What now?

The doctor just told you your A1C is climbing, your glucose is up, and it "runs in the family." It feels like a diagnosis you just have to accept, but is it?
In this episode, we’re breaking down the "Pre-Diabetic" label and giving you the steering wheel. We move past the medical jargon to discuss the three "buckets" of health you can actually control starting today: Nutrition, Activity, and Stress.
We dive into:
The "No Sugar or Flour for Breakfast" Rule: Why your first meal dictates your blood sugar roller coaster for the rest of the day.
The Egg-Wich & Protein Hacks: Easy, tangible meal prep ideas to keep you full and your glucose steady (including the Costco favorites).
Fiber as a Secret Weapon: How fiber acts like a sponge for blood sugar and a simple tortilla swap that can double your daily intake.
The "Sponge" Concept of Movement: Why a 5-minute walk or even calf raises after a meal can "suck" the sugar out of your bloodstream.
The Impact of Chronic Stress: Why your A1C might be high even if your diet is on point.
We wrap up with a powerful, real-life story of how shifting these habits, and managing life’s pressures, led to a massive A1C transformation from 18% down to 5.9%.
Whether you just got your labs back or you've been managing diabetes for years, this episode is packed with small, "boring" wins that lead to life-changing results.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome into the Oh Health Yeah podcast, brought to you by Healthy is Wellness. As you all know, our mission is to empower you to take control of your health and elicit a little bit of curiosity in your life when it comes to the world of wellness. Thank you so much for tuning in today. And if you have loved ones or friends that you think would benefit from this, share it with them. Let's get this thing going. So you went to the doc for your yearly, and he took your A1C, looked at your glucose, and he's telling you you're pre-diabetic. What can you even do? That's the number one question that most people ask when they get the pre-diagnosis of, oh, you're pre-diabetic or you're going to be diabetic. The doc says, you know, it just runs in your family. You're probably just going to have it, it's just going to happen. What can you actually do to begin taking control of those metrics? That's what we're going to talk about today. It's going to be a little bit quicker one. We're going to talk about three different buckets. We're going to be talking about nutrition, activity, stress. First thing that I wanted to point out A1C. We look at A1C quite a bit. The way that we assess it, we're looking at this thing called glycosylated hemoglobin. Zach is really familiar with this as well. But what it looks at is what percent of your red blood cells have been damaged by sugar over the last 90 days? That's something that we look at within our practice a lot. A lot of people look at your glucose number as well. The reason behind that is they're looking at some form of metabolic dysfunction that can oftentimes lead to diabetes. And when you go to the doctor, oftentimes it feels like there's nothing you can do. And what we're going to talk about today is what things can you actually do to feel in control of that number. First thing, first bucket I want to talk about nutrition. One of the number one challenges that we like to talk to people about when they're focused on their A1C number is no sugar or flour for breakfast. Whenever you break your fast, can you prioritize protein and fat? The majority of the time in the morning or whenever you have your first meal, your blood sugar is sitting in a steady state and may have even dropped. If you take in carbohydrates, whether that's sugar, flour, whatever it is, it's gonna spike the heck out of your blood sugar. What goes up must come down, and you crash. And that crash is signified by dang, I'm craving something else sweet. But honestly, your blood sugar is in for it, with that first meal of the day being sugar flour based or sugar flour heavy. So one of the first things that we like to talk to people about, if they're concerned about their A1C, is this idea of no sugar or flour for breakfast. When you break your fast, can you prioritize protein and fat? What do you got on no sugar flour for brecky or this intro, Zach?

SPEAKER_00 2:50

I like giving people options. And my first my we got Gus's go-to is cheese stick. He loves he loves doing the cheese stick.

SPEAKER_01 2:58

I do, yeah. Oaken had one this morning.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

My wife loves to do egg witches, and is it's as simple as taking a casserole dish. You can line up with tinfoil parchment paper with like let's say you're prepping for one person for a week, you want two eggs worth in the mornings. Um you are going to crack, let's say, so let's do seven days, you're gonna crack 14 eggs into a bowl, or just into the casserole dish. You can mix it inside that, add your spices. They do have a little bit of a tendency to kind of float to the top, but you're still gonna get your seasoning. So season it up, throw it in the oven. I don't even remember how long, probably like 10 minutes at 350. And it'll cook it up. It'll expand quite a bit, so you don't need as much as you think you do. You gotta remember that cake, that eggs rise like cake does. So pretty decently thin layer. And then you can take something like bacon, um, sausage. You you can totally skip the meat if you want to, but you could throw a little slice of cheese in there, and then you just you can score that like you would do a lasagna, and then you can just use the egg as bread instead of using bread. So you got egg, one layer, your meat of choice, like bacon or sausage, and then cheese, and then another piece of egg. And it's that is, I mean, just off the top of your head, I don't know, guess what would you think? That's probably 25 to 35 grams of protein. Probably just in that alone. I mean, one egg has what, like eight to ten grams? Six to eight. Six to eight grams of protein, and then you know, a sausage patty, you could have like 10 to 12 grams of protein, and then you got a slice of cheese that's usually like two to three grams of protein, healthy fats, you know. Good stuff. Yeah, that's sounds delicious. It's very protein dense, and you can get your seasonings in, make it spike, make it spicy, you know, gets colored that microbiome up a little bit, throw some hot sauce on it. But I always want to give people like, you know, you talk about actionable item. I I I I always like to leave people with something that they can like tangibly take away and do it. Yeah, so that's that's where I would go with nutrition on that one.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

I like it. That's a good idea.

SPEAKER_00 5:00

They also sell them at Costco if you want to try them before you make them.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

That's sweet.

SPEAKER_00 5:03

Yeah, they use turkey sausage too, so they're like really local. I think they're like, oh, I want to say like 180, 190.

SPEAKER_01 5:12

Are they the egg witches? That's called or are they called?

SPEAKER_00 5:15

It's called egg witches by I think it's by a company called Reds R-E-D-S. Oh, yes. Yeah, remember those. They're really good, they're expensive at Costco, but they're actually pretty decently cost effective to make. Also, a pro tip if you're like cutting and bulking, you know, you're really sure egg whites. If you you can get cartons of egg whites at instead of if you if you want to go lower calorie, higher protein, you can do egg whites and cut out the yolks. Not that yolks are bad, but if you're going for a little bit lower calorie, you can totally make the egg part of that just out of egg whites, and it's gonna be a little bit lower cal. So, or you can just beef up. So if you like, if you're a quantity person like me, you can do your eggs, and then you can just add a little bit of egg whites into it just to fluff it up a little bit more, add a little bit more quantity to it. So, and more protein.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

Yeah, that's protein too, yeah. I like those egg whites sound delicious. Other things, too. I'm trying to think of more. I mean, we got yogurt, obviously, is a good one. Watching the sugars that come in there.

SPEAKER_00 6:14

Cheese sticks are a good one, too.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

Nuts and seeds, hard-boiled eggs, too. We talk a lot about that.

SPEAKER_00 6:19

Are you a hard-boiled egg or a soft-boiled egg guy? Hard. Oh, dude, soft-boiled egg and ramen.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

Oh, interesting.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

That's good. That's good.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

That's an interesting combo.

SPEAKER_00 6:31

Mm-hmm. So the yolk spills into the the broth.

SPEAKER_01 6:35

That sounds pretty numbmy. Meat sticks can be good ways to break the fast too if anyone sees a concern.

SPEAKER_00 6:39

Convenient. Very convenient.

SPEAKER_01 6:41

The other thing that I talk to a lot of our clients about is reframing the way that you view breakfast. In America, we think breakfast has to be this sweet oatmeal, cereal, waffles, pancakes. Whereas oftentimes, if you take whatever you make for dinner at your house and just make an extra serving and use it as your breakfast, that's a great way to do it.

SPEAKER_00 7:00

It's such a hard thing for for I I don't I don't know much about it's such a weird thing, like culturally, because an English breakfast is literally its own thing. Have you ever heard of an English breakfast? It's like beans. I love beans, but trying to get an American to eat baked beans in the morning, my breakfast today at oak Big Mac casserole.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

That's what I'll have for breakfast. That's what I'll break my fast with. But the more that you can reframe that idea in your head and not think that you need those desserts for breakfast, better off you're gonna be. Seriously. With the nutrition side, if anyone sees a concern for you, focus on breaking your fast with proteins and fats, not sugar flour.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

I'd also go fiber, man. Fiber's a good one too. Fiber, I think, is almost as important, especially when you're talking about a diabetic. Um, do you want to talk about metformin and fiber and how they're similar?

SPEAKER_01 7:52

For yeah, run with it.

SPEAKER_00 7:53

So metformin and and uh fiber are kind of similar by what would the word be? Molecularly similar, um, and the way that they help with the pancreatic release of insulin. So if you can up your fiber intake, also to add a super pro tip on fiber intake, sometimes fiber is really hard to get. And us as Americans on average only eat about 15 grams of fiber a day. I would venture to say it was probably three to four times that. I was like 10 times that. You know, a hundred years ago. So super pro tip. Chia seeds great, awesome. Even if if you can't handle it, um, my friend up in Alaska, what she does is she just puts them in a bottle of water and chugs it. Honestly, waits for them to expand a little bit and just chugs it. A lot of people like to, my wife likes to put them in yogurt. Um, just adds a little bit of texture, doesn't really change the flavor at all. They're kind of flavorless, to be honest. Um, but the pro tip that I have is Mission, the tortilla brand makes carb balance tortillas. One tortilla is 70 calories, 16 grams of fiber for one tortilla. So that so even if you just ate one tortilla a day, just one, plus the the fiber that you get from your regular diet, which is probably another four, you know, 13 to 16 grams, you're doubling what the national average is. It's gonna help so much. Super warning though, you're gonna poop. It you it's gonna, yeah, it's gonna take a little bit of time for your body to get used to that much fiber. So be prepared for uh poop. Bathroom. Yeah, poop.

SPEAKER_01 9:36

So nutritionally, two kind of baby steps there: prioritize protein and fat in the morning, prioritize fiber throughout the day. Fiber's a great focus, just like Zach said, like the way that your body works with fiber is very similar to the way the body works with metformin, to where it allows the body to not necessarily it doesn't allow the blood sugar spike to be as negative that comes from certain foods, minimizes that, almost absorbs it like a sponge.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

It helps regulate the release of insulin instead of not releasing it all or dumping it all at once, like hypo versus hyperglycemia. Yeah, right?

SPEAKER_01 10:12

Yes, not as abrupt type thing.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:15

Second actionable bucket that we're gonna talk about, activity, move. I'm gonna leave it just as simple as that. Can you move more? Coming back to that sponge concept. When you move, your muscles act like a sponge and they suck the sugar out of your bloodstream. So if A1C is a concern for you, one of the best things that you can do is move and specifically post-preandial or after meals, if you can just even like calf raises sitting at your chair or getting up and going for a five-minute walk, if that's doable after you eat your meals, can be extremely beneficial. Frame that in a way that you can get wins with it because it's different for every single person. Some people can move after every single meal, other people have to work during lunchtime or even dinner time. So figure out ways that you can fire your muscle fibers after you eat your food if you can. Anything on movement? Move. Move. Okay. Simple, easy peasy. Yeah. Move. Move it or lose it. And another thing too with the movement side of things is if you do move, pay attention to the way that you feel. Like I did this in my own life. We'll order pizza sometimes on Wednesday nights for Survivor night. And then what I've been trying to do is eat the pizza, go for a little walk before we watch Survivor with the family, and then watch it. I feel so much better when I move after I eat. Even something like Papa John's. If I go in the front yard and play basketball with Asher after I eat that pizza, I can sit on the couch and watch Survivor and feel fine. Whereas if I eat the pizza and just chill, digestion, bloating, like immediately. So play with it and see if you notice a difference. Survive. Survive boy. And then the third bucket when we're thinking A1C, I wanted to talk about was stress. There's a lot of science coming out based around how chronic stress can actually increase your HBA1C value. Not only can sugar break down or stick to red blood cells and increase HBA1C, but chronic stress levels can as well. So if you went to the doc and you figure out your A1C is going up and it's a concern for you, try to figure out ways that you can take back control of your stress. That's very vague, but every single person in this world deals with stress in different ways. And if you're somebody that's an extremely stressed person and your A1C is going up, see if you can combat that a little bit with different habits that can help you take control of your stress. Anything on the stress bucket?

SPEAKER_00 12:30

Not really, no.

SPEAKER_01 12:31

Okay. Sweetness, cool. Short episode today. If A1C is something you're concerned about, one of the number one things that you can do is first figure out where you're at, get a test done, see if it's something that is concerning for you, if it is a number that's high or increasing, look into it. And if there's habits that you want to instill in your life, there's three kind of main ones to start with: nutrition, activity, stress. Thank you all so much for tuning in. Feel free to leave us comments, reviews, likes. If there's ever anything you want to hear from us, let us know. Thank you all.

SPEAKER_00 13:05

So the one thing that I want to add on the end of the episode, and I wanted to do it after, because if it's not okay with my dad to share it, I can just cut it out. We have a clean break. But I do want to tell tell the people that listen how much the stress, the movement, the all of the things that we talked about can affect your A1C. And I wanted to talk about how my dad's when he was in active addiction over a year ago, uh, his A1C was about 18, 18%, which is alarmingly high. And he's been a diabetic for a real long time. Uh we we tested his blood the other day, and he was at 5.9%. And I just have to give my dad the biggest shout out in the world and his sobriety and his A1C, and he's taking charge of his health and taking control of his life. So love it. Thanks for listening, guys.

SPEAKER_01 13:57

But Terry, keep kicking butt, man. Bye.