273. Is This Everyday Habit Stalling Your Blood Sugar or Weight Loss Progress?

In this episode, we explore everyday habits that could be stalling your blood sugar control and weight loss progress.

Get practical tips and expert insights on how small changes can make a big impact on your health and fitness goals.

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Resources From This Episode

>> Insulin Resistance Diet Blueprint - https://www.zivli.com/blueprint?el=podcast

>> Free Low Insulin Food Guide - https://www.zivli.com/ultimatefoodguide?el=podcast

>> Join the Zivli Program Waitlist - https://www.zivli.com/join?el=podcast

>> Test Your Insulin at Home - https://www.zivli.com/testing?el=podcast

Have a question? Email us at: support@zivli.com

Transcript

So maybe you've been working at your health during all of 2024 and you feel like you didn't make the progress that you expected to make or you made some progress but then you backtracked over the holidays. This episode is for you.

Hi, I'm Dr. Morgan Nolte, founder of Zivli. As a geriatric physical therapist, I saw the heartbreaking effects of insulin resistance. At Zivli, our mission is to help you prevent and reverse insulin resistance for long-term weight loss and disease prevention through a low insulin and inflammation lifestyle. Each week on this podcast, you'll learn simple, actionable tips to lose weight, keep it off, and get healthy. If you're ready to create a body and life you love,

you're in the right place. Let's get started.

Well, hey there and welcome back to another episode of the Reshape Your Health podcast. I'm so excited for you to be here today. I'm your host, Dr. Morgan Nolte, and this is the first episode that I am recording in 2025. So happy new year. I hope that you had a wonderful holiday season with your family. I took a couple of weeks off just to be present with my kids while they were home over break and we had a wonderful time. We played a lot of cards, a lot of Monopoly, played with our Christmas toys.

went on, you know, different day adventures to get out of the house. I had just a lovely time and I hope that you have had a nice holiday season as well. Coming into the new year, I know a lot of people are focused on their New Year's resolutions and New Year's goals and word of the year and I'm so excited to get into all of that. I kind of eat that personal development stuff up and today's episode is specifically going to talk about a really sneaky but important

thing that may be causing a weight loss plateau or a blood sugar plateau. So maybe you've been working at your health during all of 2024 and you feel like you didn't make the progress that you expected to make or you made some progress, but then you backtracked over the holidays. This episode is for you and whether you have a goal to lower your blood sugar or to lose weight or to

just lose body fat and gain muscle, you're going to find value from this episode. And if you're a Zivli member, we are diving into this topic even more during our monthly mindset coaching call in mid January. And if you're not a member, but you want to dive a little bit deeper into this information, be sure to register for our blood sugar bootcamp that is going on right now. You have about one week left to watch the videos and you can do that at zivli.com forward slash bootcamp.

There's a link in the description. That's where we're gonna dive into more of the details and the nitty gritty and the how to, if you're not a member. If you're a member, everything's in the course, come to that January coaching call. It's gonna be a really good one to focus on meal planning and macros and calories and some things that we tend to avoid and not really wanna talk about because I don't know about you, but I have never met somebody who enjoys tracking their food. I just haven't.

Like I don't enjoy it particularly. Most of our members and clients don't really enjoy tracking their food, but I will tell you what, if you don't have your calories and your macros dialed in, it is going to be very difficult for you to reach your body composition and blood sugar goals. So that's what I'm diving into today is exactly how do we determine

our calorie needs? How do we determine what macronutrient ratios are right for us? Now, before we get to that, I'm gonna give you a little bit of background and share with you my word of the year. And I was not expecting this to be my word of the year. I like to say the word chooses you. You don't necessarily choose the word. It's kind of like what word keeps coming up in your head over and over again. And for me, that word is discipline. And...

I feel like I'm a pretty disciplined person already, but we are entering into a very unique season in our life. We are having a baby, God willing, in April, or he might come early and decide to join us in March, who knows. And it's anyone who's had a newborn knows like that is a whirlwind. We already have a six year old and a four year old and

It kind of feels like we're starting over in the newborn phase and we know what we're getting into. And I'm really trying to prepare myself mentally for the challenge of sleep deprivation and a changing body. And one thing that's been so important to me is maintaining my health during this pregnancy, maintaining my physical health, my mental health, my emotional health. I am so focused on that.

because I know my postpartum experiences historically have been pretty rocky. And in order to reduce the stress on me, reduce the stress on my family, I have to be so strong mentally and emotionally and physically. I get to be so strong mentally, emotionally, and physically. And that takes practice and that takes work and it takes discipline.

So specifically, what am I trying to be disciplined about this year? In my opinion, there are a few cornerstone habits in my life where if I can do these, everything else will come easier and more naturally. The first is that morning mindset routine. I have hammered that home on this podcast so many times. The second that I'm focusing on right now is an evening mindset routine. And that is allowing me to have the space and the time

to reset mentally before I enter into my time in the evenings with Justin. It's also a really, really good place for accountability. So I have this morning and evening accountability system for myself so that I can track my food. I'm tracking my calories, I'm tracking my macros, I am weighing myself every day because I know if I can control this pregnancy weight gain and not gain too much weight,

that will make for an easier natural childbirth experience. It will reduce my risk for gestational diabetes or preeclampsia or high blood pressure or tearing or all of those, you know, birth, birthing complications that happen often. I want to do everything that I can to reduce my risk for those. And that takes discipline of what I put in my mouth, how I move my body and how much weight I'm gaining. So historically,

I don't like to weigh myself every day. I'm getting used to it. It's fine. It's a good discipline, I think, for me at this season of my life, but it's something that I have to be disciplined about. I don't like tracking my food. Historically, it's not something I do all the time, just like weighing myself. But again, during this season, it is the right thing for me to be doing. And you could maybe relate to that. Like maybe you don't like weighing yourself. Maybe you don't like tracking your food.

But if your health is in jeopardy, it might be a good season for you to start doing things that you don't wanna do, okay? Unfortunately, we get to choose our hard, know, these things, facing your fears, doing these tasks that might seem mundane in the moment, but they add up over time, doing things that you don't wanna do, facing what you're actually eating, tracking what you're eating.

You might not wanna do that. That might feel very hard for you, but it's also hard on the flip side if you don't do that and you have to suffer the consequences of poor health or excess weight, or you're feeling tired or sluggish. Like there is sacrifice either way. And so for me, I am choosing to be disciplined about a few key habits, namely that morning routine, the evening routine, daily weights and daily food tracking so that I can control my weight gain and reduce

reduce any risk for complications in my birthing experience and my postpartum experience. So that's why discipline is important for me, number one. Number two, that morning and evening routine is so important for my mental and emotional health, which is so important for how I show up in my marriage and how I show up as a mom. And so if I can be disciplined in my thought, in what comes into my mind, in what

comes into my mouth and what comes out of my mouth. That's kind of how I'm telling myself, man, my relationships are so much better and my health is better. So discipline is my word. And then how does that translate into real life? I like to go beyond just like pick a word for the year. And I like to say, challenge yourself with a sentence that you ask yourself multiple times a day. And so the sentence that I'm asking myself is, how can I be more disciplined?

How can I be more disciplined in this situation? How can I be more disciplined before I leave this room? Is there something that needs to be put away or put back or in place or a dish that needs to be done or a towel that needs to be hung up or a bed that needs to be made? All of those little acts of discipline will add up and reinforce that I'm focused on discipline. The other thing I did was I added to my personal faith formula right at the top, discipline, daily weights.

daily logging. And the other thing for me is in the past, when I've logged my food, I haven't really focused on calories as much, but I am right now because quite frankly, you just can't get around it. Like energy intake is important and what you eat is important, but also how much you eat is important. So I'm not just logging for accountability. I'm logging and reflecting on my log to see, all right, what did I eat? What was my weight?

How can I tweak things? Am I on pace for my my weight gain goal for this pregnancy? So maybe you've logged in the past too, but you've only focused on protein or you only focused on your carbs. So this could be a nice challenge. Like let's add another number to pay attention to. So I'm really paying attention to calories and protein at this moment in my life. And what I have noticed from logging my food,

is a habit of behavior that I have had for years and years and years. And if you're the kind of person where you're like stuck at a plateau or you have five or 10 more pounds that you wanna lose and you can't get it off or you're just stuck at any plateau, frankly, chances are if you're a health conscious person, you're making the same mistake that I was making and that sometimes I continue to make out of habit, out of a lack of discipline of thought.

And that is overeating healthy foods. Now I've done a great job over the last five, six, seven years, cleaning up my diet, reducing added sugars. I don't drink pop. I don't really eat a lot of candy or sugar. But what I do is overeat healthy food. And what does that create? That creates a calorie excess, which puts your body in storage mode. So if I am

Chronically overeating I'm going to be chronically a little bit heavier than what I would like to be ideally if I'm chronically overeating my pregnancy weight gain will be going at a faster rate and and this pregnancy has been such a blessing because I Was getting away with it by compensating with intermittent fasting, right? So I would overeat during the evening and then I fast

for breakfast and lunch the next day if I felt like I needed to, it was a really good lover and I think it is a good lover. But all in all, that habitual pattern of overeating healthy foods led to an overabundance of energy for my ideal body composition. So it's not that I wasn't healthy. I mean, I'm healthy by any stretch of the imagination, but I wanted to kind of develop more muscle tone and reduce body fat. And that just takes discipline of again,

what goes into my mouth and how I'm moving my body. So it's been a blessing to really learn that, you you can't get away with overeating when you're pregnant because you don't have that fasting lever to pull. You're just gonna gain weight faster. And that's what I experienced during that first trimester before I really dialed in the calorie intake per meal and per day. I've also been using a continuous glucose monitor as a cross check to see, all right,

what did I eat in that meal and how did that affect my blood sugar? And my goal is to see no more than a 30 milligram per deciliter rise in my blood sugar after I eat. And that is, I'll be honest, hard during this pregnancy if I don't move after the meal or if the meal is not very low carb. So I'm giving myself a little bit more grace, a little bit more leeway, you know, compared to the traditional blood sugar standards they want to see in pregnancy. I am well under those ranges. So I do feel good about that.

but I'm still above that ideal range that I like to be when I'm not pregnant. So moving into how can you apply this to your life, especially if you don't like tracking. The first thing to recognize is that what we resist persists. So if you are resisting tracking your macros, tracking your calories, your problem of your plateau will likely persist longer than if you just swallow the pill.

Bite the bullet, whatever you want to say, and just do it. Take the resistance out of it and just do it. And a few things that have been helpful for me is pre-logging my food in the evenings. That's why that evening routine is a cornerstone habit for me. Because if I can plan my food for the next day and pre-log my food for the next day, it does two things.

actually probably more than that. The first is it reduces decision fatigue. I don't have to think throughout the day, what am I going to eat? Does this fit into my plan? Like I've already made the decisions for myself. Number two is it's a lot faster when you actually decide ahead of time and log it ahead of time, what you're going to eat. For some reason, I just think it's a lot faster and more efficient. And then the third thing is it's a great opportunity for me to identify emotional eating patterns. Because if I log

my meals and it's in line with my calorie and macro goals and I deviate from that plan. That gives me really good personal data about what caused the eating because clearly it was something emotional because objectively you had your plan. You could have followed your plan. Why didn't you follow your plan? So that provides some really rich experiential data that I can reflect upon because

You know, there's this quote, experience is the best teacher. And I think that's so false. And everybody knows that. Like everybody knows somebody who's super mean and they're grumpy and they ruin all of their relationships. And it's like, they don't learn from their mistakes. Right. And if you don't learn from your mistakes, that's the clearest example that experience is not the best teacher, but reflecting on your experience is the best teacher. So using this data.

Reflecting on this data, seeing how can I do better tomorrow? How can I think differently tomorrow? How can I prepare differently tomorrow? That is where the gold is and that is where habits change. So remember to really reflect on your experiences, measure what matters. And if your goal is to lose weight, calories and protein do matter. If your goal is to lower your blood sugar,

your carbohydrate intake, your protein intake, your calories, they matter. So let's start to measure what matters. Let's start to reflect deeper on our experiences. Let's start to be proactive and let's plan better and let's do better in 2025 because you have the power but nothing will be different this year if you are not different. You must initiate that change. Nobody can do it for you.

Okay, let's wrap up this episode with some practical things that you can take away for your calories and your macros. And again, if you're a Zivli member, we are reviewing this stuff and some meal planning tips in our monthly mindset coaching call. And if you're not a member, get signed up for the bootcamp so that you can learn this stuff in more detail with slides and different learning modes so that it sticks better. So the first thing is to figure out your calorie needs.

and Carb Manager is my preferred app. It's not a sponsor or anything like that. I'm not an affiliate. I just like it. And it kind of, it'll be a little bit more accurate than this equation that I'm giving you because it considers like your age. It's a little bit more specific on your activity levels and that kind of thing. But in general, let's start with inactive people. So if you are a male who is inactive, you're going to take your current weight in pounds times

13. Okay. Your current weight in pounds times 13, if you're an inactive male, and that's going to be how many calories is estimated to maintain your current weight. All right. These are your maintenance calories that we're starting with. If you're an inactive woman, you're going to take your current weight in pounds times 10. So if you're 200 pounds and you don't exercise, that would be 2000 calories a day for your maintenance calories.

All right. Now, if you're moderately active, which is like 30 minutes a day, five days a week or so, men are gonna take your current weight in pounds times 15 for your maintenance calories. And women are gonna take your current weight in pounds times 12 for your maintenance calories. That's the first step. So determine your maintenance calories. The second step is if you have a goal to lose weight, take that number minus

500 calories per day. Now if that feels a little bit too restrictive or too big of a jump for you, totally fine. You don't have to have that big of a deficit a day, but that will kind of jumpstart your results a little bit. And sometimes that leads to better motivation and adherence. So that's something that you're going to have to play with. But if your maintenance calories were 2000 calories a day, that would be a calorie goal of about 1500 calories per day. Okay.

Now the next thing that you're gonna wanna do is figure out the right macronutrient ratio for you. And I understand this is a lot to absorb from a podcast. That's why I gave you those two other ways to absorb this information visually. So the first thing is if you are diabetic, like if your fasting blood sugar is over 126, for example, if you're in that type two diabetes range,

you need a pretty low carbohydrate diet to reverse that type two diabetes. So once you have your calorie goal for weight loss, and by the way, if you want to gain weight, you would just take the maintenance calories plus 500 a day, and then you would follow this macronutrient ratio. So 60 % of those calories from fat, 30 % of those calories from protein, and 10 % of those calories from carbohydrates.

So that is more of a ketogenic approach. If you are already diabetic, if you're already taking blood sugar lowering medications, a ketogenic approach is gonna be the most effective for you. The second category is the prevent category. So if you're fasting blood sugar is like 100 to 125, this would be the category for you. So you'd want 55 % of your calories from fat, 30 % of your calories from protein.

And then 15 % of your calories from carbohydrates. So you'll notice something there. You just gradually increase the calories from carbohydrates and reduce the calories from fat, but the protein stays the same. Like the proportion of calories you're getting from protein should be constant no matter what category you're in. All right. So I'm going to say that again, the prevent category, if you're pre-diabetic blood sugar is between 100 and 125 fasting, you want about 55 % of your calories from fat.

30 % of your calories from protein, 15 % of your calories from carbohydrates. It's still pretty low carb guys. And then if you're in maintain, which is where I'm at, you have normal blood sugar ranges. So 70 to 99 for a fasting blood sugar. You want about 50 % of your calories from that, 30 % of your calories from protein and 20 % of your calories from carbohydrates.

Now, if you're a very active person, you're an endurance athlete, you work out a ton, you may need slightly more carbohydrates than that to fuel your workouts and that's fine. You're just gonna eat more of your calories from carbs, ideally timing that with your workout so that you're using, it's just different physiological mechanisms. I don't need to explain it here, but that glucose is gonna get soaked into those active muscles, those hungry muscles during the workout.

versus if you were to have the carbs like several hours after your workout. So have any extra carbs that you need to have around the time that you're working out. That's gonna be better for your blood sugar levels long-term. So I hope that that provides a little bit of clarity. Again, I'm not gonna go into the weeds or too many details. The Carb Manager app helps tracking this stuff a lot easier.

but I did want to give you some baseline parameters that you can use because if you're just like Googling, like what macros should I be eating? How many calories should I be eating? You're going to get like 10,000 results, right? So I wanted to give you something that was vetted and proven and trusted as a starting place for your calorie needs and your macro ratios. Again, I hope if you're a member, you come to our January mindset coaching call where we can walk through that slower and in more detail.

or you join the blood sugar bootcamp if you're not a member so that you can see that in slide form and watch it again and again. And there's a workbook for you to kind of work through your own numbers. It's really helpful. Both of those are great resources. And if you have a goal to lose weight or lower your blood sugar, I highly, highly encourage you to be disciplined about your calorie needs and your macro ratios. And that will absolutely help you reach those health and body composition goals.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode and I will talk with you at the same time, same place next week. Bye for now.

Thanks for listening to the Reshape Your Health podcast today. To learn more about Zivli, our online course and coaching program to reverse insulin resistance for long-term weight loss and disease prevention, check out our website at www.zivli.com. That's z-i-v-l-i dot com. And if you enjoyed today's episode, please leave a rating and review on your listening platform and share it with a friend.

I'll talk with you at the same time, same place next week. Bye for now.