Reversing Prediabetes
June 25, 2018
Have you had a recent check-up at your primary doctor and been told that your glucose numbers are a little high, maybe even in the prediabetes range? It is estimated that more than 1 out of 3 American adults have prediabetes. Listen in as we talk about what food choices you can make to avoid Type 2 diabetes and get your prediabetes under control and into remission.
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Transcript
CASSIE: Good morning everyone and welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition. This show is brought to you by Nutritional Weight & Wellness a company that brings you life changing information every week, and we do that in a variety of ways. Of course, we have this program Dishing Up Nutrition, but did you know we also have blog posts on our website at weightandwellness.com. We have great classes that we teach at our office locations and at other areas onsite throughout the Minneapolis St Paul area. We also have great online classes for those of you who live out of the area or are just too busy to make it to an inhouse class. I know many of you are aware. We do individual consultations either in person or via skype or by phone - whatever works best for you. And my personal favorite, you can take us with you anywhere and listen to all of our past Dishing Up Nutrition programs by accessing our podcast, either through iTunes or with the free Dishing Up Nutrition app. And we're never pushing a book or trying to sell you a gadget. We come on the air every week simply to educate you on the power of eating real food. Our motto is real food matters. And remember this Dishing Up Nutrition show, it's free. We don't charge you. You don't need health insurance to listen and learn. Pretty good deal if you ask me. If you haven't recognized my voice yet, I'm Cassie Weness, registered and licensed dietitian and I'm pleased to welcome you all to the show today. Cohosting with me today is Carolyn Hudson, who's been a registered and licensed dietitian for over 30 years. So really between the two of us, there's a lot of life experience and nutrition knowledge in the studio.
CAROLYN: Absolutely. I would also like to welcome you to the show today because I think we will be speaking to a very large majority of people today because we're talking about prediabetes the entire hour. So here's a question for you. How many of you, our listeners out there, have had a recent checkup at your primary doctor and have been told, "uh-oh, your glucose numbers are a little high." In fact, you may have been told your numbers are in that prediabetes range. That should be a little scary for you, right? Because certainly you don't want to have that full blown diabetes and then have to take meds or insulin.
CASSIE: So if you are in a place where you can look up your latest glucose numbers, in other words, your blood sugar numbers from your most recent lab reports, we can help you understand what those numbers actually mean. The glucose number on your lab print out is your fasting glucose or your fasting blood sugar, and this should be done after you've fasted for 12 hours. It simply measures the amount of sugar in your blood. Now a normal fasting glucose numbers should be lower than 100 milligrams per deciliter. Lower than 100. If you have a number between 100 and 125, that's an indicator for prediabetes.
CAROLYN: Yeah, and if you are in that prediabetes range, you're certainly not alone out there because it's estimated that more than 1 out of 3 or, get this, 84 million American adults have prediabetes. So to get a more accurate measurement of your blood sugar levels, your doctor may have ordered an A1C test. That's a hemoglobin A1C test and that's used to measure the glucose in your blood for the past two to three months. So the A1C test can give you a much more accurate measurement of how well you've been managing your glucose levels because it's not based on just a single measurement. So an A1C of 5.7 to 6.4 is considered prediabetes. A number of 6.5 or higher is considered diabetes. So let me just say that again. So an A1C of 5.7 to 6.4 is prediabetes and 6.5 or higher is considered diabetes. So when we try to help our clients get their numbers below 5.7 that's what we always want to do it, right Cassie?
CASSIE: That is the goal, yeah.
CAROLYN: So if we're able, and I would say we're pretty darn successful at helping our clients get those numbers down. It may take a while if they've been prediabetic or even full blown diabetes, but it usually does come down. I think that we are quite successful at helping all of our clients alter those A1C numbers and that if we can get it down to that 5.6 or 5.5 or even 5, we are definitely winning that war on diabetes.
CASSIE: Definitely. And you know, I bet there are some listeners out there thinking, okay, but why is the doctor is so concerned about my blood sugar number? Or why should all of us be so concerned when we have those higher blood sugar, or sometimes we call them blood glucose, numbers? Well, we want to give you some reasons behind why you should be so concerned because I believe if we give you this research, that's going to be the motivating factor to really make some changes. And certainly today, Carolyn and I will be giving you some food ideas to make some changes in those numbers, but first we have some research based information for you. First of all, several research studies have found that having large fluctuating blood sugar levels, you know how the standard American eats and the blood sugar spikes.
CAROLYN: That rollercoaster.
CASSIE: The rollercoaster. Then it plummets, then they have cravings and it spikes again. The research is finding that if you have those large fluctuating blood sugar levels, this is a major contributor to neurological damage.
CAROLYN: In fact, 10 years ago in 2008 and article was published in the Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology. That article was called “Alzheimer's Disease: Type 3 Diabetes.” I can't believe that's been 10 years already that we've been calling Alzheimer's type 3 diabetes.
CASSIE: Right and yet I bet that's new for some listeners that it is called type 3 diabetes.
CAROLYN: So if you or a friend or family member is struggling with memory problems, it may be a result of fluctuating blood sugar levels. So what can cause those fluctuating blood sugar levels. Here's one example of how many people start their day. They skip breakfast and then they grab a coffee with a big beautiful blueberry muffin thinking, "oh, it's got blueberries and it's got to be good for me." So this muffin has to be great for me, not so much. The muffin which looks healthy has over 50 grams of carb and that carb that turns into 12 to 14 teaspoons of sugar in your bloodstream. So some of those muffins might even have more carbs and more sugar and they don't even really have real blueberries.
CASSIE: Fake blueberries and a lot of sugar. And I think to visualize that, would you ever stop and spoon 12 spoonfuls of sugar down your throat in the morning and think, "oh great started my day good." But like you said, Carolyn, sometimes because it's a blueberry muffin, you fool yourself into thinking that was a good start. But up spikes your blood sugar and so you eat that blueberry muffin, you know, and not to mention the caffeine with it drives your blood sugar up higher and faster than it would have gone otherwise. And so now you have that sky high blood sugar. And I've heard these stories from clients before a lot of times then because they had that muffin and coffee, they don't stop for lunch, but then maybe 1:00 or 2:00 rolls around and you think, "boy, I'm getting really hungry." So you think have a late lunch because at that point your blood sugar is rock bottom. So your body is telling you grab for something that's going to turn to sugar. And you know a lot of people when they have that rock bottom, blood sugar, they will feel tired. Some people get sort of spacey and have sort of this brain fog. These up and down blood sugars can lead to memory problems and Alzheimer's disease. And we're going to talk more about other complications of fluctuating blood sugars on the other side of break. If you're just joining us, you're listening to Dishing Up Nutrition. Before we go to break, I want to let you know some of you know this already, but I bet many do not. This past Monday, June 18th, 2018 was a very exciting and historic day really for all nutritionists, dietitians, and really anybody who wants to eat healthy because the FDA is helping us by banning the use of trans fats in processed foods. Again, this became effective June 18th, 2018. Now at Nutritional Weight & Wellness we've been teaching about the harmful effects of trans fats for the past 25 years and we've been sharing that information with all of you, our listeners here on Dishing Up Nutrition since the show started 14 years ago. Now, finally, trans fats will no longer be in the human food supply. Partially hydrogenated fats should no longer appear in those food ingredient lists, and this truly is a victory for all of the nutrition researchers who discovered the harmful effects of trans fats and, get this, it's estimated that there will be a 30 percent reduction of heart disease by this simple removal of trans fats from all processed foods. That deserves a round of applause.
CAROLYN: Well, welcome back to Dishing Up Nutrition. Now that those trans fats have been banned from the human food sources, we still want our listeners to look to using healthy fats and we like to keep it really, really simple. Cook in butter, coconut oil or ghee, lard, bacon grease and duck fat. Duck fat is used in a lot of those really upscale restaurants. So that's okay but I don't have that one in my kitchen.
CASSIE: I keep it simple too.
CAROLYN: So we tell our clients to please use olive oil or avocado oil, but you should not be cooking high heat with those. They should be low, low heat and maybe you should just use those more for the salad dressings. And stay away from still kind of those processed or factory type fats. Okay. So the refined oils like corn oil, soybean oil, canola oil and cottonseed oil, those have all been refined. They're heavily processed and some of them, well almost all of them have some residual chemicals still in them because of that processing, right?
CASSIE: Yes, yes. And then, I mean this is a whole other show, but that cottonseed oil as you know, because cotton is not a food so it can really get sprayed heavily, more heavily than foods. But then they extract the oil and wanting to make use of every part they use it in processed foods. So that one of all of those four oils you just mentioned, Carolyn has a lot of pesticide and chemical residue because at the start it was never intended for human consumption.
CAROLYN: I don't even think of oil. Cotton? Oil?
CASSIE: Cotton is in my shirt.
CAROLYN: That's my clothes. That's my dress today. I think when you're eating that stack of pancakes for breakfast or drinking sodas throughout the day, or eating pizza for dinner or eating a piece of leftover sheet cake loaded with frosting. Or like I was just talking before the show how I walked in on my dad one day and he had the whole gallon of ice cream and he's eating out of the bucket. He goes, "oh my gosh, you caught me." And he says, "At least it wasn't your mother." I said, "Dad, can I get you something nutritious to eat." "Oh no, no, I'm full now." So what did that do to his blood sugars? They were like up and down.
CASSIE: That spiked his blood sugar sky high. And that one might be more obvious for some people that eating out of the gallon bucket of ice cream is a boatload of sugar for your body. But I bet some people didn't know that pizza turns to a ton of sugar or that those pancakes just turn to sugar.
CAROLYN: So we totally forget about that connection between high blood sugar and the possibility of future health problems. Research really has found that there's a very solid connection to high blood sugar levels and heart disease, stroke, kidney disease. But also did you realize there's also connection between high blood sugar and cataracts and glaucoma and even retinopathy. So of course we need to mention the connection. Get back to that neuropathy that we were talking about. Neuropathy of the feet, that's a big one in diabetes, so high blood sugar levels damage our nerves, so we always recommend to our clients that it's best to eat real food at home. Skip drinking that juice and pop. And substituted much better to have nuts than those chips.
CASSIE: If you want something crunchy, exactly.
CAROLYN: And replace that bread and pasta with vegetables.
CASSIE: Taste so much better too, doesn't it? I mean, once I gave up the bread and the pasta and switched to vegetables, I would never want to go back because the vegetables have more flavor, more texture. Not to mention all the nutrition and something else Carolyn, that we should mention is that the good healthy fats like butter and olive oil, nuts and seeds, avocados, my favorite which is coconut oil. These healthy fats do not raise your blood sugar levels.
CAROLYN: Oh yeah. That's really important.
CASSIE: That is important. And what's maybe even more important is that not only do they not raise your blood sugar levels, you need those healthy fats every time you eat to help stabilize your blood sugar levels and keep them even keel. So really we're giving you the green light to eat these healthy beneficial fats with every meal and every snack.
CAROLYN: Yeah. So if you want to avoid type two diabetes and get your prediabetes under control and hopefully totally into remission, we say you need to change your nutrition to change your blood sugar numbers. Now, as dietitians and nutritionists, we realized certain medications such as prednisone or many of the medications for high blood pressure can actually raise your blood sugar numbers. And I don't think a lot of people know that, so I think that's another important point. However, what you put in your mouth is the biggest factor. So we really want to watch what we're eating.
CASSIE: Yes. And before we talk a little bit more specifically about some food choices that you can make in order to change your nutrition to change your blood sugar numbers, as Carolyn said. I want to help the listeners understand the blood sugar connection to health problems a little more in depth. So we've talked about some of these health problems already on the show. Certainly over our 14 years of being on the air with this program, we've talked about these health problems. A good doctor will remind their patients have these health risks and research after research study confirms the health problems associated with high blood sugar levels. So it's real. We know there is a connection and because this is such an important message, I just want to say it again. That statistic that Carolyn gave when we opened the show today, 84 million people have prediabetes. That's about 1 out of every 3 people. So if you're in a crowd of people right now, count out one, two, three, one, two, three. About every third person has prediabetes. And you know what I read last night, Carolyn, as I was reading up on this, it was on the Centers for Disease Control website, about 90 percent of the people with prediabetes don't know that they have it.
CAROLYN: Oh wow, that's high.
CASSIE: It is high. So get your blood sugars tested. I think part of that is maybe they're not going to the doctor and getting those numbers, but I don't think the doctor is always telling them, until it gets into the diabetic range. And that's so sad because when you're in the prediabetes range, it is so fixable. And here's an interesting way to look at prediabetes and type 2 diabetes. When I was driving here this morning all the way from Albertville, Minnesota to St Paul, I saw several kidney dialysis centers. And the question that always comes to my mind as I start noticing these kidney dialysis centers is why do we have all of these popping up all over the place? I don't remember all these centers, you know, 20 years ago. Well according to the National Institutes of Health, 14 percent of Americans have chronic kidney disease. And one half of those people that have chronic kidney disease have diabetes. Diabetes, that's one of the complications diabetes can bring on kidney disease. So again, let's get back to our mantra today of change your nutrition to change your blood sugar levels.
CAROLYN: Yeah. So let's talk about how those elevated blood sugar levels affect your feet. This is called diabetic neuropathy and I'm sure some people have heard about it, but there are more than 200,000 cases of neuropathy in the United States today. So diabetic neuropathy is caused from or by the damage to the nerves from those elevated glucose levels. Simply put too much sugar in the diet can and often does lead to nerve damage. And so for our clients, when we come back probably from break, I'd like to paint a picture for them on that.
CASSIE: Perfect. Perfect. We'll give them a good visual of what is going on when you have diabetic neuropathy. If you're just tuning in, you're listening to Dishing Up Nutrition. Before we go to break though, I just want to say that if anybody out there listening wants to know more about the June 18th, 2018 FDA ruling on trans fats that I mentioned at the start of the show, do check out our blog titled "Trans Fats Ban + What's Next" And you can find this on our website at weightandwellness.com. Once you're on that homepage, just click on “blog.” And we know at Nutritional Weight and Wellness that Dr. Mary Enig who was a well known researcher, she authored many great books, one of which was called Know Your Fats. We know Dr. Enig would've been so proud of this FDA ruling. She's no longer with us, but she actually called for a ban on trans fats over 40 years ago because she was doing the research that showed how harmful those trans fats are for our health. And Dr. Enig was largely responsible for getting the labeling of trans fats on foods. We learned from Dr. Enig decades ago that fats, good or bad, affect your bone health. You need healthy fats to build healthy bones and that might be new information for some of you. If I've peaked your curiosity, tune in next week to Dishing Up Nutrition when Jennifer Schmid and I discuss osteoporosis and bone building foods.
CAROLYN: Welcome back to Dishing Up Nutrition. Do you want to put your type 2 diabetes or prediabetes into remission? Do you need to learn and practice eating to control your blood sugars? If you said yes to one or both of these questions, I suggest you take our Nutrition 4 Weight Loss Series not just once, but twice. As we've been saying over and over this morning, it takes practice to change those bad eating habits. Most of us have been not eating properly for a long time. It could be up to 30 years or 40, some people it's 50. And we've been doing that high carb and low fat eating. So if that didn't work for you for weight loss or your blood sugar control, why not try something different? So, no, that's just not very good for us, right? The low fat and high carb eating. So we want you to try balanced eating and the real food plan and I'm sure you're going to be really pleased with the results. So call us at 651-699-3438 to get all of your questions answered or to sign up for one of our July Nutrition 4 Weight Loss Series. And before we went to break, we were talking about diabetic neuropathy and I wanted to paint a picture for our clients so you understand how that slow smothering damage of high blood sugars can cause neuropathy. So the nerves are like a rope. So picture a rope in your mind and that rope is on fire. So for the rope there's a constant slow burn that's fueled by the air, while the nerve burn is actually fueled by glucose. So that rope ends up being really charred and weak and splintered. Well the same thing actually happens to the nerves that go to the feet. So just like the rope, the nerves are splintered and broken and at this point the damage is kind of beyond repair. So the result of that elevated blood sugar on your feet is pain and numbness and a lack of stability when walking. That diabetic neuropathy is considered preventative. It's preventative condition. Again, you have to change your nutrition to change your blood sugar levels.
CASSIE: Good picture. I'm such a visual learner, so I hadn't heard that one before of the rope. That gives me a good picture of that diabetic neuropathy. We have a caller. Let's take the caller and then I have some more research I'd like to talk about, but line one we have Jonathan. Jonathan, welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition. You had a question for us this morning?
CALLER: Yes ma'am. Good Morning Miss Cassie. How are you?
CASSIE: Good morning. Good.
CALLER: So question for you, since this week it is a big weekend and a lot of people will be drinking and doing their thing for Pride weekend. My question to you is how alcohol, how does it affect the diabetes pre, you know, condition or if you have diabetes, if you could go into the health conscious part of it to let people know what the. I'm having trouble with my words this morning. First time ever. If you could figure it out, let me know what you think either with the fluctuation and with that type of thing does. Do you get it?
CASSIE: Yes, okay. That really is a great question. So how does alcohol affect blood sugar levels? It certainly raises your blood sugar levels and that spike in your blood sugar. I mean if you have prediabetes, it's probably going to keep you there. It's not going to help get that hemoglobin A1C down. I don't know. Carolyn, did you want to add?
CAROLYN: Yeah, well I think all alcohol and really almost no matter what it is, if you're doing hard alcohol mixed with a pop or something or if you're doing beer or even wine on that puts you on that kind of roller coaster up and down that we were talking about and that's what you want to avoid. Obviously, you know, the higher your blood sugars go when you're drinking alcohol, then the lower it we'll go and it's just, you know, up and down and up and down. And that's, that's gonna cause that nerve damage. It's going to cause all kinds of those complications from diabetes.
CALLER: Thanks for answering my question. I hope you have a safe and happy weekend and God bless. Have a great day.
CASSIE:Thank you for calling in. I recognize that voice he calls into Jason and Alexis. He's not new to calling in, but that really was a great question and that brings to mind a few years back when my mother-in-law got diagnosed with diabetes. And so she called me up and wanted to sit down and talk food when she got this diagnosis and so we kind of went through her typical day's eating and change some things up and very quickly she was able to get her numbers back into a low prediabetes range. She's doing very well, but two major things that she changed one per my suggestion and they totally helped. One stopped drinking a glass or two of wine every night. So to Jonathan's question that was really messing up her morning blood sugar because wine, beer, hard alcohol, they all spike your blood sugar and put you on that rollercoaster ride. The other thing for my mother in law, she had to give up her cold cereal with skimmed milk poured over the top for breakfast.
CAROLYN: I think we're going to talk about that.
CASSIE: She thought it was healthy, it was not. And that really helped her to get her blood sugar numbers down. So great question Jonathan, and I'm sure a lot of people had the same question. So glad we got that answered. And I want to talk a little bit about the blood sugar rollercoaster ride that Carolyn and I have just been talking about as it relates to memory problems. If you're that person that's always scrambling to recall a name or a place or maybe you're having more serious memory problems, look at your blood sugar numbers. New Research suggests that people with high blood sugar levels, even those that don't have diabetes, but if you're constantly hitting a high blood sugar several times a day, day after day, year after year, you may be at an increased risk of having memory problems. And Carolyn, I don't think you would mind sharing, you talked about your dad and the bucket of ice cream and we can lovingly laugh about it now. But he had memory problems.
CAROLYN:He had a huge memory problems. I was just going to add that I didn't say that before, but yeah, he had huge memory problems, but he had a sweet tooth. Absolutely. He had to have his sweets pretty much after every meal. We have been reading about prediabetes and diabetes research since 2008, and probably some of us were way before that, as we said, I have been a dietitian for over 30 years. We've been talking about this for a long time. But people continue to eat that high sugar, processed carbs, and we continue to have increased levels of obesity. And in fact, I think I read this current statistics in Minnesota, I think our obesity rate went up again.
CASSIE: I heard that too.
CAROLYN: This year. But it's not just obesity, it's that diabetes which we've been talking about today, heart disease and cancer. So for those reasons we say, again, change your nutrition to change your blood sugar, but we know that's a lot easier said than done.
CASSIE:That's where the problem lies, right? People know it but they don't always do it.
CAROLYN: Yeah. So it is really serious. We really want you to get serious about reducing your blood sugar numbers and getting out of that prediabetes range. I would say first and foremost, you've got to give up. What did we just say? That oatmeal, that cold cereal and that a lot of flavored low fat yogurt for breakfast, the hard truth is processed carbs and sugar raise your blood sugar numbers. Cassie said earlier that good natural fats such as butter, olive oil, nuts, avocados, olives, nut butters, and coconut oil. That's one of my favorites as well. They don't raise your blood sugar.
CASSIE: Exactly, and I want to talk more about some other great foods that will balance your blood sugar instead of spike it, but one thing that I thought of, Carolyn, as you're talking about the healthy fats, and I'm thinking of Jonathan's question, if it is a special occasion and you're going to have a glass of wine or some type of alcohol, if you can eat some olives or some almonds or some healthy fat with it to help stabilize the blood sugar instead of just spiking it sky high. That's a thought too, so it's time for us to take our final break of the hour. If you're just tuning in, you're listening to Carolyn and I'm Cassie. We're discussing how to reverse prediabetes. Before we go to commercial, I just want to share a couple thoughts that I had as I drove into the studio this morning. I realize that when it reaches a really hot temperature, like was it just last week when we had the 92-93 degrees and really high humidity and those days most of us just want to stay inside our air conditioned homes, but maybe you still want to learn more about eating real food for real health, so I want to recommend that if you do want to stick inside your house this summer in the air conditioning, you can still take our online classes. Nutritional Weight & Wellness offers some great online classes. One that I highly recommend is our Nutrition 4 Weight Loss Series. We are offering this at our different office locations beginning in July, but it's also available anytime online and it's so much more than just about losing weight. We have countless evaluations from class participants over the years who have said that after taking the Nutrition 4 Weight Loss Series, they have more energy. They report having better moods. They report having fewer aches and pains. And on that note, if you are someone suffering from pain and inflammation, we also have the online class titled Eating to Reduce Pain and Inflammation. And we also have my favorite class, I'll give a shameless plug, Going Gluten Free the Healthy Way is online as well. These can all be found at weightandwellness.com. Once you get to that home page, just click on "nutrition classes" and from there click on the word "online" and you'll find these classes and other ones and you can pick the that interest you the most. Stay with us, we'll be back.
CAROLYN: Welcome back to Dishing Up Nutrition. Every week as we come towards the end of our show, each cohost always begins to wonder how many people did we really reach as an like who actually plans to take this information to the next level and put it into practice in by eating real food. Some people say it costs more to eat real food, but you know what? I really disagree. Junk Food and processed food is expensive, but so many people are addicted to the junk food and that taste. They just loved the taste so they don't care how much it costs and sugar and processed carbs are very, very addicting. So maybe a nutrition consultation might be the answer and some insurance policies cover the cost of nutrition consultations for certain conditions. So check with your insurance company, but consider this even if you didn't have insurance, you would still get your teeth fixed, right? Nutrition covers what? The entire body and your brain, your memory, your nerves, everything including your teeth. It's like a no brainer to me and I always say to my clients, you know, you can spend your money buying good food now or you can spend it on drugs and medicine and hospital bills and clinic bills later. That said, I spend my money on buying the best food that I can buy now. So to set up an individual consultation, you can go to weightandwellness.com or call 651-699-3438 and get your personal questions answered.
CASSIE: Well said Carolyn. We have another caller. I think we should take that caller and then I have some great food ideas we could share too. So line one we have Marcus. Marcus, welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition.
CALLER: Yeah, thank you. I say I was wondering about, you were talking about wine being bad for you before as an evening snack or whatever I'm wondering are things like complex carbs okay? Like a brown rice or a sweet potato, something like that.
CAROLYN: Absolutely.
CASSIE: If you add the healthy fat. So if you just eat a sweet potato or just eat brown rice, that falls into that carbohydrate category. Even though it's a complex carb, it's still gonna take your blood sugar up, up, up, up. But if you, for example, put butter. I've had that for a bedtime snack, half of a sweet potato and a lot of butter on top. That butter is that stabilizing piece that sort of grabs onto that blood sugar and, and keeps it even keel.
CALLER: That butter, is that inflammatory at all?
CAROLYN: No, not for most people. If you have, you know, if you have a sensitivity, I know we'd have to be a very strong sensitivity to dairy products, may be a full blown allergy. Then you know, it could be inflammatory.
CASSIE: Then you could do some coconut oil instead. Which I know are our past colleague, Kate, loves that sweetness of the coconut oil melted on top of the sweet potatoes.
CAROLYN: Or even olive oil.
CALLER: Or avocado, I suppose.
CAROLYN: Avocado with a few vegetables. I put a little Sirracha in my avocado and then use it kinda like a dip and mash it up. A fast guacamole, I guess.
CALLER: Got It. Is meat protein good before you go to bed?
CASSIE: You know, it's okay. I usually think of, okay, you got to get your meat throughout the day and that's important because it gives us energy, it helps build our brain chemicals. But because it gives us energy, I typically shy away from it at that bedtime snack because now I'm trying to calm down and go to sleep. So at that bedtime snack and hour or 30 minutes before you go to bed, you're really focusing on a real carbohydrates, so preferably a vegetable or a fruit, and then a healthy fat.
CALLER: Banana?
CAROLYN: Banana and peanut butter would be a great a bedtime snack.
CASSIE: I would suggest half of a banana because bananas do turn to a lot of sugar when you compare them to the other fruits. But I just put a little Saran wrap around that end and then have the other half the next night. So that's a great one.
CALLER: Alright, well thank you.
CASSIE: Thank you for listening.
CAROLYN: Thanks for calling.
CASSIE: Yeah, great question. You know, and on that note, talking about food ideas. So with Marcus we were talking about some good bedtime snacks and you know that's so important because as you talked about Carolyn on Kare 11 this past week when you were on TV, you most people need a good bedtime snack to help them sleep through the night.
CAROLYN: To balance their blood sugars.
CASSIE: You'll sleep better and more soundly with that balanced blood sugar. But now let's go to the other end of the day, the start of the day and talk about breakfast. One idea for a really great breakfast and a fast breakfast that will give you blood sugar control is about three quarters of a cup of full fat cottage cheese. Top that with a half of a cup of fresh blueberries, and then I like to throw a handful of walnuts or almonds on top. You have your protein, your blueberries are your healthy carb the nuts are your healthy fat. It's quick, it's easy. Delicious.
CAROLYN: That is actually what I had before I came into the studio today.
CASSIE: That's a great one for morning radio because it is so quick. I realize that a lot of people have been told to eat the oatmeal with the skim milk for breakfast or the Cheerios with the skim milk. It's wrong information. That's the best I can say and it's certainly is wrong for blood sugar control.
CAROLYN: Absolutely. So another really simple breakfast would be 2 hard boiled eggs and half a cup of sliced strawberries and either a half of avocado or maybe even two tablespoons of heavy cream on those strawberries. Yum.
CASSIE: I love that.
CAROLYN: Again, quick and easy, delicious and really good for that blood sugar control.
CASSIE: Win, win, win. And for those of you that don't mind having leftovers from the night before for breakfast, that's actually my favorite thing to do. I feel the best and I think it's because I get that good healthy dose of meat. So one of my favorite breakfast is to have a leftover cup or usually I'll have more like a cup and a half of our Weight & Wellness chili.
CAROLYN: Oh, I love that.
CASSIE: For breakfast and it might sound weird to some people, but give it a try because I think you'll find that it tastes good and you feel so great that you'll want to try it again. So the chili, some people like to top it with black olives because it needs a little added fat to really balance your blood sugars. I'm not an olive person so I put a couple of big dollops of full fat sour cream on that chili. And if you're looking for the recipe, you can find it on our website at weightandwellness.com, or I get it out of our Weight & Wellness Cookbook, which is my favorite cookbook. If you're interested in purchasing that, it's available at any of our seven office locations.
CAROLYN: Let's move on now to some examples about lunch. If you are in the habit of grabbing like a sub sandwich for lunch, again, that's too much sugar and too many carbs. So some of you are thinking, "oh my goodness, now what? What, what else could I eat?" We really suggest that you cook at home and bring your lunch. Personally, I love a good steak salad with avocado and black olives, or even a handful of nuts or seeds. And I am addicted to my olive oil and balsamic vinegar. I make that one at home all the time.
CASSIE: That sounds delicious and we had more great ideas to share, but we'll have to save them for next time, Carolyn. Our goal at Nutritional Weight & Wellness is to help each and every person experience better health through eating real food. It's a simple message, but a powerful message. Eating real food is life changing. Thank you for tuning in.
