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Master Your Health Through Metabolic Flexability with Susannah LaPoint Part 1 of 2

• Mary Wagstaff / Susannah LaPoint

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Join wellness coach Susannah LaPoint as we explore a revolutionary approach to vibrant health beyond alcohol, focusing on nutrition, insulin control, breathwork, fasting, and mindful living.

Key Takeaways:

  • Achieve Vibrant Health: Discover Susannah's approach to Mastering your wellness through nutrition, breathwork, and fasting.
  • Blood Sugar & Hormonal Balance: Understand the connections between blood sugar levels, ketogenic diets, and hormonal balance.
  • Hormetic Stress Benefits: Learn how controlled stressors like fasting and exercise can enhance your health.
  • Mindful Activities: Shifting the mindset around diet and exercise culture to support your metabolic health long term.
  • Support your alcohol journey with diet : How low carb and keto can make it easier to quit drinking. 

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Speaker 1:

Do you ever feel like you're outgrowing alcohol, that you are longing for a deeper connection to life? If alcohol is keeping you playing small and feels like the one area you just can't figure out, you are in the right place. Hi, my name is Mary Wagstaff. I'm a holistic alcohol coach who ended a 20 year relationship to alcohol without labels, counting days or ever making excuses. A 20-year relationship to alcohol without labels, counting days or ever making excuses. Now I help powerful women just like you eliminate their desire to drink on their own terms.

Speaker 1:

In this podcast, we will explore the revolutionary approach of my proven five shifts process that gets alcohol out of your way by breaking all of the rules and the profound experience that it is to rediscover who you are on the other side of alcohol. I am so thrilled to be your guide. Welcome to your journey of awakening. Hi, friends, I wanted to jump on to make sure you are in a place where you can take some notes for this episode. It is one of the most impactful, powerful episodes and you'll hear when I talk about it how we're not talking specifically about alcohol, but we are talking about really educating women on kind of the unseen factors and the untalked about factors of health surrounding blood sugar levels, ketogenic diet, insulin, insulin resistance, alcohol cravings and all of the things and our hormones and how our hormones impact the way that we're measuring those types of things and interacting with the unseen realms of the body that are more felt. And it's really the invitation, and I think the intention for both Susanna and I is to give you more information, not so that you can find some sense of urgency, but so you can get curious, and we mentioned that several times.

Speaker 1:

But there is a part two of this episode where we go even deeper into how to really support yourself in some practical ways that you can start applying some of these principles on your own. Of course, we always want you to be safe. We always want you to get support and that's why both Susanna and I are here doing the work we're doing and there are a lot of resources online which can get overwhelming, but take what works and leave the rest and start small. Take control where you can and really see. You know, when we are balanced in our hormones, in our blood sugar levels, the holistic expression of our body changes our moods, our mental health, our energy levels, and this is the vibrancy we're looking for on the other side of alcohol. So if you quit drinking but you're, you know, shoving a bunch of food inside of your cells that isn't the high quality energy that you need, you might still be feeling like crap, and I don't want you to feel guilty or shame about this, but I want you to just have some information about, if I make these small tweaks, what is possible for me. It has changed my life. I know it's changed Susanna's life and all of the clients that she's worked with.

Speaker 1:

So I hope that you enjoy this episode and I would love to hear your comments, your feedback, what works for you, what hasn't worked for you. And I want to support us, to support each other as a community. And you can text me now If you go to the link in the show notes. You can text me there and I can share the information confidentially and anonymously on air so that we can have a more conversation, a bigger conversation with community support. So enjoy this episode and tune in for next week's and make sure you share this episode with any woman in your life because, frankly, as we age and we are stuck in that old model of diet and exercise lower calories, higher workouts it is not serving us. It's actually counterproductive for what we need in our lives right now.

Speaker 1:

Okay, enjoy the show. Welcome back to the show. My beautiful listeners, thank you so much for being here for another episode, and today we have something really special, actually something that I don't often do on the show, which is bring in other experts in the field of their expertise that I just know will have such a huge impact on your life by sharing their story and then all of their wisdom and knowledge that will be really supportive of your journey of awakening right now. So I am so thrilled to welcome to the show Susanna LaPointe. Thank you so much for being here.

Speaker 2:

Yay, I'm so excited. I'm so excited to be on your podcast. I love your mission so much. I'm such a huge supporter of your mission and I'm really excited to be on here.

Speaker 1:

Oh my gosh, I'm so excited to have you. As soon as I was, suzanne and I live close by, so that's super nice. We're new, like we've known each other for a while, but we're we're growing in our relationship and in our friendship and it's been really nice. And we got to visit and when I left her house, we had such an amazing conversation and my wheels were turning and I'm like, oh my gosh, suzanne has to come on the show, like right now, and share all of her amazing wisdom with everyone, because we had just such a great conversation. So why don't we just start by telling everyone, yeah, what you're up to and the magic that you're spreading out in the world and that you have been sharing?

Speaker 2:

Okay, so I've been a wellness coach for 17 years.

Speaker 2:

I started as a personal trainer very physical, just working on, you know, manipulation of our bodies through exercise, and then I quickly transitioned into nutrition. So for 17 years I've been coaching exercise and nutrition as a way to sort of become a little bit more embodied, and over the last few years I've definitely had more of kind of a spiritual awakening and a spiritual bent to my work, and during this time I've transitioned into breathwork. I'm a breathwork facilitator, which I'm very, very passionate about and more recently I've stumbled upon, re-stumbled upon, fasting for women as a way to basically increase our health and wellness, but also as a means to spiritual growth and achieving optimal health around just metabolically switching our sugar burner system to a fat burner system and back and forth, which is what our bodies are meant to do. And so I'm kind of combining all of these things together into my coaching, with exercise, like really supportive exercise that feels good to our bodies, really solid nutrition that centers around blood sugar stabilization, and then also adding breath work in there as a way to calm our nervous systems and just really connect to ourselves in a whole cohesive package so that we can be kind of the highest version of ourselves and be confident and feel really, really good in our bodies and be able to rely on our energy just being really solid and predictable and stable. So that's kind of what I'm up to now. Can I give a little background about how I fell into this kind of blood sugar situation?

Speaker 2:

My daughter, who is now 20, was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when she was 9. And that's sort of what spurred my whole really deep interest in blood sugar and blood sugar stabilization deep interest in blood sugar and blood sugar stabilization. And while type 1 diabetes is different than type 2 diabetes, which is more of a lifestyle metabolic issue, the outcomes of poor management are the same and they're pretty devastating. And so I'm really passionate about helping people prevent type 2 diabetes by achieving optimal health and understanding insulin resistance and the mechanisms around that and how we get to these places that our doctors don't really tell us about. They don't really say anything until there already is a problem, even though things you can kind of see in your blood work, like a couple decades before it really turns into a thing, you can kind of see things starting to creep up. So I've been paying really close attention to my own blood work and just being really, I guess, intentional about hopefully producing the best outcomes for myself in the near future and the far future, and so that's what I'm really focused on.

Speaker 2:

But it started with my daughter becoming diagnosed with type 1 diabetes 11 years ago, which was a huge, like defining moment in all of our lives. But that's kind of what spurred this. I don't think I would have stumbled upon it if it hadn't been for that. So that's kind of what has spurred my interest in fasting as well as just a way to really give our bodies a break from digestion and give our insulin and blood sugar time to just fall and completely stabilize for a period of time whether it's just like a short part of the day or if it's a little bit longer, and really see those differences in the numbers down the day. Or if it's a little bit longer and really see those differences in the numbers down the road, because we've given our bodies those breaks to be able to just rest and settle. So that's kind of what I'm, that's what I'm up to right now. I'm super passionate about it. Yeah, I have so much to say.

Speaker 1:

I'm writing notes over here Not so much to say. But that piece of a you, your, your, the way you explained what you do, I'm like sold, I'm just like, yes, I love every piece of it because especially, you know, as we get older and we're awakening to the and and just evolving as humans, we're awakening to like, okay, the way that we had been doing things. We know, with diet culture and fitness culture, that there's some, there's been kind of a piece missing, especially when it comes to women's health, because a lot of the studies and things that have been done, um, have been, you know, for men, by men, which is, you know, that's fine.

Speaker 1:

Um, but even you know the way in which it's and and I've I've just recently really tapped into this because I've had, I've been interested in fitness and nutrition my entire life and have been, you know, doing we're not like getting a good workout in when, in reality, what that's doing is stressing the body as we, as we age, or working with our hormones. But there's these ways that are actually very counterproductive for the results that we're trying to get. Would you say that For sure?

Speaker 2:

Yes, totally. I think I'm really realizing this, along with the fasting as well as like less is really more and less stress is like the most important piece of all of this, and so like, while fasting is a stress and exercise is a stress, we can kind of control these stresses and use them to our advantage while also doing things to keep the rest of our stress down, and it's called hormetic stress, where our bodies are kind of forced to rise to the occasion to manage that stress. So it's kind of like a controlled stressor that we can put into our lives. But with exercise especially, like a lot of people are really kind of in the more is better camp, where it's really not like better is better.

Speaker 2:

And I my favorite, one of my favorite phrases that I use all the time with my clients is like minimum effective dose, like do as little as possible to get the results that you want, Because when you hit a plateau which we all do you don't have anywhere to go.

Speaker 2:

If you've been like killing yourself, so with you know really intense exercise or like really like restrictive nutrition, so having a place to go where you can increase something or decrease something or whatever, like you have some metrics to play with if you're doing as little as possible to get the result that you want.

Speaker 2:

And I think the biggest key in all of this is just keeping our stress down so that we're not mindlessly eating, which is probably a really big piece of like unwanted weight and like not feeling as good as we want to, is kind of like the mindlessness of the way that we can get kind of stuck in a nutrition trap and it's hard to get out of once you're kind of in that, in that cycle of eating processed foods or comfort foods or you're eating for comfort. Like really reducing our stress around it and kind of changing our conversation around exercise and nutrition and then also being really mindful to add in those pieces of things that give us peace throughout the day is a lot more. It's a lot more. It's a lot more pleasant. It's way more fun to feel at ease with your life instead of constantly like white knuckling your way through everything. So that's the approach I love.

Speaker 1:

I think that even the mindless like activity too, I mean I've been there where I'm like, oh, I just got to get my workout in right, like versus. You know what is the benefit, and I'm sure there's been lots of studies done of, say, um, a 15 minute breath work practice. That's super mindful. Of course, the mind's going to wander, whatever you're going to bring it back, but you're, you know, you're, you're in this present state where, at the end of it you're going to be, your nervous system is going to get like a completely harmonized and rebound and regulated. Or you know, like you just do this, like running on a treadmill, watching a TV for an hour, right, I mean, I just think that there's such a different experience. Probably it's happening. Yes, also that you're of of what you're enjoying. And we know, because a lot of athletes and fitness professionals and personal trainers talk about it's like making sure we turn on our muscles. It's like when we're actually engaged with the activity that we're doing, it's going to be more efficient as well.

Speaker 2:

Yes, absolutely yeah. Like you said, the mindless, like on a treadmill, just putting in the miles, putting in the time to check the box, is a much different signal to our body than really like okay, what do I feeling into? Like what do what does my body want today? Like what feels good, what does she feel would be nourishing to her in this place, in this time? Like with the you know the implements that I have available to me? Like what feels the most nourishing. If you can, if we can approach it with that that mindset, rather than like just got to get the run in or whatever it is out of, like some kind of external need for, I don't know, validation probably is what it really comes down to in a lot of, in a lot of cases, can just be such a much more pleasant experience.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean, I have so much firsthand experience knowing that when I'm I have so much firsthand experience knowing that when I'm stressed out about or about working out, when working out becomes a stressor, um, that I'm not getting the results that I want or I'm not maintaining. Or then maybe I am, you know, say, eating when I don't, when I'm not really hungry, versus something that I've really shifted into that I didn't have access to. The audience knows like about my mountain retreat, isolation. But when I came here to the gorge, like I joined the yoga studio and I was able to walk there and there was a sense of community and it was like felt very easeful.

Speaker 1:

And then I was like started to just go for like really easy walks after I would drop my son off at school, just go for like really easy walks after I would drop my son off at school. And I could just really notice a difference, not only in my mood but in like because I was enjoying it and I was out in nature that I was noticing like the physical results from that too. And there would be times up at the mountain where I would work out and I would be like trying to watch like a YouTube video. This is ridiculous. Do it like watching a YouTube video, like on something else? Some information I'm trying to take in or like something? While I'm trying to like lift weights and doing something different, it's like my mind's not in either of those places.

Speaker 2:

Right, yeah, just totally disconnected from yeah.

Speaker 1:

I mean the activity, it's just it really ends up being just so counterproductive. So the other thing and I kind of wanted to, I had wrote this down when I was making notes for the show as a caveat that our conversation today is not about like just losing weight, which is we, I know and you know Susanna could probably talk about this too is like a big thing on many women's minds all the time. Now, is there a health, are there health implications around that? Absolutely, but one of the things you said when you were introducing yourself is really about self-reliance, and lately on the show I've been talking so much about creating a sense of safety, and if we cannot and this is what so many of my clients are coming back to it's like how can I learn to trust myself again If I say I'm not going to drink and then I do it anyway, how can I even trust myself? Or I don't even know what my body wants?

Speaker 1:

And so all of these tools that you're talking about providing and coming at our health from the perspective of curiosity and that idea of, like you said, relying on our own energy, what can I count on if I do this during this time? And we're going to talk about this a little bit, like during this time of the month. I can expect this right, because we know when it comes to. We'll just use alcohol as the example. It's like when you drink if you're still in your bleeding years, and even if you're not, I do believe that we do live cyclically, even in our menopausal years there is a cyclical yeah totally, but that the impact even of alcohol during certain times of the month is going to be different.

Speaker 1:

Your cravings are going to be different. So when we start to just, instead of the end result being like I've got to lose 20 pounds If we move towards, I really just want to like be the expert on my body and know what I'm getting and like why don't I have energy when I eat this thing? Or maybe you don't even have that correlation that, like I eat a chips Ahoy and now I feel like shit, like some people don't even have that connection, right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, totally they're not. Yeah, Teaching or guiding I guess guiding people into feeling, into connection, is so important. Like, how do these things affect how I feel? And most I mean honestly with my clients when I first started with them, most of them are pretty disconnected from their bodies and how they feel, and so that's one of the things I really encourage. First off and I often love to have people if their insurance covers it and if their doctors will prescribe it getting a glucose monitor to be able to correlate fluctuations in blood sugar with how they're feeling Like what you're eating, what your blood sugar is doing and then what you're feeling are all generally direct correlations between your nutrition and your outcome and how you feel and those things.

Speaker 2:

Like it's really fun to watch people kind of connect there and be like oh wow, I have so much more energy if I keep this line a little more stable, the blood sugar line, as opposed to having big, big we like call them big roller coasters and baby roller coasters. So we want to have a baby roller coaster where our blood sugar is fluctuating, of course, because it does fluctuate when we eat, but learning the things that create a baby roller coaster, as opposed to big peaks and troughs in our blood sugar really helps create that connection of like what we're putting in and what we're receiving from it and then what we're able to put out. As a result of that and alcohol really would play into that as well too, because of the way that it's metabolized by the body it goes straight to a blood sugar spike generally and then it creates like this kind of depression afterwards, like just a kind of a peak generally creates a big trough afterwards, and we want to avoid those troughs by avoiding those huge peaks.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, and then there's all these other things that affect our blood sugar.

Speaker 1:

So when I came home from Susanna's house, I ordered my monitor.

Speaker 1:

It's not it'll be here today, because we were talking about I have been experimenting with a ketogenic diet and which is like a pretty, pretty low carb diet and actually like very low carb diet and actually like very low carb diet, and my intentions for doing that were to really work on my digestion and almost more of an elimination diet, to see, like, okay, what is really creating this bloating and this fatigue in my body, and if I eliminate some stuff and add in more animal protein which is something that I hadn't been doing for most of my adult life and I was just seeing like, oh my gosh.

Speaker 1:

So, anyway, the monitor has both ketone testing and blood sugar testing, so I'm super excited about it Just to see, like, what is actually happening there and not just be guessing. But I have felt this really beautiful new sense of control, like not control, like, oh, I got to manipulate this, but more of that, what we were talking about, this understanding of like, okay, when I eat these foods, this is what creates this bloating, and I kind of have just been like troubleshooting a little bit in the dark. So I do want to have. I'm excited about the monitor because I really want to have some just more like data points for me to read.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's really nice to be able to kind of correlate and to your point. I just I heard this quote yesterday that I want to share because it has so much to do with what you just said, where you just said I have more control, not in a controlling sense, but you have more. I mean we have more agency when our blood sugar is more stable, which is what a ketogenic style diet does. It gives us blood sugar stabilization because we're kind of eliminating the carbohydrates that spike the blood sugar. But this quote is when your diet owns you, it's an eating disorder.

Speaker 2:

When you own own your diet. It's a part of how you manage your life and your energy and.

Speaker 2:

I love that because it's from Dave Asprey, who is a fasting expert, but I just I love that because he I mean he was kind of talking about this exact thing in his I was listening to his book called Fast this Way.

Speaker 2:

Highly recommend it. It's really really good, especially the audible version where he is narrating but talking about like when you're in a social situation or whatever and you're making decisions that are best for yourself and someone else might comment or like think you might have an eating disorder or something around it, and like obviously you know if your relationship with food is healthy or not, and when we're able to like make decisions because we're really watching out for our own health, our own energy, and from a place of like am I actually hungry or is it just quote time to eat, and so that's why we're eating, and just kind of knowing that about yourself and then being really again really stable creates a better sense of really actually knowing what's going on. And so that's what the ketogenic diet does it presents the stability. So then from there, diet does it presents the stability. So then from there, you can make more kind of educated assessments of what feels good in your body and what doesn't, because you're not coming from a place of dysregulation. It's more stable to begin with.

Speaker 1:

So then you can go from there, yeah, and the other thing, as you're speaking on that, the and I think this is what you're speaking on that, the and I think this is what you're talking about too is that stability, while also the control, where the other thing that it's done for me is it's eliminated cravings, for the most part, for anything for you know I mean I definitely was like chocolate.

Speaker 1:

You know, like get that kind of sweet craving after a meal, um, so never really like a cake person, but definitely like my little bit of chocolate. I do have raw cacao still, um, but you know, and I'm not saying like there's there's anything wrong with like eating and like having a full breadth of the experience of life at all but what this has told me is that those cravings weren't really my own. They weren't. They were just like the craving for alcohol was created by consuming alcohol. It wasn't just born with it, right? So I think this is a really good mindset for people to have that like. You're not just born I mean, we do. I think that sugar is different than alcohol because alcohol is not something we need to survive where calories are. But yeah, I wasn't born craving like popcorn, you know, necessarily.

Speaker 2:

No, totally not, Totally not. It's something we've trained ourselves into by creating this kind of feedback loop of like oh, carbs, my blood sugar spikes and then it troughs, and then I create more carbs, and then it spikes and it troughs, and then I crave more carbs, and so it's just like this never-ending loop and with keto, with fasting, with becoming metabolically flexible, which is switching back and forth between burning sugar and burning fat, which is ketogenic, or burning sugar, which is kind of what most of us are in in this normal nutritional state where we're just eating normal foods, we have carbohydrates. Our bodies are made to switch back and forth between those two states, but eliminating as much sugar and processed food out of all of it. But especially when we're in more of a sugar-b burning state, which sugar in this case is also kale and sweet potatoes and anything that grows in the ground, nature's carbs are also part of the sugar burning system, but it's a clean sugar burning instead of dirty sugar burning, I guess. But when we can kind of step back, give our bodies a break, which is where fasting comes in really handy, like being able to step back, give ourselves a few hours or a day away from the constant input of food we can, those cravings will definitely subside, which is awesome.

Speaker 2:

I'm also feeling really free from cravings in the last several months, which is just a huge gift, cause I was a little bit stuck in that cycle as well, because kind of when you're in it, it's hard to get out of it.

Speaker 2:

But, yeah, creating a situation where we're not craving as much and then we can get really honest with our actual hunger and fullness signals Like you were telling me the other day, like you're just not that hungry very often, like it's not this, like compulsive need to eat and yes, we need to make sure we're getting adequate calories and especially adequate protein. So that's where it becomes a little bit like we have to be really intentional about our nutrition in order to and what I, what I really subscribe to is trying to achieve optimal health, and that comes from being very in tune with our nutritional and energetic needs and also really honest with ourselves about our cravings and actual hunger levels, and that's one thing that fasting and kind of being in ketosis helps with is just like am I actually hungry or is my brain just telling me to eat Because it's's time according to the clock?

Speaker 1:

Well, and, to that point, what's so fascinating is, yes, I have been able A I'm just way more satisfied Like I had just today. I had like this, really full. I had some kale, I had some chard, I had some chicken and I had some eggs and I feel so sated, I feel so energized, so full, like happily full, but what? Because I've spent the last 43 years probably not 43 years, but you know so my life just kind of like there has been mindless eating. That that's almost the piece of it there's.

Speaker 1:

it's a habit, right, food becomes a habit just like a drink, so, but I am able to check in and know for sure with so much more clarity am I full or am I hungry? Like, am I hungry, do I need food right now? And like I can feel that shift in my brain with such a different like definition than I've ever been able to feel any ever in my entire life, and the clarity around that. And so then the piece of it is is that there's like that, that and I do think that the fasting help will help with this too, because I'm going to jump on the fasting train I've been doing a little bit of intermittent fasting, but not as much as like you know especially what I want to talk to you about more. So I kind of want to.

Speaker 1:

So, yes, the clarity around the embodiment piece, like it's just never ending. I mean I'm like five years sobriety and I still feel like, oh my gosh, there's just so much more I can learn about myself because we, we just go on this journey of dissociation and trying to figure it out, and then we get to a point where it's like, okay, like let's, let's come back to, like we've established enough of a self concept or enough safety in our lives that now we can really tune in to this place of authenticity and really like self discovery, right, and you know, I'm sure it's possible at 19,. But at 19, you're just still trying to figure out, like, what's happening in the world.

Speaker 2:

you know what's going on Totally, yes, totally, and trying to fit in too.

Speaker 1:

So that's where and that's the piece of that balance that I've talked about on the show recently between belonging and authenticity and how there's like this fine balance and really we need we need both of them. We want to feel like we belong in our authentic state and that's. You know, we don't always have that opportunity when we're, when we're growing up and in a household where we don't make the rules and stuff.

Speaker 2:

Right, totally.

Speaker 1:

Most people here are grown and I always tell I'm like you're a grown ass woman, decisions, let's go Um. But I would like to just backtrack a little bit because I do think, like even insulin and blood sugar as a concept is and you talked about like the spikes but if you could just break it down like the little bit of basics of insulin, blood sugar and like what insulin resistance is, that would be amazing.

Speaker 2:

Yes, perfect, okay. So when we eat food generally, so carbohydrates create and it obviously depends on what kind of carbohydrates. Kale releases a lot more quote sugar than something like a cupcake would. Obviously we know that. But whenever we eat, our body, our blood, the sugar from whatever we're eating, even protein, creates a little bit of sugar in our blood. Our blood sugar goes up commensurate to what it is that we've eaten. So this is kind of this example. So let's say you start your day with a bowl of cereal and a glass of orange juice which hopefully nobody's doing that but that is going to create an instantaneous blood sugar spike because there's not really any protein, there's not really any fat and there's a lot of carbohydrates. So there's probably sugar in the cereal and there's grains and then there's sugar in the orange juice. It's going to create a big blood sugar spike. If we were to start our day this is my other example with like two eggs, an avocado and maybe even a piece of toast, so having some carbohydrates in there, but with the fat and the fiber and the avocado and the fat and the protein and the eggs, your blood sugar is going to go up a little bit, but then it's going to be really stable for a long time.

Speaker 2:

The sugar that comes into our bloodstream from the foods that we eat needs to go into our cells for energy, and insulin is a hormone that our body releases. Commens kind of see that our blood sugar is rising and rising fast and like dump insulin into our system to try to bring that blood sugar. Basically, what insulin does is a hormone that opens the door to our cells to let in the sugar to create energy for ourselves. When our cells are full, which most of ours are, there isn't any place for that sugar to go, and so the body releases more insulin to try to shuttle that sugar into other areas of our body. So it goes into our liver, it goes into our muscles, it goes into our fat, it goes into our visceral fat, it creates fat, and over time and this is like kind of an extreme example but over time that creates all this extra body fat.

Speaker 2:

When we eat something more stabilizing, like the egg and avocado example, there isn't a lot of sugar to be put away, and so our body releases just a little bit of insulin to be able to handle that load. And so what creates insulin resistance is when we ask our bodies to release large amounts of insulin over and over and over again throughout our lifetime and basically the system just kind of wears out where our body releases insulin to put the sugar into the cells and it doesn't work. So our body releases more insulin and it tries to like stuff that sugar somewhere. There's a little example of like let's say, you have a suitcase and it's stuffed full and you're trying to close it and you can't close it and you can't fit any more clothes into the suitcase in order to be able to close it. It's sort of like.

Speaker 2:

The same example with insulin is like you're trying to stuff that sugar into the cells and there's no more room, so your body has to release more insulin to try to deal with that sugar and it stuffs it in a bunch of other places, which is what creates metabolic instability, where we become insulin resistant to start, and then the sugar in our blood just starts rising and so our fasting blood sugar becomes higher and higher and higher until we're diagnosed with prediabetes or type 2 diabetes Once the sugar comes high enough to create that threshold, which for type 2 diabetes it's generally like 126. And for prediabetes I think it's at 110. So once you hit those numbers on your fasting blood work with your doctor, sometimes they'll say something about it and sometimes they'll be like oh, it looks like you have diabetes, here's some medication that this is all preventable and reversible. But generally people just trust the doctor to like know what is best for them, which is definitely not the case in like 90% of the examples, where the doctor just gives a medication to try to shut the problem up.

Speaker 2:

So insulin resistance is when and this is the precursor to type 2 diabetes, but it's also the precursor to a whole host of other issues in our bodies the issue that causes cancer, some cancers, not all cancers, but some cancers heart disease, which is the number one killer of humans, heart disease all of it is caused by elevated insulin levels and that insulin, having like nowhere to go, it's just pooling in our body.

Speaker 2:

It's creating inflammation, which is also the cause of everything. The blood, the number of the blood sugar, is actually the symptom of the issue, which is too much insulin that's not being not able to do its job because our bodies have like run out of places for the insulin to stuff sugar. Basically. So that's what insulin resistance is and is when we resist the amount of insulin that normally would do the job, and our bodies have to create more and more and more. And then, if you get diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, they give you a pill called metformin which brings your blood sugar down, but if it starts to get even worse, they give you insulin, so you're even giving your body more insulin. So that state of like, all of this hyper amount of insulin, is what creates this massive amount of inflammation in our bodies, which creates all of these other lifestyle diseases. But it all goes back to insulin, which means it all goes back to our nutrition.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, holy crap, that was so well explained, thank you. So I'm just so curious, like so if someone, if they're just giving you more insulin, like then the sugar, then it's forcing the sugar to go somewhere else, right, I mean, are people feeling better?

Speaker 2:

on that? No, no, no, no. If you have type two diabetes and you're on insulin, chances are you feel pretty bad all the time, like your whole body is inflamed. Your body is storing sugar in visceral fat, which is the fat like inside of your muscles. Like it, like, literally, is just finding places to store fat all over the human body, which just creates this huge inflammatory response. So, no, you're not feeling better. You're probably in a state of just feeling like crap all the time and literally the. The fix for this is more and more and more medication.

Speaker 2:

So but it is this is all preventable?

Speaker 1:

It's so empowering, really, because the truth is, yeah, I mean it's amazing. So I have a lot of questions, but I mean, and then to that point too, it's like if you're constantly in a state of inflammation, which we know so many people are, your ability to heal from other things that might come up is going to be drastically reduced or going to take much longer right, yes, totally yes, much longer. Viruses, colds and even a physical like breaking all of that stuff.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and then you think about the mental health impacts on that of like feeling like shit for so long and like your body is just kind of degrading and your mental health is degrading.

Speaker 2:

Like I know, when I am not feeling really good, my mental health just starts, like you know, you start to get kind of depressed and a little bit like stagnant, and when you're not feeling really good and vibrant and full of energy, your mental health starts to suffer too, and so it's kind of a loop that can happen. And again, it's preventable and it's manageable. But it's not common knowledge that a lot of people have, because we're not taught it and doctors don't have the capacity to coach us on lifestyle, which is why we need coaches to help us kind of work through these issues, creating a lifestyle that works really well for us Doctors, all they know how to do is diagnose and then prescribe something that shuts up the symptom. Basically, there's not cures in most modern medicine. There's no cures. It's all about just suppressing the symptoms and not treating the root cause, which in so many cases, is nutrition.

Speaker 1:

So many things. It all comes down to nutrition.

Speaker 1:

And I'll just have this little caveat too, because just about alcohol, where this is what I found in a lot of it's just behind the times. I mean alcohol where is? This is what I found in. A lot of it's just behind the times. I mean, frankly, the info you know, it's like the information's there, the gold standard of what they're teaching in medical school is just not caught up to like no, what the information we have, and, of course, there's a lot of money involved.

Speaker 1:

It's a business that, like I know people that have, like you know my father, for example, who you know, he's pretty old school, it's like he listens to the authorities, like you know he's going to do. If his doctor told him to go on a ketogenic diet, he would do it. If his doctor told him to do physical therapy, he would do it. But would he seek that out on his own? Probably not, right, and I love this man, but he's a real, he's like a real follower, right, um so, and then the same around alcohol where I was, you know, it's like the traditional models of alcohol was really that just treat the symptom and really not get to the root cause of lifestyle. Cause that's what I do with my clients where we look at a holistic picture of what else is going on in your life. That's creating, yes, some of it's habitual, some of it's the addictive qualities of nature. But why? But how did you get there in the first place? What part of your life are you needing to alter Right?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely yes.

Speaker 1:

And how do we shift the, the perception of that? And now, and I wish I would have known all of this four years ago and I will continue to study this but it's like the, you know, I don't feel qualified. I do talk to you about nutrition a little bit with my clients, but I but not in the way that I would like to, because I think, starting on your alcohol, so starting on your sober, curious journey, and I say like, don't put too many things in one pot because you don't want to overwhelm yourself, but just being curious, like not going on a super strict ketogenic diet, but I believe from the, from the firsthand experience that I've had with keto, that if, if one was to start on keto even before they quit drinking, that their alcohol cravings would start to decrease naturally. Um, that's my, that's my intuition. I don't have any experience with that because I haven't been drinking during keto, of course, but I have this feeling that it wouldn't be. And then when they, if, when you do quit drinking and you do eliminate alcohol or start to reduce alcohol, that the the big cravings for sugar and for substituting with other things also wouldn't be there. That's just my intuition, but again, I don't have firsthand experience. So if you're listening to this, what is your take on that? Okay, so tune in next week to hear Susanna's answer to that question and so much more.

Speaker 1:

We cover a lot on this topic and we give some practical tips and tools for starting this journey with, of course, from so much curiosity, so much compassion and just being really gentle with yourself. The whole point of all of this information is that so you can live in harmony with your body and not fight against it. But we kind of have to get to the root of how we are naturally in order to know what we're working with right. And that's the whole thing about alcohol. It's like, if alcohol is in the way, we don't even really know what's underneath that. We don't know what our biological blueprint is actually saying, because we have all this other influence. So tune in next week, share this episode and text me to give me your feedback, and I want to support this community in a completely open and non-judgmental way and see what is working for you. What do you disagree with? What do you agree with? What do you want to know more of? Have an amazing week and I'll talk to you soon. None of this would be possible without you.

Speaker 1:

I wanted to say thank you so much for being here and, as a special gift, I want to give you access to a masterclass that I created called Fearless Sobriety. It is going to walk you step by step through my five shifts process that is going to help you really gain a new perspective on an old habit. And once you sign up and you're registered, it'll take you only about 15 seconds and you'll be rated. It's on demand. You will receive a bonus guided meditation that's going to help you learn how to experience sensations in your body essentially from urges, from emotions without freaking out. It's going to help you learn to regulate your nervous system so that you can be in any situation, anywhere and feel grounded and feel safe. So head on over to my website, marywagstaffcoachcom. It'll prompt you to click the link for the free training and I will see you on the inside.