And the last time I was on the scale a couple weeks ago, it was 27.6. So what that equates to it just a little bit less than two pounds of fat loss in two weeks, but. To me, that's pretty darn fabulous. 

Hi, and welcome to the solving type two diabetes podcast. I'm Tom. And I'll be your host as I share what I'm doing in my daily life to solve my type two diabetes. Listen in, as I share the food, movement, and tools that I'm using each day. This podcast is intended for entertainment purposes only. For a full transcript or to follow the solving type two diabetes podcast on social media. Please head over to SolvingType2Diabetes.com for all those links and more now onto the show.



I hope you had a great week. I had a little bit of a challenging week. Uh, as you may know, if you listen to last week's episode, I've been cruising and I'm actually supposed to be on a cruise right now, but I am not. I am home, and the reason I'm home is in order to continue with the second leg of our crew to enter berm.

We had to get Covid rapid tests. Bermuda still requires that, and so the last day of our Canada cruise, we went and got tested on board and about three hours later I got notification that I had tested positive for covid 19. So that certainly put a wrinkle in the works here. I was getting ready to go back to dock and then head out again to Bermuda for five more nights.

And that didn't happen, so it was an interesting process. We got notified that I tested positive. My wife, who's in the same cabin tested negative, and I was quarantined to our cabin for the remainder of the cruise. Now, luckily, the remainder of the cruise was only about 18 hours. So that wasn't too bad.

They did turn on free pay, Perview, movies, free wifi. I could order room service from any menu of any restaurant on board, and that was free. So honestly, it wasn't too bad. So we packed. They came and got our bags, especially, we couldn't just put them out like normal, and they came and got our bags that evening.

I was feeling fine. I had no real symptoms. Again, this is just two days ago from when I'm recording and I slept well. We got up the next morning and about two thirds of the way through the disembarkation process for most of the cruise passengers, we got a knock on the door. They were there to escort us off the ship and they took us off the ship, not through a normal elevator, but through a crew elevator.

Took us off right through a crew exit and had our luggage waiting for us outside. They loaded us into a small private van and we were all wearing masks. The people around us were wearing masks, and the driver of the van was wearing a mask, so anyone who was coming in contact with us were all mask. And the driver of the van took us right to our car, our parked car.

It was a pretty seamless, pretty easy process that we went through. Really, not too bad at all, and got home. Came home again. I'm just feeling fine. I went out for a walk that afternoon yesterday. I walked over four miles to close my rings, and today I went out for, it was just a little under four miles, but went out for another nice.

Still feeling fine and uh, we did test again today. Again, today is two days after we got home and I still tested positive today. Ironically, my wife, who is still here with me, tested negative again, so how that works, I really don't know. She and I were in close proximity for this entire nine day cruise. I tested right before the cruise and we were both negative immediately before the cruise.

We both fully vaccinated. We have the Moderna vaccines. We have a total now of three boosters and uh, nonetheless. I, according to the tests, have covid, but again, no symptoms. Sleeping well, walking long distances is totally fine. Eating well, still have taste, still have smell, so I'm guessing that I'll have it now for a few more days and then hopefully it just goes away.

I start testing negative once again. I hope my wife continues to test negative, but again, she's in close proximity with me now forever. And still testing negative, so I'm thankful for that. So that's the majority of my, we can review. That was the big to do for this week. It's a little bit of a bummer that we didn't get to go to Bermuda, but we have been there before and obviously if I have Covid, I don't want to be on the ship and give it to anyone else.

Ironically, they did give me the option of staying on. I would've been quarantined to our cabin. It's a nice cabin, not a nice balcony, spacious, but I would've been quarantined to our cabin for the duration of that five night Bermuda Cruise. And honestly, I didn't see the point. They're offering a full 100% refund, not a credit, but an actual refund.

We took that and no harm, no foul. Just to change your plans. 



So let's take a look at my numbers for the. Okay, so for my rings, I think this might be the first time in about six weeks that I have not closed my rings each of the last seven days. I did manage to close them five days, but. The day before and the day that I tested positive for Covid the first day, honestly, I was just feeling a little bit tired and was just not up to it.

After a day long excursion, we were in a tour bus for about eight hours, so I did not finish my rings that day, and then the following day I was confined to the cabin, so I did not close my rings. Day, but except for those two days, I did in fact close my rings five of the seven days. And if you look at my workout, those of you viewing this on YouTube, you can see that I did quite a bit of walking each of these days that I did close my rings.

So that's always positive. If you look at the. Blood sugar readings for the past seven days. You see that I had an average 24 7 blood sugar reading of 1 0 2, and that equates to an A1C of about 5.1, which is very good. Again, those of you who have been listening know that back in my original diagnosis days, I was having A1C levels of over 11, so.

They seem to be settling in the low fives and that is normal blood sugar range. It's high normal, but it's normal. It's not even prediabetes. So what I'm doing is now making a definite difference in how I'm solving my type two diabetes, and I can't ever undo the damage that was already done, but at least I'm hoping I'm not creating any more damage and my doctor seems to be very pleased about that.

So let's take a look at my macros. And you see here where my carbs were actually a little bit higher than goal. I averaged about 14% of my intake from carbohydrates. My goal was 11%. Fat was a little high, and what was lacking a little bit was protein. So now that I'm home, I'm gonna take an extra focus on that.

I did have good choices on the ship. It's just that some of the choices I made didn't include. Uh, a lot of that extra protein that I'm really trying to get. So, finally on my numbers here, if you look at my body fat percentage, I was able to step on a scale here. It was about two weeks since the last time, my body fat percentage was 26.8% When I stepped on the scale this morning.

And the last time I was on the scale a couple weeks ago, it was 27.6. So what that equates to it just a little bit less than two pounds of fat loss in two weeks, but. To me, that's pretty darn fabulous. I do have a goal for body fat percentage, at least I think I do. We'll have to see how it goes, but I'm thinking 18% seems to be a fairly healthy body fat percentage.

18% certainly is healthier than 26 or 27%. So I'm within about eight, nine percentage points of my goal body fat percentage. And for me, about 9% would equate to. 20 pounds. And so what that tells me is that if I lost another 20 pounds of body fat, that would get me to my body fat percentage, assuming I don't put on or lose muscle.

And that's why I don't track just, uh, weight. I actually track the body set percentage instead of tracking weight because I really want to know what I, what it is I'm losing or gaining. And that's a good way to do it. So those are, Numbers for the week. 



Okay. Let's look at the wins and challenges for the week.

It might be pretty obvious what it is this week. It's the testing positive for Covid. That's a pretty big challenge. I am so very thankful that I'm honestly not showing any symptoms. I guess that's how it goes sometimes. I recently did get the Al Macron. Variant booster. Got that about three weeks ago, so it clearly did not keep me from getting covid, but I'm glad to have whatever protection it did provide.

How was that a win? I did continue to eat properly. I did not get in movement because the day I was quarantined and the day before I tested positive, I did not finish my movement. Honestly, I was feeling quite tired and it was the end of the day by the time I got back from the excursion. Was that because of Covid or was that because of just being a little lazy?

I don't know. But that was my challenge for this week. Now I'm back. I'm still testing positive, but I'm getting out there and I am closing my rings. I am completing my movement and I am eating properly. In fact, if you see later on today, this should post on Monday morning. So later on today, if you check out my reels or my short on YouTube or my TikTok or my video on Twitter, you'll see what I ate today for lunch.

So that's. Sneak preview, if you will, if you're watching this in the day it came out, Look the same day for my short, and it's a one minute synopsis of me preparing and enjoying my lunch today. So I hope you like that. That was my challenge for the week. 



Let's take a look at the news. All right. This first article is entitled Loneliness Can Double the Risk of Type Two Diabetes.

So there was a study and it was done in Norway saying that loneliness plays a key role in. Developing the body's stress response and that in turn develops type two diabetes. So increased levels of stress hormones, such as cortisol can lead to temporary insulin resistance. And we know that insulin resistance is one of the things that.

Causes our blood sugar to rise. So I thought this was very interesting. So they took the information from 24,000 people, and this was those people who participated between 1995 and 1997. So 24,000 people over the course of three years, and they found that 59% of the people who reported having feelings of loneliness went on to develop.

Type two diabetes. Now, they're certainly not, at least I hope they're not claiming that they have causal proof. Again, causal proof meaning one thing causes another is very different from corollary proof, and that is. One thing seems to trend either up or down, increase or decrease, as does another. So what they're saying for sure is those people who said they had feelings of loneliness, had a greater chance of going on to develop type two diabetes.

But is that because people who feel lonely eat a lot? In at m and m, I don't know, but it's not necessarily causing one thing or the other, so that's important to keep in mind. But yet this seems like a very interesting article and I'm gonna recommend you take a look at that loneliness causing a risk of type two diabetes.

That's very interesting. As always, all of these links will be in the show notes and you can find all the show notes. In fact, you can find a complete word for word written transcript of each episode over at the website SolvingType2Diabetes.com so please hop over there. You can find my social media links there too.

Okay, the second article, the Most Crucial Eating Habit to Prevent Diabetes. Now this article, I think that is basically common sense advice. Their premise is basically, if you don't want diabetes, type two diabetes, then eat like someone who's prescribed a diet for having type two diabetes. In other words, eat lower sugar, eat higher fiber, eat less processed foods.

Eat more real foods and take baby steps, but in the end, they believe that eating. A type of diet that would be considered a diet well rounded for someone with type two diabetes to help get their blood sugar under control, if possible, is the same type of diet you should be eating if you want to avoid type two diabetes.

Let's say for example, you have been diagnosed with prediabetes, which means your blood sugar is higher than normal, but doesn't technically get classified. As type two diabetes, which is great, you wanna avoid that diagnosis. So maybe they're saying start now eating as if you have already been diagnosed.

Now that means less cake and ice cream, but it could, according to this article, keep you from ever getting that diagnosis of type two diabetes, which unfortunately, the vast majority of people diagnosed with prediabetes will eventually. Be diagnosed with type two diabetes, so you can avoid that by eating this way now.

Great. The final article says, I'm a doctor and here are five diabetes signs to check right now, so I'm gonna go through them quickly. Again, you can see this article and it's by John White, MD. Looks like he also has a Masters of public health. That's nice. So number one, you are thirsty a lot. I think many people have heard that they believe it's because the elevated blood sugar levels are drawing water outta your cells and therefore you come thirsty.

Make sense? If you're thirsty lot and you drink a lot, what's the next symptom? You go to the bathroom a lot. Again, your kidneys are trying to dump that sugar and so you're drinking a lot cuz you're thirsty. You go to the bathroom a lot. Third thing says is that you're always hungry and they have a scientific name for that.

And I'm not going to try and pronounce it, but it's basically saying that because you're no longer processing insulin properly and you're not reacting to it properly, the glucose is not going into your cells where it's needed. And then that causes a signaling of hunger when the fact of the matter is you have a ton of glucose in your body.

It's just not being used properly because you're not sensitive to the insulin. Insulin's a hormone that actually one of the many jobs. Is to actually open the gates and let that glucose into your cells. But when you're insulin insensitive, and this is just a layman's terms, but it's like the insulin's trying to open the key and the key won't unlock the lock.

So that's why the glucose is in your blood. But it's not in your cells providing energy. The fourth thing they say here is the feelings in your fingers, like tingling or a numbness, and that's from neuropathy. Your nerves being damaged. And when your nerves are damaged, it sometimes produces in your toes, your fingers.

This tingling. This numbness, and honestly, that was one of the first symptoms I had when I was first diagnosed with type two diabetes is I noticed that my toes were tingling and numb. Now, finally it says, What should you do if you get these symptoms? Obviously the answer. Go check with your healthcare provider.

They can give you a simple A1C test, and then we've talked about that a lot. That's the gold standard. They might start with a fasting blood glucose test, which will tell you at that particular instant they drew the blood. What was your blood sugar level? But the gold standard is the 90 day average from an a1c.

I get that 24 7 because I do wear the continuous glucose monitor, which is extremely helpful for. But those are the five tips, four things, four of them are actually symptoms. And then the last one was an action step that if you do have any of these symptoms to go see your medical professional. So, Three interesting articles, links over the show notes.

I hope you go check them out for yourself. I do not want you to just take my word for things. Please look into them yourself, and you figure out what's good for you. 



So here we are at the main topic for this week, and it's not more about covid. That wasn't supposed to be the main topic for this week, the main topic for this week.

Are the tools that I use in solving my type two diabetes. These are my gadgets, my devices that I rely on in solving my type two diabetes. Now, I'll go over them, but I also wanna point out that if you don't have these tools, it doesn't mean that you cannot solve your type two diabetes when you work with your healthcare professional.

I find these tools invaluable some more than others, but some I believe are truly beneficial to me and could be beneficial to you depending on what you work out with your healthcare provider. All right. The first one is my Continuous glucose monitor. Now I use the Libre Freestyle brand. And it's comes to me through a company called Nutrience.

They basically will prescribe it to anyone that meets their guidelines. I do not get this through my own personal doctor. I get this through the doctor they have on staff at the Nutri Sensee company, and that doctor had me fill out a questionnaire, a little bit of an interview back and forth, and then they decided that I met their criteria.

Now, this is not covered for me by health insurance. The ironic thing is, That my blood glucose levels are too good. To get it covered by insurance. Now, they certainly weren't in the past, but as soon as I became serious about solving my type two diabetes, my blood sugar levels did go down and I don't qualify.

I have very good health insurance. But I don't meet their criteria, so I do pay out of pocket cash for these sensors. I put one sensor on every two weeks, and I will have an episode coming up here shortly where I detail, and I actually show you how I put on and where the blood glucose sensor. But this monitor is on 24 7.

And if you see my Instagram and Facebook stories every day, you see that I actually post my readings, my 24 hour readings from the prior day every morning. So if you wanna see those, follow me on Facebook or on Instagram and you're saying, Hey Tom, how do I find those things? Just go to the website SolvingType2Diabetes.com, and the links are right there.

Click on the Facebook icon, click on the Instagram. You can follow and leave a comment, leave some feedback. I'd love that, and you can see how I'm doing with that blood glucose monitor every day. That's one of the five or six things that I post every morning, showing you all the details of my prior day.

My second tool that I use is my food scale. Now, the food scale in combination with measuring cups, measuring spoons, things like that, gives me precise measurements. And to track my carbohydrate intake, my protein intake, things that are very important to me. I find that I either need to buy prepackaged food, which unfortunately usually means highly processed food or.

If I buy real food, natural food, I weigh it out on a scale. I put it in a measuring cup. I get out and level a tablespoon if I need to, and a food scale can be had for easily less than $30 at Walmart or at Amazon or many places. I've had this food scale now for over 20 years. Little plastic food scale. It works easily.

I also bought one that folds up even smaller and lighter. And just takes two double A batteries and I can use that for travel. It folds up to about, maybe about the size of this microphone or smaller, and it's certainly much lighter. So that's an easy thing to take with you if, like me, you travel a lot and don't be embarrassed by getting out of food scale, even if you're at a restaurant.

Now, once you've been doing this for a while, you can pretty much judge four ounces of steak versus six ounces of steak. But it's usually not the steak you're gonna mess up on. It's usually the yummies that you're gonna mess up on. Is that really four ounces of mashed potato. Ooh, is that really four ounces of macaroni and cheese.

These are the things you wanna be really careful about because going over on the carbohydrates for someone with type two diabetes can keep you away from your goals. So food scale, measuring cups, measuring spoons. Next would be my Apple. Watch this little baby right here. I use the Apple Watch mostly for movement and sleep tracking, both of which are very important to me, getting a good night's sleep, Depending on your age and your activity level, getting between seven and nine hours of sleep has been shown to be very helpful in reducing your stress levels, reducing your cortisol levels, and therefore reducing inflammation and helping with your type two diabetes.

So I use an app, obviously, to track those things. Let's talk about apps next week though. That'll be something for next week. The Apple Watch is grade four tracking movement. It has Apple Fitness, and sometimes I use it for my walks. Or if I am using Apple Fitness Plus on my TV with maybe Li Rower or my treadmill, it tracks all that.

It tracks my standing hours. Basically, all the things that are measured by my apple rings I measure on my Apple Watch. So for me, incredibly helpful tool. Now, you don't have to have an Apple watch. You might have a Fitbit, you might have a step counter garment, many other things. In fact, now in the latest iPhones, you don't even need a Apple watch to.

Track your fitness workouts. You can do it right on the phone itself, which was a nice ad to the latest version of the iPhone operating system that they came out with here very recently. So Apple Watch. The next tool that I really rely on is my smart scale. Now, the brand I don't think is important. What I find important is the fact that it doesn't just track weight.

It tracks body fat percentage. Now interestingly, it sends a little electric ocurrent of one foot passes through your body and down into your other foot and back into the scale. Very small electrical current. You feel nothing. It all runs off a nine volt battery. But what this does is it tracks the resistance or impedance through your body.

And fat. Water, muscle, bone, all have various impedance levels. So you tell at your height, you enter that into the scale. It obviously knows your weight, you tell it your gender, and then. Tells you what it thinks your body fat percentage is. Now, I've had some very high quality tests done in the past, and this scale has always been within one percentage point of those very high quality tests that are supposed to be 99.9% accurate.

So to me, to be within 1% for free versus paying $50 every time to get your uh, body fat percentage measured. This is a good deal and honestly, it doesn't matter if I am 26.2 or 26.7% body fat. What matters is that today's body fat reading is closer to my goal than it was say two or three months ago. If it fluctuates a little bit in between.

That's maybe a little bit of an accuracy in the scale, but over the course of months or years, it's totally fine. I think I might have spent, I don't know, 40 bucks on this scale. It comes with an app. That's where I get my body fat percentage charts from, and we can talk more about that app. A little bit later, say next week.

All right. The final tool I wanna talk about today is my iPhone itself. Now I'm a Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, fanboy. I've used Apple Products now since, Oh wow. I'm gonna say 98, 99, sometime around there, maybe 2002. I didn't have the first iPhone. I waited till I came out on Verizon, so I think that might have been the iPhone three, might have been the first one I got, or something like that.

But I do use my iPhone and it is, I'm gonna call the command center for all of these other things that I measure all of these apps. I mean, for heaven's sake, I even look up the news articles on the iPhone. I do some of these social media. That I post on the iPhone. And so it does just about everything that this laptop that I'm using now does, it even has about the same storage capacity.

So it's very handy. Sometimes I just like a keyboard and some of my software doesn't run on the iPhone, so I still need the laptop, but, And that's a MacBook of course. So anyway, the iPhone as Command Central, that's the last tool that we'll talk about. So those are the tools that I use. Do you need those tools?

Not necessarily. I'm just giving you an example of what I use, what works for me, and you work out what works for you. But I hope this was helpful. 



All right, so onto your questions. Well, we don't have. So once again, hey, we're new, but there are a few dozen of you who are watching this every week, which I'm very thankful for.

Feel free to write in. Feel free if you wanna send an email directly and you don't wanna go to the website. Hey, here's my direct email address, tom@solvingtype2diabetes.com that easy. Send me an email, send in a question, send in your feedback. If you wanna use the form on the website, that's cool too.

SolvingType2Diabetes.com click on feedback, send in a comment, send in a question. You can get all the links to social media. I do post every day, so a short one minute video, a little sometimes inspirational, sometimes tough love message, but check it. I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to make this podcast much more interactive.

All right, so what's next? Next week's topic is going to be apps. This week we talked about the tools that I use. Next week, we'll look at a rundown of the apps that I use, things that are available to you. They're almost all free or have a free version at least. And I do pay for a couple of 'em because I do like some of the more premium features.

But we'll talk about all that. But that's coming up next week. So I hope you stick around and watch or listen to that episode. Please check out my shorts. I do try and post a short video every day on YouTube. I also post it on TikTok and into a real on Instagram and Facebook, so if you check it out, you'll be sure to find it fairly easily. Thanks a lot.

Well, that wraps up another episode of the solving type 2 diabetes podcast. I hope you found it valuable. Please follow and leave a five star review, as it helps other people find the podcast. By subscribing you ensure you won't miss the next episode. You can always get a full transcript of the episode at solvingtype2diabetes.com

there you also find the links to leave feedback and links to follow on social media. I'm very interested in hearing from you with comments and suggestions. Thanks very much for listening. Please remember that everything I share is just from my own personal experience and should not be taken as medical or health advice. 

Please consult your own medical professionals. This podcast is intended for entertainment purposes only.