Introduction --- Now I did something a little bold this week. I changed, uh, the amount of carbohydrates that I'm eating each week or each day. And I changed that a little bit this week because I had noticed previously that the A1C I was hitting was even lower than it had to be. Honestly, it was quite down below prediabetes level even. 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. My Week in Review --- I hope you have had an absolutely fabulous week. I mean, why not everybody should have a fabulous week, and I hope you had one. I know I had a really great week. I had a week full of walking. But first, let's talk about my covid. So, Last week's episode, I told you about how I tested positive for Covid on a cruise ship, and that was quite the experience, and I went over all that. But now we came home after that, we've been home now for eight days, and I have finally tested negative. I tested myself. It's been a week, took a test this morning, and I'm negative, which is great. I have to tell you that throughout the entire process, I really didn't have any symptoms. I don't know, I guess that's how it just goes for some folks. I'm tested negative now, so according to the tests, I don't have it. If you would've just checked in with me if I hadn't taken that initial test. I would've denied having any covid whatsoever. I mean, people are supposed to get really sick with this, and I'm sure some do. I don't wanna downplay it. That's not what I'm trying to say at all. I think some people unfortunately, get very, very sick from it and, uh, people end up in the hospital. They still, people are still dying from this. So, I don't wanna get too deep into this whole covid thing, but I just wanted to share my experience in that. You know, I could have been walking around with Covid and never have known it were it not for the tests that I was mandated to take because we wanted to stay on the cruise ship and go to Bermuda. Now, I think Bermuda is one of the few places that are still testing for this, but they tested. I tested positive and here I am a week later. I took a test this morning. It shows negative. So, but I feel no different today than I did a week ago. So I guess that's my point. Anyway, so I have recovered, from Covid I've had a great week. I certainly did not stay in bed this whole week. I felt no need to do any of that. I did out of caution and courtesy, I did wear a mask anytime I went into a store. Or something like that, but even that's pretty minimum. we only went to a store when we had to, and so yeah, I wore mask inside, no problem at all. but you know, I'm done with that now. But I did get out and have some really great, uh, walks on some rail trails. I tend to like rail trail. They're often well maintained. they're often flat and they go through some scenic area a lot of times. So I've had a couple of nice long walks on my local rail trail. Uh, Lebanon Valley Rails, two Trails, uh, is the official name of it. And they have a great volunteer maintenance organization. I think they get some funds, but uh, it's very well maintained. Uh, it's, um, at least a dozen miles long already. Of course, I don't need a space anywhere near that, but there's a lot of bikers on there as well. You see a lot of local folks who live along the trail, out walking their dogs. parents with children, retirees like myself. Lot of people out there on that local trail, enjoying that. Uh, really year round. Uh, a lot of snow is shoeing or cross country skiing when we get some snow up here in the winter. We don't get it as much here in southeastern Pennsylvania as we used to, but it seems like, uh, we still get a couple of nice storms. Two or three times a winter, we'll get it, you know, six inches or more. So it's nice for folks to be able to get out there and enjoy their winter sports. But for me, I'm a walker, primarily, little bit of running, and I got out there twice this week and had really good walks. Then if you saw my minute, I posted my Instagram reel or YouTube short, whatever you wanna call it, that I post every day. If you saw yesterdays, Remember that I was up in the Montoursville, Lycoming County area of Pennsylvania yesterday and doing some family errands. And so I Googled and I found the Indian Park in Montoursville, Pennsylvania, and that is an entrance to the Susquehanna River Walk, which I really enjoy. It was a long, The part I was on was a long Lycoming Creek, near Montoursville, Pennsylvania. You can see where I was yesterday and then today. I had my favorite walker the whole week, and it's because it was joined by one of my daughters and it was, believe it or not, my Father's Day lunch. And yes, we're in the middle of October, but she has a busy schedule. I have a busy schedule and uh, we've seen each other, certainly between now and then, but this was our time, just the two of us to get out there. We enjoyed the outside, enjoyed walking on. York Heritage Rail Trail. We were in York, Pennsylvania. It's uh, halfway between our houses. So we met there and then we went to Collusion Tap Works in York and had lunch after our walk. Uh, we certainly earned it. We walked over five miles, surprisingly, and we just talking and enjoying it and we sit after an hour, Hey, we should turn around. So it was almost a two hour walk. I guess. We walked faster on the way back, but it was very enjoyable. Beautiful weather. Very well maintained rail trail. If you ever get up to York, Pennsylvania area, check it out. It's the York Heritage Rail Trail. So that was fun. At the collusion tap works, we had lunch and actually that'll be the subject of the minutes that goes up tomorrow. So check out my minutes. They go up on Instagram, real Facebook, real TikTok. Believe it or not, Twitter. And the YouTube channel. So every day I post one minute or less. It can't be more than a minute, or a YouTube won't call it a short, so I post one minute or less each morning. So enjoy that as well. So that's pretty much my weekend review. Uh, like I said, a lot of good walks. Quote unquote, recovering from covid. But that's all gone well. Hope you've had a good week. Let me know about your week. Feel free to comment, send in feedback. I'd greatly appreciate it. My Numbers --- Okay, well, let's look at my numbers for the week. We'll start off with my daily glucose readings. Now I did something a little bold this week. I changed, uh, the amount of carbohydrates that I'm eating each week or each day. And I changed that a little bit this week because I had noticed previously that the A1C I was hitting was even lower than it had to be. Honestly, it was quite down below prediabetes level even. So I upped the carbohydrates by 20 grams per day. And it's still only 80 grams of carbohydrates a day, 80 net grams. So I don't count fiber and like sugar alcohols and things like that. So you see here that the, uh, average for the week was 1 24. That's my average glucose reading across 24 hours a day. Seven days a week was 124. Now that equates, if that were strung out, that would equate to an A1C level of 5.6. Now that is just a hair below prediabetes. I mean a hair below, like if it averaged 1 25 or 1 26 instead of 124, well, that would be. Very bottom level of prediabetes. So honestly, I would like to keep this between 115 and 120 as an average. So today, uh, I saw that my weekly average was 124, so still below prediabetes, but only by half a hair's width is it below prediabetes. So I'm going to, uh, continue to look at that. Uh, does that mean I, you know, tried experiment with some different foods or whatever? Uh, maybe. But, uh, all in all, that's a pretty good reading. And if you look at the macros, uh, you can see here that I hit my protein absolutely on target. My protein was for 27% of my intake to come from protein. And it spot on. So, uh, protein's an important thing for me, uh, because I want to maintain my muscle mass and getting sufficient protein is important to do that. And you see here that carbohydrates took up about 9% of my intake, so that's not bad at all. So let's look at my. Body fat percentage, and right now I'm holding at 26.8% cent. Yeah, to meet my goals. I've still got quite a bit of ways to go, but if you look over the past three months, past six months, past 12 months, even past 24 months, my body fat percentage is going down. It's going down slowly. But you know what, that's fine. This is a long game. This is not, uh, an overnight, uh, thing. As long as my blood sugar levels stay in the. Zone they currently are. Then I will take a slow but steady, uh, not perfect, but you know, some up and downs, but a slow, gradual decline in my body. Fat percentage I think is fabulous. If you look at the rings, let's move on to the rings. You'll see that for the past seven days, I have closed my rings each. That's starting up a good trend for October. If you're viewing this, you'll see that last week, uh, the day before, and then the day I tested positive for Covid. I did not complete my rings either day. First day was by choice. Ironically. Uh, we had an all day excursion. Uh, the second day I was confined to my cabin, so I really couldn't do it. I guess I could have done burpees in my cabin, but who the heck wants to be on a cruise ship doing burpees? In their cabin. I don't know, maybe Dave Castro, but I certainly wouldn't. So let's look at what I did do, and you'll see that for the last seven days I did get in a good walk each day. One day I had to do it on the treadmill. Uh, that was the indoor walk, But every other day was a very enjoyable. Outdoor walk and you can see that even today was 5.36 miles. So nice walk. The only longer walk I did was three days ago. I did 5.67. I typically average like four miles a day, so that's great. So those are my numbers for the week. Uh, but looked at a1c, we looked at the body, five percentage, the macros, the rings. That's pretty much all the numbers. All right, well, let's move on. Well, here we are now talking about small wins and challenges for the week. And I hinted at this earlier, I had a, uh, challenge in a small win of increasing my carbohydrate intake. Uh, for the past month or so it had been, uh, low. I've been averaging about 60 grams of carbohydrates per day. Now, you may or may not be familiar, but, um, the keto. Diet, which is I think pretty popular nowadays that recommends less than 50, sometimes as low as 20 grams of carbohydrates per day. And I tried that for a while, but that is so darned restrictive that it's, I don't know, I would call it a little miserable. Now there are people who do like to eat nothing but meat and leafy greens, and that's fine, but I do like my car wrap once in a while, or heaven forbid if I have a sandwich, but, I tend to stick. It was around 60 grams of carbs a day, and I did very well for the last month doing that, but my A1C was even much lower than it had to be. So like I said a little bit earlier, I upped it by 20 grams of carbohydrates per day. Now, what is 20 grams of carbohydrates? Well, those low carb wraps I like have five grams of net carbs. It could be more of those, uh, nuts. Uh, have carbs. So it could be a few more nuts. 20 grams of carbohydrates is not a lot, but it did make a difference. I did actually notice a little more leeway. Uh, little more flexibility in what I could have, and that was really helpful. So I think it's a win. My blood sugar did go up. Uh, I had been averaging like 5.1, 5.2 this week I averaged 5.5 as an a1c. That equates to a blood sugar average reading of like one 10 versus 1 25, something like that. So still in the very respectable range and with a little bit more flexibility. So that's a challenge that I had, how to add back in a few more carbohydrates. So we'll do that again this upcoming. And if the trend continues, well, we might leave it at 80 for a while. If it's a little too hard to manage, we can't get quite the blood sugar readings I want. I might bump it back down by. 10 grams a day. We'll see, you know, we'll see what happens. But for now, I have it set at 80 grams a day and for this upcoming week, it's my intention to keep it at about 80 grams a day. It's not perfect every day, but that's an average, uh, over the course of the week. And no one day gets crazy cuz that would just, uh, spike. Like I can't have all my weeks carbohydrates in one piece of pecan pie. Can't do that. My blood sugar would be high, it'd be very high, and it would stay high for a couple days. So I don't want that. I don't want what that can cause. So that's my challenge. Turns it into a small win. Let's take a look at the news. News --- As has become the standard. I have three articles this week that I think are interesting and I hope you find that as well. Just a quick reminder that the links for these articles are part of the show notes and they can be found over at the Solving type two diabetes website. You'll find the links for all of these articles for every episode. Right there on the front page of the website. So let's look at this first article. It's entitled The Absolute Worst Drinks for High Blood Sugar. Now I thought, oh, this is fascinating. Maybe there's something here that I don't know. Well, I don't think so. Um, it's an interesting article, don't get me wrong, but it's pretty common sense. Basically, they start off with saying, Don't drink sugary soda. The one they list here, first off is Mountain Dew. Yeah, I mean, that's pretty obvious. A single 20 ounce serving of Mountain Dew contains 77 grams of added sugar. Now don't forget, I just mentioned how I was eating 60 grams of total carbohydrates, not just added sugar, but total carbohydrates. And a single serving has 77 grams of pure sugar that's equivalent to 18 and a half teaspoons of granulated sugar in a single soda. That in itself is 290 calories, which in a single soda that has more calories in a regular McDonald's hamburger. They go on to say things like, Well, don't eat an icy, uh, 20 ounce Coca-Cola. Icy, uh, likely servant Burger King has 74 grams of sugar. Well, yeah, Okay. I think everybody knows that. I mean, I'm not sure if everybody knows that. If you don't know that. Well, here it is. Here's the article for you. Uh, 20 ounce can of regular Coke, 65 grams of sugar. So again, if you have type two diabetes, And you are trying to control your sugar. If you're still drinking soda that has sugar in it, you're doing yourself a tremendous disservice. And you know, don't think it's just soda either. Sweet tea. They picked one brand here, and I don't know about this brand. I don't drink sweet tea, but it's called Pure Life Brew Sweet Tea. Ooh, that sounds fabulous. An 18 ounce glass contains 42 grams of sugar. They say here. That's the equivalent of eating 42 gummy bears. Now, for those of you who like sweet tea, I have to ask you, do you drink just one glass? And that's a treat maybe on a Friday night. Or are you having it throughout the day? Maybe almost every day. That's something to consider. 42 grams of sugar in a glass. Uh, I don't know the how. That's good for you, even if you don't have type two diabetes, but you know, that's between you and your doctor. All right. That's the first article. Pretty interesting. So here's the second article, and this article is entitled, Counting Steps Can Reduce Disease Risk. Now, this was a study done over many years. In fact, here I'm gonna look and it says that this study was done over seven years, and they tracked people who wore these step counters. Just simple pedometers. They said that the risk of disease, and one of the disease they mention is type two diabetes, and they mention obesity and other diseases, but those people who reached an average of eight to 9,000 steps a day saw a dramatic reduction in their disease in the rate of getting diseases. Type two diabetes, obesity, sleep apnea, uh, gastro esophageal reflux disease. I think people call that gerd, but a dramatic, reduction. this study was launched in 2018. It gathered data from over 520,000 participants. So this is a good article. It contains, uh, links to the actual research study itself. It has graphs showing how people were able to, you know, do things like reduce their body fat, by walking. and it's definitely in these charts you can see a distinct corollary effect, especially for people who managed to get in between, uh, eight and 10,000 steps. A day. Now they tracked, evidently some people got in up to 20,000 steps a day, but there was really no difference in these charts if you got in 10,000 or 20,000. In fact, even getting in 8,000, provided almost all the benefits. Of getting in 10,000. So again, a seven year study, they track these people and very fascinating. So look that one up. And uh, finally, I guess there's proof they say, I think folks always knew that those people who got walked and moved and exercised are reduced their chance of getting some of these chronic diseases. But here is actual proof of that. in a study, it was done by nih. And, uh, the article appeared in Nature Medicine of this year, so check that one out. And finally, the last article is entitled, These Foods Can Increase Lifespan of Those with Diabetes. So, hey, let's live longer. More importantly, let's live longer and be healthier while we're living. So it compared, uh, different types of diets, Uh, vegan, uh, vegetarian, uh, regular, normal omnivore eating. Uh, not that being vegetarian is not normal. That wasn't what I meant to insinuate. It's just not as typical. As, uh, omnivore eating, I should say that. So what did they find? They found, according to this study, and you can read, uh, all the details, but they found that there is not a statistical difference in whether or not people included meat or eggs or fish into their diet compared to just eating vegetarian sources. What they did find is that consuming omega-3 fatty acids, uh, it's most often found in fish, but there are other sources dramatically reduces heart disease and inflammation, and that gives a dramatic, um, reduction of all. Cause death all cause mortality. In other words, people live longer. Yes, people eventually die, but they live longer. Uh, when they get sufficient quantities of these omega three fatty acids. And again, this is not me saying this, I'm not giving you health advice. I'm just sharing what I found in these articles. The other finding was that fiber. Fiber found in plant-based foods, plants are the only things that contain fiber. So you're obviously gonna find your fiber in plant-based foods, but they found that it was especially important in managing diabetes, the fact that those people who had high fiber diets, were able to control their blood sugar more easily by slowing down digestion, and it also helps the body from absorbing too much fat and cholesterol, which they say again, lowers risk of heart disease. Now. In my personal opinion, and this podcast is about my personal opinions, so I'll feel free to say it. I think the jury is still out on the eating of fat and cholesterol with regards to your blood fat levels and blood cholesterol levels. I don't think personally that they equate because I can go find lots of studies that say that it's eating of the sugar. That actually causes your cholesterol to rise. so if anybody has a question on that, I dare you to ask me. I dare you to ask a question or leave a feedback or comment. I challenge you. I would welcome it tremendously and I would be happy to share those articles as well. And I would like to hear your opinion. What impact do you think food has on all cause mortality? Are we just gonna die when we are meant to die? Or can we extend life by what we eat and how we move? More importantly, can we extend good, healthy, productive life? I think that's our goal. Anyway, that was a quick look at the news. Let's move on. My Apps in Solving Type 2 Diabetes --- Well, here we are at the main topic for this week and last week's main topic was the tools that I used, those physical devices, those uh, electronic devices that I use in solving my type two diabetes. And as I mentioned last week, this week's main topic is the apps. So what are the apps that I use in solving my type two diabetes? Well, I'm gonna start off with Mo might be the most obvious app, and that is the app that I use to monitor my blood sugar, uh, as I have described it before I wear a continuous glucose monitor, a cgm, I'll show you. For those of you who are watching, it's right there on my arm. If you're not watching, you didn't see that. That's okay. Trust me, it's right there on my arm. So the app that I use, the company that I get these monitors from is called Nutri Sense, and they are, I'm gonna call them an online company. I have. First stumbled upon them almost a year and a half ago now. Uh, on of all places Instagram, and I was following some health minded folks on Instagram, and this came up as an ad. I checked it out. I thought, Hey, that might be a helpful tool and wow. What an amazingly helpful tool for me. So I use their app. I take my phone, and at least once every eight hours I have to use the NFC reader in my phone. And I tap the sensor with my phone and it transmits that data into the app. And I get all kinds of statistics. You have seen, uh, some of the charts, some of the graphs that I share. Every morning. I share my prior 24. Glucose readings in my stories on Instagram and Facebook, so you can check that out. You can know exactly where my blood glucose was going up, been going down, and if you ever have any questions about that, I'd be happy to answer what's going on in those individual graphs. So I would say Nutri Sense, that app is my number one primary uh, app that I use in solving my type two diabetes. Now there's some other apps that are very important as well. For example, one that you might be very familiar with is My Fitness Pal. In My Fitness Pal, I'm able to record everything I eat. I'm able to, uh, zap a barcode of something I purchased. Uh, they have many restaurant menus loaded, especially your, uh, nationwide chains. They have a lot of that information loaded. I can enter a recipe and it'll tell me the macro contents of the recipe, but that's how I'm able to track my macros each day, monitor what I'm eating, make sure my portions are right, make sure I'm staying in the guidelines that I'm shooting for, for my. Eating. And, uh, for that I use my fitness p. Now I do like some of their advanced features, so I personally pay, I think it's like 40 bucks a year, uh, for the professional version of My Fitness Pal. But I used my fitness p free version for many years and uh, it's very helpful in its own right. Uh, as. The other app that you might have seen the results from is the Ren. Pro app that came with my scale. Renfro is the company that puts out the app, uh, that goes along with that, uh, smart scale. And again, what makes it smart is that you entered in your starting information, your height, your gender, your age, and then it tracks your weight, obviously, and it has those sensors on the bottom. Track, uh, your body fat percentage, and that's what I use it for, to track my body fat percentage. And you'll see that graph again every day. It's part of the graph so that I show here on the YouTube version of this podcast. And that's a, to me, a key app. And I only have three or four key apps, but that's certainly one of them. Apple Fitness is another app you've seen me use. I share those rings and that information every morning as well as each time on this podcast. So that uses the watch. I track my, uh, steps, I track my track, my mileage. I track pretty much all my movement activities, my standing hours. And that's a key feature, gives great reminders, uh, throughout the day. You can have it set up so that if you're close but not quite there in one of your goals, it might give you a hint to get up and get some movement. Uh, very user friendly. I can go back in history, see average number of miles per month. I can see time spent, uh, in exercise. A lot of good information with that Apple Fitness app. And then finally, like I said, I only have four or five apps that I really rely on. So my last one, Is called Auto sleep now. I started using auto sleep a couple years ago. It's a free app. It tracks your sleeping by wearing your Apple Watch at night. And quite frankly, the new version of the operating system for the Apple Watch does a lot of this itself now. So I don't even think I would need to use this autos sleep app, but I do like its display. I do like its readouts. It's very easy for me to understand. It tells me, uh, things like my heart rate. Throughout the night, making sure that I'm getting a good heart rate dip at night. It tracks my heart rate variability, uh, which is helpful if you're into that, you can really see how you're recovering. It shows things like REM sleep, deep sleep, light sleep, uh, shows when I wake up at night, it also shows me when maybe I'm not sleeping as well as I think I am, because it's pretty. Honest, I can't say, Well, I got to bed at nine, I woke up at five. I guess I got eight hours of sleep. No, not at all. I might have only gotten seven, seven and a half hours of sleep, maybe less so by seeing when I really fell asleep when I truly woke up, not just when I got into bed and out of bed is very helpful. And then it subtracts out those times that I get up during the middle of the. It gives me a net time of sleeping, and my goal is to get eight hours of actual sleep, and I find for myself, I have to get in bed at least nine hours, sometimes nine and a half hours in order to get eight, eight and a half hours of actual sleep, which really to me, sets me off on the right foot for the next day. So those five are the apps that I use. Now don't worry if you don't have those apps, you might not even have a smartphone or an Apple watch or anything like that. I don't think it is critical. For example, if you wanted to wear a continuous glucose monitor, they have small little meters, battery operated meters. Not do nothing but read the, read the uh, monitor, so you wouldn't need a smartphone. Now I find that if you have one, it's a lot easier to use it with a smartphone, but you don't need it. You can just have that little meter and read it with that meter. It's as simple as that. Likewise, for the sleep app, well give yourself sufficient time. Just don't go to bed. Eight hours before you wanna wake up and say, Well, that's the best you can do. You can learn your own habits. You know that maybe you need to go to bed nine hours before you wanna wake up in order to get eight hours of sleep. You can learn this kind of stuff about yourself. For example, there's many other ways to measure your body fat percentage. Rather than having a smart scale and an app, you can go to your local gym. They might have tools for measuring body fat percentage. I know hospitals, doctor's, offices, they can do it there as well. I find it pretty easy just to step on the scale in the morning. So yes, that's very convenient, but it's not required. I guess my point here is I use these apps. I find them very helpful, but that doesn't mean you can't be successful if you don't have these apps. Figure out what works for. Maybe invest where you need to, where you think it's gonna be helpful and you can have success as well. Questions --- All right, So let's talk about your questions. Now, you know what's coming up. There's no questions. I wish there were questions. I really do. Uh, you're listening, Um, feel free to ask me a question. I know some of what I'm saying might be confusing. Might be new to you. Don't be embarrassed. Ask. You can say, Tom, don't use my name on the air. Fine, I won't use your name. No problem. But if you do have a question, I would like the chance to help you out. Help you with an answer, or at least point out a place to look to find an answer. So how do you do that? Go to the website SolvingType2Diabetes.com you'll find the links you can click on. That'll send me an email. You can leave a comment right on the episode, show notes. There's a place to do that, but yeah, I'd love to hear from you. So give it a shot. Next Week --- All right, so what's coming up next for next week's Main topic. Next week's main topic is going to be my food. What food do I eat in a typical week? What are some of my go-tos? What are my favorite veggies meats? Do I have a favorite cheese? All these fascinating questions will be answered in next week's Main topic. We'll look at what I ate maybe in this week or any other average week. We'll look at what I eat at home in case you're curious Next. You get all your answers to what it is that I eat in helping to solve my type two diabetes. Thanks! --- Well, that wraps up another episode of the solving type two 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.