Introduction --- And they found that people who performed up to an hour a day of moderate, which is like brisk walking, to vigorous, which is maybe like running or CrossFit or something like that, they had a 74% lower risk, developing type two diabetes compared to those people who were more sedentary. 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. Well, I hope you are having a really great week. before I talk about my week too much, I would like to ask a favor if you're a regular listener. You know, I ask this favor all the time, but it's important. Would you please share this episode with someone that you care about? It could be someone that you know who has type two diabetes, or maybe they care for someone who has type two diabetes. But if you could share this episode this week. It would really help me a lot and I would appreciate it. Week in Review --- So for my week in review, well, there's not gonna be any rants this week. I think last week. If you didn't listen to last week's, you should go back and listen to it. Because it was, I must say quite the rant that I, let loose with last week. But, you know, sometimes I guess that's just, what's needed. But this week, no rants. it's a normal week. I'm back at home this week, coming back from Walt Disney World. And I've been able to enjoy my regular meals, getting in the meats and the veg. we had put some meatloaf, in the freezer before we went down there, and so I've been enjoying some of that. Some chicken, just the regular type of things that I like to eat. Of course, my coffee every morning with heavy cream. I actually think about that when I'm going to bed. Ah, only nine hours from now I get to have my coffee. I really do enjoy that. But I've been getting outta my trail, the local trail, my Lebanon Valley rail trail, and I've enjoying some long walks, which have been great this week. we've had a couple days of heavy rain, so a couple days I didn't get out there, but mostly I've been out there on the trail in the afternoon. It's been anywhere from the low seventies to the mid eighties this week. A lot of variable weather, but I have enjoyed it. So it's been a good week for me. Here we're gonna be headed up to the Poconos tomorrow. It's only an hour and a half drive north of here, and my family has a cabin up there. The greater extended family, I should say. And we actually helped to build that about, oh, it's almost 40 years. No, actually it's 35 years ago because, it was a period of time between when my wife and I were engaged and when we were married. And last Sunday was our 35th wedding anniversary, so it was 35 years ago that we helped, my wife's dad and family build that cabin. And it uses a system called Lincoln Logs. It's actually a Lincoln Log cabin. It's a kit and it's nice. three bedrooms, one bathroom, nice big living area, kitchen, everything. And we really enjoy going up there for family trips. So this is gonna be, three of my daughters and. two grandchildren, I think only two. And, my wife and I, and, we're gonna have a good time up there. We're celebrating birthdays of two of our grandsons. one is turning one and one is turning four, and we're gonna have fun with that. Don't tell 'em. But the four year, four year old is getting a bike, so don't tell 'em that. Actually, by the time this comes out, he will have just received the bike. So don't worry about it. Go ahead and tell him if you want My Numbers --- for my numbers this week. It's been a good week. I'm back to tracking my numbers. if you listen to last week, you know why I did not track my numbers for a week, but luckily that only lasted for a week. And so for my rings, I have managed to close my Apple Watch. Fitness rings five out of seven days, which is great. My seven day average glucose is 1 28. And if you've been listening, you know that 1 28 is much higher than I've been averaging. Well, I use the words much higher. It's about, I'm gonna say 20 points higher. I think. my average was in the low 100 s, you know, 1 0 5, 1 0 8 here recently. But now, If you listen last week, you'll know that I have stopped taking Farxiga was not my choice. My doctor literally insisted on it. I'm not gonna get into that. I fully talked about that last week. So go back and listen if you, if you want to hear all about that. So anyway, it's now, I'm gonna say almost three weeks without the Farxiga. So having a seven day average glucose reading of 1 28, which is just creeping into the pre-diabetes range, is higher than I'm used to for sure. And. I don't know how to feel about this. I knew my blood sugar would go up when I stopped taking the Farxiga because I have experimented with that in the past, and usually after my little experiment of a week, I went right back on it, but I don't have any, so I can't take it even if I wanted to. My doctor has removed that from my prescription list. So we'll see where this, ends up. For the past seven days, it's been 1 28. I've been eating what I would typically eat and we'll have to see where that ends up. I certainly would not want to tolerate it going into the one 30 s or one 40 s, even though an average of one 50 is the demarcation, for type two diabetes. So 1 28 is not up to that range yet, but it's certainly higher than I like. So for my body fat percentage, I'm sitting right at 21% and I've been there plus or minus a half a percent for a couple of months now. So that looks like it's pretty much leveled off. I have a goal of 17% body fat, but it's sitting right around 21% body fat. So I think right now I'm not really losing any more weight and. You know, to get my body fat percentage. Lower. I think at this point, cuz I really don't see a need to lose any more weight on the scale. So at this point I'm gonna have to add muscle and that's the only way that I'm gonna get that body fat percentage down to 17%. So I'm gonna have to start thinking seriously about adding back in strength training. pushing some iron so to speak, or body weight movements. burpees and pushups and sit-ups, pull-ups, that type of thing. Those are totally fine as well. You don't have to use physical external weights, but it does make it quicker, to do it that way. But I'm gonna have to do something if I really have this goal of 17% body fat and I want to make sure I hit that. For my macros, like I said, I've been, you know, back to eating the way I normally eat, not at Disney. And, my average carbohydrate intake for this week has been 72 grams of carbohydrates each day. And on average I've had 134 grams of protein each day. And those are, perfectly fine right in my target area. Mounjaro Update --- For my manjaro update, I am still on the 7.5 milligram dose. in fact, I just had, some today, did a little injection this morning. I do that once a week and it's now my only medication for type two diabetes. So right now, Mounjaro is the only thing that I'm adding to my lifestyle of eating and movement to keep my blood sugar under control. And like I say, Seven days. The average has been 1 28 of glucose, which is, right about the highest I'd ever wanna see it get any higher than that. And we're back to my mind too high. I'm not sure my doctor agrees with that, but anyway. Challenge and Win --- For my challenge and win this week? Well, my challenge has been breaking from, eating at Disney for nine days. I had more fast food than I normally would at, Disney. Steven had asked a question about, what fast food do I eat? And I did have some burgers down there, that's for sure. Did have some chicken strips down there and normally I don't eat that type of thing. Like I would have normally, meatloaf instead of a hamburger with a bun, I would just have the burger or I would have, roasted chicken instead of, fried chicken strips with breading. So I'm back to my normal eating. That was my challenge to immediately get back to that, and I was able to do that. So I'm gonna call that one a win. News --- Okay, let's take a look at the news. This first article here is, I'm gonna say a no-brainer, but it's good to get reminded of this from time to time. It's entitled, low Carb Breakfast may Help Stabilize Blood Sugar in Type two Diabetes. So they actually did a study on this and I guess it was a, three month study, a very small study, only 121 patients, but they fed part of the group, a low fat. Normal carbohydrate level breakfast. And the other group a low carbohydrate, little bit higher fat, breakfast. And they had, between eight and 12 recipes to choose from for each of their breakfasts. And usually, the breakfast contained eggs and then maybe some kind of meat along with that. But they did find that, the blood sugar levels for the type two diabetics with, eating very low carb breakfasts, were definitely lower than those people who ate the, regular higher carbohydrate breakfast like cereal and toast and things like that. So we might think that's a no-brainer. But, it's interesting to see that, you know, they, there's evidently are still people who are questioning that. And, but here they did a little study. Again, very small study. 121 people. that's practically nothing. But anyway, also in here are some, breakfast recipes you might like. So that's the first article. The next one here is entitled, These types of exercises, lower risk of type two diabetes. So this is good for not only if you already have type two diabetes, but maybe you have pre-diabetes and you want to, avoid ever getting, Type two diabetes at all. And they remind us here in this article that more than one in 10 Americans has diabetes. And 95% of those is type two diabetes. And that's really what we're concerned with here, because type two diabetes is the one that you can actually do something about. And what they found here, and of course this was a much, much larger study, they had 59,000 people, Participate in this. And they found that people who performed up to an hour a day of moderate, which is like brisk walking, to vigorous, which is maybe like running or CrossFit or something like that, they had a 74% lower risk, developing type two diabetes compared to those people who were more sedentary. and that, You know, that's like just basically strolling or maybe not doing much of anything. So again, good article. And they'd go on here to say why, exercise can help you lower your risk of develop type two diabetes and, things like that. So check that one out and, maybe that might help you with some exercise ideas. This third one here, little scientific, having to do with medication. It's entitled, how does Ozempic work to treat Type two Diabetes? So I think by now you're probably familiar with Ozempic, which is the semaglutide, medication. that's also an injectable. just like my Mounjaro is injectable. This is a different, molecule. Ozempic has the molecule called. So Megalot and Manjaro has Tze peptide, you know, so two different molecules. They work in two different ways, but they're also similar. And, what they're saying here is that, ozempic works by mimicking, incretin. And incretin is a hormone, and it regulates, the amount of insulin released into the blood after eating. And, it is glucose dependent. So just because you eat something does not mean that you're going to release more insulin. It's actually eating food that contain or is converted into glucose. So the more glucose you eat, the more sugar, the more carbs, then the more insulin it will be. Put out into your body, which is what normally happens. It's just ozempic helps your body do that so that will eventually end up lowering your a1c, if you continue doing that. So that's a good article explaining some of the ins and outs of how Ozempic works. I obviously didn't get into all the details, but if you're interested, just follow up and check out that article. The last one here. This is a little disconcerting study finds one in three adults with type two diabetes may have undetected cardiovascular disease. So they're saying that this increased risk of cardiovascular disease can come from hardening of the arteries. it's called. atherosclerosis, thickening of the arteries. And, they're saying that's a side effect of having, you know, high blood sugars, insulins, resistance and, that can lead to heart disease, which I think, you know, but it was surprising to me is that up to a third of the people could have this and not realize it because typically, Hardening of the arteries is something that you don't really see signs and symptoms to. It could be, maybe your blood pressure, you might be able to tell, but it's pretty, what do they call a silent, issue And you don't really know about it until something very bad happens. But when they did a study and tested people for this, I think they use, I think they used like an ultrasound, to test this building up of thickening of the artery walls. And, they just did it with people with type two diabetes and, in this study, and they found that one out of three had this thickening of the arteries, which, is, you know, the precursor to very severe cardiovascular disease. So that was interesting. That's the some good news articles for today. Do I need to cout calories or macros? --- All right. Let's look at the main topic for today. And as I mentioned last week when I was talking all about my numbers and my doctor and, oh, don't get me started on that, I said I wanted to talk about do I need to count calories or macros. Now, some people. My doctor included thinks that you really don't need to focus on, numbers, and you do hear things nowadays about intuitive eating and the fact of the matter is, you know, 50, 70 years ago, no one even knew what a calorie or a macro was. this is a fairly recent thing, and for me, you only have to worry about this if you are in an abundant food situation. Especially abundant good choices of food. If you are undernourished, you know, if you go hungry, Which is very unfortunate, but it still happens. Still happens a whole lot. But if you're in that situation, I don't think you need to worry about counting calories or macros. You're trying to just get in enough food to survive. And that's how I think we were for most of our, history. You know, we had to work very hard to get food to live, but that's not the case for most people anymore. Now some people don't have good food choices available in where they live, in their neighborhood, in their area. They call that being in a food desert, where maybe all you have are convenience stores and maybe fast food places where you have things to eat, and it's not a problem of not getting enough calories. It's just that what you're getting is not very nutritious. But for most of us, we have not only an abundance of junk food, but abundance of regular meat and veg and fruits and things like that. So we just have a whole lot. We certainly get advertising and all that. So I think that's what's bringing about. You know, some people call it the diet craze or whatever, but to me, I think the need to count calories or macros or having maybe the privilege of counting calories or macros, takes on a new meaning. Now, in our more recent years, you know, not tens of thousands of years of our history, but the last 50 years, let's say. Because we have all this food available. I know I'm fortunate. I have a cupboard full of food. I'm sitting here in my dining room, so if I turn around, I can see a cupboard full of food, a large refrigerator or a freezer all filled with food. So I don't have that problem of having to struggle to get enough. What I have is a problem of too easily getting too much. So what's the difference between counting calories or counting macros? Well, let's look at just plain old counting calories. some people go by, and I personally don't, but some people go by, you know, calorie in, calorie out. You burn X number of calories, you intake X number of calories, and as long as you make them equal, you won't gain or lose weight. Well, the fact of the matter is that doesn't take hormones into account at all. That doesn't take stress hormones, that doesn't take, estrogen testosterone, that doesn't take, insulin. None of those hormones are considered. When you're just simply counting calories, and the fact is that those hormones have a tremendous effect on what your body does with what you eat. Whether it burns it up quickly, whether it burns it up slowly, whether it stores it very easily or it's difficult to store. Those things make a difference. So while you might want to count calories just to get your overall intake within a certain range, Because let's face it, if you're eating low carb for your blood sugar purposes, you could still overeat. So maybe you do count calories for an overall, to me, I use it as a ballpark, you know, plus or minus couple hundred calories in a given day. But to me, what's more important in helping me solve my type two diabetes is when I look at what it is I eat. So, yeah, I have to keep an eye on how much, but to me, what's even more important is what I eat 500 calories of. Let's say chocolate cake is not the same thing as 500 calories of chicken and vegetables. It's just not, your body does not treat it the same at all. Your body does different things with 500 calories worth of chocolate cake. For one, it sends your blood sugar sky high. At least for me it does, but 500 calories of chicken and vegetables. That happens to be what I had for lunch today, and I didn't see my blood sugar move one bit. It was about, I don't know, 110 or so before I ate, and an hour, two hour, three hour after I ate it was still within 10 points of 110. So it definitely does matter what you eat. And also earlier I talked about my body fat percentage and where it is and where I want it. Well, to get muscle, to gain muscle in addition to doing strength movements and exercise and work. You know, if I was a farmer lifting. 80 pound bales of hay all day. I'd have a lot more muscle than I do now. I don't do that. I don't do much work at all, so I would have to add that work in to get more muscles, but I'd also have to make sure I was eating enough protein and with my type two diabetes, I need to make sure I'm not eating too much carbohydrate. And the way I do that is by counting my macros. Now, sometimes I'm explicit in what I count, and I usually am very explicit when I'm counting carbohydrates. But as long as my protein levels are, you know, within a good range, plus or minus 15%, that's good. And I honestly don't care about my fat grams that I consume. That sort of is handled by my, let's say, overall caloric ceiling. You know, the balance of what I eat is fat. So if I'm just gonna give you these numbers as an example. They certainly would not apply to you. But let's say I'm eating 2,500 calories, you know, plus or minus 200 calories each day. And let's say I'm shooting for about 140 grams of protein, and let's say I'm shooting for about 80 grams of carbohydrates, which is not too far off from a typical day for me, the balance. Of that 2,500 calories is simply made up of fat. Now, it could be the fat that's in eggs, the fat that's in, cheese. It could be the fat that's in my heavy cream. it could be the fat that's in my, nice salted mixed nuts that I eat. whatever it comes from, wherever the fat is, that's where, you know, the balance of those calories are made up. So, Do I need to count calories or macros? Well, need is a pretty strong word. I enjoy counting my macros and I also count calories as an overall tool to help make sure I'm getting enough of what I need to get and not too much of what's not particularly helpful to me. does that work for you? That's something you're probably gonna have to figure out on your own. You know, you can talk to a nutritionist, a registered dietician, someone who specializes in type two diabetes would be most helpful. Typically speaking, your average medical doctor really honestly, did not get a whole lot of nutrition training, so I would recommend a specialist, either a nutritionist, a nutritional coach, or a registered dietician, someone like that to help you work out whether or not maybe you might want to consider counting calories and or macros. I do both, but hey, that's just me and I do like my numbers. Questions --- All right, let's look at your questions. We do have, one today. It's not a question, it's actually a recommendation. If you remember from last week, Steve asked me what fast foods that I eat and, unless I'm at Disney or something, I typically just shy away from them. However, Katie from Maryland wrote in with a recommendation for Steve. So let me read this from Katie. She starts off with, I think this is cute. Hashtag not sponsored, then she says, but Steve should check out real good foods. I guess that's a brand name. Real good foods in the freezer section for takeout. Duplicates made with chicken and cauliflower. Also my favorite pizza option is to just eat the toppings, l o l, but I think she's serious. Papa John's actually has a Papa Bowl, which is just a casserole of baked pizza, toppings, and cheese in sauce. Super tasty. Well, hey, thank you Katie. I appreciate the fact that you wrote in, I think you're the second person here recently who wrote in to help someone who had written in previously. So, that's great. That's a great trend. if you have a tip. For someone that maybe has written in or just a tip in general that you would like to share. I would absolutely love to get it and read it on the podcast. Now, there's two ways to get it into me. First of all, you can just send me an email. My email address is Tom solving type two diabetes.com. Just send me an email, right with your regular email program. The other way you can do it is to go to the website. Solving type two diabetes.com and click on feedback. Just type it in right there. It'll get sent right to me, and I'll be very happy to either answer your question or share your tip. Maybe you also have a suggestion for an upcoming episode, which is great. I'm gonna ask you my favor again. I asked you about 25 minutes ago. I'm gonna ask you again, could you please share this episode? With someone that you really care about. Could be a friend of yours, could be a family member, but please share this episode. I'd like to get out there and help as many people as I can. What's Next? --- Okay, so what's next? Next week, cuz it'll be about a month Since we took away the Farxiga, I want to talk about the effects that I'm seeing. So for the past six months, I have been using both Farxiga. Which works through the kidneys and eliminates excess sugar in the bloodstream via the kidneys and the manjaro, which helps with, insulin sensitivity and also decreases appetite and things like that. So I've had that combination working very well for six months, almost seven. But now my doctor has removed the Farxiga Listened last week's episode to find out why. So I wanna talk about what I'm seeing now one month in without having the Farxiga, with relying strictly on the manjaro. So that's next week's topic. I hope you listen to that Then. 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.