Ask Dr. Cheryl

Topics discussed in this episode: 

• Building The Perfect Plate to manage hunger (1:11)
• How our bodies respond to eating (2:06)
• Understanding glucose response (2:46)
• Fruit and blood sugar (8:25)
• Whole carbs and blood sugar (9:38)
• Miscues and blood sugar (11:03)
• N. Hanes research showing young adults becoming insulin resistant (11:49)
• Insulin resistance (12:03)
• What is insulin (12:25)
• Max 50 formula (16:17)
• Using exercise as medicine (18:04)

Transcript:

Ok, so we're gonna talk a little bit about other components that make us feel hungry or could miscue hunger, what we need to feel full because we've all recognized that feeling hungry is a part of hangry for some, and not feeling hungry is a part of happy. So I'd rather be happy than hangry. So I think it's a great topic so that's what we've talked a lot about. There are many components to it. But as we look at things that can actually miscue that or how it can help us. How can we use hunger, understand our body, and then be able to reach our health goals, but really feel good and happy and satisfied in the pleasure of the day of the eating experience without having to also eat every two hours because we're hungry all day long. That's something where, you know, you have to have a full time job just trying to feed your body. So that doesn't work very well. So we're trying to look at how can I feel full for four hours and not feel like I need to snack? That's the goal. So how do we take the foods that are on the score and build them into a plate that's the perfect formula to manage hunger, help us to feel satisfied, keeps us happy, this is the happy factor, and that we're feel that we feel full for four hours without needing to snack. So I'm not saying that you can't snack, but I don't want you to need to snack. That's really the key here. And what we do is we keep adjusting. So you might be in that 20%. So as we talk about the plate, we'll take and adjust if 80% we say don't need to snack, if you do, we keep making some tweaks and adjustments and we'll talk about that more when we talk about the plate. So now I want to talk about when we eat, how that affects our body and how that affects our blood sugar levels and how that affects our hunger. So that's something really important and it really helps us if we understand it better. So I'm gonna draw a little bit and I'm gonna show you this stick person which represents you. So let's talk about how our body responds to when we eat and how, when we eat, how much we eat and the type of food we eat affects our hunger and when we feel full, and then how that affects how long we stay full. And one of those components is how it fuels the cell. So a lot of this is about, we as our body is thriving, we need our cells to be fueled. They need energy and they like carbohydrates, that's the most efficient. And our body also needs enough hydration. Our cells need to be hydrated and we need electrolyte balance. So now we're gonna talk about what you eat and how it affects your body over time. And this is a good example of what I call the max 50 blood glucose meal response. So when we eat food, we think about it comes into our mouth, we feel hungry, and we eat foods that we love. And then as we eat them, what does our body do with it? And understanding that is so important and how can that help us not be hungry? And ultimately, that's the reason we're eating is that we want to crush the hunger and we want to feel post meal peace is what I call it. So as we look at this, I call this, this is the blood sugar curve. This is a bell curve. And this shows us that when we eat food, this is our blood glucose levels. And you can see between 80, 100, we want to be in this range about right here. And when we're in this range, I call this the happy zone. And this is where when our blood sugars are in this range, we feel peaceful, happy, we're not craving anything. So blood sugar really affects our hunger. So if our blood sugar drops below 80, now, most of us out liver, our body will not let that happen, it will begin to break down muscle, fat, so that ,we call this gluconeogenesis, but what that means in simple words, is taking the body tissue that's been stored for the very purpose of regulating blood sugar. And that's an important part to remember as we understand our bodies. So why each person is different than another is how efficiently that works. So for some of us, our body very quickly when the blood sugar starts to come down, even into the low eighties begins to say, wow, I've got to get some, I've got to get break down some body tissue and get you some energy. So, and other people never pop down below 80. But when we start to see prediabetes and sometimes with diabetes, they drop into the lows and we call the low when you're at 80 and below. I call that the hunger zone. And this is when I often say even your kids might not really like you, they'll love you, but they won't really like you. This is when we have not the best conversations with our spouse. This is we, we might, we might not be our happiest and sweetest person. Hence, hungry, angry, hangry. And so hangry zone is essentially when a blood sugar for people that their blood sugar really drops or if there's a rapid drop in blood sugar. It really can throw our emotions off and really has a big influence. So ultimately, our goal is to stay in the happy zone with our blood sugar. But when we eat a meal, how that affects, it's normal to raise blood sugar. So there are many different ideas out there of, we don't want to raise blood sugar at all or we don't want to spike it. So ultimately, when our, when we eat a meal, our blood sugar begins to rise. And we see this bell, this bell shaped curve. And if you look, there's the top curve, which is what a normal diet might go to. And if we look across here, we can see that this is how high the blood sugar comes. So if we go from an 80 right before the first bite, this is when we begin to eat our first bite, we begin to see blood sugar respond to the food that we've eaten and the timing of that depends on the food. So the bottom here we see is fruit juice. So fruit juice, if you were starving, what's the first thing that you would look for? Would you go for an almond or would you go for apple juice? And if you look at this, you can see that fruit juice is going to start rising, so we can get a very quick 15 minute, so down at the bottom is time. So even 15 minutes, we can begin to see from when we consume a food specifically, let's say those sugar-sweetened sodas or an apple juice, the blood sugar can spike pretty quickly. And if that's the only thing we ate, we could see a very quick spike and a very quick drop because the body would utilize that. And so those are the kinds of things that can throw our emotions off, trigger cravings. So we want to have this reduce and delay blood sugar response. So this lower curve represents slowing down and delaying blood sugar response. Because what we're looking for is we number one want to feel good. And so how can I feel good? Feel fueled? And I don't get triggered by a spike that throws my, how I feel, it will throw your mood off.  Or a drop, when I'm dropping suddenly I can go into the hungry hunger phase. Imagine living your whole day and you're getting this wrong, it can make you not your best. So when you're trying to be your best and we talk about a balanced life, we're living with a nice blood sugar bell curve. That's, note to self, this is the happy zone. So as we look at foods that do this, if we look across the bottom, if I were to eat a whole apple, the whole apple could come in and maybe between 30 and 45 minutes, the apple is raising the blood sugar a little bit slower, but I get to enjoy the sweet of the apple, but it's packaged with what we talk about that calorie free carbohydrate, which is fiber. The insoluble fiber is on the inside of the apple. The th soluble fiber is on the inside of the apple. And the insoluble fiber is the skin of the apple. And so that soluble fiber, that's all the pectins that makes apple sauce taste so good or bananas, that actually forms the gel substance and will slow and delay the blood sugar response, but it allows us to have the sweet of the apple. So whole fruits are really important. So a lot of different popular diets say wow these fruits really spike blood sugar. So in a keto diet, they would say I'm, I'm let's take these out of the diet. So we don't need to spike blood sugar. And the reason is, if you look over here, is insulin. So whenever our blood sugar begins to go up, insulin is also excreted because it's the way this is the way, we're gonna draw just say our blood vessel, this is the way that we can get this blood sugar into the blood. So we're raising, we eat the food. It's slowly, we hope if we eat the right meal, slowly raises the blood sugar and we want to slow and delay the response. So more fiber does this beautifully and it allows us to eat the fruit and enjoy it. We don't have to give it up and then when we move into vegetables, they're pretty nu-, they're pretty neutral unless we're going with some of the fast carb. I call them fast carb vegetables. And those would be like corn, things like that where it might raise it a little bit more. Beets, things like that. But as we look at this, most of the greens and broccoli won't have much impact on blood sugar. But now we get into the whole carbs. This is what we're all afraid of. We're looking at grains, I can't eat bread. That's going to make me fat. That if we look at it, that's about two hours. Think of oatmeal when you have oatmeal in the morning. So as this blood sugar curve rises, if we were to have, let's say whole fruit and we were going to have our oatmeal. This shows us at about two hours is where our blood sugar would spike. So, I mean, would peak. And so what this tells us is that this is about how long you'd be full. So if we eat just the foods on this side of the curve, we're gonna find ourself to be hungry in maybe about two hours. So as we look across the bottom, we see plant protein, they help us stay full for about three hours and then the healthy plant fat. So the beans and the nuts and the healthy plant fats like the seeds, help us stay full for four hours, which is what our goal is, but as we see it, we want to slow and delay the response and so what we need is for this to come down, where does the blood sugar go? The blood sugar now is moving into the vessel. And so now we're increasing our blood sugar and now we need to get it from the blood to the cell. So now our next journey for the body is we've eaten it, we've gotten it into the blood and now our body is trying to now take it from the blood to the cell because that's the whole end point of this whole process. If we can't get it from our body to the blood to the cell, we will continue to feel hungry, because the cell is ultimately going to trigger the brain to say I'm still starving. You don't have any energy, so this body is in trouble. So this can be a miscue because ultimately insulin's job is to to transport that blood sugar into the cell. So we have insulin here and I call it the gatekeeper to the cell. So we have insulin and it will drive that sugar right into the cell. So when this is all working well and the body is working well, we can listen to our cues. It works. When this is all functioning, we can listen again. And if as we age, we find 40% some of the new Hanes research showing young adults between 18 and 44 are becoming insulin resistant. And what does that mean? That's when, all of a sudden, this insulin that drives the sugar into the cell, we start to need, there's like a block in the gate and we can't quite get that sugar into the cell. So we get a little bit of a road block here. So it starts to take more insulin to do the very same job that it did before to get that sugar in. So the body says we better make more insulin. So now we start to make more insulin and insulin is fat storing anabolic hormone. So when insulin is present, this is one thing that I really like to stress to people, we can never break down fat, you will never lose weight with insulin high in the blood levels. So that's the reason the formula gets off a little bit between the calories we eat and what we burn that it's a little off. But what about insulin resistance? So as we see if insulin is high, we're not going to break down fat. So if we look at this blood sugar curve, at these highest points, insulin is matching your blood sugar. So if I get and I eat fruit juice and let's say I have a sugar soda and I, maybe I have a muffin at Starbucks. So what we find is that our blood sugar can, can, can spike and then we can see that now, I'm about an hour and a half later and I'm still hungry. And so from there, I'll have another snack. And so what we can find is any time we're above this line right here. This is important for us to see maybe above 110. We have, we have insulin present. So when insulin is high, we're not gonna break down fat. So if you're craving all day long and you're eating all day long, you can see how much time, in this blood curve, are we in this insulin fat burning zone? And so that's really the key is. That's why I want you to stay full for four hours and not need to snack. Because now I can bring insulin back down. And the majority of your day if you think of three meals a day. Now at the most, there's about one hour after each meal that you won't be breaking down fat. But of the 24 hours, you have 21 hours to have maximum fueled cell and you have the ability to be thriving and able to properly burn the energy, not store it as fat, and be able to have that insulin come down and you can lose weight, if that's what your goal is. If we're snacking, we're keeping that insulin high and we're literally fighting the battle. Eating the same calories could be eating the very same calories, but it's how we eat them and how they're packaged. The goal of this bell shaped curve is to be able to slow and delay blood sugar response and for us to be able to measure at the two hour point no more than a 50 point increase in blood sugar. That's my formula to say that at 50 points, that's what that meal did. So as I look at what's a good meal and how do I create those combinations? We know what the score tells us, because the score is like, built on all the research of these are power foods. We need this food, we need this food. But what if we decided to eat just pomegranates? I'm gonna eat all the pomegranates that I need and I'm gonna do all that at one time. And then an hour later, I'm going to eat my blueberries and then an hour later, I'm gonna eat my apples all on the score. It's perfect. It's great and I can get a good score. But the reason I did the plate is that you could see that it also matters how you combine it because now I can say when I have that apple, I'm gonna have whole grains with it or I'm gonna have nuts with it or I'll have a healthy fat with that like flax seed or I'll have almond butter, something like that that would combine it. And now I get this nice bell shaped curve even after a snack, so that everything's working most efficiently. So, one thing I wanna add is, and it's important to know is that when we're eating the standard American diet, that is 90% processed and only 10% whole foods, that formula spikes the blood sugar and our bell curve is a raise of 50 150 sometimes 100 between 100 and 150. Notice, this says max 50. So I created the max 50 blood glucose meal response so that every meal we eat all the recipes, all of them meet within, if you look at this plate, you'll be guided right into a natural max 50. You'll find that even with diabetes, I tested this, this formula works so that the maximum your blood sugar will go up is by 50 points between the first bite and two hours after. And that's the most important thing and that it's back to baseline in four hours. Now, you've reached your perfect, what I call, you will not be hungry, you will feel satisfied. And at the beginning when you first start, if you have some insulin resistance, it might take you a few days. It might take a week till we can begin to decrease insulin resistance. But ultimately, this max 50 formula sets your body up so that even within a week, you can begin to listen to the cues and it will begin to cue your hunger accurately because the cell is satisfied. And when the cell is satisfied, your cues are correct. And that's really the most important part of what the max 50 blood glucose meal response is all about. So I want to add one point here is that with this max 50 blood glucose meal response, other types of foods, the plate is designed to give you just that. But if you were to eat the average American diet with more processed foods, like 90% processed, we can see this bell curve pike spike to almost 150 points after a meal. So now we're trying to have 1050 point spike and bring it back to baseline in four hours. This is the reason that America is becoming insulin resistant because it's requiring so much insulin. That's way more insulin than what we need at a 50 point increase. And one of the ways that we can increase or improve insulin sensitivity is exercise. So exercise is the one exception where insulin is the gatekeeper to the cell, but when we exercise, we need hardly any insulin and some say even no insulin that our body can directly receive blood sugar during exercise because that's sort of our kind of our flight fight response. And so our body to protect itself, literally will from exercise, drive blood sugar right into the cell. So exercise can work hand in hand with this. So when we get into the score and you will see movement on the score. There's something called the oxygen cocktail and this is a 10 minute walk within an hour of when you eat. And what's exciting is when you see that if the meal raises the blood sugar, only 50 points, we've measured this on many, many people, a 10 minute slow walk, we're not talking about a fast walk, maybe a two miles an hour walk. You're walking and talking, no stressful, not a brisk walk. And that's right within that hour zone, that helps us when we are a little more insulin resistant, which will be almost half of us. It will help drive that blood sugar into the cell until your insulin resistance begins to improve. And you wanna keep doing that to prevent it from happening again. So we can exercise, and we want to exercise 150 to 300 minutes a week. These are the guidelines. But again, when we look at when we exercise, we can use exercise like medicine. So I use the food as medicine by the right food combination to get no more than the max 50 blood glucose response. Now, I can take exercise and bring that down another 20. So 20 point decrease in your blood glucose response. And that's really what that means is that 10 minute walk is enough to drive decrease and it's actually your insulin for you. So what we need is we need food combinations that help us achieve the max 50 blood glucose meal response. And that's exactly what the plate is designed to do.

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