 So it's the up and down movement in your glucose that can trigger those feelings of anxiety or just like jitteriness, energy dysfunction. So often that's that spike in glucose can lead to kind of those feelings of like brain fog feeling kind of off. And then it typically is followed by a glucose crash. And that's where a lot of the anxiety can get sparked. People just feel really cruddy in those moments. And then usually that also triggers cravings and the body is wanting more energy because it's seeing this dip in glucose. Today's program giveaway maps anabolic advance. This is the second iteration of maps anabolic. It's the advanced version. It's pretty awesome. If you want to win it, leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we drop it. Also subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications. If you win, we'll let you know in the comment section. We're also running a 50% off sale on the original maps anabolic and on maps split. So they're both half off. If you're interested, just click on the link at the top of the description below. All right, back to the show. We had a really good conversation last time you're on the show was well received very well received. And I wanted you back on because you're you're in this kind of unique position. You don't meet a lot of people like this that where they work with people through the conventional medical system. They work with people independently, then they work with people combining tech and kind of traditional type coaching with your experience. And so you've got and you've got to experience all these kind of like these different ways of working with people. And I think there's a lot of value in each of them, but each one is incomplete. Putting them all together kind of gives us kind of this kind of full picture. We have a similar experience in which we worked with people for a long time before, you know, this really cool tech is being introduced like CGM now CGMs have been around for a while, but now they're being used. And you're here representing NutriSense, you're very experienced working with CGMs. They were used really to manage diabetes, right? Now we're seeing it being used as this powerful tool just to help people lose weight, improve their health, improve their fitness. And we've seen the promise of tech many times where it always falls short is it lacks the behavior modification, coaching and guidance. And you guys are combining all that, which I think is pretty cool. So real quick, explain what a CGM is just for people who don't know. And then I want to kind of take you back and we can talk a little bit about the kind of this journey and what it's like combining all these things. Yeah, absolutely. So CGM stands for Continuous Glucose Monitoring. And it's just this small device. I'm actually wearing one for those who are looking, but you can put it on the back of your arm, you do it at home and it lasts 14 days and essentially measures your glucose 24 seven. And so I talk about this as it's a ability to get a window of what's happening on the inside. We're often measuring things like weights, which is kind of more reflective of what's on the outside, or we're looking at ourselves in the mirror, or maybe we're only getting a snapshot in time of what's happening on the inside. So fingerprint glucose, or you go to the doctor and you get a lab panel. It's telling you what happened in that very moment where CGM is more giving you a movie picture. So similar to something like an Apple watch where you're getting a movie picture of your heart rate, that's kind of the closest we've gotten to this continuous data stream. Now we're getting that image of what's happening with our metabolic health as well. So these CGMs last for two weeks, you're getting this 24 seven glucose stream. And now you're getting information into how your glucose is changing throughout the day, what various meals and habits and lifestyle factors are influencing your metabolic health so that you can really dial in and fix some of these you know, issues that then will have a ripple effect on your health overall. And this is all real time, meaning it's not like you get tons of lag where it's like it measures your glucose and oh, this is what's happening now. But we don't know what happened an hour ago because it takes an hour to measure it. This is like real time. This is what's happening right now. Yeah, absolutely. Now, you know, this reminds me of it's like MRIs versus fMRIs, right? So like MRIs, you look at the brain and see what's going on fMRIs. We could watch the brain as a person's thinking as they're looking at imagery as they're processing things. And this is revolutionized like brain understanding of the brain in the mind. I feel like CGMs are kind of doing that for metabolic health. Why measure, you know, before we go into like, you know, working with people and before we use this kind of stuff, why measure? Why is glucose such? Why is that the chosen thing to measure in real time? Why not measure other things like what's what's so special about glucose? There's two parts to this. So one is just the technology itself. So glucose is easier to measure than something like insulin. That's a hormone where glucose is a metabolite and it's just easier from a technical perspective. But when I was thinking about which measurement form in general, do I think is the most important for consumers to be monitoring to really drive true health outcomes and also behavior change? I came to glucose because it's really the central point of our metabolic health. And metabolic health to me is kind of that foundation of good health that all other things are built upon. So some of the most common chronic conditions, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, dementia, other neurological conditions, they all stem from metabolic dysfunction. So if we can get our metabolic health in good control, which glucose is kind of the fuel system that our metabolic engine, so to speak, runs off of, then we can see that big ripple effect in preventing most of these common chronic health conditions. And not only that, but when we prevent some of these chronic health conditions, which is, you know, we're not very prevention focused in the first place, but I think we need to move in that direction, but we also feel better. So there's the subjective experience that comes with optimizing your glucose values of stable energy levels, better sleep, you know, better mood, anxiety, mental health, brain fog. So you feel better, but then you're also having these longer health outcomes that are in a more optimal range if we can measure this metabolite. OK, so essentially what you're saying is a lot of the things that we tend to want to pay attention to or measure tend to be downstream of what is happening with our glucose. In other words, to put it plainly, if we can look at glucose and work with that, we kind of directly work with all these other downstream things that people tend to complain about or have issues with. You mentioned anxiety. I want to focus on that for a second, because I have an interesting story. You know, when I work with clients, we have tools like this and we had to go through trial and error, asking questions. Now, you know, obviously, when you're working with people, you can work with their behaviors, if there's a human component, you can guide them. But you're like so limited by their awareness, your awareness, your experience. So it's like this long process. And I remember I had this one woman that we were talking, you know, I was working with her and she would kind of deal with anxiety. Didn't necessarily want to go to medication. We tried all these different things. And I remember reading an article about how starting your day off. I can't remember the article or where I read it, but they talked about how starting your day off with a high protein, moderate, fat breakfast with stabilized blood sugar or help stabilize blood sugar throughout the day and how these swings in blood sugar could contribute to anxiety. It's literally what the article said. So what the hell? Let's just remember I've been working with this person for months. So I said, hey, instead of having your yogurt, fruit, breakfast, let's have just eggs and let's have nothing else. Just have just some eggs and that'll be your breakfast, maybe some bacon and see how that affects you. And her anxiety was significantly impacted in a positive way from that. That took me forever to go through. Whereas I could have literally had a CGM and seen your breakfast is causing these crazy ups and downs that might be contributing to anxiety. And do you see that when you work with people? Yeah, absolutely. It's extremely common that those swings specifically, so it's the up and down movement in your glucose that can trigger those feelings of anxiety or just like jitteriness, energy dysfunction. So often that's that spike in glucose can lead to kind of those feelings of like brain fog feeling kind of off. And then it typically is followed by a glucose crash. And that's where a lot of the anxiety can get sparked. People just feel really cruddy in those moments. And then usually that also triggers cravings and the body is wanting more energy because it's seen as a dip in glucose. And so then we kind of end up in this cycle. It really starts that roller coaster movement throughout the day, especially if you're starting the day off with that spike in crash that can kind of trigger a negative spiral. But when you can see it, like you're saying, the data is so much more powerful to actually then be able to adjust it and then compare it the very next day. If you can fix that and see how you feel and enhance that mind body connection of, OK, when my glucose looks like this, I feel like this. And now we've started to enhance that connection. And eventually you don't always need the data to understand better how you feel. But a lot of times people don't understand how they feel. And that's that's the hard part. I've had so many people who are like, why do we need to monitor our glucose if I know sugar is going to spike my glucose? And I know that's a bad thing. And like, there's not that much of an effect. And I'm like, you'd be very surprised how little you actually do know. You put it on and you're like, oh, I didn't realize that that spike that wasn't soda, maybe it was a less obvious glucose spike moment that my glucose was rising. And now that's why I feel that way. You know, putting that together is not as obvious as it sounds. How did how did we make the leap? Because if you've been training people for a long time, you probably remember having a client that was diabetic who used this tool. How did we make the leap of, oh, this is going to really impact everyone, not just we knew it. It was an important tool for diabetics. And so anybody who's been a diabetic is probably familiar with the CGM. But now we're introducing it to the masses. What was the transition of like, holy shit, this could really help the general population. We've got to move it in that direction. Do you remember what that transition was like? Yeah. So for me personally, I was working in hospitals and health care. I'm a dietician. So prior to starting NeutroSense and worked mostly using CGMs with type one and sometimes type two diabetics. And they're extremely useful for diabetes as well. But as I was getting frustrated with the traditional health care system and all the pitfalls there, which we can get to, I started trying to think about how to solve some of these root causes so that we didn't end up in this super reactive place. I was catching people, you know, 30 years later than I should have. Ninety percent of diabetes cases are estimated to be preventable. Ninety percent. Ninety percent. And that's extremely frustrating when you're trying to help people. So for me personally, I eventually left health care working at a different startup, working with clients still, but was trying to solve that root cause. And that's where I came to glucose. That's kind of the 80-20 rule of addressing metabolic health. And I started wearing them myself. I had friends in the health care space that would write me a prescription. You still need a prescription for them. This is a self experimentation. Self experimentation for me. So you had to be one of the first people to be messing around with that. Yeah. And you googled what are normal glucose levels for non-diabetics? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. You know, at first I had to completely figure out what was even normal because it just didn't exist. And then I started putting them on my mom and my brother and my friends and my family and started to see different patterns. And that's when it became really aware that we don't all have the same glucose. Do you remember the first thing that kind of blew your mind on yourself? Because I remember having that with it going, what the hell? That's so weird. I would have never guessed that food. So a lot of things. Yeah. But one of the first things I remember, because before this, I was doing the finger pricks. So like the glucometer, checking my glucose fairly often. So I thought I had a good idea of what my glucose levels were going to be. And then there were so many moments that I missed because you're not getting that movie picture. I remember one was pineapple. So I remember checking kind of before I would eat something and then an hour or so after eating to try to guess how that food affected me. And with pineapple is like 80 beforehand, 80 an hour after. So I assumed doing pretty well. I remember the first time I put a CGM on and I ate pineapple. It's actually shooting up extremely high and coming back down really quickly, which is a sign of a good metabolic system. So that's what I would call an undesirable but healthy metabolism normal to have glucose spikes to something. But we don't want to do that constantly all the time because then we're going to veer towards metabolic dysfunction. Yeah. But I had no idea that I was having such a big glucose spike to some foods like that, that you're just missing when you're trying to finger prick. Well, the other part to that, too, is when you're doing the finger prick, your tip, you tend to measure your glucose when you think you should. And so, like, in other words, after eating, OK, well, that makes a lot of sense. But a lot of things affect glucose, not just your blood glucose, not just food, right? Like I had a client who was starting to monitor because they were pre-diabetic, so they started to monitor their their blood glucose and this person had a tendency to go to the gym and overdo it. OK, and we'd have these conversations. Well, anyway, they once they became or were diagnosed as pre-diabetic, they overdid it even more in the gym and they were they couldn't believe that their blood glucose spiked post hard, intense workout. They didn't make any sound and anything like what's going on. And then they had to, you know, basically what was explained to them was what it was a lot of stress. Your body went to a stress response. Your liver dumps a bunch of glucose into your blood because you're stressed because it's over you overworked. And now you're making things worse. I mean, how could a lot of people don't know that they don't know that there's lots of things that affect blood glucose aside from food. Did you see that when you were experimenting? And were you like, oh, this is weird? Yeah, and I think stress of all factors is really the most surprising components of glucose responses that that people take away, not expecting that just like chronic consistent stress is going to be driving glucose up. A lot of people have no idea that that's having a real physiological effect. Like we all know stress kills, stress is bad, probably stress out less. But being able to actually see it is really, really powerful for people, including myself, and then also implementing some stress management techniques and seeing your glucose improve. Well, then also, too, the I think the most important part is recognizing your behaviors after that, because I think that's the part and there's there's a there's a part of our community, the fitness community that wants to speak to just, you know, calories in versus calories out all the time. And, you know, oh, why are we even having this conversation about glucose? If the calories are at a deficit, I lose weight. If they're at a surplus, I gain weight. So why all this nuance? But this nuance drives so much of our behaviors, which is what we like to speak to so much. And so I think what's even more important than, oh, you had this crazy glucose spike and crash. It's like, oh, then how did you respond to that? Or what did you eat after that? Because of those things that I think really impact the client. Exactly. Yeah. And I I definitely believe calories matter. Of course. Yeah, like, absolutely. We've all probably cut calories and seen what happens. They're real. Yeah. They're real. They're real for everybody. Yeah. But how there's different, better and easier and more difficult ways to monitor calories. Like what we're saying with the woman with anxiety and we see that all the time. If you're on this glucose roller coaster and you're having triggering moments of anxiety and that's making you want to eat more. It's a really, really difficult to actually manage calories. Right. Or if you're in, you know, some sort of state where your glucose is actually high, even though you're not giving your body energy and you're all jittery and you're in this weird mood, that's going to affect your ability to do these things as well. Yeah. Is it going to make it easier or harder to maintain, I don't know, a lean body if you feel like crap versus if you feel good? Like think about it this way. Are you more likely to work out and eat right if you feel good or are you less likely to work out and eat right if you feel good? Right. So this drives how you feel, how you feel drives your behaviors. And then the behaviors drive the calories. Yeah. Calories and calories out. We'll talk about what is probably happening. Like here's two scenarios. Somebody eats something and less than a half hour hour later, they're craving or wanting something again versus somebody eats something and they feel satisfied for the next two, three, four hours. What is probably happening on their glucose monitor? Yeah, usually it's more stable if you're feeling satisfied. Right. And then the other thing that happens a lot, too, is people mindlessly like grays or, you know, they're not thinking about those calories. And then when they see them, you're having these little like bumps throughout the day. There might not be big glucose spikes, but you're never actually getting back down to those normal glucose levels because they're always snacking. Yeah. That helps bring a lot of awareness to people, too, that, oh, those like bites here and there add up, they matter. And so kind of both senses is helpful. Powerful data reinforcement for people to actually stay on track. And the other thing with calories and especially people who maybe have been overweight for a while or been trying to lose weight, regain it, try to lose weight, regain it, is there's such an emotional component to weight and calories. And so for a lot of people that have been struggling with this and you give them a different number to focus on, that's going to have that correlation with weight at the end of the day versus the scale. Like I'm sure, you know, we can get on the scale and like I'm like, I'm two pounds heavier than I was yesterday. Then I'm like, I know I'm not actually two pounds heavier. I can take in the different nuance, but not everyone can do that. You know, they might weigh heavier this week and that sends them spiraling in an opposite direction. And it's brings a lot of guilt or shame and binge eating where glucose levels, people don't have that emotional connection to their glucose levels, which is actually a very good thing. You know, that's such a great point. This is something we've talked about this before many times, and it took it over a decade of training clients to utilize this kind of reverse psychology with a client that is trying to lose weight instead of them counting calories, send them focus on the scale. I would add things to their diet and have them count like protein. So I don't care about anything else that's going on. I don't care about scale, I don't care about this. I just like, you weren't getting enough protein. I want you to hit 150 grams of protein and just focus on that. And then what would inevitably happen is they would end up replacing other bad choices, which would naturally reduce their calories would then would make them lose weight. And then all of a sudden they think magically they're losing weight or not focusing on that. Telling people, hey, I don't care about the scale. Let's just get stronger in the gym. Like a totally different metric that that they can connect to that doesn't feel as is triggering, you know, you know, you mentioned something about, you know, the emotional connection to things and that psychological mental component of all of this. And you also mentioned the limitations of or the limitations that maybe that were placed upon you in the system that you started in, which was the medical system. So I have two questions for you. One is, do you often feel like you're as much of a psychologist or therapist as you are a dietitian? And then two, what were the big limitations? And was it that when you were in the medical system? Yeah. So starting with the first question, I definitely feel like a therapist most half of the time, maybe more than half the time. I don't know if you guys have a similar. Oh, yeah, that's all of it. Yeah, it's all of it. Information and knowledge and education is important. So that's the first piece of it. And that's where, you know, the data itself is giving you objective information and then you're adding expertise on top of that, but that only gets you so far. You have to really understand the human side of things and the human side of things are complicated and messy and nuanced. And people are people, you know, they have, they don't live in a vacuum. And that's part of the problem with research, too. Research is done in a vacuum and it doesn't consider all of these complicated variables and factors that are part of the human experience. So a lot of times, yeah, you have to talk about what's going on in somebody's real life. You have to talk about mindset. You have to talk about emotions and you have to talk about what's realistic and sustainable if you actually want to see those long term effects. So a lot of what we do is helping people find like their why, the real true motivation behind this, focusing on building that intrinsic motivation. So it's not I'm somebody or I have to go to the gym today. It's I'm somebody who works out like this is now part of my identity. And so maybe it's not, you know, I can't eat a cookie tonight. It's I'm somebody who values health and this is part of my identity. So really helping people build that intrinsic motivation is mostly psychological. And it's mostly really getting to know them as an individual and focusing on what matters to them. And so you could give them the best habits to do. And maybe one of that is sleep nine hours every night with no distractions. But if you just had a baby, that's not very helpful. You know, there are things that are real life that just get in the way or maybe it's don't eat after six p.m. And it's like, well, I don't get home until eight p.m. And then my family is counting on me and, you know, there are so many things. You just reminded me of my experience when we first got introduced to you guys over well over a year ago and we first started doing the CGMs. And I don't know who who's responsible for the the messaging in the app. If it's one one or many people that do that. But even the way you guys communicate about like spikes with that, like I wish I remember the exact verbiage, but I remember it was it was so like that where it was, hey, how was your night tonight? We noticed that, you know, it was like asking how I was feeling like a good coach. Yeah, no, it was. And I was like, wow, that's like how I would text a client, you know, like I wouldn't just be like, oh, you fucked up or you didn't, you know, saying, or why did this happen? What did you eat? Yeah, it wasn't like that. It didn't come off that way at all. It was like, oh, they're like asking how my day was. I'm like, oh, my day's fine. And it was like this was a really interesting encounter for me. That was like one of my first experiences of your guys's team reaching out and noticing something off. I wish I remember exactly what I had did. I think I just I think I got up in the middle of the night and actually eight late or something. And they're like, yeah, we noticed that this was going on or something was off in my sleep. But it was those gummy bears. No such a cool approach on on that is. And you could tell that there's that blend of the the psychology with also the data that is so important that if you just speak to the data all the time, you're potentially missing out on so much. Yeah, when you worked in in traditional medicine, you weren't able to coach people through the process, right? No, both pieces are kind of missing there in a sense where you don't have the luxury, especially because I worked inpatient. So I worked like in acute care hospital setting, mostly ICU's or rehab floors, as opposed to outpatient where you get like an hour or sit down with someone. Even that is very limited. You don't get a lot of time with people. They're distracted when people are sick. That is not usually the time that you want to come in and help motivate them to revamp their lifestyle. You know, they just usually got some bad news or they're not feeling well or something's going on. So even the psychological aspect of it was very limited, very challenging and even thinking about, you know, I've done traditional counseling as well outside of the hospital. And that's limited too, because you don't get very many touch points with people in a traditional way, especially if insurance is reimbursing. You might get like one or two sessions a month that insurance will reimburse for up to like eight weeks. And it's not very long. You don't really get to know a person very well and it takes time for them, for people to trust you and be able to be honest with you and for you to really get to know them and help them in a way that's meaningful. And so that's kind of why when we were building this, it's coaching is texting through the app like you mentioned. So we will do like phone calls and video calls with people as well. But the primary source of communication is this texting format because it's live, it's async. It can be quick. We can look in real time what's going on. You can respond when it's convenient for you and we can have a lot of contact pieces. And then you find out if that was just some anomaly or also I'm consistently doing that and there's something that I may potentially need to change, whether my eating or what I'm doing late at night. I just think that was a powerful tool. It's the limiting factor because I mean, I trained and coached people for a long time and I would text them and talk to them. But the limiting factor was the filter of their own awareness. And then my own experience in a way. Well, yeah, like that exact example I'm using, had I not had that on there, I would have just been like, I didn't do anything out of the normal. Yeah, I felt not fine. Yeah, it was cool. Right. You wouldn't know. And I mean, and you're a self-aware health. Right, right. Fitness individual. Right. Let alone the average person who's just never really paid attention to this kind of stuff. So you would ask. And unless it was like super loud signal, you know how many times people come in? I tell you what, eight out of 10 times you do an assessment, right? When people come in to, you know, potentially work with a trainer or coach and you would ask them. And I learned how to ask more questions to get better answers because I always get the same answer. And I was like, this can't be right. I'd be like, hey, are there any areas of your body that you experience pain eight out of 10 times? No, everything's fine. So then I learned eventually to go, how about your neck? How about your shoulder? What about your left shoulder? What about your shoulder blades? And then they'd be, oh, yeah, there's a little bit of pain there. Oh, yeah, that hurts sometimes when I squat or sometimes. And it was always like I have to kind of dig deeper. But I couldn't imagine having a tool where I'd look at it and be like, well, it looks like physiologically there's this pain sensors that are coming out of these areas here. And then them being like, oh, yeah, that does kind of bother me. In this case, it's like, I don't have to ask or you don't have to ask somebody what's going on. You could literally be like, hey, we noticed these spikes in your glucose at this time. What can you tell me what was happening at 6 p.m. last night? And like, well, I didn't eat anything. Well, did something stressful happen? Oh, oh, yeah. You know, I got an argument with my daughter or what happened this morning? Well, nothing really. How was your sleep last night? Oh, yeah, I woke up like four times and I had poor sleep. So it takes that time that it used to take me months to be able to kind of work with somebody and develop that awareness. You do it right away, which I think is pretty cool. Yeah, it's powerful for both the clients and the healthcare professional, the coach. Both people need that for it to be effective. So for the client's perspective, like you're saying, they're not usually trying to manipulate you or hide things from you. It's just, yeah, the awareness piece. You know, I'm sure you've had people try to track what they're eating and it's also almost impossible. They come back with their like perfect three meals and they're like, did you eat anything between that? You know, did you eat anything after it? And it's like, oh, maybe I might have. They're not usually capturing the full story. And even if they are capturing everything, just the ability to like actually measure it and eyeball it and know what's happening. It's just a disaster. And so without the good information for the coach, though, it's hard to help the individual. First, you need the right inputs to really be able to coach them appropriately. So when it's easier for the client to have this information just streaming from their body so they don't have to do as much work, it's easier for them. You know, they're not forgetting things as much. And then same for the coach. Now we actually have real data to point to and talk about and it makes them so much more powerful. And so together that's just like a super synergistic effect. Yeah, so, because you've obviously done both. So you can see the difference. How much more effective would you say, are you as a coach or, you know, a health practitioner now that you are able to point to real, you know, real-time data? Like how much more effective is it making you? Yeah, it's not even comparable. You know, it's a completely different experience as a coach, so much better, so much easier to help people. For a similar way of what we were just talking about where you can point to, you know, yeah, what happened last night? Like, or like what happened last, all weekend? You can point to specific examples, but in addition to that, it helps build that real motivation for the client, which then makes your job easier as well. You're not there as just the only external motivator for them, trying to get them hyped up, trying to get them staying on track. But when somebody sees that, oh, when I do swap my breakfast for something that's higher protein and I have even glucose levels and I feel better and I ate better the rest of the day, it's a lot easier for them to stick to that than when before. They're like, I'm starting to feel better. I don't know what exactly might have done it. Let's say you see someone once a month, they're like, yeah, you know, I lost two pounds. I'm not really sure which thing I changed actually worked and which didn't. A lot of people do a ton of things in the beginning when they're eager. And then it's like, well, what habits do we need to do long-term to see real results over time? And they can't keep up with all the things they might have done in the beginning. This helps really be like, these are the three things that really, really work for me and I know they work. And so I'm less likely to fall off the line. This is so powerful because the filter of how you feel affects how you perceive everything that's going on in your life. So I've literally seen clients have similar interactions with their kids, but because they went into one feeling great or they went into another one feeling bad, the perception of an interaction was positive or negative. And we do this throughout life. And so then what ends up happening is you ask the person, well, what happened? Why do you feel this way or what's going on? And then they make the reverse causality. Well, it's because this happened. Not realizing that when you went into it, already feeling a particular way. This allows people, and then here's another part to it. Sometimes people feel a particular way and oftentimes it's poor. They don't feel good for so long that they have no idea. They don't know what good feels like. And so it's like, I feel normal, I feel fine. Not even knowing what good can actually feel like. And you can show them with the data which allows them to make those connections and be like, oh, wait a minute. This is what it feels like to have stable blood glucose throughout the day. And having this objective measure between the two of you, between the client and the coach, also helps to remove any sort of feelings of defensiveness that sometimes comes out. Totally. Because you're like, oh, we're just, we're looking at it together. Like, you know, it's not me telling you what to do. Nobody likes to be told what to do, even if you've hired someone to tell you what to do. Nobody likes it. So it really helps create a more neutral ground for people to work together as well. Yeah. Okay, when you talked earlier about spikes and drops in glucose and how that becomes kind of like this cycle, what's happening to the body? Why does the starting the day off that way tend to continue throughout the day? Like why is it, when the spike happens, why does it then follow, why does the drop follow typically afterwards? And then why does that trigger behaviors that then cause a spike and so on? Yeah, so typically in that situation, what's happening is the body is over correcting a little bit. So especially if we break a fast, so like an overnight fast with just carbs as the first thing to eat. So focusing on protein is again, what we always tell people because it can help blunt that effect. But let's say you start with a glass of orange juice or a sugary coffee or, you know, sweetened yogurt. Breaking that fast with some sugar typically sends the glucose up really quickly because there's nothing in our digestive tract to slow down that digestion. We just gave it some quick sugar and we see that spike. And then the body tends to correct by then releasing a bunch of insulin to bring that glucose down really quickly. And then often what happens is you can overshoot a little bit because the body would rather get that glucose down and overshoot then undersecrete insulin essentially and not get it down. And so usually then if you are insulin sensitive, metabolically healthy, you'll see that dip as your body is trying to adjust itself. And then that can stimulate cravings and hunger because now your glucose is below what it should be. And your body's reaction to low glucose levels is to eat, I need fuel, I need energy. And then that can end up being this kind of roller coaster wave that people are on. So if we can prevent that glucose spike in the first place and just get more even glucose levels throughout the day then that sends people on, you know, they feel better. They're not stimulating that craving afterwards. And we can kind of set you up for success a little bit better. You know what this reminds me of? You remember when you first got your driver's license and they talked about what to do if your car started to hydroplane a little bit on the freeway? Oh, as far as overcorrecting. Yeah, like don't turn the steering wheel too much because then your back will come out and then you try and turn the other way and the next thing you know, you're spinning. It's almost like that's what's happening. It's like correction, overcorrection, correction, overcorrection, now you're spinning all day long. So how you start the day makes a big difference on how the rest of the day tends to unfold and you're finding that working with thousands of people. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. This is also how, so the funny part about what we're talking about right now is you brought me back to an old memory for me. Like so I struggled putting weight on for most of my life and this was well before CGMs or using this tool and this hack that I have figured out. This is totally not healthy. I'm not recommending this to anybody that's listening to this podcast. But because I struggle with getting enough calories in, I figured out this thing and I used to do it when I worked over at the Santa Teresa location, I'd go over, I'd have one glazed donut, a sugary drink and a bagel. And what I recognized was even that calorie bomb, I was hungry again in like an hour then I could eat another breakfast. And if I had like a basic breakfast, I wouldn't want to eat till noon again and I'd be so low calorie. You did the opposite. Yeah, so it caused me now that's a terrible strategy for someone who's trying to manage weight and their blood sugar, but it was this hat and this is again, I didn't know what I was doing. I just finally figured this combo out. Like, man, when I have this weird combination first thing in the morning, it makes me want to eat again and I kept eating and it was the only way I could bulk up. And that's another example of like a different strategy where like a calorie isn't always a calorie in that sense where some calories make you more satiated and you eat less, which then again, it matters calorie wise overall where some actually make you hungrier and make you want to eat more. But sometimes just a bite of sugar is just like makes you want to eat a ton of sugar. That's what the one glazed donut was like, it sent me wanting to eat so much more and then I would eat another meal after that, which was wild. Okay, so here's something that I find most interesting about CGMs because I learned, you know, when I learned my basic nutrition, education and fitness, you learn about the glycemic index and how different types of carbohydrates and sugars affect different people. And then when you train lots of people years and years, you start to realize, and this is a lesson you learn over and over and over again until it finally penetrates, you know, your thick skull, is like, wow, people are really different. Like this part, like I know it says this in the textbook, but I'm working with these people and I've seen enough people to know that this doesn't always work for everybody. Let's talk about the strange individual variances of how people's blood glucose reacts to different foods. Do you remember seeing like the first time when somebody ate something, you're like, uh, yeah, oatmeal's not supposed to make your blood sugar spike more than candy, but it seems to be doing that for you, like something else. Yeah, absolutely. And just to touch on like the variation between people, it's wild. And that was one of the most eye-opening experiences when we started putting CGMs on more people. We started to accept our first clients. Like I was saying, you know, there wasn't a lot of data out there for what to expect. It's actually pretty predictable what's gonna happen when somebody's a diabetic because the system no longer works as well. So glucose goes up kind of almost every time you eat. But for a non-diabetic, you really, it can really highlight the variation between people and there's no one-size-fits-all approach. And so just the initial example for myself, there are a variety of things that go completely contrary to glycemic index. So I respond better to bananas than I do to strawberries. I respond better to white rice than I do to quinoa. And, you know, there's a variety of I respond better to white bread than I do to potatoes. And so there's just learning the ins and outs for myself. But then you start to get other people's examples and you're like, oh, but my pattern is not the same as your pattern. And this is where, you know, low-car versus keto versus high-car versus how many carbohydrates are perfect for me also varies a lot. Like where that sweet spot is of how much total amount in addition to which specific carbohydrates work best for you is completely different from person to person. What's coming to me too when you're saying that, Kara, you gave your examples. White rice, you respond better to than quinoa. White bread, which is like the devil when you think about glycemic index, right? You responded better to than, I don't remember what else, what it was that you said potatoes, right, okay. Imagine if you were struggling with weight and you're working with a coach who doesn't have this tool and you're like, you know, I just feel better when I eat, you know, a sandwich. When I eat wonder bread, I feel way better than the potato that you keep telling me to eat. The coach is gonna be like, you don't know what you feel, you're full of crap, just listen to me, do what I'm telling you. And you would be stuck in this weird position where you're like, do I know what I feel? I guess I'm just to ignore myself and listen to this expert, even though it's making me feel worse and am I feeling worse? Like, could you imagine being in that position? Yeah, and then it's like, which thing is making me feel worse? Like even getting to the point of like knowing that it's the sandwich or the bread that is making you feel a little bit better is already a level that most people are probably not getting to. It's like, I just kind of generally feel bad today compared to yesterday. I have no idea what's driving it. And so being able to really understand that. And that's where we have a lot of people who come in and they expect to leave with a more restricted diet and they usually leave with a more liberated diet. Which is super powerful. How do you mean basically just like what you said? People come in and they're like, I'm gonna use this tool, like I'm ready to do it, but I'm not ready to give up my chocolate or I'm not ready to give up my white bread. But they're expecting that, that's what they're gonna have to do when in reality they're finding, oh, I can have that thing, maybe it's just in a different situation or maybe I actually can eat more than I thought I could. A lot of times for people who are training a lot, they're really stressed, they're watching everything, they can actually potentially eat more than they thought they could eat. And that's actually going to help kind of relax some of that stress response because they might be over cutting or even over-underdoing carbohydrates. Sometimes you add in more carbohydrates and you have better glucose response. Because then that really restrictive stressed mode, it's a form of a hormetic stressor essentially. And so especially women, if they're really lean, they're training a lot and they're doing sauna and they're doing cold plunge and they're doing lots of fasting and they're not eating any carbohydrates. Sometimes they're in this really stressed state where we've added too many things and we're starting to tip the glass basically of your stressor allotment. And then we're seeing that glucose levels rise. It's not just psychological stress that can make your glucose levels rise. It's physical stressors on the body like that. So sometimes we'll add in some more carbohydrates, maybe add in a more relaxed training day and glucose levels actually improve. So just the variability of what's working for somebody both within specific foods, but their routine, the different things that are essentially driving them towards success or away from success just varies so much. How often does like food pairing make a difference too? Like where somebody like, you know, there's a food that maybe they think they can't have because it's affecting them, but just simply by adding some almonds or adding some meat to it completely changes their response. Yeah, and that's a huge part of, yeah, people actually maybe might be able to eat the things that they love if they do it in a specific way. So some of the hacks are eating protein first, going on a walk afterwards, or timing it where you do your training session before maybe a larger meal that you enjoy eating. It doesn't necessarily mean that you can never eat that. It just means that we might have to be a little bit more thoughtful about how we're consuming it. Wow. And again, that's where like if you have the data alone and not the human element to help you troubleshoot some of these things, you might be walking away with incorrect conclusions. And that's why from the very beginning I was adamant with my co-founders that we include humans because I knew that that would actually set people potentially off on a path of poor health outcomes and that's not why we started the company. The last thing I want is that the food that you absolutely love the most, you have a glucose by two, all you see is the data and you think, well, I guess I can never eat dark chocolate again and now you're sad. Yeah. So as a trainer, it always felt like it was human versus tech. And my argument was when it was like that, I was like, human's gonna win. I think human's always gonna win because of the human component, the coaching, the guidance. We can work with the behaviors. And then what was presented to me was like, no, no, no, use them both. And I was like, oh yeah, well, that's 100% the future of how we're gonna be effective. When you look at the data on diets and I don't care what diet it is, it could be paleo, keto, carnivore, vegan, whatever, the fail rate is like 85% or more after about a year, like across the board. Yeah, it's keeping more, yeah. It's like 85 and 90% across the board. You guys, and let me know if this is not okay for me to share, I've grown like 3X in a very short period of time. Is it because you're seeing that your success rate's much better than that? Cause nobody's been able to crack that. Nobody has been able to break that 85% plus fail rate. I would argue, except for like really good trainers and coaches, but that's more on an individual basis. Are you guys seeing that, oh, we're doing better than that? Yeah, absolutely. And that's kind of part of what our goal is is to actually help people see those long-term success. We're not here for that like quick fix for that initial aha moment, for that like lose five pounds, and then good luck, I hope everything's okay. We're there to help people on that health journey, which doesn't necessarily mean wear a CGM forever. Part of that is like the coaching, the intermittent use, checking in, but so many people, so many of our customers' testimonials, a lot of what they say is now I don't have to diet because it doesn't feel like a diet when you're actually finding what works for you and fitting it into your lifestyle, and then that's sustainable. And now you're actually seeing the health outcomes that felt difficult to attain before, because you were trying to fit it into this like rigid diet or rigid structure, which I think is part of the reason they fail so much is because we're not actually shifting the psychology aspect of it like you're saying, and we're not personalizing it to us, and we're also not adjusting it to how our lives might change. So not only do we need to be flexible in knowing that what works for you is not gonna work for Adam and it's going to be different, but also that you as an individual are gonna change over time. Simple things like seasonally, our bodies change or the food that's around us might be a little bit different, or as you go through different life stages, especially for women going through menopause or even monthly menstrual cycles, or once you age, things are different. If you have health improvements, what you needed to get to that health improvement might not be the same habits you need to maintain the health improvements. How do you do, okay, so I feel like I'm due again to wear it against, it's been off of me for a while now, and what's making me think that is like, you know, and I wonder if this is like a challenge that you have with this is that when people are motivated to figure things out, solve it, work out, get all those like, they wear it, and then when they go off, they fall off the wagon, then they stop wearing it, which I would think that, God, that's probably some of the most important time for you to wear. Even if you're not eating well, is at least wearing it and paying attention so you become more aware of what you eating, you know, non-restrictive, or you just kind of eating whatever looks like in your habits. So I wore it for almost a year consistently, so I got to see that, you know, and that brought better awareness to me of like, oh wow, these are certain things that I just need to like really watch out for because this throws me way off if I eat this way, even if I'm not on my hardcore training and hardcore diet, do you find this as one of the challenges as people tend to not use it when they need to find that out? Yeah, I think what works for people for that long-term accountability piece just differs from person to person. So really how we tend to recommend using it in general is first there's a knowledge gaining education piece. You know, you're learning a lot about yourself and the time that it takes to do that really depends on the person and their situation and how much information they knew ahead of time. And then it kind of shifts into the behavior change phase, which again is the powerful part of the data, for my opinion, and that's the game changer for the coach, is having something that actually helps somebody create sticky habits and build that motivation and accountability, that feedback loop of, I know that this is gonna spike my glucose, I don't want to be sent on this spiral, this roller coaster, so I'm not gonna do it. It's so much easier to say no to things when you have that data on. So a lot of times, yeah, we recommend people kind of shift into that behavior change component, but unfortunately the hardware is expensive, so not everybody is going to use it consistently just for that accountability aspect. Some people do, we have people who've been with us since the first day, we took customers that are still here and they've never taken one off. I mean, they take it off and replace it with a new one because they're like, I don't care what the cost is, makes me accountable. This is the only thing I have found that makes me not slip off the wagon, so they just wear it consistently. Yeah, I feel like if you know what it feels like to have fluctuating glucose, which will take a while to learn, you know what it feels like to have high and low, once you've connected that feeling and you've done a good job and you've worked with a good coach, then you could take it off for a while and be like, oh, I know what this feels like, I know what's happening right now. Yeah, but I kind of feel like it reminds me of the similar way I coach the people about actually kind of tracking your food and calories. And I think that even here, I am 20-something years into this profession and I still go through these phases because so many other variables change. I switch jobs that I'm more sedentary. I have a child, now my life is a little more stressful. This, oh, I'm dieting because I want to get in competitive shape. Oh, now I'm like, you know. So it's a tool that you would you then you would enter exactly. Yeah, like I think like I see this as a value, like that's why just as this, having this conversation is now inspiring me. You know what? I'm in a different phase in my life than I was just two years ago when I was wearing it. That's exactly what I'm saying. You know, let me check back in with some of the changes that have happened so I can recalibrate these feelings that I think I'm having, but be more precise about it. So I see it as like a tool like that. And that's where like a general framework that I always recommend to people, not just with CGMs is to measure and almost like schedule it in where it's like every six months or so, I re-measure the things that are important to be measuring. And glucose to me is one of those, but also could be just, you know, doing a week of really tracking your meals, like am I on track, getting regular labs, you know, doing things like even blood pressure, heart rate, like checking the metrics that are sometimes easy to forget about or, you know, you can move just a little bit in the wrong direction. But if you never are checking on it and holding yourself accountable that little bit year over year really adds up. And then there's, you know, in between that really having the motivation and behavior change in those sticky, consistent habits to keep yourself accountable in between. So you had mentioned something earlier that I wanna go back to because I find this might be fascinating. You had talked about how, you mentioned menopause menstrual cycles. What's interesting about women is that their hormones fluctuate pretty, I mean, reliably dramatically throughout the month whereas a man's tends to be more consistent. I'm obviously speaking generally, but that's typically how it works. And hormone fluctuations affect behaviors and how we can feel and can't do they. Are you seeing in the coaching that you've done that you've worked with thousands of people, are you seeing how a woman's glucose is affected by where she is in men's this, whether it's ovulation or during after, are we seeing any changes with that? Yeah, absolutely. And this is documented in the research as well as we tend to have higher glucose levels and less insulin sensitivity in that luteal phase specifically. And so, and this is also the time where we have the most cravings. I was just gonna say, yes. And so you're kind of like stacking these factors on top of each other. And speaking back to your question of personal insights, this was something for me of tracking it for a whole month, kind of seeing the differences. I knew it from the research that maybe I could expect that, but then seeing it and then doing another month to be like, well, is there actually that dramatic of a change? But I can see my baseline glucose levels rise a little bit more and then similar foods, I'll just have a higher glucose response. It's nothing that's super dramatic, but it's enough that it's noticeable and it is different. And coming back again to the emotional aspect, we have emotional aspect or relationship with food and cravings. And so being able to see that and take away some of that emotional side of it really is seeing it in the data and be like, oh, it's not just me that feels like I'm craving foods. It's not just me that feels like I don't have like self control right now. It's like, you know, there's objective data and that feels better. You also, I mean, it's almost never physiological nothing behavior. You end up stacking. So what I mean, so here's why this is blowing me away because when I would work with clients, they would mention how they'd have these cravings and then they'd feel irritable or shitty or whatever and or anxiety was higher. And being a coach understand nutrition, I'm like, well, the food, let's try changing the food and see what happens. You could literally be making how you feel worse because you have a little bit more of a craving. So then you're like, you know what? I'm gonna have this candy or this food that I really crave right now. And then that could send glucose higher than normal, which then it drops more than normal. Now you're like, oh, now I'm irritable. It must be my cycle, but now I'm gonna eat more of it. And then you cause this kind of like negative feedback loop throughout the day where you could actually, a lot of your symptoms could be attributed to not necessarily your hormones, maybe some of it, but a lot of it could be the behaviors that follow and the foods that you eat as a result. And that's where the data can be really empowering. It's actually like, okay, I'm not gonna do that thing because I know it's gonna send me on the spiral and then you feel better. It's that positive flywheel. They can go in both directions. Like you're saying with the habit stacking, sometimes like the negative habit sends you spiraling and then the positive habits also send you spiraling, but in a positive trajectory. And that's what we, that's part of the reason starting the day off correctly is helpful too. Cause we're sending you on that positive flywheel as opposed to the negative flywheel. I was gonna ask that. So if when you are coaching someone or a female that is going through her period of time or getting ready for that, are there strategies that generally you tell them like, hey, do this, do that, this will help out? Are there certain ones that you go to? Yeah, and it's really, it's the mindfulness awareness piece that is the first part that's the most important for letting them know this connection exists. This is very real. So helping people track that, you know, you can track in our app kind of where you're at. So building that awareness and seeing those patterns that already helps people because it's a similar information, you know, it's focused on protein. It's, you know, don't send your glucose on the roller coaster wave. Don't eat too close to bed. It's gonna disrupt your sleep. And then the next morning you're gonna have higher glucose levels cause you didn't sleep as well. Again, that negative flywheel. So they aren't strategies that are dramatically different than what we would encourage in general, but it's the awareness piece of helping people put those different variables connecting them. And then they feel empowered to know their strategies that might work better in one scenario versus other. Like maybe I can eat a little bit higher carbohydrates in my follicular phase, but maybe not as much in my luteal phase. And that's okay. And that's like, that's how my body works. You just said something that connected for me that I'm curious if I'm more normal or common or not, which is there is nothing that causes more of a struggle for craving for foods than a poor night of sleep. Like I can eat junk food, all that stuff. And I can control that craving better than I control a terrible night of sleep. Is that common or not? Very common. Yeah. There's pretty much nothing that's more powerful than sleep at the end of the day. And it's even documented that glucose levels can vary as much as 25 to 40% higher the next day if you have a poor night of sleep. Which is really, really high. That's a big number. And not only is it just affecting your body's ability to be insulin sensitive, so to process that glucose in the same way, but it also affects hunger hormones like you're saying. It affects our natural balance of cravings and satiety, which then just makes the whole thing worse. And so again, it's an empowerment piece. It's an awareness piece where if you know that, it's easier to not start to that cycle of, I'm just gonna go- Oh, totally. Katrina will tell you that was one of the biggest hacks I ever helped her out was when I figured that out for myself and just knowing that that's coming, it made it easier to say no to it. Because I'd be on like a really strict diet where I'm eating clean, I'm training really well, and then all of a sudden, I'll just have this really bad night of sleep for whatever reason. And then the next day, like say 11 a.m. or noon hits, I'm like, all of a sudden I want like just food that I wasn't even craving. I hadn't been craving for a month plus. And then I realized like, oh, that's right, I've made that connection. Like I had such a terrible night of sleep. And so teaching her that when she has those cravings of being able to know that if, and be ready for it, makes all the difference that like you can say, and I was like, oh, cause then it becomes this like- You're ready, you're ready for it. And I play this mental game where I go, if I really want that food, I'll give it to myself tomorrow or I'll get it on Friday or something like that. Like I won't tell myself I can't have that food. I'll say like to myself, I will have it. And then all I, what I realized is it just kind of get through that day where my sleep was so disrupted. Once I get a good night's rest, I'm back on the swing of things that I don't even want it to get. Cara, do you, do you guys, now that you've worked with, you know, thousands of people, are you able to compare different forms of exercise and their efficacy with, you know, managing or improving glucose levels in both the short-term and the long-term? Like are you able to see like cardiovascular exercise versus strength training versus maybe things like yoga and see that maybe there's differences or now? Yeah, so there's both the short-term and the long-term effect. In the short-term, like you were mentioning with your client that had that glucose spike after working out, you can sometimes see different responses in the moment during the exercise. And this is typically like a supply and demand type of situation. If you're doing something really intense, really strenuous, your body needs energy to supply that. And it's gonna flood the system with some extra glucose. So we'll typically see that with like high intensity interval training, sprints, heavy weight lifting. If you're going kind of all out, you'll probably see a glucose spike. Whereas if you're doing something more steady state or like zone one, zone two type of thing, yoga, cardio, then we'll usually see glucose levels stay pretty even during, but both of those are gonna have positive impacts long-term. So if you have that glucose spike during exercise, it's usually not that big of a deal because your body's using that energy right away as opposed to a spike from food. The difference is sometimes people can take that really extreme, we'll see this a lot with like our crossfit athletes who are just like really going for it. And they'll see. I'm so glad you said it, I don't have to lay it up to you. That's good to ask, you're like, you'll see she goes there. It's consistent, so I'm not thinking on them. It's just I've seen it so much. They'll have glucose spikes during their exercise that are really high, like a little too high, where it's potentially damaging to the blood vessels. There's a threshold where even if you're healthy, we really don't wanna see it get that high. So a lot of times for that, it's maybe eating something beforehand or not going into it completely fasted, making sure you're hydrated, electrolytes, a lot of those can be mitigating strategies. Wait, electrolytes have an impact on glucose? Yeah, because just general hydration status can impact glucose levels. So depending on what you're doing, you may or may not need electrolytes. I was telling you earlier, I play beach volleyball and I live in Arizona since I'll play in the summer when it's 115 degrees outside. And if I can see the difference in my glucose levels if I'm doing it with or without electrolytes, but I'm sweating so much, so I need it in that situation. That's interesting, that makes sense because we work with a company element that is electrolyte powder and I'm getting feedback from people that they have less cravings and they just feel better from it. And so it's got an impact on glucose. Wow, I didn't know that. Yeah, it's been really helpful for me. But then to get to your question about the long-term effects of exercise, any form of exercise is helpful for glucose regulation long-term. And we're seeing this with just like longevity research, health span research as exercise is probably the most powerful tool in our toolbox. But to, I probably all of our opinions and liking, strength training is really superior in the sense that the more lean body mass you can build, it's more resiliency essentially or giving your body. So our skeletal muscles are the sink for almost 80% of circulating glucose. So the more lean body mass you have, the more space you have for that glucose to go in the first place. And so it helps to really balance glucose levels overall. And especially for women, especially if they're going through menopause or if they're having their different hormonal shifts where your glucose regulation at baseline is not as optimal as it used to be, or maybe those factors are out of your control. Doing something like strength training and building up lean body mass can help provide a little bit more cushion or resiliency to the different factors that are happening in your life. I mean, that's how I would define what like metabolic flexibility is. Exactly, yeah, exactly. Your ability to get away with some of these foods that you weren't able to get away with before because you've built all this lean tissue. Yeah, some of it, I've seen some interesting studies where they'll take obese people and they won't even have them lose weight. They have them build a little bit of muscle and you see pretty clear improvements. Well, your experience is right now. I mean, you know, off air we talk right now, you've put on some of the most muscle since we've started this and it's like you like literally can just eat like a horse right now and get away with so much more than what you could get away with just say three years ago. So yeah. Yeah, and often insulin resistance tends to start in the muscles. Ooh, interesting. And so usually like the first factors are the body's ability to move glucose into glycogen. So the storage space of glucose, which is typically stored in our skeletal muscles, that starts to get impaired and then our insulin sensitivity at that layer of the skeletal muscle is also a little impaired, which means we just don't balance glucose levels as well. And so usually if we start with just moving our muscles, so movement is what I would say general movement throughout the day and strength training. So actually building up those muscles are two of the most powerful tools to start seeing those improvements quickly. Yeah, I would liken it to like movement is like working, earning your hourly pay, building muscle is like investing your money so that it makes money for you. I love that. So if you want to create wealth, like that's what you do. You got to do kind of both of them. Wow, that's really interesting. So, but and you know, I mean one of the most common, I guess factors that accompanies diabetes is sarcopenia, right? Muscle loss, it's like they almost go hand in hand and which causes one affects the other vice versa and you get this kind of, you know, this negative feedback loop. So is it, what do you typically recommend exercise? Okay, so I'm sure it's mostly based on behavior. So like what you like, let's do that first. But let's say a person was just like, I'll do whatever. What do you typically recommend from an exercise and movement standpoint that has the most impact and is the easiest to sustain, I guess? Yeah, like you're saying a lot of times it's going to depend on somebody's personality and preference. We were talking about like, are you willing to go to the gym? Do you have any equipment at home? So those type of factors, but consistent strength training at least three to four times a week. If we're just like really trying to get started is a good place to start. And then aiming for, you know, the generic 10,000 steps. If you're starting at 2,000, maybe we're going to aim for 5,000 just trying to increase your daily movement. So making that a daily goal and not necessarily like a weekly goal so that we're consistently moving throughout the day. And then we do recommend some zone too for people because it really helps with mitochondrial health, which is going to help the glucose and metabolic health overall. But I find it less important than starting with that strength training specifically. So if we're stacking and we're really trying to move more towards overall balance exercise routine, then we'll add in some of that kind of consistent zone too. But really for most people, we're focusing on what we can, how can we move every single day and then how much can we strain train throughout the week? How much does that make a difference? So you know, something that I've noticed in my own life is when we got into the podcasting space, I went from a guy who was a trainer working in a gym who was stepping 15, 20,000 steps every single day to easily, a day can get away from me and I might step a thousand steps because I drove in my car, I sat on a podcast, I drove somewhere else, sat at home and it's like, how much of a difference does just regular movement make on balancing out your glucose throughout the day? It's huge. And especially like going on those walks after meals if possible, that can really help. It can be a 10, 15 minute very leisurely walk or even movement. Like let's say you don't have the ability to actually go out and walk, kind of moving around the house, especially if you work from home, you have a standing desk, that can help. Just letting your body utilize some of that circulating glucose a little bit, it doesn't have to be extreme, it makes a big difference. But the consistent walking, yeah, you can, a very noticeable change. Did you see the study? I don't remember what they called it. They made it sound revolutionary but it was actually quite silly. They showed that a person could eat and then seated could do little calf raises like literally like this. And they showed a significant impact on glucose. Now I love that because if I can make something easier for someone, I know that they're gonna be able to sustain it. So literally going on a walk is great, probably obviously that's the best option. But if you literally sit at your desk after you eat and then just kind of do this and squeeze your calves, that'll actually make a difference. Cause it's like your, the way I like it is like your muscles are sponges for glucose. So if you just contract them and relax them, they'll suck up some of the glucose. Is that, would you say that's a fair? Yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly what's happening. Yeah. And we have, so at Nutrisense, you know, we're a wellness company. And I think there was like one person in the beginning got one of those standing treadmill desks. Have you seen those? And now everyone, you go on any meeting and like 90% of people are walking over and we don't. But if you have the ability to kind of do that at home, that helps too. Are you, I asked you this last time you were on and I wanna see if you have any new information for this. Are you noticing any trends with supplements that can help control glucose? Like alphalipoic acid or vanadium or anything? Like have you noticed any, any consistencies where people will take something and then you see an impact on glucose? Yeah, so similarly to last time I think we talked about berberine continues to be one of the more consistently beneficial supplements for really just focused on glucose control specifically. The mistake a lot of people make with berberine is they'll have like a big binge meal. They'll like take it right before Thanksgiving or their birthday or something. And it doesn't work that well in isolation. It works more if you're taking it consistently. And so berberine works really well. And then we've actually been experimenting with our clients more of kind of supplemental fiber if they're really not getting any. And that's, there's a lot of research there and that seems to be working well. So like psyllium husk? Yeah, psyllium husk is usually the most tolerated. And that's of course, you know, if they're not willing to do food first or if we're really not hitting it with food, fiber can help. And then magnesium and zinc are the other two that tend to be pretty helpful. And then vitamin D, if your vitamin D levels are low, bringing them up with supplementation can help a lot as well. I would love to see, or maybe you are or you're not, but I would, what about creatine? Because of its effect on muscle, ATP, strength, mitochondrial health, I've seen some data that shows that creatine can have a positive effect on glucose. Have you noticed anything? I've seen the data. And so I certainly think it's possible, but I haven't been able to notice it in a way that's dramatic enough for it to be like, though that was a very clear correlation, but I have seen the data and it makes sense from a physiological standpoint. I would imagine that it would take time for it to compound enough to like you see it move the needle on that. More like an indirect effect. Right, right. With what it's doing with lean body mass, your energy going into the workout, things like that, that'd be really tough to probably measure. You know, I wanted to know from you because you've been a dietitian for a while now, do you find it more or less challenging today, combating like diet culture? Like, do you have a lot of people who like hire you guys and they're like, this is, I follow this diet and like they want you to try and help them in those constraints, is that? Yeah, I would say there's more than there used to be like, you know, eight years ago working with clients. It's also a different audience that I'm working with than in healthcare where you're working with people where you have to explain what carbohydrate is. There's not a lot of diet culture. So it's certainly gotten worse, but I would say the data helps there. Because again, it can diffuse some of that opinions that people might have because we're looking at something objectively together. It's not me trying to override your opinion. It's not you trying to prove yourself to me. We have this middle ground that we can talk about. And all of our coaches, our dietitians at NutriSense are trained in like a no diet philosophy. So if someone comes in and they're like, I'm doing carnivore, carnivore has fixed my issues. We're all for that, but we're going to help you try to optimize it as much as possible and still potentially improve it within the constraints that you want to work with. So I think that a lot of things can work if you're willing to be flexible around it. But the data helps potentially some people come to their own decisions. I mean, how often do you disrupt that? I mean, how often does someone come in and they're like, I'm vegan, you know? And that's what we do. And then we, okay, and you start doing it. And you're like, well, this is happening and this is happening. Okay, maybe I'm not vegan anymore. Do you have any examples of times when people like radically change? That happens all the time, yeah. Especially with vegan. Oh really? Because vegan tends to be, we've worked with a lot of vegans who eat a lot of really processed food. So you can be vegan and be eating Oreos and French fries and basically no protein or all of your protein is also sort of processed or a lot of people are like, well, I eat beans and peanut butter and I'm like, that's not enough protein. So often with vegans, they'll start to see it in the data themselves and it's easier to draw that conclusion. We've also seen it a lot with people who've been following really strict ketogenic diets for a while. Their glucose also tends to rise over time. So it's this really interesting concept of physiological insulin resistance, which is essentially your body's like, you don't ever give me exogenous glucose anymore. So I'm gonna start making more of it myself because the body relies on glucose for a lot of its different systems. And so we'll see their glucose is flat all the time for the most part, but the baseline glucose tends to rise. So they'll usually come to us because they'll be like, you know, three years ago, my fasting glucose was 75 and then I was following keto strictly never deviating and then it was 85 and now my fasting glucose level is 100 and I don't know what's going on and it tends to creep up over time. I never thought about that. And so, you know, I'm always like curious to like what diets tend to do the worst harm post diet. Like let's say you're, let's say you are not totally dogmatic about anything. Like, you know, obviously there's vegans that do it for, you know, animal rights issues. And let's just say you're not any of these type of people and you're just, I heard my friend was doing the keto or the vegan diet and so you do it. Which ones tend to be the most detrimental to post like eating afterwards? Do you see that? Yeah, I would say vegan because I think a lot of people, there's a wider audience of people finding a vegan or plant-based diet just because they heard it was healthy somewhere. Whereas a lot of people who follow more extreme diets in the opposite direction. So the other extremes are usually keto or carnivore in my opinion. And they typically have the reason they found carnivores because they have some health issue that nothing's working. They've already cleaned up a lot of things or trying so many things. And then they landed on carnivore and they finally feel amazing. So I think it's the bias of where people are coming from and maybe not the diet itself. Cause most people on carnivore tend to be like pretty healthy because they're thinking about all these things they're desperate for health. You're right. There's a self-selection bias there. Right now, maybe there's a change in the future. Right, as it gets more popular but a lot of people who go carnivore was a last resort. It's like I have all those autoimmune issues and I can't figure it out. And I heard McKayla Peterson say she solved her problems. I tried it and now I feel good. That's interesting that you said that about keto. It's funny because all the keto advocates, even like Dr. Mercola, even carnivore advocates- Paul Soledillo. Yeah, are now saying intermittently add carbohydrates or glucose because it's better for you. Like Dr. Mercola is like, oh no, once a week you should have some carbohydrates. Whereas originally it was like never have them. Yeah, back to the concept of metabolic flexibility. I think about it similarly where probably 95% of Americans, 90% are metabolically inflexible in the other direction where they can no longer process fat as a primary fuel. They're burning glucose all the time. Whereas somebody who's been following strict keto diet for a long time, they're now metabolically inflexible to carbohydrates. What we would see is the person who's keto 99% of the time but it's their birthday and they eat like a pizza and a whole cake. And their glucose goes like 300 and stays there for two or three days. That's the crazy trend we would see because the body literally doesn't have the processes anymore to deal with that. So they are now metabolically inflexible. And then if they introduce carbohydrates just a little bit, often you can have maybe a hundred grams of carbohydrates in a day and still be in ketosis. Especially if you're lifting weights, if you're really active you might even be able to get away with 150, 200 grams of carbohydrates. And by having that balance, the body is still being metabolically flexible then. So we don't always have to take it to such extreme to see that benefit. But we saw that all the time. Yeah, I actually thought you would have said carnivore keto for that reason. Cause I can only imagine somebody who's been doing keto or carnivore for an extended period of time. And then all of a sudden they go the other direction and start to introduce carbs. And then the compounding effect of that cause then that spikes cravings blood sugar. And then it just puts on the weight like really quick. It's so, it's so funny too. Cause I just through trauma, I figured out for myself the best ways to eat for athletic performance, physical performance, you know, depending on what I'm going to do and then mental performance. So like, so, and I know, I know what's happening but I'd love your feedback on this. If I know I'm going to lift heavy and hard and train hard. I'll definitely make sure to have carbohydrates cause I typically work out in the morning, a nice carb meal as my last meal of the day before. So I have that glucose, that glycogen to train with. If I know I'm going to travel and do like three, four podcasts in a row, I tend to eat keto or fast. I'm not working out. I'm sitting, I'm talking. And so what's probably happening is I am not getting those spikes in glucose cause I'm not, and I'm not needing glucose cause I'm not training hard. It's making me feel sharp mentally. Then when I go lift, I get the spike but then I go burn it off when I work out and I get better performance. So that's what's happening. Yeah, absolutely. And I do the same exact thing. So adjusting based off of your situation, you know, your lifestyle in that moment. And that's what we try to teach our clients as well is that ability to be flexible. A lot of times I'm sure you've experienced as people want their plan, they want their meal plan or they want their like, tell me what to do. But if we have this rigid mindset then you're setting yourself up for a failure. You need to be able to know what works in this situation versus that situation. And I think that the data also helps people do that. Because it empowers them with the ability to be flexible and adjust. So it's not that my big like everyone hates on oatmeal with glucose. You Google foods that are gonna spike your glucose and oatmeal is gonna show up on every single list out there. But I like oatmeal. I especially like steel cut oatmeal and I like overnight oats. And it works really well for me. If I'm training, if I'm in my normal routine, if I'm doing the things I'm doing and it's satiating and I always pair with protein, et cetera. But if I'm traveling, I didn't get my workout in. Yeah, I'm not gonna step that much. I'm not going anywhere near oatmeal because I know it's gonna be a disaster for my glucose. So you have to be able to be adjusting and be flexible and know what works for you. And it starts with having the data, the information, but then also that mindset shift. The way that we used to do this, Kara, and this is what was so hard is I would have people keep a fricking journal and they'd have to write down and be super conscious and aware about how they feel and it was so hard. And it was really the only effective way long term but it was so hard to get people to do that. I 100% believe that working with a coach and working with someone who's a health practitioner or coach and a CGM is by far the most effective strategy for diet, period, end of story right now and unless something revolutionary gets invented and it's precisely because of what you said, it allows for the most individualization that I've ever seen when you're working with a diet and because people are so individual, that's the only way. And you learn for yourself and you learn what works for you and you learn how to eat depending on the circumstances. And now you have times when you can eat particular ways and times when you eat other ways and it doesn't feel, because what's the biggest challenge with diet with people is it feels restrictive. It feels like they're in a box and I can't live my life and everybody else is enjoying this thing and I can't or whatever. But now you're allowing people to really work with their own body. There's nothing that compares. There's nothing that can compete with this. Yeah, and you are exactly right with the thing that actually matters longterm is people not feeling like they're in this super restricted thing because that never lasts. If you feel like it's difficult or you feel like it's unsustainable, it's not gonna work. But then the other extreme often happens, there's one version of dietetics, dietitians that are like everything in moderation. But you can't go that extreme either because it's not gonna work. So you have to find something that is still pretty consistently good but flexible in a way that works for your unique physiology, metabolism, your unique situation. And so finding that balance is really hard without the data component. You pointing out, so one of the things that we collectively get a hard time about this because we don't really do it is share what we're eating for the day. Because I really think it's not helpful to everybody else. And yeah. Don't mimic what I'm eating. We know people are gonna copy it, right? You literally just nail, okay, I eat oatmeal almost every single night. Right before you walked in, I had my Creatures of Habit which is 30 grams of protein with my oatmeal mix. Today will be a training day. It's my normal routine and the rest of my food. I just got back from flying from Austin. I skip breakfast on those days when I'm flying and I'm sedentary and stuff like that. And so if I show you what I'm eating for my day, I mean, it has a lot to do with what I got going on. It's not necessarily like, this is how you should eat too. And so people don't understand that which is crazy because it is. It's the most viewed, most shared stuff. If I show what the hell I'm eating and it's like, yeah, I'm not really helping you by saying I eat this. Because I eat this right now for these reasons and just like to your point with, if you're gonna go podcasting, it's like you're not eating like that every single day. It's because you're getting ready to do a podcast. So I mean, I tell you what, one of the reasons, not the only reason, but one of the reasons why I like to work out first thing in the morning is I'm way sharper on the podcast, way sharper. And so I'm stronger in the afternoon for sure, but I work out in the morning because I come in here and I feel much sharper. So that being said, Adam, I'm gonna ask you anyway, Kara. You came in here, you're on a podcast. I'm assuming because you traveled you didn't get to work out this morning. Okay, typical workout day, you have your oatmeal in the morning, do your workout, what did you eat when you know you're not gonna work out and you're gonna get on a show like this or do something mental? Yeah, so today, I'm out of my routine. I'm not at home. And so I did like the egg bites at Starbucks. Yeah, perfect. They're really easy, low-carb, like high protein. I got two of them because I eat a lot. And I'm probably not gonna eat for a while today because I'm gonna go work and be focused somewhere and I'm probably not gonna get, I might get a lift in later today, but if I do, it's gonna be really late. So I'm probably just not gonna eat that much, probably gonna get a salad with protein somewhere. And then if I'm flying later today, I'll probably do a protein bar all the day. You know, you can work out here if you want. Which is probably a total flip if you're home on your routine, way more active training. That's why, I mean, that's the idea is that's I think of trying to, you know, I mean. Listen, if you want long-term success with anything that's related to health and fitness, your workouts, your diet. I was just gonna say that. They need to be able to be changed. I feel like the training should be the same way. Totally. Which is also the other thing that everybody wants to see all the time. Like, oh, how did you work out today? Well, what me, my training session is not a reflection of how I always train. It's a reflection of how I feel from last night, how I ate yesterday, how I ate today, and like that and how I feel from like the previous workouts. Like that dictates the intensity, the volume, maybe even the exercises that I'm gonna do that day. And I think that's the place where we're trying to get everybody is to a place where you can intuitively eat and intuitively train, where you know, you understand your body. Well, enough of a pretty good idea of what it needs. Yeah. And it takes some time. It takes that input. It takes trial and error. The date of all aspects, not just CGM helps to train that intuition, to connect those different things. And then you have that flexibility. Like you said, a lot of thought and nuance goes into my decisions of how I'm gonna eat today or how I'm gonna train today, but it's based off of all of that information and learning. So if somebody saw me on a random weekend where I've decided intentionally and mindfully today that I'm eating like crap, so to speak, or I'm not eating very healthy, they might be surprised that I would eat that, but it's very intentional. It's not every weekend, it's not every day, et cetera. A lot of thought goes into it. You don't feel restricted. No. You're not saying I can't, you're saying I don't want to, or I want to. And it works with your individual body, your lifestyle, the context of what's going on in your life. This is when your diet now, because your diet, first off, you should enjoy, there's definitely truth in the fact that you, that enjoyment of eating is a part of us. We can't deny that. But there's also the fact that your diet has the power to improve your life in every element and every aspect or make it much worse. And knowing, and it depends on the context of your life, depends on the time and how your body's going or what's going on with you. And when you can figure that out for yourself and learn that, like now you have a stress, this is the key here. It's now a stress-free diet. You're just eating right for yourself. And that sounds so esoteric. And it used to be, and it used to take me a long time to work with people. And it took me 10 years to figure out how to do this. And now you guys freaking do this. And it's like, I wish I had this, you know, a long time ago, because it would have made my job. Oh, it's a coaching tool. This has to be one of the most amazing. I mean, how does your clientele base look like that? I mean, are you starting to see way more coaches that are utilizing it for clients? Or do you guys pretty much get all the clients? How does it work right now for you? Yeah, we do have a lot of people who use it as a tool for their clients specifically, or they use it to learn the information to then try to help their clients if their clients aren't using it directly. But then we have our own staff of coaches. So they're either registered dietitians or licensed nutritionists that are working directly with our clients. Yeah, I feel like this is a, if you're a coach and you're listening, and I know we have a lot of coaches, and if you haven't gone through this yourself, at least a three month, six month period of learning about your, I think just it gives you the tools to communicate to the potentially, what's happening with your clients, even if they, let's say they can't afford to do it or they don't wanna do it for some reason, you as a coach going through that process now have the ability to communicate potentially what your clients is trying to tell you that, like, hey, I feel this way when I do that, like, well, maybe this is what's happening. So I think for that alone, like if you're a coach, it's a must, at least experience. Yeah, and then here's the other side of it too, just so people understand the experience. First off, the CGM is super easy to put on when you stick it on your arm. It's like no big deal, you wear it and that's it. And then you have, you can communicate with the person through your phone pretty much regularly. It's like an easy communication back and forth. So you kinda have this access to this person. How do you guys manage that by the way? Do you have like a million coaches? I remember how fast you guys were with your responses and me being able to ask questions and even me not even saying anything, you guys would say something to me about what was going on. What does that look like on the other end, business-wise? Yeah, so we have close to maybe 70 coaches now at this point and yeah, they work one-on-one and everything is async for the most part. And so they can have about maybe a hundred members or so per coach. And they'll respond within 24 hours, business days to anything that you're saying, but what we've learned is that people don't know what they don't know. So we also proactively engage with people and more in the beginning and then it kind of trickles off. So then it tends to be that most of communication happens like at the initial stages, building rapport, helping people to understand that information piece and then we can kind of transition to more of a rhythm and a flow where maybe the member, the client wants us to check in with them once a week to just kind of keep them accountable or maybe they have questions that pop up every once in a while when they're in a different routine. And so the communication patterns to coaching gets easier over time. What is the scaling of that look like to you? I mean, are you part of this part of the business where I would think that like, let's pretend that the business overnight 10X, like that would create probably a really major challenge for that many coaches to deal with. I mean, they can have 70,000 clients, right? 70 coaches, a hundred each. Am I doing the math right? 7,000 people. Yeah, so imagine it went to like all of a sudden went to 14,000, right? That would be really difficult. So, and I'm trying to think like, how would I handle that? I would think that it would be cool to have some sort of sophisticated software that alerts us when things go high or low. I mean, are you guys working on things like that? Yeah, there's several things from a business aspect and this is my entire responsibility as you just said, so we could talk about this for a long time. But part of it is, yeah, the power of technology to both help us as well. So trying to augment our coaches with internal technology as well. So we have tools for them to help prioritize kind of who to reach out to, who to nods. And we're working on building that out more. The other aspect of it is improving our app more and more so that some of kind of that basic education is there and then you can personalize it on top of it with the coaching. So combining some of that generalized information with the coaching. So we're building more like course content and webinars and information within the app itself right now. So really focused on building some of that content. And then the other aspect is we're creating kind of a flexible on demand coaching force as well. So a lot of we get over and over we kept getting coaches coming to us where they're like, I wanna use this with my clients but I don't know how to interpret the information. I don't have the experience you guys have of seeing thousands of glucose data sets. So we're building our internal onboarding into kind of a training for people to be able to take so that then if we have a surge they're able to help us out kind of temporarily in addition to helping their own clients. So kind of building some of that more like flexible ability rather than just full-time staff only. Walk me through what the process looks like for somebody who's brand new. They listen to this, they're like, all right like this is what I wanna do. I wanna work with this company. What does the process look like? Yeah, so everything can happen on our website. So NeutroSense.io, you just sign up there. So it's a quick health questionnaire. And then the only people we don't accept you have to be at least 18 and you can't be on insulin therapy because then it's just a little bit more of a medical management. So we do take type 2 diabetics. They're just a small percentage of our clients. And then you pick which plan you wanna do. They vary based off length. So we have either a month to month, no commitment. If you just wanna try it out, that's good. If you aren't really sure if you're gonna like it or not, you can cancel at any time. And then you can always upgrade to one of our longer commitments if you do like it and they're cheaper. So committing for three months, six months, 12 months. And then we take care of everything else. So we ship the devices to your door. You put them on at home. You use our app to talk to your dietician to scan your device, to log your meals. So everything kind of comes to your door. Now, obviously you guys offer the month to month to the consumer who not sure and weary, but in the most non-bias way you can. What do you think is like, this is the, I have my own opinion on what I think like the minimum you should do to get a really good idea. What do you think like, you should give this thing a shot for this long. So you have enough data to really learn from it. What would you say? Yeah, I think a minimum is really three months. Okay, I say, I wouldn't say six. I wouldn't say three to six. Yeah, three is like the real minimum I would recommend for just learning enough about yourself and fine tuning. Cause you also wanna be able to swap things around, experiment, see what's worked. So you have built some of those tools up. If you have a lot of progress to make on your health goals, maybe you have a lot of weight to lose or you're just getting into nutrition for the first time or just getting into working out or maybe you are diabetic, I would say six to 12 months to just be able to build those consistent habits, start to see that positive flywheel, get yourself in a good place. So it kind of depends. Okay, very cool. Well, this has been awesome. Every time we have on the show, it's a great conversation. Yeah, appreciate what you guys are doing. I really do think that this is probably gonna be the future of, I mean, if lack of better term dieting or helping people to work on their diet, I can think of a more individualized way of doing it before it used to be just coaching, but now you got this in combination with this real-time data. Especially in a world where we're becoming more distracted, it's becoming more difficult to become more aware of that. We've been coaching for a very long time. I actually think the challenge that we had 15, 20 years ago to help somebody become more aware of their habits and behaviors. It's harder now. It's harder now, minus these tools, right? If you didn't have these tools, it's even more difficult because of how distracted we are with iPads and phones and tech and stuff like that. Our attention span. Yeah, I think stuff like this is going to become a necessary evil if you care at all about health to at least go through the education process. Totally, thanks for coming on. Yeah, absolutely. Today, we're gonna teach you everything you need to know to build a strong, well-developed chest. When I think of weak points and areas that I struggled with developing for a really long time, chest was up there with the world. Yeah, it was for me. It was for me, for sure. I got more caught up in the weight I could lift versus how I was developing my body. I think it's one of the most challenging muscles to develop for most people because the form and technique.