Transcripts
Well, Katie, welcome to the Accrescent Podcast. The audience will get a little bit of your intro when I read it in our intro outside of our conversation, but I always love to get a little bit more of an origin story and a background to what brought you to this work, what brought you to where you are today. And I think even more specifically, because you're a holistic nutritionist, is that where you started? And if not, what...
Katie (:Thanks for having me.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:what made you want to go even more into nutrition through that holistic lens.
Katie (:Well, where I started was in Iowa eating macaroni and cheese and canned green beans and cereal. So that's how I started my nutrition journey. And then it was really when I got into junior high and high school into more competitive sports. And then you're more aware of body image and all those things that the food piece starts factoring in. And at that point, this was in the 90s, and I think it still lingers now, but it
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:you
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:You
Katie (:The low fat, no fat, count calories was real front and center. And so you just get really good at what the messaging tells you to do. And that's when I realized Shape magazine maybe doesn't have my best nutritional needs in mind. Like they're telling you what the messaging out there was. It didn't serve me. And I was so interested in, you know, like lifting and nutrition. And that's kind of how I got into that.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah.
Katie (:only to find myself in a tough spot with energy balance, hormones being off like early high school. So I knew that that wasn't it, but you you just keep following the same recommendations harder thinking that that might change. And then, you know, I kind of set nutrition aside in college because it was more about like beer and day old bread. And then I got, you know, more into the strength and conditioning after college corporate world.
And then finally, nutrition kind of came back around when I was training for an Ironman. Because I was like, well, everybody is like, this is 90 % mental or this is 90 % nutrition. I'm like, well, it can't be 90 % both. I'm in a sport performance psychology master's program. So I've got that info. Let's take on some sports nutrition. And that's when I realized, was like, gosh, this information out here, it just doesn't make sense to me. It's all this.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Right.
Katie (:the goo sweet sugary packs and gummies and just really like nasty food, which the first bite might be fine, but when you're on your bite for six, seven hours, it gets old real fast. And so I just dove into all this force nutrition and I'm like, it just doesn't make sense. So I, you know, I've done all those certifications, the training, and then it was more actually after it was my second pregnancy, long story short, I
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah.
Katie (:I was full term, I was understructured, I ended up having a stillborn. And I wasn't able, yeah, it was total bummer. was the first time in my life I think I ever felt, like I never feel like a depressed person, but that was the first time I'm like, this might be what that feels like. You just feel like pretty low and people would bring food and drinks and things to kind of comfort you. And that was the first realization I had that wasn't.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Katie.
Katie (:about the macros or the calories or just the measuring of anything. was the first time I experienced certain foods. I had this like light feeling of hope and like ready to get back out there. But then other foods, I physically just felt heavy and like down, like not in a good spot. And I don't really understand why at the time. It was the first time I noticed it. And it was after that that I was, you know, I'd grown up super Western oriented.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Hello.
Katie (:all the other things I concerned kind of woo-woo and it's the first time I'm like, you know what, those rules didn't guarantee anything. There might be more out here, you know, when you're in a spot of enough pain or discomfort, you actually become a lot more open-minded. And so that's when I went into the world of holistic nutrition and went deep into some programs there. And so that's my roundabout story for mac and cheese to eating raw beets and green vegetables, not out of a can.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:We're done.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah. my gosh. It takes me back to my childhood where we, you know, it was like from the shelf, Betty Crocker package frosting and Captain Crunch. And I'm like, how did I not get diabetes? I don't know. With all that said, preparing for today's conversation, because with any guest I have on there's like
Katie (:purpose.
Katie (:Right.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:20 different avenues we could go down in our conversation together. And I always want to make sure it's serving you and serving me and serving the audience. And something that I was thinking about that I haven't had anyone on to talk about is really, really specifically how hydration and nutrition can be impacting our nervous system, affecting our emotional state of being. This is something that usually comes up as just kind of an aside that I mentioned to clients, which is, Hey, we're here in the work we do.
to look at the kind of cognitive, conscious and unconscious mental, emotional, spiritual factors to why you might be stuck in certain emotional patterns or behaviors. And we have to acknowledge that there are physiological contributors to this as well. And so I was like, I think this is such a great opportunity to really get to dive deep into how nutrition can be affecting the nervous system and then kind of indirectly through that affecting
our mental emotional health.
Katie (:Absolutely, yeah.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:So where do we start with this? think the broadest question that came up for me is maybe this is where we can just dive right into. There's, you know, there's a lot of talk around blood sugar and insulin levels, and this might be where we spend our time. But what I wanted to understand is, is that the only way that nutrition is ultimately affecting the nervous system where, whether we're talking about fats or caffeine or sugar, all of it kind of filters back down to how all those things affect.
blood sugar and blood sugars, what's affecting the nervous system, or are there more facets to it than that?
Katie (:I love that question. I don't think I've been asked that that way. And the reason I love it is because I kind of look at your body as having this overall stress container and we can have an input of stressors that can come physically, mentally, emotionally, you know, just, you know how that is. Like you don't have the saber-toothed chasing you right now, but literally sitting in the comfort of your cozy couch.
thinking about something that happened from 15 years ago triggers the same physiological response as if you were running from a real or perceived threat. so stressors that can enter that bucket from a nutritional standpoint can come from an imbalance of what our body needs to maintain homeostasis or balance. So that can come from a lack of hydration, as you mentioned, a lack of minerals.
It could come from a lack of digestive enzymes that make it difficult to break down all the amazing foods we're eating that could be perfect on paper. But if we're not digesting, breaking down, and absorbing those nutrients, our cells are still hungry, and that is a stressor on our body because then our cells don't have the amino acids to produce sex hormones or digestive enzymes or immune cells. And so anything that creates
imbalance in the body is a stressor and that puts you into a fight or flight state. And so back to your CGM point, yes, we can see that from CGMs and that doesn't have to only come from the food we eat. So when I'm looking at people's data from continuous glucose monitors, I have people track not just food, not just drinks, but also stressors.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mmm.
Katie (:and that can come from a lack of quality sleep, that can come from a meeting, it can come from a specific conversation with a certain person, it can come from just you being by yourself having thoughts of something, and the CGMs will pick that up. And that's something I noticed the first time I was playing around with mine, that yes, food, drinks obviously have an impact, especially when you're talking about processed carbohydrates or alcohol or any of the obvious things.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:you
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Wow.
Katie (:is the less obvious things like, that was a little bit of a heated conversation and holy cow, not only did it rise, but it was elevated for three hours. How quickly do we recover or not?
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Wow, you're seeing that in the glucose spikes. that's so cool.
Katie (:Yeah, because what's happening is that stress response. So whether it's stress from sugar entering the blood or your body not having any fresh fuel, but perceiving it as, hey, release all this sugar into the bloodstream because you gotta run, you gotta fight, you gotta do something. And so you're mobilizing your resources even with thoughts or interactions that aren't physically demanding.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm-hmm.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:my gosh, I'm already so excited about this because you're speaking to so much of what I speak to, which is, first of all, everything is interconnected, which as we know in this holistic health world, but I think it's so powerful to understand the emotional that it goes both ways, but the emotional contributors here, because there might be someone out there who's like, I have made every nutritional diet change I could possibly make. Why is my blood sugar not regulating still?
And yet you actually kind of just told this story off air before we started recording. You kind of spoke to a client that just had this experience.
Katie (:Yeah, yeah, so I'll give you.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:And they've tried everything except changing the like emotional stressors.
Katie (:Yes, because it's in our, I think our culture, it's easier to check the exercise bucket. It's easier to check, I'm going to eat this food, not that food bucket. It's easy to let's out supplement something and go that route. And the real work that is transformative comes from a lot of that mental emotional work that's harder to measure. It's harder to, for a lot of people to see the tangible value because it's
not as linear as what we're used to seeing. And so if you think about like meditation or breath work or Qigong or whatever your thing is, let's say in the morning, a lot of Western minded brains are, well, if that costs 11 minutes of my time, how is it going to make up 11 minutes? know, I'm basically losing 11 minutes. It's looking at it like a zero sum game. Whereas it's hard to measure, but people who do it and experience it say,
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm-hmm.
Katie (:I invest 11 minutes of my day into this to get a four hour return on production. And so when we're looking at some of the work, again, it's kind of easier, I think, to check off some of those action to do items. And this I especially see with people who are type A, high achievers, more is better, not necessarily smarter is better, just go, go, go.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm-hmm.
Katie (:burning it, they're in that fight or flight state all the time and they're not ever coming down. I call it reverse interval training because you know with sports we know you you want to push up and you know what's more powerful a marathon runner or a sprinter? You know if you look at the profile or the physique who actually has a higher power output? It's the sprinter right? And it's actually easy to run the pace of a marathon or half marathon you just have to do it forever. That's what's hard about
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Ugh.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm-hmm.
Katie (:The pace is not hard. It's like a brisk walk for many people. But actually sprinting, that's hard. That's hard work that's pulling into account so many muscle fibers and your heart's having to pump out so much volume of blood. On the flip side, when we're looking at the reverse, getting into that parasympathetic or dropping into the recovery part of the nervous system work, we don't think about the value of that. And that's a lot of what I've learned over the years is
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm-hmm.
Katie (:It isn't just the output that makes more output that makes better or more consistent output. It's the recoveries in between the dips down low that allow you to bounce higher on the backside. And that's kind of the undervalued. It's becoming more valued. But like sleep is the most effective and free ergogenic aid. Right. And now we finally start having data on it. But before it was kind of considered like a waste of time or
We don't know what it does, therefore it's not valuable. Whereas now athletes, like elite athletes, realize that human growth hormone happens then. And not only do they prioritize their sleep that's protected, they do naps to get that hit twice. And so it's really being strategic with recovery and nervous system work. And I think they go hand in hand because like with music, it isn't just the notes, it's the...
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Hmm.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:completely.
Katie (:gaps in the spacing between the notes and how it all works together.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Absolutely. Okay. A couple short follow up questions, and then I'm going to try and take us through this really linearly. So it makes sense for the audience, but because some of these things came up, I really want to ask about them. So when we have an emotional stressor, not only is the body releasing cortisol, adrenaline, noradrenaline, some of those hormones to quote unquote, respond to the threat.
It's also dumping sugar in the system to maybe correct me if I'm wrong, maybe give the muscles the fuel they need to perform. So if it's purely an emotional stressor and we're not actually physically getting up and running somewhere and using our muscles really strongly, what happens to all that sugar that's that glucose that gets dumped in the blood?
Katie (:Yeah, well, if there's not room in the muscles and not room in the liver for it to go, guess where it goes next? Fat storage. And so we see this with people who under eat calories, but have a highly stressed or chronic stress situation. They're overweight. It's not because they're overeating. It's because of the hormones playing into effect. And that's the insulin that's like, hey, I'm protecting the blood vessels from this damaging sugar.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mmm.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:huh.
Katie (:because that's what is damaging to the body for aging, for heart health, brain health, skin health, all the things. And in order to protect the blood vessels, the insulin's like, hey, we need to get you out of here. Let's go into muscles. Nope, that's full. Let's go into liver. That's full. We're going into the fat cells for storage.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Hmm. Wow. Okay. Follow up question. And this is just a random aside. You might not know, but to that end, I was wondering, I just interviewed a doctor on HRV heart rate variability and you, got me wondering, I wonder if there's any positive correlation between when HRV increases does do blood glucose levels decrease? Like as that stress. Yeah. I mean, really in the broadest sense of the question.
if HRV goes up, does blood glucose go down?
Katie (:Well, I think, I mean, I don't know if there's like data out there. It would make sense that the more resilient you are, the more flexible, the more your body is like appropriately handling the blood sugar levels. And again, like, you know, when you do blood work, they typically just run fasting glucose and hemoglobin A1C, which is the average passing, you know, glucose over the last three months. Those can look fine because of the insulin. So.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Katie (:it's how much or how often is the insulin having to kick in? So that's what we can measure with fasting insulin. And I run that and highly encourage anybody else to ask their provider to run that because that's gonna tell you a decade before you start seeing undesirable numbers on your fasting blood sugar and your hemoglobin A1C. And so things that would make the insulin come up more.
would be snacking all the time, processed carbohydrates, like breads, pasta, sugar, candies, syrups in your coffee, caffeine actually increases your blood sugar levels, even black coffee. And that was surprising to me to see on the CVM. And then everybody else who does it is like, wow, it's not because, mean, obviously if there's sugar in it, it will exacerbate it. And even totally black or with cream.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Hmm.
Katie (:will still increase it because caffeine, while it can be a stimulant, there can be benefits to it, is also a stressor in the sense where it's revving up your heart rate, it's revving up to go, right? And so when we're chronically consuming caffeine day after day, multiple times a day, that is causing your adrenals to keep pumping and pumping and pumping. And so it drains them a little more than they would otherwise be drained without it. And a lot of people get to the spot where
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mmm.
Katie (:There's just so many stressors going on. We start borrowing from tomorrow's to pay today. So you're always borrowing from tomorrow and those are the long-term projects like sex hormone production, digestive enzymes, so things I mentioned earlier, thyroid functioning. So things start to slow down. So it's really common to see chronic stress, elevated cortisol, chronically or dysregulated cortisol pattern with lower sex hormone production, poor
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm-hmm.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:I think you're good.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Can hear me?
There we go.
Katie (:Do you know what that is? It says recording stop. We're sorry, we had to stop the recording because there was a change in one of your audio devices.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Say it one more time.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:interesting. wonder if maybe it tried to like click into your mic or something. Although the recording is still happening on my end. So I think we're good. Yeah. It probably likes somehow automatically picked up another mic or something. You're all good. We'll cut it. Awesome. So caffeine.
Katie (:Yeah, earbuds or something. OK, great.
Katie (:That's weird. Okay. Yeah.
I'm I have no idea, I'm not touching anything.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:when the problem has been persisting for a long time, it's gonna take a while to also rebalance things.
Katie (:Correct, yeah. And that's where lot of that nervous system work, getting in to rest and digest more efficiently, more frequently, can really support that process happening faster.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah, I want to.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:I want to go back to something that you mentioned because we, we touched on it so briefly. I think it's really important. The difference between doing, fasting insulin, if I'm right, which is kind of a standard test in most conventional blood work versus fasting glucose, or maybe I flipped those.
Katie (:Mm-hmm.
Katie (:So yeah, it's flip-flops. So what's typically done on like a traditional blood work is fasting blood sugar and hemoglobin A1C. What's not typically covered by insurance is fasting insulin. That's actually the better marker to be looking at because that's gonna tell you up to a decade before the numbers will be reflected in fasting blood sugar or hemoglobin A1C. If people are heading down the road of
pre-diabetes, having difficulty effectively shifting on and on insulin. Because the more the insulin's up there and the more it's signaling, the more immune your cells become to it. So it's kind of like the mom is like, eat your veggies, eat your veggies, eat your veggies, eat your veggies. Then the kid just starts tuning it out. It's like the annoying thing that you're like, mwah. Just the cells become resistant to it when it's always activated. So that, yeah.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah, that's so important though, because to that end, the fasting glucose levels, the standard things they're testing are really symptoms of the fasting insulin issue. And so the sooner we can understand where fasting insulin is out to your point, I mean, a decade in advance, that's massive. That's not just like, maybe six months earlier, we catch something, which could still be important, but a decade in advance is huge.
Katie (:Yes, and the reason that's the case is because it's so important to your body's immediate needs to not have excess sugar in the blood vessels that that insulin kicks in and clears it. So it clears it so the test looks fine, because the insulin's doing its job. And so if we start looking at the marker, what's the insulin doing? the insulin's super active. Okay, now we know there's some stress on the body, and eventually the insulin's gonna crap out.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Uh-huh.
Katie (:the cells are gonna be like, there's so much insulin, I'm just ignoring it. And that's like a really big problem.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yep. So let me take us back to, cause I want to understand this more fully. talked about, it just, is all nutrition coming down back to glucose and insulin levels? And then that is having an effect on the nervous system. But then you also talked about minerals, hydration, and some of these other things. And so I'll kind of come back to that question, meaning for example, if our minerals are off,
Does that still come back to when minerals are off, it affects blood sugar, which then affects nervous system and everything is sort of going through that blood sugar channel, or could it have its own effect when minerals are off? It maybe doesn't have anything to do with blood sugar. It's affecting the nervous system in some other way.
Katie (:Yeah, so all that comes down to your body needs certain nutrients or inputs for each process, right? And that's why, you know, we know that nutrition isn't just about calories because when your body needs amino acids and omega-3 fatty acids and B vitamins and you're giving it lollipops, yes, we're getting the calories. We're not getting any of the nutrients or the building blocks it needs. So that's a stressor.
So that function isn't happening, which means another system has to overcompensate or kind of balance out the seesaw. And then our body just has all these negative feedback loops. So then when that's out of line, something else down the stream is probably gonna be off. And the more of those that are off, the more of that is setting kind of up that stress state. And the second story that you just made me think of,
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm-hmm.
Katie (:that I was gonna mention was when we're looking at the fasting blood sugar levels or the A1C, I had pre-diabetic A1C, like three month average. And I'm like, I know exactly how to eat. I know that I'm not, I cut out alcohol, I didn't cut out fruit at that point. So like was not even having like spikes. And I noticed when I had my CGM on, it wasn't from the food. Like that wasn't the issue.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Hmm.
Katie (:There were like stressors throughout the day, but where I really noticed it was at night. It wasn't coming down into the recovered zone. And long story short, when we have chronic or hidden infections that are constantly turning on the immune system in the background, it's like having an app open on your phone that really drains the battery, it's draining your immune system 24 seven. So it doesn't get a full recovery. That becomes a stressor on the body. And one of the things we'll see is higher A1C.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm-hmm.
Katie (:and I had mold and you know that's what kind of came up from that.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Wow.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Wow, my gosh, that's so huge. Which I think is so directly related to so many of us here in the world of recovering from chronic illness and even cancer. There's almost always underlying co-infections that are happening, whether they're parasites or mold, bacteria, dormant viruses.
Katie (:Mm-hmm.
Katie (:Yes.
Well that makes sense because your immune system, we all have cancer cells floating in our body all the time and our immune systems should deal with that and when they're busy or distracted over here with H. pylori or parasite or mold or you name the thing, it misses the things over here that would really be better off you know taking care of but it can't do it all and so that's
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Exactly.
Katie (:usually when something like that happens. And you always see this like, there was like a major stressful event and then boom, like, you know, somebody gets sick or that's when their diagnosis is because when you're stressed, your immune system is suppressed. so, mm-hmm, you probably see that all the time.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:completely.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:I've never ever, ever seen it be just one contributing factor, which is why I use that term contributing factors. You know, it's always, I have always seen it be a combination. Now maybe for each person, there's one that was weighing much more heavily than the other contributing factors, but there's always multiple things that are going on physically, mentally, emotionally. So absolutely. So I feel like what I hear in that is
Katie (:Yep, the perfect storm.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Diet and nutrition can affect emotions and the nervous system, not just through fasting blood sugar. can be indirect, direct and indirect in both ways. But I think to that end, I do still want to lean deeply into blood sugar. because I think there's like so many interesting places to go with this. So you did give us a quick list of some dietary habits that might negatively affect blood sugar. Can we get into those a little bit more deeply?
Katie (:Yeah, so obviously the name implies sugar is going to do that. And within that category, people often don't think of savory tasting things as being a sugar. So I count bread, pasta, bagels, chips, crackers in that sugar category because it's already pre-ground flowers or whatever the ingredients that make it up are, which have an immediate spike in the drop in blood sugar.
And one of the things that is fascinating to people is when they're really tracking their habits, their food, with their mood and looking at what happens with the blood sugar levels, they notice whenever they have a big drop in blood sugar, it usually corresponds with a big spike before it, which comes from sugar. And with the drop, that's when they feel their...
mood blows, that's where they feel sad, that's where they feel anxiety, that's where they notice those down moments that what's typically the response to that, you probably need an SSRI, you need an antidepressant, right? And so that's a huge thing as far as like our food having influence over how our, not just our physical energy, I think that's obvious, and the overlooked pieces are mental, state, focus, ADHD type of behaviors, but then mental like,
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Hmm.
Katie (:you know, like your mood, you know, do you feel positive, optimistic? And that's what I was saying at the beginning. That's what I noticed after certain meals. Like when I was in like a really like, you know, down spot, it felt really good to feel light, you know, and feel hopeful. And to know that's like, there's something about that that shifted the energy. And then on the flip side,
When you're already down, it feels crappy to feel worse and down. And you're like, you're just like, ugh, now I feel heavy on top of down, that sucks. And so just knowing that that can contribute to it. And I think, like we were mentioning before, a lot of us have to actually see it on paper. It's like, you kind of know it and you kind of feel it, but you discount on it. Or we've been trained to ignore it or push through it. And so I think that's the value in seeing some of these biometrics is to be like, that sugar, like,
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Hmm.
Katie (:really has this profound effect on me and I don't like that or if I'm going to have it I know what I'm signing up for.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Right. And how to mitigate it a little bit. Exactly. Yeah, completely. I'm excited to talk about the glucose monitoring because I, well, we'll get into it more. I sometimes feel those devices can be as harmful as they are helpful. And so I think there's, we need to use them with intention and discernment. And so I'm sure we'll get into that. But to your point, one of the things you were saying is like, sometimes it can be hard where people sort of in the periphery of their
Katie (:Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:awareness, they're clocking maybe certain emotional patterns paired to food they're eating, but maybe it's not really coming into their full consciousness. For me, I also, this is kind of where I feel like I've been lately. When you're dealing with a number of different things, you start to just be like, I don't fucking know what to pair this to. Cause I could pair it to a couple different things. I'm also currently working on detoxing mold. I've had six concussions. So that's sometimes a factor I bring in.
Katie (:Right.
Katie (:huh.
All right.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:sometimes stressful work environment. And so when I maybe do have a mood dip, I'm like, okay, is this a mold flare? Is this a concussion something? Is my neck out of place, which is flaring my concussion injury? Is this work stress? And it's so funny, because literally even just today I was like, fuck, I don't even want to try and figure out which one it could be. I'm just exhausted with it all.
Katie (:Which one? Yeah. Right.
Katie (:Yeah, yep, no, because that is the stressor then. Yeah. Yes.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Exactly. But to that end, I do think that's where some of this monitoring can be really helpful when it's used with discernment, which maybe we'll get into. But can we come back to so, like, let's talk about what are some of those maybe general things for most people that are really just not great for blood sugar? You said caffeine. Is this things like not eating breakfast in the morning or?
Not eating enough or eating too much.
Katie (:Totally, so yes, all those alcohols typically gonna either spike it in the moment, especially if it's wine, beer, things that are really fast burning, spirits maybe not as much in the moment, if it's like a clear spirit with like soda water, lime type of situation. However, when you look at the next 24 hours, the whole baseline is elevated. So again, our body protects in the moment and you know this from liver work.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Wow.
Katie (:your body's going to prior your liver's going to prioritize detoxifying toxins before it deals with absorbing nutrients. And so when we're having those types of, you know, like drinks with food, we're missing out on the absorption possibility from the food because the liver is consumed with the toxins in the alcohol. I'm not saying never have alcohol depends on the person, of course. It's just a fact of what comes along with it.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mmm.
Katie (:And so, and then what are the decisions we make afterwards? Usually more processed carbohydrates, sugar, and all the things opens up the can of worms. Other things that can be tough on the body, you know, we mentioned the caffeine a little bit. Again, everybody's body's a little different, so there's always bio-individuality to this. Oh, you're talking about skipping breakfast. Yes. When...
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mmhmm. Mmhmm. Mmhmm.
Katie (:That's something that people are like, oh, time restricted eating, intermittent fasting. Yes, it can have benefits for the right person at the right time. And the right time for your body is not necessarily the right time for our society. And so this is an unpopular opinion that, hey, if your goal is to lose body fat and you're not, know, females have the whole hormone thing to balance out, so there's times that are better than others to be doing that. And men...
respond very differently but even within women and within men people can respond differently. But over in general you're better off skipping dinner than skipping breakfast because going back to the nervous system when you start the day off with some food and it doesn't have to be right at 5 a.m. 6 a.m. when you wake up you know maybe by 9 a.m. maybe 10 you know but sometime well before lunch tell your body it's safe and protein is a great way to do that and
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm-hmm.
Katie (:you know, then at the end of the day, well, what are you trying to fuel for? Like we're pretty much sitting down and going to bed. So in the morning with the whole day ahead of us and whether you're training at the gym, because if you're training at the gym and you don't have any fuel and your goal is to build muscle and there's no energy availability, what happens? You know, you can pull lower intensity from fat, but if you're like going hard intensity, which if your goal is to have changes, it should be challenging.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm. Right.
Katie (:then you're gonna need a pull from some other fuel sources. And if you don't have that from fuel, it'll take your muscles. And that's counter to the goal. And women tend to need more of that fuel source more than men might. Like men can be a little more successful training faster than women can just because the whole hormone thing. But again, within women and men, everybody's different. Depends on your training intensity, depends on your goal. There's so many things.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm-hmm.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mmm.
Katie (:But in general, telling your body it's safe for earlier in the day is gonna set you up for a calmer nervous system experience. And then it also starts giving your body the resources it needs to do all the functions. So when you're not in a stress state, your body's like, I'm good, I'm good with savory food, I'm getting my protein, my veggies. When you're in a stress state on the other hand, that's when your body's like, I need some immediate fuel, what's immediate?
your body starts craving sugar or sweet things. So that's where we get to that cycle of whether you're not consuming the protein or the fuel sources your body needs or the digestive side of it, if you're not digesting, absorbing, integrating it, same impact at the cellular level. Just one, you might be eating and passing it through and the other, just might not be eating at all. Your body turns into a stress state and the immediate fuel source it'll cause you to crave is sugar or something sweet.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Hmm.
Katie (:And so when you see people having coffee for breakfast, I'm gonna time restrict to eat, I'm not gonna eat anything now, then all of a sudden they're going for the energy bars, they're going for the sweet treats, you know, all day, the rest of the day. they're like, body's kind of constantly trying to catch up with the deficit from earlier. Whereas if you get in front of that, kind of front load it with some solid protein, veggies, the rest of your day is set up for success and a much smoother ride.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:I love that. It's funny because that's always that has been kind of how intuitively I've eaten where if I were to skip a meal, it would be dinner or sometimes I might just do like a cup of bone broth or something where it's just soothing. Maybe gives me a little bit of something, but it's going to be really easily digested. I have kind of a random follow up question to that, though, which is
And maybe this is why you're saying you don't have to immediately upon awakening, eat something. I find that I can't really stomach solid food right away. I, it might take me like an hour, hour and a half from waking up to be able to stomach it. And is that maybe coming down to just digestive enzymes? And once I wake up and do my morning walk and get that sun exposure, it's sort of getting everything going.
Katie (:But what time do you wake up and what time do you find yourself naturally being ready to eat?
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:I wake up at like seven typically, I'll have my protein coffee and then I'll usually do like a 30 minute to an hour walk. And by the time I get back from that, I'm ready to go. So like maybe 8.39.
Katie (:Yeah, and so that's what. Exactly. And from a traditional Chinese medicine standpoint, the hours of the stomach are seven to nine a.m. And so that's when the digestive fire is highest, so your body's most receptive to something. Now it doesn't mean you can't eat other times of the day, it just means like it's naturally gonna be a little more primed to kind of hint that maybe you should do that.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm-hmm, yeah. Okay, so protein's a big one. Say it again.
Katie (:And you're getting hydrated. What's that? you're hydrating and getting some protein in, it sounds like, from your coffee. And so you are getting something and then it's like, you know, I think it's normal to move around a little bit and very much part of a healthy routine to do some of that. I I used to, I mean now in understanding nervous work, like jar the crap out of my nervous system, like pop out of bed.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm-hmm. Yep.
Katie (:throw back a smoothie, go straight to the gym, you know, it's like, do, do, do, you know, just like go hard. And I'm like, oh my God, like I did that for so long. Cause I'm like, I'm just trying to be efficient with my time. I don't want to waste a minute. And now I'm like, whoa, in sort of those things, you're told how many different years, like maybe you try meditating or slowly transitioning your day, like leave some margins. And you know, eventually, you know, it takes me a little bit to get around to it. But like now that you have like,
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:home
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah.
Katie (:it takes getting out of fight or flight to realize you're in it. You know, it's like you can't see it when you're in it. And then once you've had a taste of an alternative, you're like, that's better. And so it's like a lot of people think they're fine or they feel fine. Like I don't have any work to do. don't really need, they have bigger problems than I do. And I bet you can feel better. Like why not? Why not try?
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Totally. Totally.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah, completely, completely. What are some of the other places we might look at if someone wants to observe their nutrition and go, okay, here's some of the things I might want to start to shift or pay attention to.
Katie (:Yeah, great question. Part of it for people, something that you can do is look, thinking visually on your plate at what is the makeup of carbohydrates? And when I say carbohydrates, I'm not talking about pasta and sandwiches, I'm talking about vegetables. And a lot of times people don't realize vegetables are a carbohydrate. In my opinion, that should be one of your primary carbohydrates.
But anyway, carbohydrates, proteins, fats, and I realized, know, like a ribeye is a mix of fat and protein. But you know, just trying to get like a visual representation of, you know, is that ribeye 25 % of my plate or 40 %? Is the rice, you know, 60 % of my plate or 30 %? Am I cooking the broccoli in ghee or, you know, lard or in drizzling with olive oil or is it like
totally steamed without any fat. Because we all have a different makeup of macronutrients, carbs, protein and fat that best support our body's needs. And we also have different types of proteins and types of carbs and fats that balance out and support longer lasting energy. And this is part of that bio individuality where you've heard people swear by vegan, people swear by carnivore and
How can they both be successful? Well, because we do have different needs and most of us actually fall somewhere in between all of that, but falling somewhere on the spectrum and this was something that took me a while to figure out back to falling to low fat, no fat way of eating for so long. My body actually does better with more protein, more fat and I can do more of those red meats and organ meats and salmon, darker, more rich proteins.
chicken thighs, whereas like chicken breasts or just eggs without any breakfast sausage or meat feel more like a snack. And you can consume a ton of calories of the thing, but if the thing you're giving isn't the nutrients your cells are wanting, you keep eating too much of the thing. And that ends up becoming excess energy. Whereas we're trying to have the ideal nutrient makeup with the least amount of energy, you know, to be most efficient.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm-hmm.
Katie (:And so if people start looking at, maybe I do have eggs and avocado and rice every morning for breakfast. Play around with is 50 % of my plate rice and 40 % eggs and 10 % avocado or changing the ratios of each of that to see what sustains you for three to five hours versus oatmeal for me.
I can have the biggest bowl of it ever where I'm totally stuffed, but I feel like something's missing and then I'm hungry in an hour. Whereas if I have like some steak strips and some eggs and some squash, you know, that'll last me like five hours. But for other people, they might feel really heavy and weighted down by what works for me. And that's okay. We don't have to eat the same because we're all different. And so that's part of the art of the science is figuring out what works for each person.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm-hmm.
Katie (:And that's where you can tap into your feedback that the body's giving you. Two hours after you eat, are you physically full but still wanting something sweet? Are you physically full but still wanting more food? Are you hangry 90 minutes after you ate? You know, there's just a lot of different cues our body can give us, not just physically, but my gosh, I have awesome mental focus for three straight hours. Or I am like kind of anxious energy, kind of like, not sure why. It's like a wire but tired, like something's off.
Like your food has that impact on your whole state of being, not just calories for physical energy.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah, to that end, a question you're making me think of is the glucose spike versus the glucose drop. Can those come with different emotional symptoms? Meaning the spike might come with, I'm making this up so it could be totally wrong, but the glucose spike might come with anxiety. And then when that glucose drops off, that's maybe when kind of a depressive brain foggy, low energy state comes in.
Katie (:Exactly and that can come from the ratio of the foods being a little off from what your body wants. squash, rice, know name a carbohydrate that you know for most people is considered supportive or healthy. When you go past the amount your body wants of it it's going to do exactly that. It's going to like for me I can have some carbs but
If I, and everybody needs some for muscle, know, glycogen restoration, you know, recovery. And when you go past the sweet spot, that's where it spikes too high or too long. And that's usually where that like anxiety, irritability, kind of like anxious energy can come from. And then because your bloodstream has all the sugar in it, that's when you clear it out. You'll like this story. I have a gal who's
doing an Ironman. And this is what I found with all the Ironman sports nutrition was just eat a bunch of sugar, eat a bunch of calories, quick burning, need it. So actually for athletes, having a bunch of quick burning sugar right before competition is a terrible idea because you have that spike that you're talking about and then your body is like, come in and clear it as we talked about before. And then you add
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Hmm.
Katie (:energy usage on top of that, which clears more of that because that's why going for a walk after dinner helps clear your blood sugar. And when you have a big surge of insulin coming in from a huge spike, you know, it's going to release more. And then you start exercising. Then you get dropped too low. And she was like, I don't understand why I'm having these blood sugar drops. And then we're looking at what she's eating before. It was like two bananas or waffles with maple syrup.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Hmm.
Katie (:And it's like all the rules you've been told to follow. And for somebody who needs more protein fat, that's gonna exacerbate that spike and drop. Now some people can handle, they burn through that maybe a little slower and that would work for them. They might do better with more carbs, but not everybody can handle that. And in general, if you have a bunch of sugar right before exercise, it can result in that hypoglycemic state or low blood sugar state.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah.
Katie (:where then you go from like, you know, like, you know, running a little too high here to like, now I'm low, I'm tired, I need a nap, brain foggy, you know, just kind of down, low energy.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah. Now why might you experience, cause here's what happened. I often have that sort of low energy, a little bit of fatigue, a little bit of brain fog, kind of want to take a nap sometimes after eating, but I'm not getting an anxiety spike first. And so does that, does that mean maybe the insulin is spiking a bit, but not massively, but then it's still dropping off or why might you have one side of the symptoms and not the other?
Katie (:Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Katie (:But not both. Yeah, it could be that. It could be that the makeup of the food or the type of the food wasn't as dense or maybe you need a little more fat with that, a little more dense protein, something to kind of roll that curve a little longer or more of the energy total. It kind of depends what the meal was, how much, because it can be the types of food, the wake up of the food, as well as the amount.
And depending on the activity level, your sleep, your recovery kind of affects your blood sugar the whole next day too. And so it's gonna affect how you respond. So if you get a crappy night's sleep, generally your blood sugar levels are gonna be higher. And that's something you can see from tracking too is the lower quality, lower amount of sleep, the whole next day, maybe two days, everything's just a little bit elevated.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Wow. Okay. Last question I want to ask about snacking, because I feel like there are so many different, and I know again, it's so bio individual, it's so unique to each person, but in general, is it, yeah, let's every two hours, make sure you're having a little nibble on something, or is it better to do that like condensed meal times where you're having periods of not eating and letting your system, I don't know, maybe clear out.
Katie (:Right, and if it's for you, for example, do you have a goal right now, like with training or your body or anything like that?
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Not really. It's more like, just get this mold out of my body.
Katie (:Yeah, yes. So like keep maintaining though would be yours. Then it sounds like as far as body composition or whatnot. And yes, by individual answer, if the goal is to put on mass, then more frequently, why is that? What did we talk about with the insulin? Insulin is a growth hormone. So when we want to get bigger, whether it's muscle or fat, insulin is gonna help support that.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm-hmm.
Katie (:If our goal is to utilize fat from storage, we don't want insulin in the picture. So every time you eat, insulin enters the picture. So if your goal is to use fat for fuel, you either want fewer carbohydrates and or fewer opportunities of introducing food to the body. And so that's where it depends. And if you're maintaining, like good maintenance is probably three meals a day.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Okay.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Okay. I love it. I wanted to just cover that. Let's get into blood glucose monitoring. This is like a totally unexplored field to me. And so what I want to start with is even just you're in this field. Is there a particular blood glucose monitor that you find is maybe the most accurate or efficient or easy or accessible for clients to use? And then we'll kind of talk about really what it looks like to use that in a discerning way.
Katie (:Roughly. Yeah.
Katie (:Yeah, so I use the it's like Abbott Libra 3. I use a platform called Faya that's for practitioners so we can both see the data live. It's like live streaming and that way it isn't me like, just tell me what you saw and then like conveniently like skipping the important parts and you know, so we can see and you know the key to any of this if it's going to be effective is tracking what you're doing during that time and back to your point earlier, I can
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Okay. wow.
Katie (:agree we can get obsessive with tracking devices so I only use it for a month because you know each sensor lasts about two weeks. People can experiment, explore, learn like all the different types of foods they do normally, don't normally eat, drinks, just learn how their bodies respond to it you know with the first one and then the second one they can kind of make it more of a challenge when it goes too high it's pink when it goes too low it's pink and then once in the optimal zone it's blue.
So have the goal be like, let's see how much blue, how much time and range we can spend. And so I like to encourage experimenting. And sometimes people are like, my God, it's a fail or like it wasn't perfect. That's not the point. It's part, it's like learning. It's the process, not just the outcome. And the process, getting that figured out will lead to the outcome. And in order to have the awareness, we need to try things that we know aren't gonna work and see it on paper.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm. Mm-hmm.
Katie (:So to me, that's the value. It's like when I was, I remember training, we had those big old watches, the garments, were like size of a suitcase on your arm. And I remember wearing it for a month and like doing different, you know, like hills or like different types of runs. And I played the game like, let me guess my heart rate until I finally could do it where I would pick the number and like once I matched it every time, I stopped wearing the watch. You just know. Like once you start tuning in, you don't need to wear it all the time. Like I don't wear a wearable.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mmm.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah.
Katie (:because I don't want to be buzzed all the time. Like to me, that's dysregulating and I don't like that. And there are benefits from for a period of time, let's learn. And my whole thing is pair the data with the feeling your body is giving you. Not just like my thought feeling, but like a physical feeling. Like your body tells you what you need when you listen. And we just have to know how to tune into that. And I think a lot of that does come from more time and space.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Hmm.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:ranked.
Katie (:in the calmer nervous system state because when you're in fight or flight you miss those things that's not relevant and so it's part of the value of the mindfulness practice whatever that is for you just sitting there and like quiet but these are all things I completely dismissed because I'm like it doesn't look productive how am going to measure you know what I mean and now it's like well so many people are obsessed and like hooked up
You know, their day is like, what was my sleep score? Oh, it's gonna be a crap day. And they actually felt fine. You know, it's like, or like, I'm gonna weigh myself every day in the morning. Oh, I was a little more hydrated, but now my number's higher, so I'm gonna be like upset the whole rest of the day. Like, you don't want it to dictate how good or bad your day is or how you feel about yourself. And it can provide really valuable information to learn about yourself.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Right, right.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah, I love that we're getting into this because I just think that discerning piece is so important on two ends. And I'll lean into what the one that you brought up. And then I want to bring up the issue I see with some of these trackers, but I love what you're saying where it's let's use this to enhance our own introception, interoception of our inner experience, not just.
Here's the numbers that are going and I'm not actually tuning in and linking that with bodily sensations, symptoms, et cetera. That has to be a part of using it with intention, awareness, and discernment. Whoa, I had a huge massive spike just now. Let me pause. What does that feel like for me? And that might be completely different than how it feels for someone else. And to that end, it's actually enabling and empowering, not creating dependency.
Katie (:Yes, and the biggest thing is to be able to do these things without judgment because so many people are like, why did I do that? Like with sugar cravings, like they feel guilty for having a sugar craving, so they dismiss it and try to like, you know, will themselves through it and ignore it, ignore it. I'm like, no, that's actually awesome feedback from our body saying, hey, I didn't get what I needed at that last meal. I either didn't get enough.
I needed more protein or my digestive enzymes aren't supporting breaking it down all the way. Maybe I'm not chewing it enough. Maybe I'm eating in a fight or flight state where there aren't digestive enzymes produced in the amount needed because in that state of survival, eating is a long-term project. We're trying to survive today. And so there can be a number of reasons. And so it is a process. And yeah, it starts with kind of having that cue like, Ooh, what's going on? What am I experiencing right now?
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm-hmm.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Right. The second part I want to bring up that I see so often with wearables, whether it's the aura ring, the whoop band, glucose monitoring is we develop a very binary acute interpretation of the data. And I think it can lead us astray where, for example, let's say someone eats a particular meal and they have a massive, massive spike. And so they immediately go, well, I guess I can never eat that food again. My body doesn't respond well to that food.
rather than there might be more factors to it. It's not quite that black and white. could have been actually beyond just the food itself. What was happening was I was eating it in the car on my way to work and focusing on three different things at once, or I was eating it and my kids were running around me like crazy cuckoos. And so I think sometimes we use the...
data in ways that are a little bit too narrow and binary that then lead us to cut things out or keep things in whatever that looks like. Usually it's cut things out that might not necessarily need to be.
Katie (:chill.
Katie (:Oh yeah, I saw that it was squash, chili, like a meat, squash, bean, chili, and with avocado on top. And the first time I ate it, it scored awesome on the app, the tracker thing for the CGM. The next time I had it, it was a hectic dinner. And it was just like, I just remember the intensity of, all right guys, we gotta go. It was more like that rushing feeling.
all right, let's finish up or whatever it was, but I remember the intensity about it being like there, where it's the first time it was very calm and it scored like moderate instead of high, like good is high, moderate is like, it stayed high too long. And so to your point, context or how we eat is just as important as what we eat. And I think that gets dismissed. So I love covering that because
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm-hmm.
Katie (:I mean, where do you learn about that? don't like, you know, unless you're my kids and we sit around and talk about weird things like this, you don't hear that growing up. They definitely don't teach it in school because they give them seven and a half minutes to eat lunch and then go run outside in the playground, you know? And so you just don't know what you don't know. And so that's so important, yeah.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Totally.
Yeah, you know, it's funny. I got my lesson on eating habits in when I lived in Spain for a year and for the first, they have like three hour meals. So I, you, I just learned to eat super slow because if you didn't, you just be, you know, you'd finish your meal in 30 minutes and then you'd have to sit there for another two and a half hours with nothing. I learned to eat slowly and now I cannot not eat. So I would genuinely rather not eat than have to rush.
Katie (:You're like, now what?
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:And like stuff something down. It makes me feel so unwell. And so that was just sort of like being surrounded by that habitual. They're also like very, very light, light meal. I mean, they do eat dinner at like nine or 10 o'clock at night, but it's usually just like a very teeny tiny bowl of light soup or something. So I, yes, I didn't have any education around that. That was more of a cultural training that I then came back to America and was like, I can't go back to how I was eating before.
Katie (:Mm-hmm.
Katie (:Mm-hmm.
Katie (:Yeah, well, while it wasn't formal education about it, it was real life experience learning about that, which is so much more valuable.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah. And those are some of those things of just eating slower, chewing your food more, quieting some of the external stimuli maybe that are happening as you're eating. think that would be such an interesting test for people to do with their glucose monitors is have the same meal three nights in a row, have one meal with the TV on and the podcast going and the whatever. Have one meal like with your kids running around and then have one meal like in just a really peaceful, calm environment where you're
Katie (:Yeah.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:solely focused on the food and just see what difference that makes.
Katie (:Yeah, well we know, I'll start a lot of sessions with breath work, just like one minute of it, just because sometimes people are coming in hot, and so it's like, all right, let's center, where are we at? And I remember one time this guy, after doing that minute, he's like, my God, he's putting his wrist up to the screen, like, can you see this? And he's like, this is the first time all week I haven't been in high stress state. And just in one minute.
his HRV or the stress response that was being measured dropped. We literally did five rounds of box breathing, nothing like that crazy, but it's just a matter of you know what to do, it's actually doing it. And how effective that can be. And that's something Navy SEALs, when they go through their training and they're jumping out of airplanes, when they first are learning how to do that, their heart rates are in their whole stress response is elevated for like 12 hours prior.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Wow.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm-hmm.
Katie (:and then can still remain elevated for hours after. And with training and learning how to do everything, the competence, the confidence, and just having the skills behind it, but the mental training too, the goal is to have that stress response as short as possible. So 10 seconds for pretty jump, not 10 hours. And then as soon as you land, you need to save those reserves, because it is literally a fight or flight situation, like life or death.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Hmm.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm-hmm.
Katie (:and we can't be wasting it for 15 hours just thinking about the thing and recovering from the thing. It needs to be really focused and efficient and that's kind of back to the intervals. You gotta push hard fast, get way up there and you gotta recover as efficiently as possible and that's the HRV piece, the heart rate variability. You need to be able to hit both extremes as quickly as possible because that shows resilience. That shows somebody.
who's in a spot where they can adapt. They can let go from the couch to running out the door, come back, sit down a minute later, they're recovered versus be out of commission for five hours later.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Right. Yeah. To that end, what is the, this might be such a dumb question, but what is the goal with blood sugar levels? I can't imagine it's to never ever, ever have a So especially people with a monitor, what are they shooting for?
Katie (:Correct. It's to have like moderate, Yeah. Well, rolling curves that are kind of in that, it's like a middle blue stripe and it gives room for variability. And so it's normal to have a spike or a rise. I should say a spike we think going pink, straight up, straight down or straight up hanging out there too long and then coming down. Whereas
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Okay.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm-hmm.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm-hmm.
Katie (:A gentle rolling curve is very normal and healthy because it's having some food, hey, a natural response, insulin come in, because our muscles do need that fuel for recovery. Our liver needs that. We need that to go places and that's the shuttle for that to happen. And we don't want it to over respond. And so we want it to efficiently lay off the brakes or the gas when it's right.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Okay.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:I love it. I'm going to ask one more really specific question about the blood sugar monitors. The one you mentioned, I think you said the Abbott Libra 3. Is that something someone can publicly get? Is it pretty user friendly? I imagine the recommendation is work with a professional like yourself because there's just so much more insight you're going to get from it. Again, it protects you from making these...
Out of context conclusions about the data, being able to have someone who's an expert in this really guides you through it. But for someone who might want to just get started with some of the monitoring and maybe can't, or isn't ready yet to work with someone, is that Abbott Libra 3 accessible for them in that way?
Katie (:Yeah, and so to answer your question, like what's the data tell you? I equate it to lab ranges. So when people go get lab work from a lab, it is comparing the average population of like people, it's comparing the population of people who run the labs. What does our average population look like? You know? Okay, so when they're like, fall within the ranges of that average, our average American, is that the average that you're wanting to compare yourself to? The person who's on?
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Exactly.
Katie (:eight pharmaceuticals, is tired all afternoon, is caffeinating all day long and finds it hard to go walk outside? Probably not. And that's why we have functional, tighter, optimal ranges where we're not waiting until somebody gets to this disease point or point where they need a diagnosis behind it. We're catching optimal and then noticing the range between optimal and dysfunctional and being like, all right, it's not diagnostic.
we in a bad spot, you're trending that way. Let's get in front of it. Here's some things you can do. So back to the CGM, the Libra 3 has, I would say lab range numbers, meaning for diabetics in like a dire situation. Whereas when you work with a practitioner and for example, the Thea program platform I use has more of those functional or optimal ranges where people are going to have solid energy. They're not going to be storing unnecessary fuel as fat.
they're gonna be optimizing their health versus do I need a shot of insulin? So you can still learn from getting it on your own. You can see spikes and drops. think those will artificially show things are better than they are. Because we've normalized being overweight, we've normalized all the sugar that we eat, we've normalized all the pharmaceuticals that we take. There's so many things that are
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm-hmm.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm-hmm.
Katie (:normal like normalized that are common, but it's actually not normal for the body to experience that. And so just doing the CGM alone without having some context, I think you can miss a lot of those nuances and it's also some data. So you can at least see some shifts in trajectories up and down. So yes, you can gain something from it for sure. And you can probably gain even more when looking at it with another set of eyes.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:completely.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:right?
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm-hmm.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Totally. Where my mind goes for me personally is I don't, I don't wear any monitors. That's never my goal to have something on my body at all times tracking something. But as a starting point, I think it would be really interesting to get a monitor just to even see what do, what do I feel like when a blood spike happens? That really caught my attention from our conversation today. Cause I think it's probably happening for me more than I realize. And
Katie (:Mm-hmm.
Katie (:Exactly.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:my symptoms might be different than someone else's symptoms. I just to even before I start working with someone, be able to start to track that and create this attunement to my body when that's happening is a really powerful set of information.
Katie (:Yes.
Katie (:Yeah, and you can really learn a lot from a month. And then you could go back five, six months later and just do a two week one. You don't have to do it a whole month, you know? I kind of look at the first one as being like, let's try everything. Let's, you know, be curious without judgment. And then the next two weeks, let's see if I can dial it in a little bit more. And then you kind of figure out your new, you know, baseline and then, let's just test it again. Like let's, you know, cause maybe the mold levels are a little more under control and the nighttime recovers more.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah.
Katie (:you know, comes lower. And so you can kind of get a sense of what's going on both during the actual stressors, but the time that should be recovery.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Right.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah. Well, to that end, this is the reminder of we are not set in stone. So also if you do sort of start to pair like, these foods really are super spiking for me right now, two years from now, it could be a completely different story. So let's not create entire identities and future, you know, the next 50 years of my life based on these things. Maybe right now I'm making something totally random up. The banana is like way too spiking for me.
10 years from now it could be a completely different story, but I think it's so easy to just go, well, guess I can never eat bananas again for the rest of my entire life.
Katie (:Yeah, great point. Because our bodies are never always in homeostasis or total balance. So if we're out of balance and this amount or proportion of food helps keep us more in balance to counter the out of balance, once you're more in balance, you need to recalibrate what you need. And that's where, maybe the banana doesn't work now, but maybe I'm like a half or half banana, you know, person with
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm-hmm.
Katie (:something else later, but it's not like, I either do two bananas or zero. There's something in between. that's, you you know, when I was working with some athletes, I like have them track what they eat before the gym workout and how they're feeling energy wise. And so I'm like, they're like, oh, I like banana. I'm like, great. Play with a half a one now, a whole one, you know, just play with the combos. And they're like, whoa, I thought I felt fine with a full banana, but I actually feel way better with half.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm-hmm.
Katie (:and then having some edge with that. Great, now we've learned something, but that's exactly like, let's be kind of intentional versus just automatic autopilot.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Right? Well, to that end, and then I'll land this plane when some what, know, so many of my clients and audience are on a journey of recovering from cancer or chronic illness. And when we are in really, really depleted states, we might be sensitive, you know, to a lot of different things that we might not be when we are in a different, more nourished, resilient, healthy state. So.
Katie (:100%.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:not creating life prophecies based on this data. Yeah.
Katie (:Yeah, it's a moment in time. Yeah.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Completely. my gosh, well, Katie, this was fantastic. I probably could have asked you a hundred more questions, but I'll start to land the plane. Thank you so, so much.
Katie (:Yes, thanks for having me. This is fun.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:I hope so. Just I'll put it in the show notes. I'll make sure it's linked, but just so the audience can hear it here as well. Can you share where people can learn more, connect with you?
Katie (:Sure, yeah, my website's MyPeek365. So mypeek365.com. I'm on Instagram, same handle, MyPeek365. if people, like this is something that comes up where people are like, what do I get at the grocery store? I put a seasonal, less than 10 minute shopping list out there. So if people want to check that out, I like to rotate it seasonally to fit with whatever is growing.
And just to kind of change it up where you can run through, these are the veggies, fruits, proteins I'm grabbing. These are kind of staples. Cause sometimes that can kind of help simplify things without like, I have to follow the specific recipe. It's like just general things to have on hand. And then you just kind of like, you know, mix and match them together. So I think that can be very freeing. And then for people who want ideas on recipes or just like what to do with foods, I post like little reels of
I'll do some cooking classes with kids or adults and you can just kind of see them in action for people who are visual or just printed recipes and this other, you know, health tips to kind of help you support you and fill your cup.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah, I love it. Well, I'll make sure all of those are linked in the show notes. Again, thank you so, so much.
Katie (:Thank you.
