Mastering Diabetes with Robby Barbaro

Welcome to True Grit and Grace, a podcast designed to empower you to claim your resilience and thrive through life's challenges. I am Amberly Lago, a mindset coach, fitness expert and bestselling author. Each week, I'll dive deep with the world's brightest thought leaders and elite performers to share tangible tools and practical advice to inspire you to keep your eyes on the prize and forge ahead. So get ready to conquer your fears, heal any trauma, lead with your heart, and elevate your life with grit and grace.

Hey there, Robby. I am so happy to be sitting here with you and appreciate you taking the time to be on the show. I've been following you for a while and seeing all the amazing things that you're doing. And congratulations, first of all, on being a New York Times bestseller for your book, Mastering Diabetes. And it's not just a bestseller, I mean, not that that's not enough, that's wild, But it's a bestseller on Audible, USA Today, Publishers Weekly. You're amazing. And I can't wait to jump in and talk to you more about all the things you're doing. This is all about— this show's all about turning tragedy into triumph and really sharing your struggles to success. So I'd love to talk about your story a little bit and share with the audience just how you got to be this wildly successful coach and speaker and bestselling author. So, could you share a little bit about your story growing up and how you got to be where you are today?

Absolutely, Amberly. I got to tell you, it is really an honor to be on your show. I love your enthusiasm. I love how you just bring people up. You are the type of person that I want to spend time with, and I really do believe we become the people That we spend time with. And if people are tuning into your podcast, they're spending time with you, they're soaking up your energy, and that's beautiful. So thank you for doing what you do, and I'm happy to be here. So my story starts when I was 12 years old, just about to turn 13, and I was constantly thirsty and going to the bathroom all the time. And I had known That those symptoms are an indicator of a young person living with type 1 diabetes because my older brother was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes 8 years prior to me. So, I said, hey, Mom, I think I have diabetes just like Steve. She said, no, no, don't be silly, you don't have diabetes. I said, okay. And I continued to drink a lot and go to the bathroom all the time, and eventually, a little bit later, My parents were in Florida. We were living in Minnesota at the time. We were getting ready to move to Florida. They were looking at homes. They called to check in and say, hey, how are things going at home? I said, Mom, I couldn't sleep last night. I was cramping all night long. She said, okay, go upstairs, use your brother's blood glucose meter, and test yourself. And I was well over 400 milligrams per deciliter. You are supposed to be Somewhere between 80 and 130-ish. So, my brother said right then and there, you have type 1 diabetes, pack your bag, you're going to be in the hospital for a few nights.

And you were 12 years old.

I was 12.

That— well, my youngest daughter is 12 years old, and just, I can't imagine how scary that must have been for you, or because your brother had already had experience with that, were you scared at that moment, or did you like, you're like, oh, well, Was there— how did you feel?

It took a little while for it to hit me. But I think because of the way my parents approached it, and because I had watched my brother live with type 1 diabetes for all those years, it wasn't earth-shattering. And my dad just said, look, this is an inconvenience. You can still live an amazing life and all your dreams can come true. And that was the way we looked at it. So I'm a Type A personality. I just did what I have to do and learned everything I could. I went to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota to get the best medical care we could, both my brother and I. And I had an endocrinologist there. I had a psychologist, I had a nutritionist. And unfortunately, in hindsight, that was a missed opportunity to really encourage me to improve my health, to make changes. But instead, they said, you know, just try and be normal. We want you to be normal. Just eat what you want to eat and take insulin to cover it. And that was the mindset.

Well, I think they probably wanted to maybe make you feel good, or say the right thing to a young person. Just be normal, fit in. We don't want you to feel like you're different. And I have to say, you sharing that makes me think of when I was first diagnosed with complex regional pain syndrome. I was like, well, I am just going to pretend like I'm normal. But that didn't really serve me because I wasn't eating the things that I was supposed to eat. I wasn't doing the things I was supposed to do. I wasn't taking the medication that I was supposed to take. And actually someone told me, one of my doctors told me, they said, you need to look at this as if— They said, if you were diabetic, Would you just not take your insulin? Would you just ignore the fact that you're diabetic? And them saying that to me is what really clicked for me to really pay attention to what was going on with, with what I had, you know, with the diagnosis of CRPS. And, but I'm sure that that must have been such a journey for you to go from just having to be in a clinic and having— did you have to test? your, your blood sugar levels every single day, or just when you felt bad? There's a lot of confusion around that, I think. And there's also some confusion around type 1 diabetes and type 2. Can you—

There's a lot of confusion around diabetes in general. So we're gonna end some of the confusion today and give some clarity to your audience. And if your audience knows somebody living with diabetes, pass along this information. Because it truly is game-changing. So let's start at the top here. Type 1 diabetes is a form of diabetes where your beta cells in your pancreas are damaged, and you no longer produce a sufficient quantity of insulin to manage your blood glucose levels. So this is classified as an autoimmune disease. We don't know exactly what causes type 1 diabetes, but we simply know there's not enough insulin production.

Right.

Now, type 2 diabetes, that's characterized by an excess of insulin production, especially in the beginning. And what's happening there is people with type 2 diabetes are simply not using the insulin efficiently. They're living with insulin resistance. That's the cause of type 2 diabetes, and that's about 95% of people living with all diagnosed diabetes. Now, there's another form of diabetes called prediabetes. And this is again caused by insulin resistance. It's marked by excess insulin production, but your body's not using it efficiently. Therefore, your blood glucose levels start to creep up and you get into the prediabetes range. There are 84 million people in the US alone living with prediabetes, and the vast majority of them don't even know it. So that's a big problem. Now, there's also type 1.5 diabetes. Which is a slow onset version of type 2— oh, sorry, of type 1. So in this case, beta cells are being damaged slowly, whereas in type 1 diabetes, they're damaged rapidly. And there is a lot of confusion around type 1.5 diabetes. People are misdiagnosed as type 2, they try and make lifestyle changes, and they don't get the results that they're looking for. That's because they're not getting the right treatment.

Mm-hmm.

That's the different types of diabetes, but really the whole fundamental principle we're talking about here at Mastering Diabetes is all around this concept of insulin resistance. And you want to reverse insulin resistance because it is at the center of a laundry list of complications, including heart disease, including cancer, fatty liver disease, chronic kidney disease, PCOS, Alzheimer's, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, Erectile dysfunction, neuropathy, retinopathy. The list goes on.

Yeah, I was gonna say the list goes on. And then I just want to ask you something really quick. With type 1 versus type 2, can you reverse type 2?

Okay, so great question. Now, you can reverse type 2 diabetes in the vast majority of cases. Assuming that you still have a sufficient level of insulin production.

Okay.

And you can get a test to indicate how much insulin your body is still producing. That's called the C-peptide test. C-peptide and insulin are produced in a 1-to-1 ratio. You go and get your C-peptide tested, that's an indicator of how much insulin you're producing. Some people have been living with type 2 diabetes so long that their pancreas is exhausted. Their beta cells are not working properly. It's not an autoimmune condition in the sense that there's antibodies or anything like that present, where there's been actual damage to the beta cells. It's just that they've been overworked. And if you're in that position, that's okay. You might need to use a small amount of insulin, but the goal is still to optimize your insulin sensitivity and only inject a physiological normal amount of insulin. That's not what's happening in the vast majority of people, of cases of people living with type 2 diabetes. They're injecting hundreds of units of insulin per day, whereas a normal healthy human pancreas is going to secrete somewhere between 25 and 50 units of insulin per day. So if you're living with full-on type 1 like me, and you have a C-peptide of less than 0.1, meaning there's an undetectable amount of insulin being produced by my pancreas, then my goal is to inject somewhere between 25 and 50 units of insulin per day. If you're living with non-autoimmune type 2 diabetes, okay, so you're in this area of insulin-dependent type 2 diabetes, you might want to secrete, inject just a little bit extra insulin, maybe 10 units a day, maybe 20 units a day, just to compensate for what your beta cells aren't able to produce.

Okay, and this is how much I have to learn about this, because when I, I always thought there's this concept of insulin makes you fat. There was like, that was the thing. Oh, you don't want to take insulin. Insulin makes you fat. Now, that was something that I heard, a seed that was planted that I don't know even where I heard that or read it or whatever. But to sit here and look at you, obviously insulin does not make you fat.

Yeah.

You're a picture of health. And I remember when I was in the hospital and I was having surgery after surgery after surgery after my accident, and they would come in to test my blood sugar levels, and if it got over 125, they wanted to give me insulin because they were afraid if my blood sugar levels got too high that I would get an infection, or it increases your risk of infection. And my fear was, oh, well, I'm already sitting here. I can't exercise. I'm laying in the bed. I don't want to take insulin. And I was like, how can I control this? How can I control my blood sugar levels? And they're like, well, you got to stop eating sugar. And I was like, I'm not eating I'm not eating sugar. I'm really not eating sugar. But they were giving me an IV bag that was a sugar bag of fluids every day. And I said, how about we stop giving me that IV? I'll just have water. I'll just eat as healthy as I can. And I was able to manage my levels. But there's so much confusion around just insulin. And so I want to—

Yes.

To anybody who's listening who may not even have diabetes, who may have an autoimmune disease. Changing my food changed my life. And I know it's done it for you. And I, yes, I would love to learn so much about just, you know, like I said, I thought, oh, well, insulin makes you fat. Obviously, that's a myth. Can you share a little bit more about that, about how insulin does not—

Yeah.

Because you guys are sharing some stuff. You and the co-author of the book are sharing, Cyrus, are sharing some tips that are mind-blowing and are really creating a lot of stir around the whole community of people who've been diagnosed with diabetes because you're changing things about carbohydrates and proven— you're proof that you can eat carbohydrates and fruit and all these things. And so, but first, before I get in, because I'm excited about this, can you share a little bit about the insulin and how I was so wrong about how it makes you fat?

Yes, so insulin does not cause weight gain. Excess insulin causes weight gain. And the question becomes, OK, why would I need excess insulin? Why would I need to inject excess insulin? Why would my pancreas need to secrete excess insulin and elevate your insulin levels throughout your body? That happens when you're living in an insulin-resistant state. It's insulin resistance that's at the core of people gaining weight or having struggle to lose weight. And this happens when you consume excess dietary fat, particularly saturated fat. And so people living in the world of diabetes, they have blood glucose meters, they have continuous glucose monitors, So as a community, we can self-monitor our blood glucose levels. That's one of the few conditions that you can self-monitor on a meal-by-meal basis. You can't decide if your heart disease got better or worse after one meal. You don't know if your chronic kidney disease got better or worse after one meal. You don't have an objective metric. But in the world of diabetes, you'll hear people say, I eat by my meter, I eat by my meter. So they'll eat a meal, they'll try and have some brown rice, they'll try and have some fruit. Trying to eat some potatoes. They'll test their blood glucose 2 hours later, and it's high. It's 200, it's 250. They say, look, the potato caused my blood glucose to elevate. I'm not going to eat potatoes. This is a problem. And what they're not understanding is that it was what they ate prior that put their body in a state where they could not metabolize the glucose from the potato In an efficient manner.

And that's the key. That is what you're changing.

So yeah, that's the key.

Mm-hmm.

So again, excess insulin is a problem for sure. Nobody's going to deny that. The typical classic form of insulin resistance is called pathological insulin resistance. That's when you have high insulin levels in your blood and high blood glucose levels in your blood. Neither one of those are good, but the solution is to change your diet and your lifestyle to reduce the excess fat that's stored in muscle and liver cells, and then you regain your ability to metabolize the glucose in whole carbohydrate-rich foods.

Well, I— that, that's key. But also, right now, who would have thought that we would be in this pandemic still, where there are a lot of people around the country that are still stuck at home? Or working from home or maybe lost their job or things just aren't the same. Here, our gyms just opened up. Before, I was doing what I could to exercise. We made our garage into, you know, a little fitness area. And, but I have to say, it's been, you know, easy to just walk into that fridge in the garage or in the kitchen or it's like—

Sure.

It's, you know, it's been a little bit harder to stay on track and I see A lot of people who even— they are people making jokes about how they've gained their quarantine weight or whatever that is. And you said something funny, I think in one of your posts on Instagram. And if you guys want to, you should follow him on Instagram because you post some awesome stuff. But one of the things that you posted was relying on willpower alone is like bringing a pool noodle to a sword fight. And I love that because I really think willpower is a lot, but we have to have daily habits and a solid foundation. What would you recommend to people to like, if they're like, okay, this is it, this is my sign, I've got to start doing things differently. What is one thing you could suggest for them to do today, right now, to start living a healthier life?

Okay, so I know it's not the easiest answer, the most objective, clear answer, but it's, it's coming to my mind right now. It's in my heart, and that is tapping into a community. I really believe— and right now it's an online community because our, our ability to interact with humans is limited— an online community that you can tap into for accountability and support and people that are on the same path as you. It's huge. I mean, people listening to this podcast, you're tapping into this community, you're tapping into Amberly's energy, and that's fantastic. The more you can do that— start a text thread with some people and do a challenge together. I mean, our book has 30 recipes, 2 21-day meal plans. You could do that challenge together. Like, commit to something, set some goals, and just go for it in a community environment. I really think that's important.

I love that. And I think that that's key. I think that accountability is really important. And when you're a part of a community, you have accountability. And when you don't show up, people start to wonder where you are and they go and check on you. But I think that that's such a great answer because— and for me, even in quarantine, I have a God squad. We check on each other. Yeah, me too. We have an email thread. I have an accountability partner, who we text each other every single morning what we're grateful for to start our day off on a right note. That's so awesome that you have things that you can do in your book and to start a book club with someone and then, you know, get your book, Mastering Diabetes, and start to really focus on your health.

Yes.

When at a time like this, that is a time I feel like we have a choice. We can either choose to go, oh, whatever, this is my time off, or not that I've had time off, but this is the time to just indulge because we don't know what's coming tomorrow, so whatever. Or you can go, this is the time that I am going to start living my best life because now more than ever, we have to do things to really boost our immunity.

Yes.

And you've tried, like me, I've tried so many different diets and fads and so many different things to alleviate my pain for the nerve disease I was diagnosed with. You tried so many. The list goes on and on about different things that you tried to feel better. You got it. And it's been a journey. And, and what do you think it was in you that was just like, I can't give up, I'm just going to keep trying until I figure out how I can make, make my life better? What do you think? Where do you think that comes from? I know you said you're a Type A personality, but you have a lot of drive. And I hear some of the crazy things that you tried throughout the years. From drinking teas to going on crazy diets to eating different ways, where do you think that comes from?

I think for me, particularly in the beginning, the motivation that has built these new habits that I have— I've been doing this low-fat, plant-based, whole food nutrition now for about 13 years— and it came from this strong why. My why, my motivation Was that I'm going to do anything and everything to get my beta cells to work again. And to go back to your original question, we don't know how to reverse type 1 diabetes yet, or type 1.5 diabetes.

Oh, sorry, we got off there.

That's okay. But, but, uh, that was, that was my mission and it still is my mission. I'm still trying to figure that one out and we're going to solve that problem. But when you have a why that you just believe in, it's so ingrained in you and means so much to you. and it's in your heart, you find a way, you find a way. And I think tapping into your why on a daily basis is important. In our book, we help people establish SMART goals. They're very realistic goals and you place them on your fridge or in your bathroom mirror or in your car, in a place where you will see them every day. And you get reminded of why you're making these changes because we don't live in a simple environment for living a healthy lifestyle. It's very challenging out there. You have to really go upstream and you have to be committed to your WHY. You have to remember your WHY, tap into your WHY in order to stay on track.

That's so true. And I think that's where you get— that is a good way to get motivation. And like you said, have the Community to support you along the way. Now, I wanted to ask you about some of the different diets out there. And I wanted to ask you about the keto diet, because there's so many mixed messages of it's good, it's bad, it can harm you. And I've known a lot of people that have had kidney problems, liver enzyme levels elevated, all kinds of things from doing the keto diet. What are your thoughts on the keto diet?

So, as a person living with type 1 diabetes, I am a fantastic test subject for the whole concept of insulin sensitivity. Anybody living with type 1 diabetes, we're fantastic test subjects because we inject insulin every time we want to eat food. We test our blood glucose throughout the day, many of us wearing a continuous glucose monitor, so we see our blood glucose every 5 minutes. It's charted out on a graph. We have unbelievable data, and we also count the carbohydrates that we consume so we know how much insulin to inject. Those 3 pieces of data, Are exactly what we need to understand how efficiently insulin is working inside our body. Now, most people listening to the show, when they eat a meal that's maybe a little higher in fat or they have some processed food, they don't know how much extra insulin their pancreas needed to secrete to handle that meal. Whereas people like myself living with type 1, we do know, and we do see our blood glucose readings and how it correlates to our day-to-day decisions. So when I did a plant-based ketogenic diet, my insulin sensitivity was terrible. And to be clear, my glucose tolerance was terrible. The amount of insulin I needed to usher the glucose that I ate from my very low carbohydrate diet— I had no more than 30 grams of net carbohydrate per day on the plant-based ketogenic diet. That comes out to about 10 grams of glucose per day.

Wow.

And I would need about 1 unit of insulin for every 1 gram of glucose that I consumed. And now on a low-fat, plant-based, whole food diet where I'm consuming well over 700 grams of carbohydrate per day from whole plant foods, I can now process 10 grams of glucose for every 1 unit of insulin. That's a 900% change in insulin sensitivity.

Wow. And now explain what keto is. There may be some people who are like, what's keto? What the heck is keto? What are they even talking about?

Yeah, ketogenic diet, basically you choose to become a fat burner. You choose to have your energy come from fat. That's what you're doing. Whereas when you're following a low-fat plant-based healthy diet, you are— you're a carbohydrate machine and you're getting a much larger amount of glucose and that is your energy source, your predominant fuel. So ketogenic dieters, you know, when I was doing the plant-based keto diet, I was not allowed to have fruit. I certainly wasn't having anything like potatoes or rice or beans or quinoa, stuff like that. It was oil, it was nuts and seeds, it was lots of greens, it was nut butters, and a very small amount of non-starchy vegetables, carrots and bell peppers. They would have too much glucose for me to stay on the ketosis that I was on.

Right.

supposed to be in. So that's what it does. The keto diet eschews— like, it basically avoids carbohydrate-rich foods and minimizes them. And when it comes to diabetes, what happens is people see their blood glucose drop when they do that. They see their A1c drop. They lose weight. Their cholesterol can improve. All these biometrics improve as a benefit of weight loss. Now, once a person following a ketogenic diet reaches their stable weight, things start to go in the opposite direction. And that's the problem. So you could just choose to follow a low-fat, plant-based, whole food diet, achieve the same amount of weight loss. And once you get to your ideal weight, you're not going to go backwards. You're going to maintain a healthy cholesterol level.

Mm-hmm.

You're going to maintain a healthy triglyceride level. You're going to be eating foods that are protective against cancer and fatty liver disease and chronic kidney disease, foods that have been demonstrated to reverse peripheral neuropathy and retinopathy. So, I'm more focused on teaching people the benefits of a plant-based diet, teaching people the benefits of becoming insulin sensitive, more so than spending too much effort and time trying to like tear down the other perspective. Because Honestly, if somebody chooses to follow a ketogenic diet, if you're going to follow a ketogenic diet, do a plant-based one because you're going to get a lot more fiber and a lot more nutrients. And, um, but the point is, if you're going to do that, you got to have a lot of respect for that person. That person is trying really hard.

Mm-hmm.

That person is deciding not to go to McDonald's and eat fast food and eat garbage. I think one of the biggest problems we have in our country right now is apathy, is the people who are not doing anything, who don't care.

Mm-hmm.

So I have a lot of respect for the ketogenic community. I think they're very sincere people. They are obviously, they're doing the best they can. They're putting in a lot of effort. I'm just here to say that if, if, if for whatever reason it's not working for somebody, if they're not happy, they're not getting the results they want, they're like, I'm lost, I'm confused. I'm here to reiterate and support and give you a plethora of evidence. Our book is based on 100 years of evidence-based research, over 800+ citations. I'm here to share that evidence with you so you can understand there is another option. You do not need to fear carbohydrates. People who are avoiding fruit, avoiding potatoes, avoiding rice and beans because they think carbohydrates make them fat, that's the person that I want to educate. I want you to know and understand this other scientific body of evidence so you can make an informed decision of what foods you want to put in your body.

And that is what is mind-blowing because so many people are so afraid to eat a piece of fruit because they think it's going to make them fat.

Yeah.

Or they're so afraid of carbs that they don't want to eat that. But what you're saying is you can eat these things. You can live a healthy life by eating fruits and healthy carbs and stuff like that. I'd like to know in your day, what does like What does your breakfast consist of?

Okay, so my favorite breakfast right now is very simple and very delicious. I am able to get some locally grown figs. I take, I add some mangoes. I add some arugula, a little bit of lettuce in a bowl, and boom, that's my breakfast. It's fruit and greens. I love to start my day with fruit, whole fruit. We're not talking about dried fruit. We're not talking about fruit juice. We're talking about the whole thing with all of its original water content, all of its original fiber, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, phytochemicals, all working together in a synergistic way that is truly beyond our comprehension.

Because you're saying carbohydrates are not the problem. That's not the problem.

It is so Factually true that carbohydrates are not the problem. I cannot get over it. And again, as a person living with type 1 diabetes, I get to experience this on a meal-by-meal basis. Every time I want to eat, I have to inject insulin. So I can see that this very small amount of insulin— I'm injecting about 27 units of insulin per day and eating well over 700 grams of carbohydrate— this small amount of insulin is able to metabolize the carbohydrate energy in the foods that I'm eating every single meal. And anybody who thinks that when they eat fruit or they eat carbohydrate-rich foods that their insulin levels are going to spike because of the fruit is completely missing the scientific fact. That's not true. It's the higher fat foods that you ate prior. And when you look in the peer-reviewed research, you will find So much evidence to demonstrate this. It goes to even like unbelievable levels to a certain extent. I mean, there's a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine where the researchers compared a weight-maintaining control diet to a weight-maintaining low-fat diet. And what they put people on the low-fat diet on a liquid sugar diet, literally 85% dextrose. 15% protein powder. That's the only way to make a diet 0% fat, which is what they did here. You have to process the food because all whole foods contain fat. There are essential fatty acids in your lettuce, in your bananas, in your mangoes, in your peaches, in your pears, in your potatoes, quinoa, rice. There's fat in all whole foods. So they put these patients on a control diet and they put them on the sugar water diet. Then they did an oral glucose tolerance test, and this is where they compare what happens when each of the subjects was put on both diets and they had a 75-gram glucose challenge. Okay, so they had 75-gram liquid glucose challenge, and at every single level throughout this oral glucose tolerance test over a 3-hour period, on the sugar water diet, Their blood glucose levels were lower and their insulin levels were lower.

Wow.

Not that I'm recommending people eat sugar, but research consistently demonstrates over and over and over again, when you consume carbohydrates in a low-fat environment, your body produces a healthy amount of insulin and your blood glucose level stays in a healthy range. The key is reducing your fat consumption. So we're teaching people to shoot for about 15% of calories coming from fat. You do that from whole foods. And when you eat the green light foods that we list in our program, we have green light foods, yellow light foods, and red light foods. When you eat the green light foods, you naturally end up falling, falling somewhere around like 10%-ish.

Hmm.

And if you eat a little bit more of the yellow light foods or some of the higher fat foods like avocados and nuts and seeds, you have a small amount of those. Then you can get closer to 15%. So it's something you don't need to micromanage. You don't need to overthink this. And it's very simple.

So, and I love that you have that all laid out in your book. You wrote a book. And I also love that you share that it took about 2 years for you and Cyrus to write this book. Cyrus, who lives in Costa Rica, so we couldn't get him on the Zoom too, unfortunately. But You share both of your stories. He was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes as well.

Type 1.

I mean type 1. I meant to say type 1. And you share just how you get through that and what to do throughout the book. But are you both plant-based? Yes.

We both follow a plant-based diet. That's right.

Okay. And that is something I need to learn more about. Look, I grew up in the South where It was chicken fried steak, a lot of casseroles, and a lot of fried pies. It was not the healthiest. And when I moved to California, I really started learning more about nutrition. But it wasn't until I became into the fitness industry and I was a fitness trainer that I learned more about nutrition. But it was still, even in the fitness industry, it was all about meat. It was all about protein, protein, protein, and how much protein you have to have to make muscle. And I've been through so many phases where when I was a dancer, I became a vegetarian. I was plant-based and I did it all wrong. I looked sick. I'm sure I was sick. But I remember getting off the plane and my mom looking at me and going, oh my God, what happened to you? You're yellow. Like there was no nutrition. I didn't know how to do it. In your book—

Don't worry. When people pick up our book, They'll know exactly what to do. It's very clear, very simple.

That's where I'm getting at. Like, you lay out exactly how to follow the plant-based diet in the book. Yes, in a whole food way. But you're also doing webinars and you're speaking and you do coaching, one-on-one coaching. Well, do you still do one-on-one coaching or is it all group coaching now?

We have all the options. We have Large group coaching, small group coaching, private coaching. So whatever people need in order to get the results they're looking for, we're here to serve them.

Okay. And what is something that somebody can do right now if they're like, besides going to pick up your book right now on Audible or Amazon or your website?

Absolutely.

What is something they can do right now where they're listening, they're like, oh my gosh, he's changed his life. He's feeling so much better. Look at what he's doing. I want to feel better. Do you think that they should go run out and do all plant-based, or do you think— how, how can they ease themselves into it?

I'm so glad you asked this question because easing your way into it is essential. We suggest that people change just their breakfast for the first week. Just focus on that. Don't worry about your other meals. Do what you normally do. Then ease into lunch. Do breakfast and lunch for a week, then you ease into dinner, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and you start changing all your snacks. And eventually you get to a point where you're feeling so good, you tried a bunch of new recipes, you love them, you don't really want to eat the foods that don't make you feel well, and you're really excited about this new plant-based diet. So I encourage people to start slowly, experiment with new recipes. They get to eat a lot of new foods. If somebody's been avoiding fruit for a long time, it becomes very exciting to bring that back. And we're at a great time of year right now to start eating fruit. So I encourage people to start slowly.

Well, where can people find you? I want them to follow you on Instagram too, because I love all your posts.

Thank you so much. So our main account is @masteringdiabetes. If anybody wants to follow my personal account, it's @mindfuldiabeticrobbie. And then we are active on YouTube, we are active on Facebook, and like you said, we do a lot of webinars. We have our own podcast, just type in Mastering Diabetes into any podcast app, Spotify, Apple, SoundCloud, and you'll find us. But if you're interested to see if you are living with insulin resistance, you can go to our website and take a quiz. It's masteringdiabetes.org. There's a quiz in the upper right corner, and you just click that button, Am I a Candidate? And you can fill out the quiz and see where you're at and just decide if it's time to make some changes.

I think that is a great idea to run over there and take that quiz now, and also to grab your book and follow these recipes that you offer. And thank you so much for being on and sharing and really clearing up some things that I've had like, well, you know, it's— there's so much confusing information out there and I appreciate you making it clear. And y'all go out and get his book. Like I said, New York Times, it was instantly a bestseller. You're amazing. And I can't wait. One of these days we'll go to the farmer's market and see Veronica together.

I can't wait. It's going to be fun. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.

Keep doing what you're doing.

I love your energy.

Thank you so much. I love yours.

Thanks so much for joining us this week on True Grit and Grace Podcast.

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Bye.