[Beginnings & Breakthroughs] Balancing Blood Sugar with Marsha Kaehne

Hey JJ Here. Every year around this time, I get the urge to make my home feel a little extra special. A space that feels just like the holidays. And Wayfair is my go to for that. Think cozy textures, twinkly decor, warm lighting, and all those little touches that make you want to curl up with a good book and a blanket. You'll usually find my books stacked on a great little end table I got from Wayfair, proof that function and style give can coexist. Now, whether you're adding last minute hosting essentials, picking out gifts for loved ones, or refreshing your decor for the season, Wayfair makes it easy with beautiful finds, great prices and fast delivery. And when the holidays wind down, Wayfair has everything you need to tuck it all neatly away. Smart storage solutions for every room from the kitchen to the closet. Plus, with free shipping for any order over $35, don't that's fast delivery and a total peace of mind. It's the perfect mix of joy and order, bringing the holiday spirit in, then storing it all with ease. If you're ready to make your home feel as good as it looks, get organized, refreshed and ready for the holidays. For way less head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. Wayfair Every style Every home that's W A Y F A I R.com hey, it's JJ here. You know, I've been talking about environmental toxins forever, and laundry detergent is a sneaky one. A lot of them contain harsh chemicals like dyes, preservatives, and even UV brighteners. Those brighteners don't actually clean anything, they just coat fabric so your eyes think things look whiter or brighter. That's more chemicals I don't want on my family sheets or skin. And if you've got sensitive skin or allergies around the house, this can be a big problem. That's what got my attention about Earth Breeze. It looks like a dryer sheet, but it's actually laundry detergent. You toss one in the washer and that's it. No pouring, no mess, and no heavy plastic jug. Their packaging is lightweight cardboard, which helps reduce plastic waste. And if you choose the fragrance free option, it's gentle, hypoallergenic, non irritating and non sensitizing. I really like how simple it is and how fresh and clean everything comes out without those unnecessary chemicals. Right now you can try Earth Breeze for up to 40% off with free gifts@earthbreeze.com virgin that's earthbreeze.com virgin for up to 40% off plus free gifts on your first order.

The holidays are all about family, but at the Chrysler Wrap up the Year sales event, it's all about you. Enjoy every mile in the most awarded minivan and America. The Chrysler Pacifica with the most standard safety features in its class, available Stow n Go seating and the available Stow and back built in vacuum. Make the most of the holidays with a great deal at the Chrysler Pacifica Wrap up the Year sales event based on Ward's small van segment based upon the latest available competitor information. Chrysler is a registered trademark of FCA US llc.

Welcome to Beginnings and Breakthroughs. This is where I celebrate and coach.

People just like you who are on.

A mission to heal their metabolisms, feel better, fast and live their best lives. We will be walking through what's worked for them and what they've discovered on their journeys and then I'll coach them on their next best steps. And if you're interested in being a guest, stay tuned and I'll be sharing how you can join me too. All right, I will be right back with our awesome guest. Beginnings and Breakthroughs. My new favorite podcast to do on the Ask the Health Expert show. It is where I coach someone who is either just starting off on Sugar Impact diet or virgin diet or one of my programs or has been on one and now is ready to take it to the next step and we can celebrate their success. And I am. I really had a great time today with Marsha Cain. She is a nurse practitioner and she works in mental health. So big kudos to her and I was really excited to be able to support her and she's really been working on improving her hemoglobin A1C getting her blood sugar better balance. So she's already started some things in the Sugar Impact diet and been doing a lot of research and now we've gone through what to do to take her to the next step. There's a lot of things in here that can be super useful if you are looking for for how to move into intermittent fasting, how to have better blood sugar balance, what you should be doing in terms of exercise for better blood sugar balance if you're looking at how you improve your metabolic health. So we've gotten into all of that stuff. I'm super excited to share this with you and if you would like to be up next, all you need to do is go to jjvirgin.com signup to apply to be on Beginnings and Breakthroughs. Stay with me. I'll be right back with Marcia.

Hey, jj, Virgin here.

Okay, real talk.

So often the holidays sneak up on me. Travel, gifts, hosting, you know, all the things. And suddenly it's like, wait, who spent what and where? And I know I'm not the only one who's looked at a bill in January and thought, wow, that escalated quickly. If you want to keep your finances under control this holiday season, you need to be using Monarch. It's rated the Wall Street Journal's best budgeting app of 2025. Monarch is the all in one personal finance tool that brings your entire financial life together in one clean interface. On your laptop or on your phone. Monarch lets you link everything and gives you real time visibility so you're not shocked later. Right now I've been checking the holiday spending category so I don't accidentally start the new year with that dreaded debt hangover. And honestly, just seeing everything laid out is already helping me stay more aware. This season, Monarch does the heavy lifting. It links your accounts in minutes, gives you smart categorization and super clear visuals. Yes, that end of year reset could be a real goal. This time. Don't let financial opportunities slip through the cracks. Use the code virginonarch.com in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year@monarch.com with the code Virgin.

This episode is brought to you by Corona. When you're on a beach with an ice cold Corona in hand, how can you not feel centered? But did you know you can get that vibe anywhere? That's because whether after work, at barbecues or at a bar with just a squeeze of lime, Corona brings you La Playa mentality. Because while we all want the beach life, paradise doesn't always have palm trees. Corona La Playa awaits. Get yours@order corona.com Relax responsibly. Corona Extra beer imported by Crown Import, Chicago, Illinois.

Marcia, I'm super excited to spend this time with you today.

Thank you. It's just my pleasure and so been so excited to visit with you.

Alrighty. So a couple of people have literally like I've been coming on for the pre interview stuff and they're like I'm nervous. I'm like, what are you nervous about? Come on, this is exciting. So I love to start with, you know, how you found me and your, your journey so far and what you're looking to accomplish and then we'll dig in.

Okay. So. Well I, well I'm a nurse practitioner so. But I also as am very interested in lifestyle management for health concerns. One of my specialties for many years has been diabetes management because I work for, I work in a tribal community and diabetes is extremely prevalent and just debilitating to so many people's lives to the extreme and very, very tragic. And so, you know, the idea of sugar is just profuse within that and it's, there's this, this, this is really a hard kind of a dichotomy between the cheapness that, you know, the inexpensive sugar and the promotion of sugar by manufacturers and the ease of just buying processed foods, especially when you have kind of a food desert, as we refer to it up here, and then the terrible effects that that has on health. So that's when I really became aware of sugar being such a detriment to our health. So just, I'm pretty much a type A extreme personality. So I'm constantly doing research and listening to podcasts and reading books and things like that. So trying to further my, you know, my scope of practice, having information available to me that is up to date. And that's actually how I came across you was just looking at the latest and greatest and most up to date research available. And when I was reading your, I came across your books and the idea of the impact of sugar just really brought it to home. And there was actually a lot of research within your writing and the things that I came across that was just supportive of the concern for sugar in people's diets.

You are in a place, I mean, you've already done a lot of good. I was reading about you. But just think now, because it is, it's such a crisis. I was just on the phone with Dr. Mark Hyman who was saying it's now 7%, the latest research, 7% of the population is metabolically healthy. And I know that, particularly in the tribal communities, that this is a big issue. And I know genetically too, like, genetically there are certain ethnicities that have a higher tendency towards insulin resistance. So, boy, this is great. I'm glad you gotten go to extremes because this is definitely one to go to extremes on. So you are looking to do some things for your own health. I see you now as, like, as we go through this, the, the ripple effect of what you can have is going to be amazing. So what are you, where are you now? Where would you like to be?

Well, you know, I've always been, or at least for the number of years, I guess I've considered myself kind of healthy in an average way. You know, I would never allow myself to get. But be technically, or at least in my Opinion unhealthy. You know, I've never been, like, very obese, and I've never had my lab work be, you know, really bad and to any extreme measures, but kind of borderline, where I haven't been also ideal in many ways. So it, and it's kind of, it's been a challenge for me because, you know, even if I say something like, well, I should really lose weight, people go, oh, well, you don't need to lose weight. Or, you know, it's like, well, you're not a diabetic. Yeah, but my A1C is, is 5.8, and that's not ideal. And you can run into a little bit of, I don't know if it's complacency or just where you kind of give yourself permission to say, well, it's not so bad. You know, give yourself a break. And that's. That can really be detrimental. And the more I've learned, the more I realize that even a little bit of a high A1C over the long haul has extremely negative effects on a person. And they're actually, I've heard, like, even dementia be referred to as type 3 diabetes, you know, where it's just, you know, you think about it, what it does so to your blood vessels. So working on the weight loss and getting my A1C lowered. And then also part of this has really been not just the behavior change, because as a healthcare professional, too, we're always so used to telling patients, do this or don't do that, exercise more, eat less. If only you were better at math, calories in, calories out, you wouldn't have this problem. And it's not true.

If it was true, it'd be very different situation.

So I've really been, I guess, focused more on mindset.

Awesome. Well, you said a couple things that kind of jumped out at me. And, you know, you kind of, you said, and. And here's the thing, and I remember years ago, I was on the Dr. Phil show for a couple years, and what we discovered, I don't know if you've seen the studies that showed that obesity is contagious, meaning that if you're overweight or obese, you tend to be like your friends, and even if they live across the country from you. But I think it's the very reason you said, oh, no, you're fine. And some of that might be that if you start to make those changes and get healthy, then they might feel like, well, now I have to do it, or that she's going to like, Leave me be a move away from me, right? So I think there's that. And my bigger question is, like, you know, oh, I'm fine. This is just fine. But you said this important thing. I want to be ideal. It's like, don't you deserve to be in your very best health? Like, aren't you absolutely what you have to get done on this planet and the value bring. Aren't you, like, you have to show up for yourself first, right? And so that's the first thing I think we have to do. When I queried my community a couple years ago and I said, if you're not where you want to be in your health, why not? And the biggest thing that came out, which blew my mind, because I thought they'd say, oh, sugar or gluten, right? And they said, I don't feel worthy. I don't feel like I'm good enough to. To care about. And I was like, oh, that just breaks my heart. So I think we have to start with, like, you need to show for yourself first. And it's not about it not being so bad. It's about how can you be your best you? So that's where we start working. And a really important concept I think, is not out there enough. Because we know that, you know, your health can become a metabolic snowball. And as things start to pile up, your blood sugar starts to rise. You'll see it in the hemoglobin A1C that now it's elevated over time, which means now you're doing damage that, yes, can remember, result in dementia, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, all sorts of stuff. But this metabolic snowball, as it starts to pick up more snow, as it starts to pick up speed, gets really hard to slow down. And then someone will go, okay, I want to lose weight. But they're so resistant, they're so metabolically resistant because of what they've done over the years and the lack of muscle mass and the high blood sugar that just doesn't work right away. And then they give up and they just think it's their age or genetics. It's not. It really is that idea of metabolic resistance. It shows up as weight loss resistance. So the first thing to think about is you have to get healthy to be able to lose weight. And when I say lose weight, I really mean lose waste, lose that visceral fat, be able to put on muscle. So we're going to focus instead on if all we spent the time now doing is looking at how do we really have you get great blood sugar A great hemoglobin A1C have it down to 5 or below as our number one focus. And then what are the things that you can do that will do that as effectively and efficiently as possible? No one wants to work harder or spend more time getting the results right.

Yes. What you're saying just really speaks to me because I've been listening to a lot of your podcasts and even in your books, and one of the couple of things that have really come to light for me has been kind of like a many, many years of dieting. I've been, you know, trying to do, you know, working on things that even the latest, you know, intermittent fasting, which I love by the way, and that has been a huge, huge benefit to me in many ways. I just feel have more energy and just lots of good things with the intermittent fasting. But some aspects that I actually was not aware of and intend to really start working on. Just one of your last podcasts had to do with resistance training. So and the difference in the different types of exercises because me, you know, I get up in the morning and jump on my elliptical and think I'm burning off some calories, I'm getting my heart rate up, I'm doing all this good stuff, but I'm really missing a big piece of the puzzle.

Yes. And if I had to prioritize, like if we had to choose between an elliptical and weight training, weight training wins every single time. Now, it's not to say I don't want you to move more and especially it's great if you can move after your evening meal, but to really change your metabolism and especially as we age. It's why I insist that we, you know, I know it's very unpopular to talk about weighing these days, but I will fight that fight because we've got to get over this idea that, you know, a scale is associated with shame. It's a mean friend saying, you blew it. A scale is a tool just like a blood pressure cuff's a tool, just like a continuous glucose monitors tool. So it starts with getting a scale that can give you your body fat percentage and ideally also a visceral body fat, which now they have them. Tanita makes one for under 100 bucks. So they now that used to be my first one of those was, was $5,000. I used it on TV. It was like crazy. But now they're that and that's great because what you measure and monitor, you can improve. So the first thing, and I'm going to give you a couple things to look at that you're going to start doing, the number one thing is to have that scale and a tape measure. And I want you to weigh in daily, but use the tape measure weekly. And every week you're going to look at, you know, changes in visceral fat, changes in body fat and lean body mass, and your waist and hip. Daily, you're looking at weight. And the reason you look at weight daily is you want to know if your weight jumps up two to three pounds in a day. Something you did not, you know, you didn't sit down and eat 12 pizza, something didn't work, like you ate something that created an inflammatory response. And we want to look back and go, what was that? So we can connect the dots. So that's the first piece of it. But what we really want to focus on, if you want to really control your blood sugar, the first, first place that you do that is in your muscles.

Okay?

Right. And so that means one of the challenges is as we age, we get worse at building muscle, we get really good at losing it. And if you don't use it, you lose it. And in fact, doing cardio, but not doing resistance training, if you cut calories and do cardio, you don't do resistance training. That just exacerbates it. It puts you into much more of a catabolic state where you're going to burn muscle and raise stress hormones. So I would rather see you say, okay, I'm going to commit to resistance training. I'm going to hit my four body parts. And I've done a lot of videos, like, you can go on YouTube, you can see my social feeds on Instagram. I talk a lot about the four areas of upper body, pushing upper body, pulling hips and thighs, and power core, but hitting each of those body parts at least twice a week and preferably three times with a 48 hour rest. So you might do upper body one day, lower body and core the next, and alternate. But you want to really start to focus on building muscle because muscle is our metabolic spanx. It holds everything in tighter, boosts your metabolism, and it's the first place we can start to restore blood sugar, good blood sugar tolerance and insulin sensitivity. So it's key. It's like super key. People all look at losing weight and the problem is we actually, if you have more muscle, you'll burn off fat, but you want to hold on to weight. That muscle, that's the heavyweight, you want to lose the fluff. Right? So if you're just looking at a scale, you might look like you're getting better. But if you're losing weight by losing muscle and holding on to fat, you're making yourself worse. So we want to make sure that you're, you're holding on to and building muscle. So that's step one.

And I love that because for so many years I've worked on, you know, like really not eating much, you know, just some extreme dieting and then working out a lot, getting that. And it's exactly the right. You think you're doing the right thing, but you're doing the wrong thing. So that's where your information is so valuable.

So what's interesting too about that, and the nice thing is our bodies are forgiving. You know, we can do all this stuff and we can repair it. But if you look at what happens chronically when you massively restrict calories and then do a lot of cardio is you actually lose lean tissue. And we want to do everything we can to hold on and build tissue, build muscle. It is the most important thing as we age is to have that muscle mass. It is super duper key. So that's the first step and you got to monitor it again. What you monitor and measure, you can improve. So step one is using a body composition scale. And then of course step two is adding in resistance training. And if you have to boot out some of the other to add in the resistance training. In my perfect world, we're moving more every day. We're out, we're walking, et cetera, and then we're getting that resistance training in. So another question on that. How is your sleep?

I sleep pretty good. The biggest contributor to lack of sleep for me is just stress and it's job related stuff. So. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

When I saw what you did for, for a job, I wanted to like, you know, much gratitude to you with having a son who's had a lot of mental health challenges. So, yes, Marsha is a mental health nurse practitioner. So highly stressful job. What do you do to help you, you know, since you're not quitting your job and please don't quit your job as we need you. But what do you do to help manage stress?

Yeah, so the area that I work in and it's just there's so much trauma in this world and you know, trying to, trying to calm that down, trying to do some healing, help people work through that. And I do. It's hard. You tend to carry stories home. And so one of the nice things, at least for me, is that I do have a bit of A commute. I live about half hour away from the reservation, so driving in and driving home gives me time to do a little bit of mind to be set. It's a time where I listen to some positive. Well, I listen to your podcast and I listen to other podcasts that, you know, kind of have positive, you know, kind of change my. My mindset, have a little bit of positive information or positive direction in them to. To kind of shift my energy.

So that's fantastic. I would highly recommend too. I did a podcast episode with Dr. Amy Opigan, who runs the Biology of Trauma Summit, and she is like one of the foremost experts in trauma and how it's stored in your body. Highly recommend listening to that and maybe even looking at learning some somatic experiencing or something else that you can shake it off, get it off. I know when my son was in the hospital, I just felt like when you see the animals that have to shake so they release the trauma and then they go on their way. I was like, I had to go do high intensity interval training where I would start sprint because I was like, I just had to get it off. So it is really important because it's. I had a great mentor early on who said, better out than in. Right. And they were talking about toxins. But gosh of trauma can be the biggest toxin of all. Right. So a way to get that out and then sleep. Of course we know that even one poor night of sleep can impact your insulin sensitivity activity in your blood sugar. So starting to track your sleep and looking at what you can do to really hit quality sleep is going to be another important one. I use. I track with two things and I will admit that I take the best score.

That's not the way to do it.

But that's what I do. I cheat. But I have an Oura ring and an apple watch. I think probably the Oura ring gives me better information. It's just I don't always like, quote what it says, but whether it's a garment, a Fitbit, it's, you know, find something to help you because it will just make you aware.

Sure.

And you'll see what impact things have. And then you'll go, okay, I need to address. Right. I need to address that. Like, my husband bought me a Kindle a couple years ago and it completely trashed my deep sleep. Because I used to just read a book before bed. Now all of a sudden I'm reading a Kindle and it was like, boof. I was like, I know better.

Yeah, right.

So we do you know, whatever you need to do to help you really prioritize that sleep. That's going to be a huge one. Big. When I look at what do you need to do to have great blood sugar control? Obviously, we're going to talk food in a moment and Sugar Impact Diet, but insulin resistance, or muscle, creating more muscle, getting good sleep, managing stress are mission critical. Now, food, of course, is where it all starts. And I know you said you had the Sugar Impact Diet. I'm going to give you a couple things that have. That I've kind of. I emphasize more than when I wrote the book, the book Sugar Impact Diet, I wrote after Virgin Diet. Because when I wrote Virgin Diet, the number one question people had after that was like, I can't quit sugar. And I'm like, okay, all right, I'll. But the book is really written for people to help them identify where sugar's sneaking in. And it's really not about eating no sugar. It's about knowing which to choose and which to lose and really realizing the impact these things are having on. Because I think for most of us, we're not going to the store and buying bags of sugar. It is more that it's sneaking into things that we're eating. And a lot of times we think we're being healthy. Like the Greek style yogurt with the fruit on the bottom that's really like a sundae, or the raspberry vinaigrette. You know, all these things that look like they're healthy, but they're actually like, loaded with sugar. And so the first part of that book helps you identify where sugar could be sneaking in. Were there any surprises for you during that part?

Yeah, there are actually a lot of surprises that you mentioned salad dressing, and that was a huge one because I was thinking, I was, you know, oh, I'm not having the French. I'm having the vinaigrette. That's got to be healthy, right? I bought at the health food co op, after all, you know, I know.

And what's sad about the health food stores is there's two items that are so damaging to our health that show up all over the health food stores that are still posing as healthy ingredients. And so I want to give them a shout out right now because they are the worst possible two things for you. If you have insulin resistance and if you have elevated blood sugar and a, you know, a larger waist size. And your triglycerides and HDL looked great. So that was good. I was like, yay, go you. But you, when you look at the different things that can indicate metabolic syndrome, high blood pressure, higher waist size. For women, it's greater than 35 inches. Elevated hemoglobin A1C, or fasting blood sugar. So you didn't have that triglyceride, LDL or HDL issues, but you had the rest. So when you go to the health food store, they have canola oil all over the place. And canola oil is not a healthy oil. In fact, I think a lot of the nutrition world, we're kind of on a rant to get these damaged seed oils out of people's hands. And if you look at a lot of them, the salad dressings out there that are pre made, first of all, they're a lot more expensive than just getting some extra virgin olive oil, which is what you should be doing, right? And either some apple cider vinegar or lemon juice, which is the easiest way to do a salad dressing. You know, Himalayan sea salt, really high quality extra virgin olive oil. It's a supplement. Treat it like that. And then apple cider vinegar or lemon juice. Both apple cider vinegar and lemon juice, by the way, help with insulin sensitivity. In fact, they had a study where they looked at vinegar and correlated to metformin because it was so effective. So apple cider vinegar, it's been used as like this weight loss tool for years and years and years, and no one ever knew why. Well, the reality is it's because it helps with insulin sensitivity. Lemon juice, besides taking your sweet tooth away because it's sour can lower the blood sugar response to a meal. So can cinnamon. So these are just therapeutic things you can do. Now, canola oil is one, and you'll see it in a lot of the salad dressings at health food stores. And it just, it makes me nuts because canola oil, corn oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, and, you know, basically vegetable oils, except for extra virgin olive oil and avocado oil, are generally rancid by the time you're getting them. Damaged seed oils and pro inflammatory, so they go out. The other one that shows up at the health food store that makes me nut is agave.

Oh, okay.

Agave is the worst sweetener of all. I'm sure you've read about in the sugar impact diet, because I rant about artificial sweeteners and agave, but especially agave, because it promotes insulin resistance. And for years in the diabetic world, it was being promoted because it didn't raise blood sugar. It doesn't raise blood sugar because the only organ that can metabolize it is the liver. So it zooms down to the liver where if it can't be converted to glucose, then stored as glycogen, it starts making fat. And basically the liver is probably full. So that's what it's doing. And along the way, it can raise blood pressure as well. And it's also the most aging sugar of all. But the reason it's used is it's super sweet. So you'll see agave syrup, or you'll see things like apple juice concentrate, which is super high in fructose, so that's the other one. Or crystalline fructose. We want to stay away from those. So back over to diet. So some of the places that sugar sneaks in that people don't realize, again, dressings, marinades, sauces, those tend to be the biggies where things are hidden. And then of course, a bunch of the, you know, processed foods and chips and cereals and all that kind of stuff. When you took the sugar impact quiz, what did you see as key things that you were noticing, you know, that sugar was where it was impacting you?

Well, I went through my. I threw out. I can't tell you how many bags of food from my house.

And people feel so guilty. They're like, okay, what can I do with this? And I'm like, yeah, I mean, you know, what are you going to say? Like, now that you know that it's something that's damaging and toxic for you, what would you give it to somebody else? Killer. I don't know what to do with it.

Yeah, but I just. Yeah, no, I got. I did go through that kind of guilt process too. It's like, this is. I just spent money on this or somebody. There's people that could use who. But I don't want to give them bad food. Food.

Right.

So. Yeah, so.

But what were some of the things you threw away?

Oh, gosh, lots of canned goods. So, you know, baked beans.

Oh, oh, baked beans. Candy beans.

Yeah, Starchy things, you know, the noodles, the things like that, salad dressings, the sauces, scanning these, these, you know, on things that I actually thought that I was making good choices in. I mean, truly, I. I knew baked beans were not probably the best choice. But there's certain, like it was, I don't know, Memorial weekend or something. You're going to have the picnicky foods. Right. Or something like that. And I was like, oh, there's are still in the cupboard. And like, oh, gosh, I didn't realize they're as bad as they are. But they really are quite bad. And. But it was, it was truly the things that I. That. And I knew that. But the, the shocking part was that I had been intentional about buying what I thought was a healthy item, only to find out by actually really looking at the label and comparing it to the list that's in your book to find out that, wow, this is really not healthy at all. And the manufacturing companies are so sneaky and deceptive, aren't they?

They'll put no sugar added on a product and they'll use apple juice concentrate so they can say it. And it is absolutely. It makes me very, very upset. And I remember when I first published that book, I went on a rant about Craisins, and Craisins actually sent me a letter and they said, we are, you know, we don't have any more sugar than raisins. I go, well, I don't like raisins either. Like, they shouldn't be there either. Dried fruits, candy, like, you know, so anyway, craziness doesn't like me. So. So I think that's important for people to hear because here's the thing. It's. What's so frustrating is I, I. What I see out in the world having done this now for 30 years, is that people are trying really hard, you know, but they're, they're being duped with misinformation and they end up following the wrong set of rules and then it doesn't work. And then they figure it's their age or their genetics.

Well, even the labeling on the packages, you know, they'll have all these things that say, you know, like you said, no sugar added or.

Right. All natural means nothing.

Yeah, or zero fat. And there's, you know, things like that.

But zero fat means lots of sugar, right?

Right.

Yeah.

Ray Ban Meta glasses come with open ear audio so you can listen to.

Your favorite music without blocking out the world around you.

Hey, Meta, play Gorgeous.

Here's Gorgeous by Doja Cat. You can also ask Meta AI questions.

Hey, Meta, when's Doja Cat's next concert?

Doja Cat is playing at the Los Angeles theater next Tuesday.

Sweet Ray Ban Meta glasses available at.

Ray Ban stores and other authorized retailers. All right, so now you become label savvy. We are working on, by the way, on a new swaps list because I made swaps for both my books. My next book will be Swap to Drop. And we are going to be working on new swaps lists with labels, with new, you know, manufacturers, because there are some great things that have come out. I mean, There's a lot of good options out there. So I'm gonna give you just kind of a little updated version of what I want you to think about with Sugar Impact Diet. So the premise of Sugar Impact Diet is that we have to retrain your taste bud to appreciate natural sweetness and savory and spicy and sour. And again, sour can take your sweet tooth away. But we do it over time. Like if you go cold turkey and you're used to being a sugar burner, which means you probably eat every couple hours, if you go too long without eating, you're hangry. When you lose weight, you don't lose it off your waist. Those are signs that someone is a sugar burner, which means their body can't even access stored fat for fuel. And we want to transition you over where you easily can use fat for fuel. Which means you might be one of those people that goes, gosh, should I eat lunch? Which was never me, by the way. Like, when it happened, I went, it happened. I forgot if I ate or not. That's. It wasn't because I had dementia. It was because I really forgot because I just not hungry. And that's where we want to get to. And so as you're building your plate, because in all my books I talk about eating by the plate, I want to give you something to think about here. Do you have an idea of what you want your ideal weight to be?

Right now I'm looking at like 150.

Okay, so if you want your ideal weight to be 150, and let's just say that we would like you to be 20% body fat. And I'll do that. And especially it's easy for math, which means that that's £120 of lean body mass. When you get on a body fat scale, you'll find two numbers that are super important. One is body fat percentage. So how many fat. How many pounds of fat you have, and then how much is lean body mass, which is everything else. And of the lean body mass, obviously what you're improving is muscle. So what we're going for is 120 pounds of lean body mass. So your protein requirements to get there are going to mean that you need at least 120 grams of protein a day. So which may be more than what you're used to. And that means, you know, if you divide it between three meals, it's 40 grams a meal. It might be that you eat 30 in the morning and then you do 40, 50. However you do it, that would be what I call your baseline. If you're working out really hard trying to build, I take it up from there to more around a pound per pound, gram per pound of the weight you want to be 150. You can see that when we start to build your meals, I always start first with protein. What's interesting is we've been looking at all this research you talked about intermittent fasting. I'm a huge fan of intermittent fast fasting and transitioning into it as you become a fat burner because it really helps with insulin sensitivity. But there's some super cool research now showing that both what you eat when you eat. So it's not just what you eat and when you eat, but it's also what you eat first when you eat.

Okay, Right.

And you think, well, I mean, I'm eating everything within half an hour. Does it matter? It turns out it does. And if you start your meal with protein, you have a lower blood sugar response than if you start your meal with, say, starchy carbs.

Okay.

So what I'd like to teach people to do is as you're building your plate or your loaded smoothie, the first thing you do is prioritize your protein. Okay, protein first.

What.

What's the protein I need based on the protein? Let's say that you did wild salmon. Well, you know, if you're eating wild salmon and you're having six to eight ounces of that, that you're getting some fat from that, probably a serving. Then you add in your non starchy vegetables. Because I want you eating 5 to 10 servings of non starchy vegetables a day. And with a serving, be a cup raw or half cup cooked. And let's say that you made a big salad with olive oil, extra virgin olive oil, and some apple cider vinegar. And maybe there was a tablespoon of olive oil or. Or two. That could be one to two servings of fat right there. Right? And you have three cups of salad. So you got three servings of non starchy vegetables in there, which is great. And then you can decide at that point, since you've got your veggies, you've now got fat. And I tell people somewhere in the two to four fat servings and for you and where you're looking to go, it's probably more like two, maybe three, but probably more around the two. Then if you want, it's a little bit of a slow, low carb. And what's interesting is we can live. We have to have protein to survive. We have to have fat to survive. We need to have water to survive. We do not need carbs. We want to eat the non starchy vegetables for all the polyphenols, the phytochemicals in them. And then I put in my starchy carb area, fruit and what I call, like the least processed. So things like squashes and tubers and lentils and things like that, and use those sparingly. Right?

Okay.

One to two servings of fruit a day. Now, when you're going through the transition period on sugar impact diet, where we're really getting you to shift to be a fat burner, I actually take fructose out altogether, and I take all fruit out because fructose really blocks fat burning. And the more fruit you eat, the more fructose you eat, the better you get at converting, at transporting fructose, getting it to the liver and making fat. So we want you to be bad at that, not good at that. But once you're through that, one to two servings of fruit a day, especially berries, great for all the phytochemicals in it, but a limited amount of those slow, low carbs. Again, protein first, adding in the non starchy vegetables, taking a check as to how much you've gotten fat between those two things, seeing if you need any additional fat from, say, avocados or nuts and seeds. I like whole fats first and then potentially a little bit of slow, low carbs. I tend to use my slow, low carbs like a half of a barely ripe banana in my smoothie, or I'll do a little bit of blueberries, you know, with my right after dinner. But I tend to leave it to a pretty limited amount of them. So I think this is where we need to be careful, especially with restoring insulin sensitivity. And then let's talk your intermittent fasting. How are you doing that? What's your meal timing look like?

Well, it's been a process, and the really positive thing is that I've been doing it together with my husband. So that is, I guess, key in being really successful with that because I don't worry about. I'm like, okay, we're fasting. So, you know, it's not like I have to cook for him and the kids are grown.

Oh, it's very freeing, isn't it?

It is, yeah. And we've saved a lot of money.

So. So, so I. First of all, I got a shout out. It's fantastic. You're doing it with him. I always say that to my husband. I go, I don't know what I would do if I was like with someone who, you know, ate junk and wanted to snack all day, like we'd have a problem. So it's great you're doing it together. So what's your like, like, what's your typical day look like? Are you, you know, with. In terms of meal timing and what you're doing?

Okay, so right now, and we've been doing this for literally months. So we stop eating on Sunday afternoon around 3 o'. Clock. We have like a Sunday, a Sunday dinner early and then we don't. Then that's our bigger fast. We actually do most weeks that we rarely miss. We actually do where we don't eat from Sunday afternoon and then all day Monday and then we don't eat till Tuesday.

Wow, that's fantastic. And here's the thing, like we have you focusing protein when you're eating. Those days when you're not eating, it's fine. You drop something called mtor, you clean out a lot of the cellular trash through autophagy and you get really insulin sensitive. So it's fantastic. That's advanced.

Yeah. What's been great about that is a couple things. One is we, we actually don't get hungry. It's, we, it's, we've done so much that it's not hard, it's not hard to do it. And people look, people, if you say something that you, oh, I haven't, I'm not eating or whatever, they're like, how can you not? Well, I'm not even hungry. Because we've gotten, our body's gotten used to it or something.

But you didn't start there and I think that's important.

No, no, we didn't start one day.

Go, let's just not eat tomorrow.

No, no. And it was hard. I, gosh, I was like lightheaded and had cravings like crazy. And the more we've done it, that's just, really just disappeared. Actually feel more energy, more focus, more clear, slept better. All kinds of positive things from that. And so we've done that. We often do a one meal a day where we'll just have what, you know, like almost it's kind of a 24 hour fast where we'll do a couple days a week, we'll just have one meal a day. And then we usually, and maybe this is my downfall, but usually like today it happens to be Friday, but we'll say, oh gosh, you know, it's been Friday, let's, let's have something special, you know, it's whatever. And then we're at home all day Saturday. And I feel like, let's cook. Let's have a. A nice breakfast. And so, you know, sometimes I feel like I might really undo. I don't think we're really undoing all that. Good.

Unpack that, Marcia. So. So when you say it's Friday and it's Saturday, when you're. So walk me through, like, what a Friday, Saturday looks like in terms of what you're eating and when.

So we often go out on Friday night. And it's been, you know, you know, of course, stressful jobs, long hours. You have this mentality that, oh, gosh, I need to relax. I deserve to relax. I need to enjoy life. I deserve to enjoy life. Let's do something special. We work really hard, we get to do something for us, you know, and spend that time together, which is lovely. And I tend, we. You can always try to make some good choices, but then sometimes we don't so much. And, well, what does that look like?

Let's walk through it. Because here's the thing. There's like, this kind of, like, sheepishness, et cetera. First of all, let that go. And, you know, I think that we're always peeling the onion of health, like, in the way I really like to work on. Getting healthy is a. Is a lifelong thing, right?

Sure.

And I remember way back when, because I've been into this since I was 12, and people are like, oh, you're a health nut. As if this is a bad thing. I'm like, but this is a lifelong thing. And, you know, I think it's. We're best when we focus on one thing at a time and really looking at that and improving that. So maybe next it's, I'm going to start resistance training, and after that, it's, I'm going to use a continuous glucose monitor to really watch how these things impact me. And I'll tell you, one of the things that can be really helpful I've been using. I'm testing now a different one. I used a Nutrisense, and now I'm testing levels of these continuous glucose monitors to see what these things really do to you. So you can see, gosh, what happens if I eat later at night? What happens if I have that extra thing? How much does it really impact me? Because I might be making a big deal out of nothing, or there might be a way better choice I could make that wouldn't make as big of a difference. So when you're kind of talking about this and dancing around it and not telling me yeah. So, okay, tell me what exactly we're talking about.

Sure. So green meal pizza and a bottle of wine.

Green meal pizza and a bottle of wine. Okay, so what's green meal pizza?

Lots of carbs. So, you know, it's the crust, the, you know, the sauce, whichever veggies, you know, green peppers or pepperoni sausage.

Is this somewhere you went out to or is it one that you got at home?

No, we, we go there.

Okay, so a couple things to say about this. Like first off, any gluten free or cauliflower style crust pizza places around you?

No. Well, I think you could, you could, I think that you could request not cauliflower, but I think you could request the gluten free.

So check and see. So here's a way to do this because we still do pizza, but what we do are either gluten free or cauliflower crusts. And we've, we have now like we moved to Tampa. Like I made it just part of my, you know, thing is I'm going to find the best ones here and test all of them, right. And so we'll, we'll have like family pizza night to test different ones. But we always start out two with a big salad. And then you make sure that whatever you have for pizza, if they don't have like, you know, if you can get a protein based pizza, pizza, great. But if not, try having like a salad with some chicken on it and then have two pieces of pizza. Because what's the difference between half a pizza pizza and two pieces of pizza? Really? You just want the taste, right? So if you started with the salad with some protein on it and split the salad and had the pizza and got a gluten free or cauliflower crust, then you're great. So easy enough to do wine. I did a podcast with Todd White from Dry Farm Wines, who was a keto guy. His, he and his business partners were paleo and keto and discovering they drink wine and would blow up their blood sugar. And he discovered that in the US there's 87 or different additives they can add to wine. And a lot of them have sugar in them and it was blowing them up. But when they went and started drinking European wines, they didn't have the same challenge. And so he started this company, Dry Farm Wine, where he orders and he lab tests all these wines. One of the big things he showed me was, was, you know, it's. The European wines tend to be a lot better. And so that's the other thing that I do is I don't drink US wines anymore. Very rarely I focus on getting the lower alcohol percentage, low sugar European wines. And whenever possible I just drink my dry farms and I take it to restaurants. So that's another one you can do. So those are easy. What I want to look at is we want you to have an amazing life, have an amazing lifestyle lifestyle and then learn how to do these things, you know, so you can go out and go, okay, you know, we worked hard. What are we going to do? And enjoy all of it and not have that little niggly thing in the back of you going, I shouldn't be doing this.

Right, right.

Really enjoy it.

Full on. Enjoy it. Because you're, you're, you're still doing something great for yourself too. So does that sound doable?

That does sound doable, yeah.

And then what happens Saturday morning?

Oh yeah, well, we, you know, it's, it's our downtime and oh gosh, usually Saturday morning is more relaxed and it would be, you know, most mornings we don't eat breakfast because we're either, because we're intermittent therapy. But then Saturday is kind of a breakfast morning. So that would be, you know, scrambled eggs or I'll make a quiche. I like to bake even. I don't know, last Saturday I made, you know, bad me. I, you know, whatever. But I made apple coffee cake.

Well, so I've got some amazing recipes in the Sugar impact diet cookbook on my website. And then I've got friends who've got amazing recipes. And so Diana Coolian is one who's just got incredible recipes. Why don't you make it your hobby if you love to do that, to find healthy versions? Because it's so much easier now. There's almond flour and coconut flour and allulose as a sweetener. There's so many different ways you can make, like we make keto dark chocolate ganache brownies that are unbelievable. They are so like no one would know that we, you know, that they were any. Like, you would never have a clue if we didn't tell you. But we tell people because then they're like, oh my gosh, these have no sugar. So like there's so many things that you can do. I make a, for, for Thanksgiving, I make a dairy free, gluten free, sugar free pumpkin cheesecake that I would put up against any cheesecake out there.

Wow. Yeah. It's just that been cooking a certain style for my whole life and so it is a big shift in, I know how to do this. This is Easy. This is my go to. And you kind of keep making fun. Yeah. Change it up.

Make it fun.

Yeah, Right? Yes, it does sound fun.

Because this, I mean, there, 10 years ago, 12 years ago, this was way more difficult. Cult. Like, you had to go find the coconut milk. You had to hunt into the Asian food aisle. And now there's like so many great things out there that you can make this all fun. Then you can go, you know what? I'm going to make quiche. This is going to be incredible. And I'm not going to, like. Then I don't have to feel a little guilty about it because there's nothing in here that's a problem. Cool.

Yeah.

Deal.

All right, deal.

Because then it makes it very easy to do all of these things because honestly, there's not a whole. I like. You're doing amazing with the intermittent fasting. That is such a big deal. For helping restore insulin sensitivity, for triggering autophagy, which takes out the cellular debris, for activating stem cells that help you live longer. So all sorts of great stuff there. And, you know, just. You're already exercising. So we're just changing what it is. And all we're doing with the cooking is just doing some swaps. It's just learning things. You're just used to doing it a certain way. And we're just going to shift some ingredients.

Not hard.

Right.

Nice. One of my big wins is that I haven't had any pop for four or five years now. And I used to drink a lot of diet pop. And thinking again, who wouldn't think that?

You know, I mean, that's what they sold us. I know. I was a diet coke addict for years.

Right. Me too. And so. But then I did again, more research. And, you know, you're thinking, well, it's the American Heart association, the American Diabetes association, they always say, sure, drink diet pop and it's not going to cause cancer. You'd have to drink like a swimming pool full of it. But the fact is. Well, maybe it won't cause cancer, but it does a lot of other damage.

The very thing they created it for, which was a way for diabetics to have sweet, is the very thing it causes problems with because it causes glucose intolerance. So I just wanna give you one last thing. Cause we talked resistance training, the body composition and monitoring visceral fat. We talked about shifting up, focusing protein first and starting to play around now with different ingredients, which will be fun. And one tool that's gonna help you there is using a continuous glucose monitor which will be easy for you to do because you're in the field. So, you know, but you know, they've always used these for diabetics. I actually think they're missing the mark. I think it's super impactful. And again, I always go back to what you measure, monitor. You can improve when you see in real time what happens when you eat a specific way and you went, okay, what if I went out, If I went out for pizza night, you can test it going just eating pizza the way you've been doing it and having a US wine, switching over to having a salad with protein and then having two pieces of a gluten free or a cauliflower crust and having a, you know, European wine and check the difference. And again lead first with the salad with protein, then have the, and, and just check the difference because you'll still have the same experience. But the blood pressure or the blood sugar difference should be marked. So it would be great to have that. I, I just went all like literally went on all over the world. Trip to Dubai in the Maldives on a speaking thing was so cool. But I wore a CGM so I could kind of just see the stuff that was going on and it was really consistent all throughout. And the only time it went sideways on me was I was at the buffet and they had kiwi fruit and I'm like, ooh, I love kiwifruit. And usually it's such a pain because it's got all that skin. And so I loaded a bowl of it and my, my blood sugar went foof, you know, flew away. And I was like, wow, wow. You know, and you think most of us like, it's just fruit and it's like, yeah, but it's a very, you know, these tropical fruits can be very problematic if you overload. I'm sure if I'd had a reasonable dose of it, but no, I had a big bowl. So it, you know, it really gives you, helps you, it's such a great, great tool for helping you like really figure out what you can do. So I'd highly recommend that too. So weight training, the body comp scale, the tracking your sleep and then going protein first and the blood sugar monitor, those are the things. Pick one though. Don't start, don't go out and do all five of these at once. Make yourself nuts. Get the first one and then go to the next one. Okay, okay.

Okay. I have actually added more protein in and felt better with that. By adding the shakes.

Yeah, I do the shakes and I also added collagen my whole body. Collagen too. And that then kicks it up even more because there's 11 grams of protein in there and collagen besides, like it's for anyone. 40 plus, everyone should be doing collagen. It's going to help with muscle mass. It's to going to help with hair, skin, and nails. So it's super important. So I've been smuggling that into everything I can. So that's an easy way to just power up that. And I use loaded smoothies. That's how I break my fast. So whenever it happens to be. So it's an easy hack. All right, so what I'd love for you as you go through this is track it and then I'd love to come back and hear hear what happened. Okay.

Awesome. Okay. Sounds like a plan. Love.

Any other last questions before we jump off?

Well, I think I put like a little plan together and speak. I think getting a. I had not thought about getting a continuous glucose monitor. So changing it up and getting more training, you know, exercise that's focused on muscle. It would be a great plan. And yes, it could playing with some of these recipes.

All right. Fun, right? It's fun, right? It's fun. All right, then go do it. Have fun. And I can't wait to hear what happens.

Wonderful. I will report back.

All right, see ya.

Thanks.

All right, thank you for tuning in to another episode of Ask the Health Experts. Beginning some breakthrough. And again, if you would like to be featured, just go to jjvirgin.com signup. I do want to remind you too of the things we talked about today. Number one, get a body composition scale that looks at visceral fat. You can go on to my website and under resources and we list the ones that I love. Number two was make sure that you are leading your diet on sugar impact Diet. You're looking to control your blood sugar. Lead with protein first on your plate, build around that and use a continuous glucose monitor. Really see what's working for you and what's not. Next thing is adding resistance training in. Next thing is monitoring your sleep. Remember what you monitor and measure. You can improve. So those are some of the things that Marcia is going to be working on. I'm looking forward to hearing her results. And again, if you'd like to join us, you know how to do it. And if you've not yet subscribe, you don't want to miss any juicy bits. So make sure you go to subscribetoj.com all right, I'll see you next time. Bye.

Bye. Hello listeners. This is Anne Bogle, author, blogger and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week I tag all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately, and I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change, or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything, you'll learn something about yourself as a reader and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read, with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and Visit our website whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com to find out more.