Soluble Fiber May Be Your Best Tool to Reverse Type 2 Diabetes, with Chris Reade

I'm also not a big disciplined person. So I have friends of mine who went a different direction. They went super high protein, all paleo, 100% meat, no carbs whatsoever. And I thought about that and I was, I was like, man, I just, I didn't think I had the discipline for it, honestly. And I didn't think I could stick to that. And so I was looking for something else that I could stick to. And then I discovered all the soluble fiber research and I was like, oh man. This is kind of my jam.

If you want to live like you matter, ditch the pills, look great, and feel freaking amazing, you're in the right place. I'm Dr. Wendie Trubow. I'm Dr. Ed Levitan. Welcome to the Five Journeys Podcast, where we empower you to live a vibrant and healthy life by optimizing your structural, chemical, emotional, social, and spiritual lives. Hang on to your hats. Welcome to the Feel Freaking Amazing podcast. I'm Wendie Trubow, no Ed Levitan today. And today we have Chris Reed, who is a lifelong entrepreneur and is committed to bringing practical solutions to reversing type 2 diabetes. His book, Beating Diabetes, was published this year. So today we're gonna spend some time diving into his approach because nobody should die from diabetes. End of story. All right, Chris, welcome. Thanks for being here.

Thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it.

How'd you get into this? Like, why this topic?

Well, I honestly, I never thought to write a book on diabetes, that's for sure. And in 2017, I just happened, you know, really, I say it's a, you know, I call it a botched insurance renewal that saved my life. I had, like a lot of people, you know, you get into your mid-40s, you have life insurance and you have to take a blood test. So I did that and everything was fine. And then my agent happened to switch to a different company and you, you can't kind of follow the policies. So whoever picked up my account never did anything. And so, uh, I noticed, wait, I never got a bill. And so I called my agent up and he is like, hey, remember the part where I moved to a different company? Um, you gotta talk to them. And I said, well, I don't even know who them is. They never called me. And so he goes out and he reaches out to his old company, finds, he's like, good thing you didn't die because you I don't have any life insurance, my friend. And, uh, so he's like, well, we'll get you set up with my new company, blah, blah, blah. So we do that. And of course that means you gotta take blood tests again. So within about 12 months, I took the standard battery of blood tests you take for a life insurance thing. In the first one, I was totally fine. And my A1C, which for your listeners is the average blood measurement of the amount of sugar in your blood over a month. Right? Normal is 5.7 or lower. Go to the hospital is about 13. And diabetes itself starts around 7. I always say—

Wait, pause for a minute. Pause for a minute because I just wanna, I'm stricter than most of our listeners and everyone in our practice is stricter. So if your hemoglobin A1C is trending up, we don't wait for you to get diabetes before we say you have a problem. So, you know, around 5.5, I'm starting to say, well, you know, you just wanna pay attention to this. 5.6, I'm all over them. And 5.7, I'm like, we got a problem, right? Like, we really do have a problem. So, so just to be clear, the, the levels are—

you're a little more proactive than most.

Yeah, we're not looking for you to get— we don't want you to have that diagnosis on our watch. So, okay, I'm sorry to interrupt your story.

No, no, that's fine.

So I want to leave with them like, oh yeah, 6.2 is cool. It's not cool.

No, no, no, absolutely. And most people, most people's experience— and this is probably why this had such a tremendous impact in my life. Most people's experience is exactly what you just described. Hey Chris, you know, your A1C's creeping up a little bit. Maybe you should think about taking a little less sugar in your diet.

Da da da.

That's what most people's experience. That happens for a long period of time, and then eventually it gets outta control and gets over, uh, 6 or 7, and then they're diabetic, right? Well, in my case, it jumped from like 5 normal one year to 9.1 the following year.

And it wasn't a lab error, right? It wasn't.

That's the first thing I thought. I went into it, you know, and, and like a lot of middle-aged men, I hadn't been to a primary care doctor in years.

You know, I love you. Insurance companies love men. They love you.

Never go to the doctor because, yeah, they never go to the doctor and then they croak, right? And, uh, but anyway, so I, I first I said, oh, it's totally a lab error, this is BS, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It was all a total denial. So I go in there and I, I talk to primary care physician, she She says, well, here's a prescription for metformin, and you know, if that doesn't really work out, we'll get you on some insulin and then we'll keep going. And I was like, wait, what? And she says, this is an incurable progressive disease. You will have this the rest of your life.

Are you kidding me?

No, no, that's a quote actually. And, uh, so I said, okay, thank you for your time. I'm gonna go find another solution. So, and actually, and, and people like to get down on, on doctors about that kind of thing. She probably saw 35 patients that day, and none of them probably would have gone to the amount of trouble I went to change their outcomes. Most people will just take the drugs. That's what most people do. Um, I didn't. Uh, I really wanted to live like a, quote, normal person. I didn't want a bunch of prescription drugs in my life. So I went and I did a lot of research. And did a lot of experimenting, frankly, on myself and got my A1C down to under 5.7 in 4 months, basically, and stayed that way within a range of 4.9 to 5.5, depending on the, the quarter. I test about every quarter or so at home. But anyway, I never really thought to write about any of that. That, that was an experiment that I went through. It, it changed my life, changed a lot of things about my life.

So wait, I'm sorry again, but no meds, right?

No meds.

In normal range.

Mm-hmm. And I can say, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get to how I did that.

Yeah, we're gonna talk about that, but I just wanna make it clear to the listeners, you're not on insulin, you're not on metformin, you're not on any program per se. You are someone with a past history of type 2 diabetes, right?

And, and actually, so, and I, I wrote it, there's a whole chapter in my book called The Scarlet Letter D. I never actually had a second test over 5.7. So I actually never got an official diabetes diagnosis because in America, as you know, if you get that sewn into your medical chart, as far as the medical establishment is concerned, especially the insurance side of it, you are a diabetic forever, which is totally not cool, but it is just the way we kind of roll in this country. Um, which is a bummer, but it is anyway. So the point is, I went through many years, lived the way I live, didn't really think too much about writing it down, or, or, you know, I would tell friends or whatever, but that was it. So I had a friend about a year ago, uh, he calls me up. His A1C has gone up to 13, which, like I said, is enough to put you in the hospital. And he says, look, what did you do? And I said, well, Tim, I'll tell you. And I told him, and then it wasn't enough. So then I wrote it in an email, and I said, this is just not structured enough. So then I wrote a book.

Um, you wrote the manual. You're like, here's the manual, right?

And that's what I started with, like, here's what you want to do. And then I was like, this is just not structured enough. Um, and then I hired an editor to help me fill in the gaps of where I was leaving things out, where, where there were jumps.. And, and that's how I ended up with the book that, that I have now. So what did I do? Right? That's the, the most obvious question you asked earlier. So what I discovered, which is not particularly new research, and it certainly isn't revolutionary, starting in the '70s, people discovered that if you have sol— lots of soluble fiber before you have other foods, that contain or become sugar in your blood, depending, you know, certain, certain types of foods we'll talk about. If you have a lot of soluble fiber before then, you will basically never get the sugar spikes that cause your A1C go up, to go up, and therefore you will never become diabetic or you'll be stopped being diabetic and insulin resistant. And that's like I said, people started noticing that in the '70s and there's a lot of research including a lot of longitudinal studies. That go on for at this point 20+ years showing that you can do this with the diet that I use today, or I really don't like calling it a diet 'cause diet's something you do for a little while, but more the approach to food and basically soluble fiber, which is broccoli, Brussels sprouts, chickpeas, beans of every variety, chia seeds, all sorts of stuff, which is very, very common once you start looking for it. It's not hard food to find. Slows down your digestion. It gums up the works. It makes you feel full. It lowers your, your sugar absorption because it slows down your whole digestive process. And as a result, you— a couple of nice things happen. One, your A1C starts going down, but two, you lose weight. Your cholesterol improves. All sorts of great things start happening when you eat lots of soluble fiber, amongst others. You lose weight partly because It's very filling. Yeah, it's very, very filling food.

There's a lot to unpack here, so let's go sort of inch by inch. So soluble fiber is generally plant-based foods, right? We're not talking about meats, we're not talking about protein, we're not talking about processed carbs, we're talking about vegetables.

Primarily, almost vegetables and legumes. Legumes? How do you say that?

Legumes, legumes. And then these are also, you know, there's some correlated things. You mentioned the cholesterol, it's good for your heart, it's good to clean your gut, it decreases your risk of colon cancer. It also helps detox from heavy metals and mycotoxins. Like, it's really got an all-around benefit. But I have to back up. Were you overweight when you got your diagnosis of diabetes?

Yeah, so I was, um, not tremendously. I said I'm an athlete. I play sports all the time. I play volleyball. I play 3 or 4 times a week. Um, and so, and I'm able to, to play at a pretty high, reasonably high level. Hugely high level, reasonably high level. And so I never really thought of myself as anything other than a healthy person. I never— I don't really get sick a lot. I was overweight. I was 197 pounds. I'm 5'10". I'm 174 pounds right now. So I dropped. And, and in the studies, one of the things they note is dropping 10% of your body weight is a huge correlate to, uh, reversing or putting type 2 diabetes in remission. And so I did drop 10% of my body weight. Uh, I dropped about 22 pounds. Um, and in the same 4 months, frankly, I mean, it, it was remarkable how fast, uh, I lost weight, uh, doing this without really— that was a side benefit. That wasn't— I didn't feel overweight. And if you look at pictures of me, I could lose a few pounds, but I don't look like I'm overweight, overweight.

You were fluffy. You were fluffy.

I was a little fluffy.

Okay. And, and When you, when you lost the weight, when you looked back on the way you were eating before you started this way, what are the things that you stopped eating and substitute— subbed in your broccoli, chia seeds, legumes, blah, blah, blah? Like what went and what came?

So the big part of my book, and this is a whole— I have two chapters on this, more or less. One is about what foods become sugar, right? So, and lots and lots of people write about this. So white carbs, rice, potatoes, stuff like that, generally going to be sugar when you eat them, right? But I cut out all the simple things, right? So no more sugar in my coffee, no more dessert. I was a, you know, come home from volleyball and throw down, you know, ice cream with some Nutella on top sort of guy, right? And, and so I would pair my— because I used to do the, the— and you, you hear a lot of people say this. I used to say it all the time. I do all of this exercise. I have earned all of the extra calories and food that I want, right? That there's, that there's this idea that exercise and, and caloric intake somehow balance each other. They really don't. Food really is the thing. And lots and lots of people saying that now, but I mean, it's really true. And in my case, a lot of it really was unnecessary. I, a lot of, like, I would come home, like, standard dinner in our house used to be, I grew up in New York and so bagel, egg, and cheese. So the bagel is just, that's nothing but sugar. The whole thing is sugar. And, and so skipping that and changing out for a lot of much more soluble fiber friendly foods at every single meal. And it's, so a lot of people say, right, what does that look like? So let's talk about yesterday since it's easy, right? So yesterday I woke up, uh, I'm a software developer by trade or by, by training. And so in my world, we say ease of use equals use. Whatever is the easiest thing to do is the thing you're gonna do, right? And so when we build software, that's what we try to build for. And in my case, that means that the oatmeal casserole, which is one of the recipes I have in my book. Is the simplest thing. It's in a pan. It lasts about all week, and it's the easiest, fastest thing you could eat in my house for breakfast. And so, big surprise, that's what I had for breakfast yesterday. And I like to heat it up for about 30 seconds in the microwave, throw some yogurt on top, regular old Greek yogurt, no sugar added, no fake blueberries or any of that sort of junk. There's blueberries in the oatmeal casserole. But anyway, ate that for breakfast. I went and had sushi for lunch. Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Slow me down. Do you put any type of allulose or stevia or monk fruit into it? Like what, what's in your casserole?

So my wife likes to switch it up. It always has blueberries in it and she'll throw in whatever she sees at the store that she likes. So she likes raspberries a lot, so she'll throw raspberries in there, which is also a good source of soluble fiber, by the way. But, uh, she'll do apples. She'll cut up some apples and throw it in there. I mean, it's whatever happens to cut up and it also gives some variety to it, so it's different.

Does she put any chia or hemp or any type or basil seeds or anything in it for oatmeal?

Lots of oatmeal. But you could— she has— she makes— she does a great chia pudding that I love that we both eat. But no, she— you could do that. We don't. It's primarily basically oatmeal and blueberries and yogurt, right? I mean, it's a version of that. We just make it with this casserole, which makes it super easy, which is the key part.

And it doesn't— it doesn't spike your blood sugar that you monitor. Like, does it? Didn't spike you? No.

No, no, no. And it's because the oatmeal, right? The oatmeal's just, it sat overnight, it sit in the fridge or for 4 or 5 days sits in the fridge and it just gets more soluble, if that's a word, right? And, and so yeah, so it's all, but if you notice everything that's in there was a natural food. The oatmeal, the blueberries, it's a whole fruit. It's not juice. It's all of that. So I mean, there's, there's a, a lot of goodness in that. So that's what I had for breakfast. Then I went for sushi lunch yesterday and when I go to sushi places, I always order a giant bowl of edamame first. And edamame is chock full of soluble fiber. It's basically a giant bowl of soluble fiber. And so I have that first. I order myself a bowl. I was with a friend yesterday, so they had whatever they had as a, I think they had miso soup. I had a big old bowl of edamame. Then I had a roll and a, tuna sushi and that again, balanced that out. And then for dinner last night, we had Mexican and I had chips, black bean dip, and then enchiladas with refried beans. And so it kind of doubled down on the bean servings last night at the Mexican place. But anyway, if you add up all the numbers, that's about 15 to 17 grams of soluble fiber, somewhere in there.

In total or per meal?

No, in, in total.

It's not even that much.

No, it's really not that much. And, and this is actually a one piece that I've never— I have a whole chapter on studies. One I would love to see somebody do is whether or not my math of 1 gram of soluble fiber equals 1 gram of sugar. Is really accurate or not. I suspect it isn't accurate, but it's a, I'm a, I'm a straightforward person. I gotta live a normal life, so I just make those things equivalent. But anyway, so that's 15, 16 grams. That's a pretty normal day for me. And that keeps my blood sugar completely under control and my A1C stays normal. And, and sometimes depending on a lot of different factors gets low.

You know, it's interesting when I'm listening to what you're eating, I wouldn't have pegged that necessarily as a diabetic, type 2 diabetes eating plan because it's chock-full of carbs. It's, you know, it's not a low-carb plan in any way. And it also sounds a little lighter on the protein than I would've expected. So it's interesting to me that you responded so beautifully to that tweak.

So my buddy who I was talking about, So, so Tim, unlike me, so I was a little fluffy. Tim was full on over it. He was probably 300 pounds. Tim dropped 100 pounds and got his A1C down to 4.9 in 4 months.

Wow.

I mean, it makes it, it's a tremendous difference, but it's all about the system. That's the, for me, if there's a message that could be taken away, it's that, and this is what my editor helped me with. She's like, well, what do you do to stick to this? And I said, well, funny you should ask. Like I said, a couple of things. I habit stack, right? And habit stacking is taking a thing that you want to do and stacking it with a thing you're definitely going to do, right? And so that's why I'm— ease of use equals use, right? So easiest things to eat in my house are all soluble fiber things. And so everything that, that's the simplest thing we can possibly eat, it's always gonna be soluble fiber foods because that makes it that much more likely that I will do it. And there's a lot of research, I'm sure you've probably had somebody on talking about this earlier this year. Somebody came out with a study indicating that as little as 5 minutes of exercise, walking, not even real exercise, was enough to drop your blood sugar by about 20% after a meal. And so I read this study and I was like, well, I know what to do. I gotta, I have 2 dogs, I gotta walk 'em anyway. So I moved my dog walk time from before bed, I moved it to after dinner. And so I get that little extra pop of knocking my blood sugar down a little bit. And basically I try to, to systematize everything I can do to make it the easiest thing for me to do is to stay on system. And then I don't torture myself. This is the— I have a whole chapter on forgiveness. I don't torture myself when I go off the rails for something.

Okay, let's talk about that, because I always say to my, my patients that as a human, you're going to live your life and there will be times when you do things that might not be optimal. However, it's, it's not about being perfect. Perfection is not the goal. The goal is if you go off the rails, to narrow and shorten the time you spend off the rails, as opposed to saying, I'm off the rails, screw it, I'm just going to stay off the rails for the next 8 months. No, it's like, okay, I went off the rails, forgive, move forward and get back on in the shortest period of time possible, as opposed to I'm not ever going to go off the rails because that's, that's like abstinence. That always fails. That is not sustainable. Yeah.

And I'm also not a big discipline person, right? So I have, I have friends of mine, who went a different direction. They went super high protein, all paleo, 100% meat, no carbs whatsoever. And I thought about that and I was, I was like, man, I just, I didn't think I had the discipline for it, honestly. And I didn't think I could stick to that. And so I was looking for something else that I could stick to. And then I discovered all the soluble fiber research and I was like, oh man, this is kind of my jam. This is, this is exactly what I need. But again, to your forgiveness point, I live in New Orleans, uh, for the last 25 years, and New Orleans has an entire season called King Cake season, right? I mean, we have a whole season dedicated to cake, and that's 40 days long. And so it's impossible during January and February for me to go to a friend's house and there not to be king cake. In my house, there is king cake on, on the kitchen island. And so I am sometimes gonna fall off the wagon on that. And as you said, If I do, I try to have the smallest slice I possibly can, and I try to soluble fiber load before I do it if I possibly can. So if I go to a buddy's house for a parade or something during Mardi Gras, I'll, there's almost always also red beans and rice. So I'll hit up the red beans as much as I possibly can, skip the rice, and then have a little slice of king cake, a little one, right? And that, because I've, I've built in this kind of forgiveness thing into my whole practice of, of life. I don't fall off the wagon, as you said, and just say screw it and just, you know, hidey-ho. So yeah, I believe, I believe in what you said. I think that's really, really critical because you have to be able to live a normal, you know, I was 46 years old when this first incident happened in 2017. I was like, dude, given my family history, I could live 40, 50 years. I, I gotta have something that I can do for 40 or 50 years. And so it, that's why it had to be something that could fit into a normal life. Um, and that's why I don't go with, you know, and in my book I call 'em extreme diets where you like have these, you've gotta do this super in intense thing. Now I did do some experimenting. Um, you know, I did start try some fad stuff. You know, my daughter would hit up TikTok and tell me about things I needed to try. And, uh, one of my favorite was, uh, cinnamon. I'm sure you've read about this one. You know, it's like a teaspoon of cinnamon a day will knock down your A1C by 0.5, something like that. And I'm a, I'm a good science-based person. So I did it for a full 30 days. And I will tell you, I would rather shoot up insulin than choking down a teaspoon of cinnamon every day. Let me tell you, my friend, it is—

that's not your jam.

That's nobody's jam. I don't know whoever came up with this, but they're a sadist.

Well, but think about there's ways to put cinnamon into your food. That would then make it palatable? Because I would think, oh, throw it into your oatmeal. Like, not a teaspoon. It's terrible.

Well, that's what originally the stuff that was being peddled was, you know, just— and I did it for like a month and was like, oh my God, I would really rather shoot myself up with insulin than go down this route. But anyway, it's— so I did try a lot of different things. So it's not like I hit on this right out the gate. But I will say, and I'm sure you've heard other people say this many times, when you get off the sugar train, it's actually surprisingly easy to stay off of it. Like when I have— like, I used to drink. I like bourbon.

Okay, well, you have to like bourbon if you live in New Orleans. Like, that's like a requirement.

Exactly right. So I like bourbon. So I would— if I would go out, that's what I would have, right? I'm not a beer person or anything. So which, which is not great from a, you know, kind of sugar standpoint. And, uh, but so I would have bourbon and, uh, I used to have it with ginger ale. And now I do all— if I have mixer, if I have a mixed drink, it's gonna be all club soda. So bourbon and club soda, right? Or bourbon LaCroix, something like that. If somebody makes a mistake or the bartender screws up and gives me a bourbon and ginger ale right now, I can't drink it. It's so gross and heavy now. That I can't even— it's the same with my coffee. Like, in the morning, if I go to the coffee place and they mix up my, my order and they throw simple syrup in there and I get it, I'm like, oh, no thanks. Um, can we remake this? And it's not because I'm like sitting here with some virtuous hat on. It's because when you stop having tons of sugar in your diet, even the little amounts that are in things, you suddenly, you can smell it and then it tastes like kind of, eh. So it's— after a while, it's self-reinforcing. I think most people say like 25 days or something is what it takes.

Yeah, you really do train your taste buds not to like it anymore. And it's funny because I have a whole bunch of kids, and one of them was saying, I really need to get back on track, I think I need to do keto. And I was like, I think keto is great. I mean, and keto for diabetics is amazing.

And yeah, yeah, absolutely.

This is a kid who has some metabolic dysfunction, and so I thought, okay, Okay, keto's a great idea. However, all my kids are young and they're not people who, how do I say this? They need to be able to live their lives and go be with people. And keto as a kid is not a sustainable behavior. So I said, maybe before we go down the keto train, would it work to just eliminate certain foods, right? Like eliminate the cake, eliminate the cookies, eliminate the pasta, eliminate the foods that are tweaking your blood sugar. And replace them with fat, fiber, and protein. Just switch it out because that to me is more sustainable than I'm gonna do a hardcore eating plan, which is not sustainable.

And that's what, so the, the, the, the standard deviation on diets is about 5 weeks. So most people can stick to 'em at, at best for about 5 weeks. And after that, the, it, it's, it falls like a stone. So it, it's really, that's what I said for me. I don't call it a diet. I try not to, to use that word. Um, it's an approach to food and an approach to eating.

It's an eating plan. It's a foundational eating plan. But the other thing— there's two things that you've said that really stuck out to me. One, I have this patient who I love to pieces, and she says, "One is too many and a thousand will never be enough." And so there are people for whom all or nothing is the best approach, and so you have to recognize who you are in that. But the other part of it is, it also sounds like when you got this diagnosis, you weren't in a, in a social vacuum. You had a supportive family who would say, okay, sure, we'll change how we eat so that you can be supportive.

Well, I'm with you on that, but it's interesting that you say that because, uh, when I came out with this book, uh, the head of sales at my company, she and I've— she's— I, I gave her a copy and She's like, read the whole book. She's like, I've had like 100 meals with you and I've never noticed. She's like, I noticed you eat healthy, but I never noticed you were eating any different from the rest of us. And I said, well, Valerie, that's kind of the point. So yes, you're totally right. Having a spouse in particular who was willing to work with me and kind of go down this whole path with me, definitely, absolutely, positively helped. And I would say, and I do recognize this completely, I'm coming from a place of privilege. I can buy any food that I want within reason, the grocery store. But I would say when you look at the cost of Ozempic and you look at some beans and some cauliflower and some broccoli, I'm going to just say that the healthy food's actually a hell of a lot cheaper. And you don't have to worry, oh my God, I don't have my supply of X with me. How can I possibly go on this trip? You know, or, oh crap, they lost my luggage. How am I going to take my meds? And I didn't want that. That was what I was trying to avoid at all costs. And so, yeah, having a, having a support system made a very big difference. And then that's why I wrote the book, was I— it took a lot of time to read all the studies. It takes a lot of time.

They're really boring. They're so dry and boring. It takes a while.

They're really boring. But I I wanted to give people the cheat code for this because after my buddy came down with type 2 and I helped him figure out a way away from that, I realized that there were a lot of other people who were similarly willing to try something different and wanted to go around without drugs and, and live a normal life, and that they would be willing to give it a shot. And so I figured, well, for those folks who, who want to control their lives and were willing to look at food a little differently, there was— I had an obligation to pay it forward.

Yeah. So speaking of, you mentioned cost. Is it more expensive to eat the way you're recommending in your book, or is it— I mean, where does it fall?

Because, you know, I mean, honestly, I mean, compared to paleo, it's cheap. Meat's expensive, man. Fish is expensive. You know, I would take my version. My version is poor people food, right? It's beans and broccoli and stuff. And, and, and so, yeah, no, my, my, my approach is, is pretty budget friendly. It is where the cost comes in. And this is what the book's about, is you do have to be educated, right? You have to know, and this is what I do on my Instagram feed. I go to restaurants and I film the menu and I just show like, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. These are the things on this menu that you should be ordering right now. And I do that in the grocery store too. Walk down the aisle. Pick up a thing, look at it, cuz a lot of stuff that's in the health food aisle ain't so healthy, especially from a sugar standpoint. Like you mentioned fiber, whole fiber's great for you. It's awesome for you. It doesn't do anything for your, your, for your blood sugar. And so there, there's different things. Soluble fiber is a lot for your blood sugar. It's okay for your gut. Whole fiber, great for your gut, not so great for your blood sugar. So you just have to get educated on this. And that's, I think, the work.. And the, you know, for me, the work has been so ingrained that I don't even think, like, I don't gotta run around looking up the GI number for a variety of different foods. I know what they are. And so, and I know the, like I said, one of my coworkers who I've shared probably 100 meals with won't even notice that I do anything different than anybody else. But that's because I'm sitting here looking at the menu going, oh, okay. Well, Chris, what can I eat on this menu that's gonna be filled with soluble fibers? And that's the first part of that. But it becomes, after a while, it, it just gets to become a background noise. You don't even notice it. And for years and years and years, you know, I just don't really think too much about it. It's do it. And that, I think, is a hallmark of a successful system is one where it's not that it doesn't require any effort, but that, that effort can be so normalized that you don't even feel like you're on a diet. You're just eating the way that you should eat.

And I think that we want to come back to that. When you look at what's the least bad option, I would say insulin, losing your leg, having a heart attack, being grossly obese— those are the, those are the more bad options. And then the least bad is changing how you eat, moving your body a little bit after meals. I, I, you haven't talked about stress, so I'll make a plug for ensuring you decrease your stress, get enough sleep, and have non-toxic relationships because those are all things that will mess up your life, right?

Oh yeah. All of those will help. Yep. Yeah. Well, and you mentioned meditation or, or detoxing your brain. So I, I do, I don't, all the research says basically all the meditations are good for you. Which, which one do you like best? You know, what's the best meditation? One you'll do. And so that for me, that, that meditation is Transcendental Meditation cuz I'm a, I'm not a sit quietly person. That's not really my, my kind of makeup. So filling my head with the mantra is like really kind of helps me instead. It like makes it my brain super loud instead of super quiet, which actually ends up calming me down. But it doesn't really matter any way, as you just said, of getting a decent night's sleep, shockingly important to your, your sugar levels, de-stressing your life. And as I was saying, meditation, walks, keeping toxic people out of your life, all of these things, all of them will do you a world of good in addition to keeping sugar out of your life.

Right. And then the other thing I'll put a plug in is because we do so much work with toxicants and toxins that those directly raise your blood sugar and raise your risk of cardiovascular disease, heart attack, stroke, and diabetes, along with autoimmune disease and cancers and degenerative disease. But we're talking today about diabetes. So in the— and, and to me, diabetes is all the spectrum of— and to a lot of people, uh, diabetes is not simply abnormalities in your sugar. It also comes with more metabolic dysfunction that impacts your heart and your brain. And so it's called type— yeah. So, so essentially these are the downstream effects of untreated metabolic dysfunction: diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol.

Yeah. And, and in my example, like my actual life example, you're totally spot on. If you look at my pre-diabetes blood test, which is interesting for me to look at when I, when I've done it, there's a lot of these classic middle-aged guys. They're not high, they're just, you inching towards the upper left, just a little up there, right? And you look at the ones I have now and they're in a completely different place. Not just one, basically all of them. And it's, it's like my, my, the guy wrote the foreword to my book, Eric, he's a personal trainer, a friend of mine. And he would harp at me. He's food is medicine. Food is medicine. Food is medicine. But honestly, Eric was totally spot on. And it really is. And it's the thing that made the difference in my life. Was simply changing how I approached food.

You are what you eat.

Yeah, literally.

So we'll put this in the show notes, but how can people find you and find out more about you and reach you?

Sure. The, the website where you can buy the book, find Instagram handles, all that stuff is BeatingDiabetes.us. And that is also the name of the book, Beating Diabetes. And that will get you both ways to buy the book in, in electronic format as well as physical format. And that also has links to my Instagram feed that has all of the videos I was talking about. We go through restaurants and stores and kind of get a sense for what I'm talking about in real life.

Awesome. Chris, thank you for being here. I'm really, really impressed at the transformation that you've undergone and then that you're paying it forward to bring this to other people. So thank you for being on the podcast. And so the listeners, go read the book, go be the book, right? Like, this is— Simply Fiber as an approach to your health. So it's pretty accessible if you ask me. So thank you for being here.

Absolutely. Thanks, Wendie Trubow. I appreciate you having me.

My pleasure. Don't go it alone. It's not a social journey until others join. Share this with your friends.