You know when something is really good in theory, but too darn complicated in real life?

That’s what I think of ketogenic (keto) and high-fat low-carb (HFLC) diets.

In theory, they offer several benefits.

Especially to people with insulin resistance, such as Type 2 diabetics and prediabetics.

Why is Keto and HFLC helpful in diabetes?

By promoting a diet higher in fats and lower in carbs, these two diets reduce insulin resistance, which is a major contributor to the development of diabetes, and address the real cause for high blood sugar.

(If you’re not familiar with insulin resistance, here’s a 101 crash course for you.)

When insulin resistance is reduced, our body cells respond better to insulin’s effect. This means the body needs to use less insulin to do the same job (i.e. regulate blood sugar).

This phenomenon, which is also known as increased insulin sensitivity, helps bring our blood sugar levels back to normal.

Because of this, the ketogenic and HFLC diets have been gaining popularity with the prediabetic and diabetic population. There are even several cases of people reversing their prediabetes and/or getting off their diabetes pills with this way of eating.

The problem with Keto and HFLC

However, as with many diets, the keto and HFLC diet has several “rules” to follow and a strong emphasis on foods to avoid.

And what happens when there are too many rules to follow and a focus on things you can have?

• You get confused or overwhelmed by what you can or can’t do.
• You become obsessed with counting (carbs, calories, g, etc.)
• You end up craving the foods you “can’t have”.
• Your enjoyment for food disappears (and you get reeeeal cranky).
• You give up (and don’t get to reap the benefits of this great way of eating)

While I still believe that keto and the HFLC are good diets for people with insulin resistance, I’d like to simplify them and suggest 5 cores principles to follow instead.

Simplifying Keto and HFLC, so you can still reap the benefits

Below I share 5 core principles that the keto and HFLC diets have in common. I chose them because of their positive effect on insulin.

These benefits include:

• Decreasing insulin resistance, so you don’t worsen your prediabetes or diabetes
• Helping you feel full, so you avoid overeating and stimulating insulin release
• Decreasing your food cravings and daytime fatigue by stabilizing your blood sugar levels

Plus, by keeping it simple with only 5 key principles and a focus on foods to INCLUDE (instead of avoid), we take the feeling of overwhelm and restriction away.

Now, isn’t that more fun than religiously counting your carbs?

So without further delay, here are the my 5 key strategies to eating a healthy diet when you have prediabetes or diabetes.

1. Include plenty of healthy fats

Benefit: Normalize blood sugar levels

As explained in my article about insulin resistance, out of the 3 macronutrients, fatty foods keep your blood sugar levels the most stable.

As fat doesn’t spike up your blood sugar, it also doesn’t require your body to produce as much insulin as carbohydrates to process it. The less insulin your diet needs, the less likely you are to develop insulin resistance, or worsen it. As a reminder, insulin resistance is a MAJOR contributor to the development of diabetes.

So it makes sense to adopt a diet that has the least effect on your insulin production to prevent diabetes.

Benefit: Promote weight loss

Because insulin is a fat-storing hormone (in addition to a blood sugar regulating one), the first signs of insulin resistance is usually weight gain around the belly. This accumulation of fat, called visceral fat, is considered dangerous as it has been linked to heart disease and diabetes.

When you decrease your levels of insulin in your body by decreasing your intake of carbohydrates, your fat-burning hormones like glucagon get a chance to use up the energy stored in your fat cells and deliver it to the parts of your body that need it. This in turn reduces the visceral fat around your belly.

So not only will you look good by reducing the “belly fat”, but you’ll do your health a big favor.

What types of fat should I eat?

First of all, you want to favor polyunsaturated fats like omega-3 and monounsaturated. Both are associated with lower risk of heart diseases. Examples of these fats are walnuts, olive oil and salmon.

While there is controversy around saturated fats, the truth is that your body needs some saturated fats to function. Just ensure you don’t go over 5-6% of your calorie intake (as recommended by the American Heart Association) and favor plant-based saturated fats like avocados and coconut oil over animal fats.

Finally, you’ll want to avoid trans-fats at all cost, which has been associated with heart disease. Trans-fats are often found in processed foods.

While keto and HFLC diets seems to be all about bacon and fatty meats these days, there is a way to adopt a plant-based high fat diet.

In fact, this is what I encourage, considering the emerging evidence of how beneficial eating a plant-based diet can be.

But this doesn’t mean you can never eat meat again.

I would suggest getting MOST of your daily healthy fats from plants (ex. avocado, olives, nuts, seeds and plant oils), and adding organic cage-free eggs and wild-caught fish to your meals a few times per week.

When it comes to meats like chicken or beef, favor grass-fed animal and enjoy it every once in a while, as opposed to daily.

2. Add green vegetables to every meal (even breakfast!)

Green vegetables are packed with vitamins, minerals and antioxidants that all contribute to a well functioning body and prevent nutrient-deficiency (which unfortunately still happens in 2018 because of the amount of highly processed foods available on the market).

They’re also rich in fiber (which I share the benefits below), low in carbohydrates, have a low glycemic index, and don’t trigger a large release of insulin (and therefore don’t contribute to insulin resistance).

Wondering how to add green veggies at breakfast or snack time?

• Make a green smoothie full of spinach, kale and avocado
• Add sauteed spinach as a side to your eggs in the morning
• Dip cucumbers, broccoli and snow peas into your hummus for a quick healthy snack

3. Focus on fiber-rich food.

Not only does fiber contribute to gut health and can decrease your risks of several diseases, but it’s also great for your blood sugar. Fiber-rich foods tend to have lower glycemic-index, and therefore raise your blood sugar much less than high glycemic index foods.

By now, you understand that foods that trigger insulin release to a lesser degree are ones you want to favor, especially if you have prediabetes or diabetes.

Fiber also activates your stretch receptors in your stomach, giving you the sensation of being full. This sends a signal to your brain to stop eating, which in turns prevents you from overeating.

Ever notice how you feel much more full when drinking a smoothie, instead of a juice made from the same fruits and vegetables? That’s because the juicer has removed most of the fiber from the fruits, as opposed to the smoothie that uses the full fruit.

To sum it up, a diet rich in fiber is great for gut health, has a lower glycemic index, and prevents overeating.

For ideas on how to increase your fiber intake, click here to read my article “6 ways to eat more fiber”.

4. Include protein in every meal

Most people think about adding protein to their lunch and dinner, but often forget breakfast.

For many, breakfast include little to no protein. People mainly eat carbohydrate-rich foods to satisfy their hunger after waking up.

Unfortunately, all this carbohydrates sends a sudden stream of sugar into the blood, which releases a giant wave of insulin to deal with the increased blood sugar.

All this insulin then creates low blood sugar, which in turn sends a signal to your brain that you need to eat something sugary to bring your blood sugar back up. Which explain your mid-morning craving for Snickers before lunch. And so the vicious circle is born.

By replacing some of the breakfast carbs by protein, you trigger insulin release to a lesser degree, which in turn prevents your blood sugar from going on a roller-coaster and you wanting to eat carbs all the time.

Therefore at each meal (and even snacks), include a source of protein such as eggs, nuts, seeds, beans, tofu, fish or protein powder.

5. Focus on whole foods

As a general rule, most diets encourage people to avoid added sugar and processed foods.

However, I’ve learned that telling people what to avoid contributes to the “restrictive diet” mentality, which isn’t something I promote.

If you instead focus on eating mainly whole foods, you naturally avoid refined sugar and flour-rich products, which are two main contributors to elevated blood sugar, insulin demand, and insulin resistance. You also increase your intake of nutrients when you chose a whole food diet.

Finally, when you spend your time thinking about how you can include more of certain foods to your diet instead of finding ways to avoid them, you tend to feel less deprived and anxious about what you eat. So let’s remove the stress and drama from eating, please!

Recap

There you have it, my 5 key strategies to eating a healthy diet when you have prediabetes or diabetes.

When the majority of your diet is composed of plant-based fats, protein, green vegetables, fiber and whole foods, you are providing your body with the fuel it needs to thrive.

As I said in the beginning, I’ve seen people have great results by managing their diabetes and prediabetes on a keto and HFLC diet. But I’ve also seen many people get frustrated with the rigidity and the carbohydrate counting, and give up on a way of eating that could greatly help them if it was simplified.

That’s why I’m giving you the best concepts of the keto and HFLC, without all the frustrating rules to follow.

I hope this articles helps you understand what foods to eat to better manage your prediabetes. If you have any questions, leave me a comment below. I love getting messages from you! :)

Warmly,

Jules xo

What comes up to mind when you hear the words “New Year’s Resolution”?

Do you feel a sense of excitement bubbling up inside of you?

Or do you feel a sense of dread that even the Mariah Carey Christmas songs on repeat at the mall can’t compare to?

If you answered the latter, you’re not alone. Personally, the approach of the New Year used to remind me of the goals I set out for myself previously but didn’t accomplish.

How about you? Maybe you set some awesome goals last year like working out every morning, but dropped them after the second week of January because Life got too busy. Perhaps you had set yourself a goal of making more home-cooked meals but found the temptation of take-out too alluring.

Until recently, the thought of setting another goal for the new year and not achieving it seemed too discouraging to me… I’ll be honest, my unfinished goals were making me feel like something was wrong with ME…

Until I realized what I was doing wrong. And I have a hunch you might have been making the same mistake.

The real reason you’re not sticking to your goals

Here’s the thing. YOU’re not the problem.

It’s not your ABILITY to complete a task that’s an issue. (You know how to finish a bunch of things.)

It’s likely your APPROACH to your new goal that’s setting you up for failure.

And I’m going to share with you 3 ways to change your approach to goal setting, so that you can stick to your New Year’s Resolutions and get the results you want.

If you have goals related to your health and prediabetes, you’ll want to continue reading. :)

Before I continue, I want to let you know I’m hosting a free Goal-Setting Workshop during the month of December 2018, just in time for you to create your 2019 resolutions! Click here for more information.

3 secrets to sticking to New Year’s Resolutions

1. Make the reason behind your goal personal

When someone tells me they want to lose weight, and I ask them why, the usual response is “to be healthier”. Now, here’s my question to you.

Do you think “being healthier” is a compelling enough reason to get out of your warm cozy bed at 6AM and to go out for a run in the dark, cold and rainy weather?

I don’t know about you, but my answer is heck no.

The reason many people give up on their goals is that the reason they started isn’t compelling enough to continue when things get hard or when “Life gets busy”.

“Getting healthier” is vague and doesn’t mean much to anybody. When I get that answer, I press my clients to dig deeper and find the REAL reason they want to become healthier.

This reason needs to be personal and stir up some strong emotions for people to want to stick to their goals.

One client told me she wanted to lose weight because it’ll allow her to have more energy to play with her grandchildren. She imagined what it would be like to be able to play with them without having to stop because she’s breathless or has pain in her knees. The image of her laughing grandchildren being chased by her during a game of tag kept her motivated throughout her weight loss journey.

You can see how this vision of her spending time with the people she loved is a much more compelling reason than simply “being healthy”.

So what’s YOUR reason behind your health goals? Why do you want to take better control of your prediabetes? If you need help discovering your compelling reason, I wrote an article for you on how to find your “Why”. Click here to read it.

2. Give up the all or nothing mentality

We’ve all gone through this scenario before.

• We set a goal.
• We stick to it for 7 days straight (and feel darn proud of ourselves)
• And some unforeseen reason (your kid is sick, your boss gave you a work deadline for tonight, etc), we need to skip Day 8.

What usually happens on Day 9?

The unfortunate answer is that we usually give up on our goal. We tell ourselves “What’s the use? We already blew it on Day 8, so why continue?”

Logically, we know this approach doesn’t make any sense. But our “good” friend Perfectionism is telling us another story.

When it comes to goal setting, a lot of people have this “Go big, or go home” and “It’s all or nothing” mentality. While these catchy phrases make us sound like we’re hard-workers and high-achievers, it’s actually just crazy talk that’s getting in the way of our goals.

By believing in “all or nothing”, we tell ourselves if it can’t be done 100%, then it’s not worth doing.

So you end up doing 0%.

Nada. Nothing. Nil.

What if we considered another option?

What if we:

• Gave up the “all or nothing” mentality, and accepted that on some day we slip.
• Accepted that’s it’s totally normal and part of the journey?
• Just picked ourselves up, and simply kept on going?

You know what would happened? YOUR GOALS WOULD HAPPEN, THAT’S WHAT.

So the next time that you unintentionally skip a workout, eat a cookie or forget your lunch at home, don’t beat yourself up so much that you give everything up.

Of course, I’m not saying you should use this as an excuse to do thing half-heartedly. You still need to be honest with yourself and know when you’re intentionally slacking off. However, if something unexpected occurs, or a craving is really strong that day, don’t beat yourself up.

75% done is still better than not done at all. Heck, it’s a whole lot better.

So keep on taking actions towards improving your health and prediabetes, even if it’s not perfect. Because you’re still on the right path.

3. Cut your goal in half

When I set up goals with my clients, I like to ask how confident they feel about achieving them.

For example, let’s say someone who eats out everyday tells me they want to bring their own lunch to work 5 days a week. I’ll ask them to use a scale of 1 to 5 and tell me how confident they feel about sticking to this goal for an entire month, and to be really honest with themselves. If the answer isn’t a 4 or 5, I tell them to cut down their goal until they can answer a 4/5.

For example, this client finally admitted that she felt much more confident about bringing her own lunch 2 days out a week. There’s nothing that says she can’t later change her goal to 3 times a week until she reaches 5 days a week.

While this approach may seem “weak” and “not aiming high enough” to our perfectionist/type-A personality/uptight self, it’s designed to build confidence.

Coming back to the example of my client, if she brought her lunch three times that week, but was aiming for 5 times a week, she’d feel pretty discouraged and might give up. However, if her goal was to bring it twice a week, she’d feel proud that she surpassed her goal.

Same result (bringing lunch three times a week), but very different outcome (feeling like a failure versus like a champion).

Of course, you don’t want to set a goal that’s too easy for you and that won’t actually bring you a sense of pride when you achieve it. It’s about setting a goal that’s outside your comfort zone, but still within reach.

So those where my 3 secrets to sticking to your goals. If this is a topic you’re interested in, I’m hosting a Goal-Setting Workshop during the month of December 2018. Click here for more info.

Warmly,
Jules xo

Do you know what the following conditions have in common?

• Prediabetes
• Diabetes
• Weight gains
• Afternoon energy crashes
• Sugar craving

If you said “eating too much sugar”, you got part of the answer correct.

(Hey, this article has to teach you something new, right?)

The other thing that they have in common is that they’re mainly caused by insulin resistance.

As someone with prediabetes, it’s crucial to your health to understand what insulin resistance is.

Why? Because decreasing your insulin resistance will allow you to better manage your prediabetes and prevent diabetes.

To do this, we’ll first need to discuss the topics below:

• What is insulin and how does it work?
• How different foods influence insulin levels
• What is insulin resistance (IR)?
• The risk factors for IR
• The symptoms of insulin IR
• What you should do to decrease your IR

Insulin: how it works

Insulin is a hormone secreted by your pancreas that works alongside another hormone called glucagon. Both hormones are responsible for maintaining your blood sugar within a specific range to allow your body to function optimally.

Blood sugar is a measurement of the amount of sugar (specifically a molecule called glucose) in your blood.  It varies though out the day depending on what you eat and how active you are.

When you eat and your blood sugar goes up, insulin helps bring it back down. On the contrary, when you’ve been fasting between meals and your blood sugar starts to go down, glucagon is released to bring it back up.

While both hormones keep your blood sugar within a specific target, insulin and glucagon have opposite effects. When one is high, the other is low. Keep this is mind as I continue my explanation.

Now, let’s focus on insulin a bit more.

When your blood glucose goes up in response to a meal, insulin ushers the glucose from your blood into your cells. The latter will then use this glucose as fuel to perform their usual functions.

However, if the cells already have enough glucose inside of them, insulin will instead store the excess glucose as fat. This fat will be used as energy at a later time when the body needs it. This usually occurs in between meals when you’re not eating, and when the hormone glucagon is stimulated by a lowered blood sugar level.

As you may have noticed, insulin is both a blood sugar regulator and a fat storage hormone. On the other hand, glucagon is your fat burning hormone.

How different food influences your insulin level

Insulin is triggered by the presence of an elevated blood sugar level. Therefore, foods that increase your blood levels the most will trigger a bigger release of insulin.

Foods that fall under this category belong to the macronutrient class of carbohydrates, which is your main source for glucose. Carbohydrates (also commonly called carbs) are often categorized into the class of simple and complex carbs based on how quickly the body digests them and breaks it down to access glucose (more on this later).

On the other hands, the macronutrient classes of protein and fat are digested by the body much slower. They also do not raise your blood sugar levels as much as carbohydrates. Therefore, they trigger the release of insulin at a much lower degree than carbs.

As a general rule, carbs trigger insulin production the most. Then comes proteins, and finally fats.

With me so far? Alright, let’s move on to the good stuff!

What is insulin resistance?

Insulin resistance develops when your body is constantly exposed to a high level of insulin in your body. The latter can occur when you eat a diet high in carbs for an extended period of time (usually years). We saw that this greatly stimulates the release of insulin.

While insulin is a crucial hormone, too much of it can be dangerous for the body. For example, too much insulin would cause your blood sugars to fall too low, which can cause death. Yikes! Therefore, as a defense mechanism, your body becomes resistant to the higher levels of insulin and its effect.

When you think about it, the human body is extremely smart. It possesses thousands of mechanisms to maintain a certain level of equilibrium.

For example, when you’re too hot, you sweat to bring down your body temperature. When you’re cold, you shiver, and your body hair raises up to bring warm you up. These are examples of the body’s adaptation to short-term changes.

However, when the body is exposed to a “stressor” over a longer period of time, the body will adapt itself to create a new state of equilibrium for this “stressor” to become less of a problem. In other words, your body created a new “normal”.

Notice how people living near a train track or airport barely notice the sounds of trains or airplanes anymore? To them, it’s just “white noise”. Their bodies have adapted to this very loud noise, and has become part of their new “normal”.

In the case of insulin resistance, your cells simply start responding less well to the effects of insulin. Consequently, your blood sugar rises, because the glucose cannot enter your cells.

To overcome this resistance in your cells, your pancreas pumps out more insulin, which only provides a temporary solution. As your insulin levels in your body continue to rise, your body will eventually develop a new state of equilibrium. Meaning your cells will develop a new resistance to this higher dose of insulin. And so the vicious cycle continues.

Eventually, after working overtime for several years, the pancreas calls it quits and starts producing less insulin. As you can guess, this is bad news and your blood sugar levels will rise even more than previously.

The risk factors for insulin resistance

The risk factors for insulin resistance are the exact same ones for prediabetes. Why? Because IR contributes largely to prediabetes. Here’s what I wrote in my Prediabetes 101 article:

Risk factors for prediabetes that you cannot change

• Age over 40
• Female sex
• Being African-American, Hispanic, American Indian, Asian American or Pacific Islands
• Parents or Siblings with diabetes
• Gestational Diabetes

Risk factors for prediabetes that you can act on (a.k.a modifiable risk factors)

• High blood pressure
• High cholesterol
• Overweight with a BMI over 25
• Waistline over 40 inches for men, and 35 inches for women
• Being sedentary.
• Interrupted sleep patterns, or work night shifts

Symptoms

Prediabetes and insulin resistance don’t have any specific nor well defined symptoms. This is one of the reasons why the condition can go unnoticed for years, and it usually found by your doctor “by mistake” on a routine blood test.

Some prediabetics experience the same symptoms as people with diabetes, such as feeling fatigue, having blurred vision, feeling very thirsty, and urinating often. This comes to no surprise, as the underlying cause for prediabetes and diabetes is the same (insulin resistance).

On occasion, some people with prediabetes experience reactive hypoglycemia two to three hours after a meal. Hypoglycemia is also called low blood glucose or low blood sugar. It occurs when the level of glucose in your blood drops below normal.

Hypoglycemia in prediabetic people is a sign that there’s a problem with the insulin and glucose metabolism in their body.

If you have these symptoms and haven’t discussed this yet with your doctor, book an appointment with him/her soon to see if they are caused by prediabetes.

The earlier you catch it, the easier it is to manage… and prevent diabetes.

Why you can’t quit carbs

By now, you probably understand why a diet high in carbs contributes to your IR. And it seems logical that adopting a reduced carb diet would help improve it.

However, carbs are darn hard to quit!

Why is that? Why is it that when we have cravings, we crave sugar and cake (instead something healthy like a cucumber?)

Here’s a secret: the reason you’re reaching for that cookie isn’t because of your lack of willpower. Nope, it’s not your fault.

It’s because your hormones are out of whack.

To explain this further, let’s circle back to the notion of simple and complex carbs.

Simple versus complex carbs

The simpler the carb (think processed sweets), the faster your body can digest it, and the faster glucose is sent into your bloodstream and then delivered to the cells for energy.

What happens when all that energy is sent into the bloodstream at once is that a lot of insulin is sent out to take that sugar (energy) to the working muscles to provide them with the fuel to keep going.

The problem with this happens when the muscles aren’t working very hard (i.e., you’re sitting on the couch, at your desk, at the dinner table, etc.)…

When that happens, the muscles say ‘no thanks’ to the offer of more energy (they don’t need it PLUS their back up stores are already full as it is) and insulin then moves on to store that energy (glucose) as fat, because we saw that insulin also happens to be your main fat storage hormone.

The second part of that problem is the speed that the carbs were digested. Because simple carbs got digested so quickly, all of the energy was sent into your bloodstream at once.

Insulin then came and removed it (again-all at once), and now your blood sugar is too low. What happens next?

Cravings

You crave more carbs to quickly raise blood sugar back up. This is why you don’t crave a cucumber. It just simply doesn’t raise your blood sugar quickly enough. So, you want something that is basically made of pure sugar.

This puts you into the never-ending cycle of craving carbs and gaining weight. This cycle is the big picture issue with a diet heavy in carbohydrates (aka the way 99% of us eat).

Unless you are extremely active, odds are you unable to use up all of that fuel that’s released at once when you eat a lot of carbohydrates.

How insulin resistance is sabotaging your weight loss efforts

If you are trying to lose weight, the picture gets even bleaker (don’t worry, I tell you soon how you can make things better!). Because you’re relying so heavily on carbohydrates and not moving enough to use all of the sudden bursts of energy, your body has a lot of insulin pumping through on a regular basis.

High amounts of insulin in the body can lead to some severe complications down the road (think insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes).

High insulin levels also contribute to your staying in fat storage mode (insulin is your fat storage hormone), instead of fat burning mode (a way of operating that’s controlled by glucagon, your fat burning hormone).

Remember how I said that insulin and glucagon are counterparts? When one is high the other, naturally, is low. If your insulin levels are constantly high, your glucagon levels will always be too low to break down your fat storage.

This is one of the reasons why people looking to lose weight are often offered a low-carb diet.

In the case of prediabetics and diabetics, a low-carb diet helps decrease insulin resistance. The weight loss is just a fun “side effect” of this reduction in carbs.

In addition, more emphasis on protein or fat is warranted as they don’t affect your blood sugar as much (i.e., no highs, lows, cravings and crashes) and keep you fuller for a longer period.

How to decrease insulin resistance and manage your prediabetes

I hope that by now, I have been able to convey to you the important role IR plays in causing prediabetes, and that decreasing your IR is the key to better managing your health.

Below are actions you can take to start reversing your IR:

1. Limit carbohydrates by limiting processed foods

Before I go on, let me state that carbs aren’t the devil. Your body needs them to thrive! However, the quantity of carbs the standard North American diet provides far exceed our requirements, and the quality of carbs is often poor (processed foods lack vitamins and other nutrients).

Right now, we don’t need to go into the exact macronutrient percentage or numbers of grams. If you’re starting out, the simplest and best thing you can do is to limit processed foods.

The latter usually contains simple carbs that are digested very quickly by the body and raise the blood sugar significantly. To make things worst, they are often devoid of any nutrients.

Instead, focus on eating whole foods that includes lots of green vegetables, berries, legumes, and whole grains like quinoa. They provide you with the carbs you need, but are full of fiber and vitamins.

2. Avoid added sugar (processed and natural)

The second most important thing you can do for your prediabetes is cutting down on the added sugar. This means both processed sweeteners like white sugar and natural sugar like honey.

By cutting down on processed food as suggested in step 1, you will also be cutting down on added sugar. Double win!

While honey is still better than white sugar in terms of nutrients, it still raises your blood sugar and stresses your pancreas. This is why I recommend using fruits like berries to sweeten your food.

Want to learn how to cut down on sugar? Check out my 5 Days to Ditch Sugar Challenge here!

3. Eat more fiber

Consuming high-fiber foods help regulate insulin resistance. Example of foods rich in fiber are green leaf vegetables, artichokes, peas, Brussels sprouts, avocado, legumes, beans, flaxseeds, chia seeds, and quinoa. Plus, these high-fiber foods are usually rich in minerals and vitamins.

Want to know a no-brainer way to eating more fiber? Fill at least half of your plate with fresh vegetables.

To learn more ways on how to add extra fiber to your diet, read this article.

4. Eat healthy fats

Not only do healthy fats trigger little insulin production (and thus contribute less to IR), but they also keep you full for a longer period.

When you are reducing carbs, it is important to balance your macronutrients with either protein or fat. If not, you’ll be in calorie deficit (because you cut down on cabs), which will leave you feeling hungry all the time and unbalanced.

Most people eat enough protein (20% of their caloric intake), therefore I often suggest people to eat more plant-based fats like olives, avocados, nuts and flax seeds. It keeps them full and it doesn’t dramatically raise your blood sugar and insulin levels.

If you’re scared eating more fats will raise your cholesterol, read this article here.

5. Move your body

The more active you become, the more “sensitive” your cells become to insulin’s action. How come? Because your cells will be using its internal storage of glucose to function. Consequently, your cells will actually require the glucose from the blood that insulin is bringing to them, and let it in.

This allows your blood sugar levels to go down and the pancreas to not have to pump so much insulin to “force” the glucose into your overstuffed cells.

Therefore, being more physically active helps bring down your blood sugar and your insulin levels.

6. Mindful eating

Mindful eating is one of those things that’s regarded as “woo-woo” by most people. However, in its essence, mindful eating is simply paying attention to what and when you’re eating.

Mindful eating allows us to avoid mindless snacking, overcoming cravings, eating when we’re not actually hungry, and stopping before the point of a food coma.

While it doesn’t have a direct effect on your blood sugar levels, it is a useful skill to develop. With mindful eating, you’ll have a much easier time limiting carbs and reducing intake of added sugar.

7. Getting enough sleep

Like mindful eating, it doesn’t directly aid in reducing IR. However, lack of sleep has been shown to reduce our judgments around cravings. Notice how when you’re tired, you want sweets to perk you up more often? When you alert and well rested, it is easier to witness your craving and let it pass.

How to implement the steps above to better manage your prediabetes

Truth be told, what I wrote above probably isn’t new to you. You most likely heard this somewhere else.

With the internet, we’re not lacking information.

However, I believe we are lacking instruction on how implement what we are learning.

It’s one thing to know something, and another thing to do it!

And I don’t judge when I say this. I’m guilty of this in several areas of my life (I always “forget” to floss my teeth…).

I believe one of the reasons we don’t always do what we know we should be doing, is that many of us don’t know where to start.

Changing habits isn’t always easy, and often can be overwhelming.

There’re at least 10 decisions we need to make (Should I sign up to the gym? Or maybe eat more veggies first? Put an alarm to be in bed by 10pm? Aaaaaaahhhh!) and choosing the first step can kind of put us in decision paralysis.

But here’s the thing, choosing to become healthier (and in your case managing your prediabetes) doesn’t have to be overwhelming.

Instead, if we simply focus on changing one habit at the time, we can still create a positive impact on our health, without going into a panic or frenzy.

It’s all about taking consistent baby steps.

Recap

• Insulin helps regulate your blood sugar level.
• Insulin is your fat storage hormone when your cells can’t use the extra glucose in your blood.
• An elevated blood sugar level triggers insulin production.
• Carbs elevate blood sugar and insulin levels the most.
• Protein and fats elevate blood sugar and insulin levels less than carbs.
• Insulin resistance (IR) is caused by the constant presence of high levels of insulin in your blood.
• IR is an important contributing cause to prediabetes and type 2 diabetes.
• Reducing IR will help you better manage your prediabetes and decrease your risk of type 2 diabetes.

I hope this article has been helpful to you! Let me know in the comments below if you learned something new. And if you know a friend who will benefit from reading it, please share it with them!

Warmly,
Jules

So your doctor told you had prediabetes… Now what?

While being delivered such news is never a fun ordeal, the good news is that living with prediabetes doesn’t have to suck.

In fact, many people have told me it was a blessing in disguise… Because being told they’re prediabetic was the wake-up call they needed to take their health seriously.

For others, it’s the permission to finally take care of themselves after so many years of caring for others.

And then there’s always a few skeptical ones who ask “But what’s the big deal? It’s not like I have diabetes”.

Contrary to what these people may tell you, prediabetes is a serious condition. If left unattended, it can progress into something much more severe (diabetes). However, if taken seriously, your prediabetes can be very well managed, and in some cases reversed.

The first step to doing this is better understanding the disease, in order to know what to act on.

In the following article, I’ll explain to you:

• What is prediabetes
• The symptoms of prediabetes
• The risk factors of prediabetes
• The actions you can take to manage your prediabetes and prevent it from turning into diabetes (because who wants to take pills for the rest of their life?)

What is prediabetes?

Prediabetes is a medical condition defined as having a blood sugar level (also referred to as blood glucose) above normal, but still below the threshold of diabetes.

I sometimes explain to my patients that it’s like the very early stages of diabetes. Not fully there yet, but on your way if you make no changes to improve your health (more on that later).

Left without intervention, prediabetics will likely develop diabetes within 10 years, along with its complications to the heart, kidneys, nerves, and eye sight.

Prediabetes is said to affect 1 on 3 Americans adults, which means 84 millions people.

That’s a whole lot of people.

While this is a scary statistic, prediabetes can fortunately be managed with lifestyle changes and even reversed.

Before we talk about how to better manage it, let’s look at how it is diagnosed, the symptoms, and the risk factors (that you can act on!).

How is prediabetes diagnosed?

Prediabetes is a condition where your body  cannot metabolize glucose (sugar) correctly. Because your body is unable to lower your blood sugar to normal levels after a meal, your blood sugar remains elevated.

You can measure prediabetes with three different tests:

1. The A1c test measures your average blood sugar levels over the last 3 months. People with values between 5.7% and 6.4% are considered to have prediabetes. Values over 6.5% indicate the presence of diabetes.
2. The fasting plasma glucose is a test that checks your fasting blood sugar levels (fasting means you don’t eat nor drink for at least 8 hours). Values between 100 to 125 milligrams per deciliter (5.6 to 6.9 mmol/L) suggests the presence of prediabetes, while diabetes is diagnosed when your result is greater than or equal to 126 milligrams per deciliter (7.0 mmol/L). This test is usually confirmed with a A1c result.
3. The oral glucose tolerance test checks your blood sugar levels before and two hours after you drink a concoction containing 75g of glucose. This test allows your doctor to see how your body processes glucose and sugar. Results greater than or equal to 200 milligrams per deciliter (11.1 mmol/L) suggest that the person has diabetes. Results between 140 and 199 milligrams (7.8 and 11 mmol/L) per deciliter are considered prediabetic values.

What is the cause for prediabetes?

Prediabetes and type 2 diabetes share the same underlying cause, with different degree of severity.

The problem is insulin resistance.

I will explain in greater detail the cause and consequence of insulin resistance in a later article. However, to sum it up, you have two hormones in your body, insulin and glucagon, that regulates your blood sugar in your body to keep it within a specific range.

Every time you eat, insulin is released from your pancreas. Insulin is responsible to taking the sugar/glucose in your blood and for directing it inside your cells. This allows blood sugar level to go back to normal, and for your cells to use this glucose as fuel to perform its functions.

In the presence of insulin resistance, your cells respond less well to insulin. It doesn’t matter how often insulin comes knocking on their door, it simply won’t open.

As insulin cannot take the sugar found in your blood into your cells, your blood sugar level rises.

Symptoms

Prediabetes doesn’t have any specific nor well defined symptoms. This is one of the reasons why the condition can go unnoticed for years, and it usually found by your doctor “by mistake” on a routine blood test.

Some prediabetics experience the same symptoms as people with diabetes, such as feeling fatigue, having blurred vision, feeling very thirsty, and urinating often. This comes to no surprise, as the underlying cause for both conditions is the same (insulin resistance).

On occasion, some people with prediabetes experience reactive hypoglycemia two to three hours after a meal. Hypoglycemia is also called low blood glucose or low blood sugar. It occurs when the level of glucose in your blood drops below normal.

Hypoglycemia in prediabetic people is a sign that there’s a problem with the insulin and glucose metabolism in their body.

If you have these symptoms and haven’t discussed this yet with your doctor, book an appointment with him/her soon to see if they are caused by prediabetes.

The earlier you catch it, the easier it is to manage… and prevent diabetes.

Risk factors for prediabetes

Prediabetes doesn’t simply pop out of nowhere. While there is still much to be discovered around the causes of this condition, certain risk factors have clearly been identified for this condition.

Some bad news: there are risk factors for prediabetes and diabetes that we cannot change.

The good news: there are more risk factors that CAN be changed to decrease your risk

Risk factors that you cannot change (unless you have a sex change maybe…?)

• Age over 40
• Male sex
• Being African-American, Hispanic, American Indian, Asian American or Pacific Islands
• Parents or Siblings with diabetes
• Gestational Diabetes

Risk factors that you can act on (a.k.a modifiable risk factors)

• Fasting blood sugar levels between 100 to 125 milligrams per deciliter (5.6 to 6.9 mmol/L)
• High blood pressure
• High cholesterol
• Overweight with a BMI over 25
• Waistline over 40 inches for men, and 35 inches for women
• Being sedentary.
• Interrupted sleep patterns, or work night shifts

How to decrease your risk and better manage your prediabetes?

As I’ve mentioned a few times throughout this article, prediabetes can be well managed and even reversed (yay!).

The medical way

It’s possible that your doctor prescribes you a medication called metformin to help you control your blood sugar levels.

While I am a pharmacist, I encourage making changes to your diet, weight and lifestyle FIRST before starting a drug. When you act on your modifiable risk factors, it can have a very positive impact on your prediabetes.

However, each case is different, therefore it’s important you discuss the pros and cons with your doctor about using or delaying the use of metformin.

If you are taking metformin or another drug for prediabetes, do not stop it without consulting your doctor first.

Lifestyle changes

You heard this before, and you’ll hear it again… good health consists of :

• Eating whole foods,
• Exercising,
• Sleeping well,
• Managing your stress,
• Not smoking,
• Being moderate with alcohol
• Maintaining a healthy body weight. I’m not teaching you anything new.

(Notice how most of these actions target your risk factors?)

This maddening yet simple health advice, that has been repeated to us by so many, is true for preventing not only diabetes, but also heart disease, cancer and many chronic diseases.

So, if this advice is considered a generally accepted truth, why don’t more of us follow it?

While there could be many reasons for this, I believe one of the reasons for this is that many of us don’t know where to start.

Change isn’t always easy, and often can be overwhelming.

(Should I sign up to the gym? Or maybe eat more veggies first? Put an alarm to be in bed by 10pm? Aaaaaaahhhh!)

How to avoid overwhelm and inaction

But here’s the thing, choosing to become healthier (and in your case managing your prediabetes) doesn’t have to be overwhelming.

Instead, if we simply focus on changing one habit at the time, we can still create a positive impact on our health, without going into a panic or frenzy.

It’s all about taking consistent baby steps.

And that’s is exactly why I created my free Starter Kit to Better Manage Your Prediabetes.

In my Starter Kit, I share with you a mini recipe book with 16 delicious and filling low-carb meal and snack ideas (no more wondering what the heck to eat!), and over 7 days, I coach you on how to make 7 healthy changes to your life. We go over topics like:

• Starting the day correctly with a balanced breakfast
• Moving that booty
• Meal planning
• Snacking on the go
• Staying hydrated
• Getting enough sleep
• Mindful eating

I don’t just give you information on these topics. I actually help you put them into action, so that you can positively impact your prediabetes and decrease your risk for getting diabetes.

If you’re ready to take control of your prediabetes, click here to sign up for my free Starter Kit to Better Manage Your Prediabetes today!

Recap

• Prediabetes affects 1 American adult on 3
• Prediabetes is serious condition, that when taken seriously, can be well managed and even reversed in some cases
• There are many risk factors to prediabetes and diabetes that you can act on
• My free Starter Kit to Better Manage Your Prediabetes can help you take action in the right direction

I hope this article has been helpful to you! Let me know in the comments below if you learned something new. And if you know a friend who will benefit from reading it, please share it with them!

Warmly,
Jules

References:

https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/basics/prediabetes.html
https://www.diabetes.ca/about-diabetes/prediabetes

When I work with clients who want to lose weight, they often want to talk about diet on our first meeting. While the food we chose does play a BIG role in weight loss, there’s one thing I’m much more interested in talking about on Day 1.

The thing most people overlook, but that will shape the rest of their weight loss journey.

I want to know the reason WHY you want to lose weight.

And I’m not talking about some vague answer like “to be more healthy”. An answer like that just doesn’t cut it.

Because from experience, when the going gets tough (ex. you gets cravings, you’re too tired to go to the gym, etc.), “being healthier” isn’t a compelling reason enough to push through. And that’s why people quit, and stay the same weight.

Let’s face it, losing weight isn’t a walk in the park. Especially not in the beginning.

Change isn’t comfortable.

But it can be done successfully.

And it does get easier the longer you stick to it.

For this to happen, you need to be crystal clear on why you’re creating this change, and what’s on the other side of discomfort.

In other words, you need to clearly identify your goal and what your future self is going to look like. Let’s see how we can do this.

Clarifying your weight loss goals

What is it that you want to achieve?

Where is that you want to be?

The best place to start is to identify your end result (or destination). For example, you might say that your goal is to be healthy. Consider that until you define what “healthy” means for you, your goal is pretty vague.

However, if you know that being healthy means:

• not getting sick in the winter
• having the energy to go to dance classes twice a week
• being fit enough to go up and down the stairs without feeling breathless
• playing with your grandchildren without feeling pain in your knees
• fitting nicely in your clothes
• shopping in the “regular size” side of the store
• or not being on prescriptions,

you now know what healthy means to you. It’s concrete.

You know what you’re working towards.

It’s a vision that’s much more compelling to stick to, and that will guide you through the discomfort of change. Because you know what the end result looks like, and you know it’s 100% worth the discomfort.

WHY is this goal important to you?

You also want to know your why – why do you want to be healthy or lose 20 pounds? Your why is usually tied to an emotion you think obtaining a goal will provide you with.

Maybe you have a goal to lose 20 pounds to fit into a dress for an event. Why is that important? Truth is, it’s probably not about the dress. It’s most likely about how you will feel; more confident, perhaps. Your why is usually layers underneath your initial answer.

Here’s a vision one of my clients wrote that painted a very compelling future for her:

“I have the energy to play with my grandkids in the park without getting breathless and needing to stop. I can actually push them on the swings and play tag with them, instead of simply sitting on the bench and watching them play. I’m able to move with ease, without pain in my joints, and go on afternoon walks with my husband and even the occasional weekend hikes on my favorite paths. My new lighter body allows me to go traveling. I know this sounds silly, but I want to be able to fit in a single airplane seat and not ask for the seat belt extension! I get to fully enjoy my retirement, instead of wasting my time with constant doctor appointments or worry about my health.”

Every morning, she would read this statement aloud. And from there, she would decide what actions she will take that day to make this vision a reality.

I can guarantee you she faced cravings just like everyone else. She faced temptation at parties. Didn’t feel like taking a walk on a rainy day. Felt like ordering take-out was much easier than cooking her own meal. But her vision was so compelling to her that she took action anyways.

And I’m pretty sure this wouldn’t have happened if her goal was simply to “become more healthy”.

So I encourage you to always get clear on your why before you make any change in your life, because change causes discomfort.

You want something powerful enough to help you get through the unease to the other side of transformation. It need to be deeply personal to you and something you care about.

I know I sound like a broken record by now, but ask yourself why do you want to reach your goals?  What would that really mean to you and what would that feel like?

If you don’t have an emotional attachment to your goals, they aren’t usually as meaningful or motivating.  What’s going to get you moving on those days you really don’t ‘feel like’ it?

Your “why” is what will help you stay committed when achieving your goal seems too hard or challenging.

Exercise for figuring out your WHY

Need help figuring out your Why?

Here’s an example to walk you through the process if you need help getting started:

I have a goal to ______________________________________________________________________

because ______________________________________________________________________

This is important to me because ____________________________________________________________

and I want to  ______________________________________________________________________

and feel like ______________________________________________________________________

because ______________________________________________________________________

and this would mean _____________________________________________________________________

(Yes, I know there are a few “because” spaces in there. That’s the most important part in getting to your WHY).

Focus daily on your vision

When you’re done uncovering your why, I invite you to write down what your life will look like once you’ve achieved your goal. Write in detail what you’ll be able to do, and how you will feel.

Make it personal. Make it super compelling.

In addition, write out your vision in the present tense, as if you’ve already achieved your goal.

Read this statement aloud to yourself each morning.

Because what you focus on you get more of.

Yes, the food you eat, the portion control, the exercise, all of that are important tools to help you get to your goal. But first, you need to know what your goal is, where you’re going and what you’re looking to achieve.

So today, get clear on your WHY and your GOAL.

If you have any question about this subject, let me know in the comments below. Also, if you know a friend who would benefit from this article, make sure to share it with them.

Warmly,
Jules

Recently diagnosed with prediabetes?
Click here to learn the 7 key habits to turning your health around!