288: Blood Sugar Regulation and Why It Matters w/ Mary Miller Brooks

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Courtney Townley 0:00
Welcome to the grace and grit Podcast made for women who want their healthiest years to be ahead of them. Not behind them. Join your host Courtney Townley right now. As she breaks down the fairy tale health story, you have been chasing all of your life, indispensable action steps and lasting change.

Courtney Townley 0:28
Hello, my friends, and welcome to the Grace & Grit Podcast. This is your host, Courtney Townley. As always I’m so grateful you’re here with me. I’m actually recording this from the great state of Texas. I’m here visiting my father for a week. And man, is it hot? I usually try to avoid Texas in the summer. But there was no avoiding it this year. So not only is it 100 degrees, but if you’ve ever been to Texas, you know it’s humidity on top of that heat and humidity. And I don’t really get along that well. I mean, this Montana girl is used to a very dry climate. But this is kind of a welcome change for a few days. Because if you’ve been following the news at all, you may have seen that Montana has been experiencing some historical flooding. We’ve had so much rain, and even snow at really high elevations. Yes, you heard me right, snow in almost July. I think Glacier National Park right before we left got almost a foot and a half of snow in the summer. So that’s fun.

Courtney Townley 1:34
But we’re not here to talk about the weather. I today have a special treat for you. I am going to share with you a recording of a Podcast that was actually not intended for public consumption. Many of you know that I have a membership community called Rumble & Rise I talk about it on nearly every episode of the show. You can find out more information about Rumble & Rise by going to Grace & grit.com, forward slash ready to rumble. But a part of the value of being a member of that space is that I have a private Podcast channel. And on that private Podcast channel. I provide monthly master classes. I do interviews with other experts. We do workshops, I supply replays of group coaching calls. It’s a very rich resource. And the recording I’m gonna play for you today was intended for that Podcast. But after listening to it, I just felt like this interview would be really a great one to play on this show. Because the topic of the Podcast is blood sugar regulation.

Courtney Townley 2:48
This month I taught a masterclass called mending the sugar mend. And it was all about sort of improving our relationship with sugar because let’s face it, that relationship can get really complicated. More specifically, it was about how to regulate blood sugar in a lot of different ways.

Courtney Townley 3:08
And as a bonus to the masterclass, I invited in my dear friend and nutritionist extraordinaire, Mary Miller Brooks, to have a conversation with me, Mary Miller Brooks has been on the show multiple times. I have tremendous respect for her. And she really has a gift for taking complex nutritional topics and breaking them down into very understandable soundbites. So I brought her in to sort of elaborate on the information that I was providing around the topic. And it just proved to be a really rich conversation. So I decided to share it with you. And the reason I’m even telling you any of this is because in the interview, you’re going to hear me mention the community and talk about some things that I think might be confusing if you didn’t realize that that is where this recording initially went. So you may not even notice but I figured it was worth mentioning from the outset of the show today.

Courtney Townley 4:11
In this interview, Mary and I discussed what blood sugar is the consequences of dysregulation, lifestyle factors that influence it, ways to measure it and so much more. So if you’re interested in this topic, which I truly believe a lot of people really are right now. Give it a listen. And better yet, come join us inside of Rumble & Rise again, you can check out the details of that membership by going to Grace & grit.com forward slash ready to rumble. So without further ado, let’s get to it.

Courtney Townley 4:45
All right. So very welcome to this little conversation we’re going to have today for Rumble & Rise members about blood sugar, blood glucose, glucose monitoring all of those things. I know a lot of members already know who you are because you have

Courtney Townley 5:00
been so generous in your time and expertise in coming in and doing other workshops with us. And this really isn’t a workshop, this is just a conversation to sort of go a layer deeper into the conversation around blood sugar, and get your spin and your take on a few things. But before we go there, just go ahead and tell people who you are and a little bit about your background.

Mary Miller Brooks 5:20
Sure. And thanks for having me. I’m always I just so respect everything that you do you know that right? So I have a master’s degree, technically, the degree is in health, but it was half the exercise physiology, half nutrition, and then spent a lot of time in the corporate world and created my own business about five years ago. And my whole focus is I’m going to call my process to feel better formula. And I’ve really just helped mostly women, but people over 40 Just have a better relationship with food and themselves. And I do a lot around autoimmune thyroid metabolic stuff.

Courtney Townley 6:03
Yeah, so important. So important. Okay, so let’s just kind of like go right there. Let’s just get right into it, which I would love to hear from you just how you explain to people what blood sugar is, and why it matters.

Mary Miller Brooks 6:17
Right? So I want to tell sort of, you know, we all have our story. My mom died of complications of diabetes. So I have that too.

Courtney Townley 6:26
Was it type two diabetes?

Mary Miller Brooks 6:27
Yeah, I don’t really have a big fear around, you know, my heredity or inheritance of that, just because I live a very different life than my mom did. But I certainly had that awareness. And then, you know, my own story, I had thyroid cancer, and I probably, if I had looked back, I do think ill, you know, swings in my blood sugar probably did play a role, because I came up in that era of kind of under eating, and eating a really carb heavy diet, because that, you know, that’s kind of the period of time that I was raised in. And then I worked under a functional medicine physician, and we drilled blood sugar, it was key to anybody who was reversing autoimmune. So that’s how I got there. But basically, what happens with blood sugar is our body reacts to food, it gets this normal rise. And it should be kind of a slow, gradual rise. But what’s happening to a lot of us is we’re swinging high, low, high, low, and those swings really cause this cascade of inflammatory responses. And it’s not just weight. And it’s not just energy. But it also you know, impacts hormones, it impacts mental health, which was like my other big reason for really getting into it. But it just means that our body, you know, what goes up must come down. And we’re working hard. It’s almost like the waiter or the waitress like getting the blood sugar out. And just knowing that we can really impact that was a game changer for my clients. And for me with my own health, it got me out of the hole, like dieting, it gave me something really solid to focus on.

Courtney Townley 8:15
I love it. So I want to address this conversation around carbohydrates, because I in all the master classes that I teach around blood sugar, or improving your relationship with sugar, I always teach that carbs are. It’s not just sugar, right? Just carbs mean a lot of things. It means starch, it means sugar, and it means fiber. So not all carbs are created equal. And so when we talk about the spiking of blood sugar, we’re really talking about the impact that sugar and starches have on blood sugar, because fiber helps to soften blood sugar, it helps to slow the entry of blood sugar. And I think that’s a really important fact for people to kind of keep in the forefront of their mind around this conversation. Because a lot of people demonize carbs. I shouldn’t eat carbs. Right. And that’s not the conversation we’re having here. No

Mary Miller Brooks 9:09
in you. And I mean, everything has to be nuanced. Everything has to be and we don’t want to take the time to hear that. That’s our real problem. And health we are getting to these bite size. You know, just give me the takeaway, and it doesn’t work like that. It’s sort of like saying, cardio is bad. Well, how are you using it? Are you using it to beat yourself up? Are you using it? Right? The right way? Right. So and I also say that, you know, there’s always good, better best, and I don’t know a person who’s going to live without sugar. I don’t, nor do I think that they should. I think, Billy, but I think knowing how those mechanics work. And maybe wearing a glucose monitor for just a little test drive would give you a perspective. On that,

Courtney Townley 10:02
So I love what you just said there because I think this is so important that it’s so true with exercise with diet with so many things. It’s not just like there’s this one takeaway. There’s this one application that works across the board for everybody. It really it’s, I always joke a client of mine always says this too, and we always laugh about it is it depends, right? It depends on the person, it depends on the dosage, it depends on the quality, it depends on your history with the thing. And so we have to remember that all of this is individualized, we can definitely kind of generalize certain information about these topics. But how it applies directly to your life is much more of a specific conversation, which is where people like you and I come in, right and helping people to figure out well, how do we improve the quality? Or how do we change the dosage or change the mindset around the said thing, so you will actually show up for it with a little bit more consistency. Alright, so there’s lots of things that influence blood sugar. Food, of course, is one of them. Carbs we just talked about is one of them. But let’s just be very clear that food is not the only thing that affects blood sugar.

Mary Miller Brooks 11:13
No, no. And that is something that wearing a glucose monitor told me because you kind of feel like food is the only thing. But something as simple as the quality of your sleep. If two people have the exact same meal, but one has had a good night’s sleep, and one hasn’t. The person with a bad night’s sleep will have a more elevated glucose response. Fitness, but if you are moving or even you’re doing an intense workout, your blood sugar will go up. So in the case of stress, right, right, right. And then just stress itself, right. Stress itself will raise blood sugar. But I think the most fascinating part to me, was the composition of your meal, how you eat it, the order that you eat it in the time of day, the I always talk about the tempo of meals, which was my biggest revelation when I started working with athletes, because I I’ve worked with dozens of athletes, including some podium finishers and like big stuff. And so I thought, oh, because their physique is good. And their performance is good. They tell me I eat this many calories, they should be good. And when I looked at the timing and the tempo, that’s where I made the biggest impact, and I probably was influencing blood sugar, then it didn’t even know it. Things and I love when we don’t feel helpless. I love when we have agency over our health that we take ownership and we see how we are unique that that to me is the most powerful thing about health.

Courtney Townley 12:57
Yeah, absolutely. The other thing, before we move on, I just want to ask if you saw any correlation with this, but did you notice hydration levels and blood sugar? how it affected it?

Mary Miller Brooks 13:07
That is a really good question. I never did not part of that is probably because I pay pretty good attention to my hydration. I will tell you this a little bit off topic, but I also track my heart rate. And I have a pretty decent resting heart rate. If I’m ever under hydrated. My heart rate jumps even from a little so I never I never saw it from hydration i i know that it’s a stressor. So it makes it follows that if you’re under hydrated, it’s going to affect everything. But I never saw that particular correlation.

Courtney Townley 13:43
Well, it’s interesting because I it makes sense to me right like that your blood gets stickier and thicker. And so the concentration of sugar in your blood would be a little stronger when you’re dehydrated. But Huberman mentioned on one of his podcasts, he just briefly wore a glucose monitor, and he went into a sauna. And his blood sugar spiked.

Mary Miller Brooks 14:03
Oh, well. That’s the heat. The heat. Yeah, we’ll make a sensor jump to

Courtney Townley 14:09
Yeah, sure. Because it’s a stressor.

Mary Miller Brooks 14:13
Yeah, right. Yeah, you have to learn the little nuances and the little things that that happen that are normal and not get freaked out about them. Yeah, of course.

Courtney Townley 14:23
So okay, so on that note, because we are living in such a like, there’s so much tech available to us. It’s almost like we have access to so much information about our biology, that it can be it can be overwhelming, right? We can count our steps, we can count our calories. We can wear a blood glucose monitor, we can do all the things that watch our heart rate, all of these things. And I know that a lot of the the comments that I hear from people around these types of options, is I just want to live my life. All right, I want to intuitively eat I want to just Trust my body. And that’s what we all want, I don’t know a person on the planet who doesn’t want that. And when we journal food, when we count our steps for a period of time, when we start observing our heart rate, when we potentially wear something like a glucose monitor, we start to learn about things in a way that helps us to shift behavior. So in the long run, we don’t actually need to use those things as often or potentially at all correct, right.

Courtney Townley 15:30
Is that how you think about it?

Mary Miller Brooks 15:32
Yeah, I mean, I, I got really fascinated with data, uh, you know, many years ago, but I mean, I didn’t have access to it. And then working for a functional medicine physician, you know, that’s when I got into food intolerance, testing. And I looked at, you know, testing vitamins, and I did the OE t test. And so I, I have, I guess, like you, I have mixed feelings, this was my thought going into it. The one that I bought was fairly expensive. And so I thought, not all my clients are even going to care, or be willing to invest. But I could be the guinea pig, I could do the test. And I could share what I what I learned. I also have people that they are data driven, they will not do things unless they see the metrics, and they see the information and they get the feedback. So for people like that, I think it could be we could talk about this more. I don’t think anybody needs to wear one forever. I think you can get what you need out of it in a month, or four or less. But can you learn all the concepts and apply them? Sure. But I do this Hawthorne effect of like when we see the data when we see it real time. There are a couple things that I learned that I will never forget. Because I had, I had the glucose monitor on and I was just like, wow, I had an eye. Maybe I knew that that was gonna happen. But we all can rationalize and be like, Oh, that’s not that big of a deal. Right. But

Courtney Townley 17:05
when you see the data, it’s like, oh, it’s a big deal. Yeah, you see,

Mary Miller Brooks 17:09
this little bit off topic, but I think you know, like, I don’t drink alcohol anymore. And the biggest thing that I saw was it every time I drank it, my sleep fell apart. And finally, like, it wasn’t because I was stressed out it was it. It was alcohol. And I saw the data enough that I was like, okay, there you go.

Courtney Townley 17:32
Yeah, and I love this because data over drama, right? A lot of times we tell ourselves these stories, and we kind of what if ourselves to death, and there’s all this guessing and sort of assumption. But when you have the data, you can let go of all of that and say, Oh, no, this is what

Mary Miller Brooks 17:47
its objective. And it takes a drama, it takes a nonsense out. Now, at the end of the day, I want to say this, you can handle an occasional spike. Of course, no, and I were I’m talking your population, I’m assuming is fairly well, but But wanting to, as I say, create a healthy, forward looking thing. And glucose is a big piece of that. Like if if you’ve been awake in the last like, you know, here, we know how much blood sugar played into the whole COVID thing. I’m seeing patients or clients with long haulers that, that that is something that I’m going to drill into, but to your point, and which is like do we all need one? No. Could you benefit from wearing one for a month? I think so. But that’s just because my particular bias variance.

Courtney Townley 18:44
Absolutely. Okay, so let’s let’s just back up for one second before we get to the glucose monitor. I would love to hear you speak a little bit to glucose and perimenopause and menopause because things are definitely shifting. And this is largely the population I work with. I’m interviewing Stacey Sims tomorrow, which I’m super pumped about just the I’ve interviewed her before. And she always brings amazing knowledge to the table. But in her new book, have you read it next level? I haven’t read it yet. No. Okay. You’ll love it because she talks a lot about glucose and insulin sensitivity and how hormones impact our ability to move sugar through the bloodstream and all the things for me

Mary Miller Brooks 19:27
that question because I may stumble through it. But you know, for sure, and I’ve seen it in my own body. Yeah, we react to carbohydrates, less well, as we’re in perimenopause and menopause. Would you agree?

Courtney Townley 19:43
Yeah, I would. I think that again, it goes back to what we said earlier. It’s all of those factors that we talked about the quality, the dosage, the person, the activity level, all of that has to be taken into consideration always. But even more so I think at this period of our life.

Mary Miller Brooks 19:59
Yeah, and from what I understand I so I always say when it comes to hormones, um, sort of a cortisol, thyroid blood sugar, and then I’m, I’m, you know, I don’t do the Dutch tests I don’t do so some of that I’m not as good at. But my understanding is, is progesterone goes down, which is sort of our hormone that says, All as well, we aren’t handling stress as well. We are more insulin sensitive. I will also say, and this is just Mary’s philosophy. I have rarely met a woman who hasn’t done really extreme stuff in their diet. Yeah, yeah. For like, it’s incredible. Like the I’m like, Wait, what did you do? So I think we’ve also created a lot of hormonal havoc and blood sugar instability for years, and we don’t know it. And it’s sort of like everything, it kind of catches up with us. And we get, we get handed a bill. So but I want to be clear, I’m not saying no carb, I’m not saying even low carb. I’m talking about the quality of carbohydrates and the way that they’re combined. And probably shifting some things which I’m sure you’ve already taught your community. But we all used to get up and have the carbohydrate breakfasts. And training people away from that has been, it’s extremely difficult. Because it’s not easy. We’re all you know, brainwashed to believe that breakfast shouldn’t take us any time or energy. But like knowing that we all used to get up and have nothing for breakfast or skimpy breakfast, or a chi car breakfast as we get into perimenopause and menopause, that just doesn’t work as well.

Courtney Townley 21:44
100%. And I want to get to the timing and tempo piece, which we’ll also talk about, because I think that’s a way especially at this stage of our life, that we can influence how our blood sugar is processed. But the other thing and I think you said this so beautifully is yes, progesterone and estrogen are leading the party, both of which help us to manage cortisol. So we have more cortisol on our system, not only because chemically, we just naturally have more cortisol in our system at this phase of life, but also women are living very stressful times. At this stage of their life, they have a lot of responsibility, a lot of demands on their time. So there’s a lot of opportunity for mental stressors, and cortisol spikes blood sugar, not just food. So that that’s kind of the the gist. I want people to just remember listening to this, that kind of this cascade of hormonal events that make us more sensitive at this stage. Yeah,

Mary Miller Brooks 22:36
one of my clients, and this is when the data is really cool. Like, so I have had clients where blood sugar monitors and snapshot them and send them to me, and they’re like, what’s this? Like? Why is this happening? I have a client whose blood sugar was like, clicking along and she got a call from her son’s school. And it spiked, like, you just need to see that once to kind of understand like, okay, right, I know that that’s what’s happening. And one thing I want to say is that when I don’t feel like we talked about this enough, you know, at the same time that we’re telling women to sleep, most people are struggling with sleep.

Courtney Townley 23:13
And it’s such a catch 22

Mary Miller Brooks 23:17
I mean, I’ve never posted about this. So I don’t want to say like just telling women over 40 to sleep is like telling an anxious person just to calm down. Yeah, we we struggle with that. So everything is overlapping. Everything is integrated, everything is connected. And I will say that managing my blood sugar gave me a better night’s sleep. But you have to also understand that we’re not sleeping as well. We just were just just trying

Courtney Townley 23:43
again, it helps us to sleep and it’s not around anymore. Yeah, makes total sense. Okay, so let’s talk about before we get to glucose monitors I just want to talk about historically before the advent of constant blood glucose monitoring. How do people test their blood sugar? Like if you went to the doctor today, you wouldn’t necessarily be prescribed a glucose monitor? What would they do?

Mary Miller Brooks 24:07
Good point. So typically, the only thing you get is a fasting glucose test at your doctor’s yep, I equate that to sort of like judging traffic in LA in LA by only seeing one number one liter like you’re you’re like you walk or you walk out and you watch see the traffic for one minute you go that’s how the traffic is. So I have to remember that blood sugar is changing throughout the day but getting a good fasting glucose number is a is a good thing to get and then I don’t know if you’re asking me that’s one of the say this anyway, want to test your fasting glucose. You want to get your fasting insulin, which if your doctor won’t run it, you can I think I just did it and I think I paid an extra $50 or something it might have been less than that. I would also get your CRP which is your marker of inflammation, and I will get your a one C, and none of most of that should be standard. But that’ll give you a little bit more perspective on what your fasting glucose is. But I will say, without sounding scary, people don’t really they’ll let you be in that pre diabetic range and not met, have you make any changes, but when it bumps over, you’re in full blown metabolic dysfunction. And it’s a lot harder to change that. So, you know, it’s like anything in medicine, we’re not always non tracking towards optimal, we’re just kind of looking at averages. So get those numbers. And if we want to get into like, what’s ideal, I can give you like a little table or something getting share, but you may have already done that with your no

Courtney Townley 25:47
do it, because I’ll post it in the Facebook group, and I can send it out in the email. But you know, it’s interesting, because I feel a lot of times in with nutrition advice and even like these medical sort of parameters with what’s normal, it often airs on the side of being a little high. Right? Like, I mean, I see that that trend, and because I know a lot of a lot of other nutritionists that I’ve spoken with have talked about you like with with faster blood glucose, that they think that what is normal at a doctor’s office is actually on your way to being pre diabetic.

Mary Miller Brooks 26:22
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you know, you can get all that. And that’s, and I do think there’s some self testing that can be done, I saw a pretty decent panel for all of that. That was like about $125, to get all of that, you know, data, if you ever want to check it out for yourself, but awesome. It was really exciting to me for like, as I made changes to see all of that data improve. So it was really helpful, because, you know, I’m, I’m always aware that like, if we say, Oh, well, you know, I lift this much, or I weigh this much, or I, you know, whatever, but you don’t really have the data. And I’m not saying the data, you know, you live and die by it, but it is nice to see.

Courtney Townley 27:07
Well, yeah, and I think I think again, it gets us away from this conversation, that weight is the only thing that is actually determining health. That’s insane. I mean, how many again, you and I both worked with a lot of athletes, we work with a lot of average weight people that are struggling with their health, because they’re their indications of their health or metabolism being dysregulated is not weight gain, it’s other things. It’s the headaches, it’s the not pooping for three weeks. It’s all kinds of other things.

Mary Miller Brooks 27:39
And I know you and I feel the same that no, no health or weight goal is worth the price of your mental health. And I really do think that a lot of anxiety, fatigue, low energy, can’t sleep. It is tied to blood sugar. So, you know, in a world right now that is suffering with all of that mental illness. And I’m not saying blood sugar is the, you know, the sole fix to that. But it sure as heck helps. Yeah, it really does. It really does. You have more mental clarity. You know, the thing that really kicked me was that Alzheimer’s is being being called type three diabetes,

Courtney Townley 28:26
diabetes, I know. That would just

Mary Miller Brooks 28:28
really, you know, given that I’m such a proponent of mental health and emotional health to know that there is a tool right in front of us that we can use to. It’s not as again, it’s not the be all end all. Nothing ever is but it, it is pretty powerful.

Courtney Townley 28:45
Yeah. And it’s not just about weight loss, which again, it’s not that that conversation shouldn’t be had that conversation is so relevant to so many people. And it doesn’t end there. There are so many reasons to monitor blood sugar that will benefit you in ways far beyond your waistline. So let’s talk a little bit about your experience with glucose monitoring. And then we’ll talk in a little bit about like how people can get access to that and what that actually looks like logistically. So you want you’ve worn one for how long now? You started in January, didn’t you? I’ve worn

Mary Miller Brooks 29:21
them probably a total of like, six months, okay.

Courtney Townley 29:26
And you use what monitor.

Mary Miller Brooks 29:28
So most people are going to get the same monitor. It’s usually the FreeStyle Libre. And then what you’re going to get is a different interface. If you’re going to self pay self direct, I will tell you that most physicians are resistant to giving it to you. I’ve had maybe one or two clients, get their physician to write them. So everything that I’ve been dealing with is like a self pay or a self direct. And then there’s like three or four companies that you can go through new which resets levels and then there’s another one that’s really inexpensive called, I think it’s Testerman or taster min. And you’re looking at about 100. And on that one maybe $150 for a month. Okay.

Courtney Townley 30:14
Okay, so you started wearing a monitor and then what were some of the things that kind of stood out to you what were some of the some of the things that were surprising to you? Like, obviously the sleep like oh, yes, when I don’t get great sleep. It affects my blood sugar.

Mary Miller Brooks 30:27
Yeah, I had three meals that were spikers that I remember very casually. One One was sushi. Because my recollection, yes. If Well, it’s a rice and I also think they add sugar to it. Oh, of course. That makes sense. Yeah. Went up and it stayed up. Now, I didn’t eat the salad beforehand. I didn’t do any of the little half. Vinegar. Like, I was starving. I ate like I shoved for sushi rolls in my mouth coming home from a hair appointment. I was like, Whoa, big spikes. So that one was significant. One time and we I think you and I talked about this. I did like just a vegetable. I had maybe keen wah and a bunch of like butternut squash and sweet potatoes and black beans. didn’t have enough protein didn’t have enough fat. But it looked like your nice health healthy and feel that yeah, I wanted to tell you like sometimes when I see someone like I’m 100% plant based, or I just eat this vegetarian meal. I’m like, you might want to look at the blood sugar on that one. That was a real eye opener. I never did oatmeal by itself, but I’m pretty sure that would be a spyware spice. Yeah, that was hilarious that I knew better two that are hilarious that I knew better. My husband came home and he was like, let’s take the dogs for a hike. And I was like hadn’t had a meal for a while and it was like, Okay, I just need to grab something. I grabbed two graham crackers. Hi. Yeah, it was it was a naked, sugary calm, of course. And then the other one was just for fun. Honey Nut Cheerios in milk. Horn.

Courtney Townley 32:07
You know, it’s so funny, because when you were talking earlier about like the sugary breakfast, I grew up on honey nut cheerios loved every morning, and multiple times a day too, by the way, because it was so easy.

Mary Miller Brooks 32:19
So this is what cracks me up about this stuff. why everything is nuanced. Because my old calculator had calculated or would have said that was low fat. Yeah. Salary. And what what’s not, you know, maybe a little protein from the Nope. Like, what would really hit me about that? Was that what are we sending kids to breakfast? What are we sending them off with? And people think they have behavior problems. So that those were my big, those are my big no no’s. Then really and truly, if I ate a higher protein breakfast, if I always tried to eat my greens first. And if I tried not to snack, but if I snacked, I really tried to only eat a like a protein or like avocado, or greens, where I will be honest with you, when I snack, I usually want to carbohydrate, well,

Courtney Townley 33:18
too, they’re mostly carbs like we I have this conversation all the time where it’s like, where you really need to put a concerted effort and getting more protein in if you are going to have snacks, a touch of fat, a test net again, those naked carbs, right, like attach something to it or better yet, just have the protein just have the fat source

Mary Miller Brooks 33:37
that really helped me the most was like when I was hungry instead of going down and being like, oh, there’s ginger sauce on the counter. Or there’s 10 Pretzels. Or there’s, if I would just take a little more time and grab even something as simple as a piece of Turkey and put a little avocado with it. Yeah, that that really helped me now I will tell you this, which is against the grain. But you know, I trained fairly hard like endurance. And even though there’s there’s a whole study that came out if you drink something that’s sugary, like the typical sports drink, if destabilize your blood sugar for 24 to 48 hours afterwards, I sometimes would strategically use a carbohydrate in the workout. Maybe just as simple as like a date or a piece of apple. Yep. Because it didn’t really change my performance. But it changed my recovery.

Courtney Townley 34:37
Right? Yeah, makes total sense. It’s interesting.

Mary Miller Brooks 34:42
Stopped any like fasted cardio. Yeah,

Courtney Townley 34:47
for sure. And it doesn’t. She does a great job speaking out against that specifically in her book next level. She’s not she’s not for any kind of fasted exercise, and she talks a lot about To sports drinks, and how really diluted that we kind of have been we become mentally around those things, and they’re not helping us in the way that we think they are. So lots of good takeaways in that. Yep. Okay. So if somebody is interested just to find out more about their own chemistry, because again, like we were talking about this before we hit record, how, like five corn chips affect me, is probably going to be different than how five corn chips affect you. Because we live very different lives. And we have different chemistry. I mean, the fundamentals are the same. But again, our nothing is beautiful. We’re different people. So for people to get a little insight on their own chemistry, if they were interested in doing some glucose monitoring, like talk us through that, what would what would be the pathway?

Mary Miller Brooks 35:51
Well, first of all, let’s talk about people who shouldn’t get one. Great. I think if you’re an obsessive person, if you’re an eating disorder person, if you’re too literal, if you’re way perfectionist, you don’t need it, don’t go there. I would, I really wouldn’t. I think on the other side, if you have autoimmune tendencies, if you have PCOS, if you are struggling with recovering from COVID. What else,

Courtney Townley 36:23
I would say pre diabetic, I have a lot of people who are on the border of pre being pre diabetic, I would also say I have several clients who are very concerned about cognitive decline, because of just their age and stage of life. And they’ve kind of noticed some things that are shifting, which by the way, the brain does shift pretty profoundly during perimenopause, and then things kind of level out afterwards. But I think we all have a lot of genuine concern, given all the cognitive issues out there to prevent that as much as possible. And so I think for people with that kind of concern at that stage of their life, that could be beneficial as well.

Mary Miller Brooks 36:59
Right. And I also think we all know that we tend to, like lie to ourselves. One, you know, it’s, it’s a good, you know, as long as you’re someone who can just look at it as data. And I will tell you one of the thing that with them, one of the things I don’t hear talked about enough, yeah, is that I’ve had multiple clients whose blood sugar is dipping low at night. Yeah. And that’s what’s waking them up. Totally.

Courtney Townley 37:29
Yep.

Mary Miller Brooks 37:31
And they had no idea. Yep. And so I’ve shifted a few people who had horrible sleep, who just did not understand. And that was actually what was going on. Because it it will wake you up your brain, your, your brain thinks you are dying. Yeah. And if you’re looking for me and 50, and a lot of clients are hitting that low number. I think those are all people who, you know, those are people who shouldn’t and those are people who should. And in the middle, you know, do you want to? Is that something you want to?

Courtney Townley 38:02
Yeah. Is it something you want to invest in? Is it something you want to spend time on? Like, that’s such a personal decision? Absolutely. I’m curious with your clients who were hyperglycaemic Right. So that’s what was happening at night, right? Their blood sugar was tanking, hypo. Okay. They were hypo. Yeah, I always get the two confused.

Mary Miller Brooks 38:23
Okay, hello, and hi. sigh roads, no.

Courtney Townley 38:25
Blood sugar super low. We’ll just say that, which is why they’re, they’re waking up at night. What was the solution to that you had them eat like a little snack before they went to bed? Yeah. Which was primarily like what?

Mary Miller Brooks 38:37
Well, first of all, it always starts in the morning, you know, so you get them to eat a higher protein breakfast a lot higher protein than what they’re used to. Yeah, you get them to move towards more protein, fat and fiber at every meal. Yeah. And then you get them to do a little protein. My favorite is MCT oil. Like you can do that before bed because the liver uses it. And probably, you know, depending on the person, they may be eating too low carb, you know, so that their liver needs that little bit of extra glycogen. You know, that refuel? And you know, not to be the jerk here, but a lot of them cutting out alcohol. Yeah, for sure. No, they finally see it. They’re like, Oh my gosh, that one glass of wine. Like that’s the thing. Yeah, I’m not saying every bit just like, you don’t know until you know.

Courtney Townley 39:29
Exactly, exactly. And it’s so interesting, too, that carbs. I mean, yes, the wrong quality and too much quantity is very stressful on the human body, but carbs in the right quality and the right dosage is actually very soothing to cortisol. So when you have estrogen and progesterone declining, right and you’re more prone to having cortisol in your system, carbohydrates, especially at night for a lot of people can help them to kind of temper that cortisol response, which helps us to say asleep because it lets melatonin do its job.

Mary Miller Brooks 40:02
Yeah, the other thing, and this is, this is, again, kind of my own theory, but I really feel like if you take care of your nervous system during the day that you don’t live so chaotically Yeah, so out of sync, because listen, nobody gets up in the morning, and binges? Nobody,

Courtney Townley 40:26
I always say that. Yeah, that’s true.

Mary Miller Brooks 40:29
When did they bench the bench at night, because, you know, they need basically a jackhammer to bring their nervous system down, or their self soothing. So it’s not just, you know, as you said, it’s the timing and the tempo. So the problem I see is that most people aren’t taking very good care of themselves, then they’re using food and alcohol and sugar and Netflix to, you know, get themselves back down to baseline. And again, what goes up must come down. So what happened, you get this surge of cortisol, and then you go down low, and then your blood sugar screwed up at night. So it really just means shifting everything from the minute you get up till the time you go to bed, so that you’re not using that time that is biologically set for like, winding down and slowing down Rest Digest. You know, with food and chocolate and chips and ice cream, right? That’s, that’s the biggest thing. But the snack, yes, the snack at bedtime to get that person to carry through. There are a couple of supplements that I’m not supplements. First, you can’t supplement your way through this. And you shouldn’t just start taking things because you know, you hear of them and try them but sometimes getting a combination of some supplements to help with, you can’t regulate blood sugar through supplements, you’ve got to do movement, stress, food, food in the appropriate amounts, and doses and all of that. And then you can do a little bit of supplementation. But to answer your question MCT, a little bit of protein you could do, I don’t think we’re getting nearly enough antioxidants in our diet. So something like blueberries and raspberries and a little bit of dark chocolate. That can be kind of nice for people, and it’s not going to disrupt their sleep either.

Courtney Townley 42:19
Yeah, I want to go back to something you were just talking about the nervous system and kind of really starting to regulate it from the start of your day and throughout your day. Because again, we do a lot of this work inside of community. And the longer I’m in this field, like I mean, it’s been a while right for both of us, like we’ve been in this space for a long time, and I more and more just realizing how all roads lead back to the nervous system, right? Like your nervous system is the currency of health. And until you take radical responsibility for regulating that blood sugar is going to be jacked and cortisol is going to be jacked and hormones are gonna be jacked and

Mary Miller Brooks 42:58
right. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes seeing not in real time because I think everybody is looking for the as you say, the Hail Mary or the easy fix. And when you when you recognize that it is all the things and I mean, for me that I came to that conclusion somehow of like, okay, Mary, if you don’t want to end up in a heap at the end of the day, if you don’t went on and I had a terrible insomnia problem. I tried with all the things to address this. So it was like, Okay, well, let’s just fix this. This is the problem. Sleep is a problem with sleep wasn’t the problem. It was the nervous system. It was the anxiety. It was I came last it was the perfectionism. It must have worried you know it was I overcommitted therefore, I deserve a glass of wine at the end of the day. It wasn’t until I changed that, that things changed. But going back to me, if you were gonna pick one thing, like they’re saying, I was like, you know, people try to do too many things. I’m going to be sugar free, dairy free, gluten free, nut free. You know, let’s just dress in hell. Yeah, we don’t you know what I mean? It’s not really helping us. But I do think I’m gonna agree nervous system. But you don’t have to have any diet dogma, right? Protocol, belief, whatever, to regulate blood sugar.

Courtney Townley 44:24
And I want to talk just briefly about the Fed. I know we’re way over. I said, we keep this to 30 minutes. We’re way past that, but that’s okay. With the sugar, because I’m with you, right, like, again, like we talked about the very beginning. Nobody wants to journal their food forever. Nobody wants to wear a glucose monitor forever. Nobody wants to stay away from sugar forever. And everybody’s relationship with these things is very different. And I definitely have worked with people over the years who are in such an intimate relationship with sugar, that every time they eat it, it’s sends them off the rails. Yeah. Right. Like they can’t just do a little bit. And so I’m just curious to know your thoughts on this because I absolutely believe there’s a large camp of people where moderation works. I also have seen it to be true that there is a camp of people that moderation doesn’t work

Mary Miller Brooks 45:18
goes up. You know, Gretchen Rubin talks about that. Have you heard her? Oh, yeah. No. Moderators and abstainers. And I’m a moderator. I am I can have something I can have a bite of it. I know how it makes me feel. And I can walk away from it. I can throw it in the trash. I have no problem with that. Yeah. Yeah. I’m married to someone who, if it’s a cookie, he’ll eat the entire sleeve. Yeah. So I don’t and I don’t know if there’s, you know, chemical things that are different about us, or mental things that are different about I really don’t know, I think my son in law had this thing that he said, he goes, it’s hard to know what it’s like to be out of something when you’re in it all the time. And I think that’s really where a lot of us are, that we don’t realize that we’re walking around in a fog, or we don’t realize that our anxiety is tied to something, you know, food and we’re just using, you know, we just don’t know, because we’re too deep into sort of like my recognition of the alcohol and the sleep. It just, it was the cause and effect. And I didn’t either I was in denial about it, or who knows. But once I did the experiment I knew. So I don’t know if this is your question. But sometimes we do need to do something unsustainable for a period of time to really get the feedback loop. And I know

Courtney Townley 46:44
that I love it. I 100% agree. Yeah, we

Mary Miller Brooks 46:47
all preach moderation, but sometimes moderation is BS. It really is. Yeah. I think if, if you if you know, like, I mean, my body, and you said you feel like crap when you have sugar. I hurt i

Courtney Townley 47:01
i have sugar I literally physically hurt. Yeah.

Mary Miller Brooks 47:04
Um, so I mean, I think we need to realistically talk about the hacks and the way to deal with it. Because I think if you get a person who is like, no to too many things, they tend not to be real mentally healthy, or they’re not having, you know, I mean, it just can be very difficult.

Courtney Townley 47:22
Yeah. I posed the question, because I know, Ana Lemke who I’m a huge fan of dopamine nation, she have you heard of her? Anyway, her books, phenomenal. But she specializes in dopamine, and talks a lot about the dopamine response. And her work being a therapist and working with so many clients over the years who’ve had very strong addictions to all kinds of things, porn, and food and alcohol and video games and everything in between. She’s a really big proponent that exactly what you said that there is a time and a place to completely abstain from something for a period of time and her recommendation is 30 days. Yeah, so you can actually see how this thing is impacting you. Because until you’re willing to do that you may never really know now, is that where you’re gonna live forever? For some people? Yes. For most people, no.

Mary Miller Brooks 48:17
I think this is such a fascinating conversation, because I feel like the whole world right now is like, life’s too short to not have this or not to have this. You got to treat yourself and but we don’t realize like, how crummy we feel. And I guess I kind of did that experiment. I think probably now it’s been at least a year and a half ago. I did like 30 days with no alcohol. I totally watching you. Yeah. And I mean, the transformation in me. And I will tell people, I really did three things. I’m out monitor my blood sugar, I gave up alcohol. And I committed to a really good night’s sleep. Like those are my three kind of non negotiables. And I mean, I just paid attention to the quality of my diet and really tried to push them you know, the vegetables and the protein and get the processed food and the meat if I show you the the side by side of my face, you won’t feel people on way.

Courtney Townley 49:14
Oh, yeah.

Mary Miller Brooks 49:15
So I think I would say that that person who really is addicted to sugar, and I’m going out here on a limb, I would imagine that they’re not able to you know there’s some emotional work that needs to be done. Some have just kept better caretaking, better self prioritization. So that because I guarantee you they’re not eating sugar in the morning. They’re eating it at night. Oh,

Courtney Townley 49:42
because I would say there’s that Trifecta at night, low blood sugar, high stress, and you’re you’re freaking hungry. Right? Because it’s nighttime. You have more time on your hands.

Mary Miller Brooks 49:52
Yeah, so I think for some people giving it up for three weeks or a month Yeah, now you know Will they come? You know, do I think you need to eat sugar free ketchup? No, I personally don’t like I just don’t think that’s going to trigger you. But that’s me.

Courtney Townley 50:10
Can we talk about this barrel? Because this is a this is a question from the community about, you know, there’s this temptation when we start reducing sugar in our lives. Or if you’re someone who’s trying to abstain from sugar in your life, there is this temptation to all of a sudden replace it with things that don’t spike blood sugar, don’t spike dopamine, but still give your tastebuds all of the reward that they crave. So give me your thoughts on that, because we’re talking about like monkfruit, stevia, all these other sweeteners that are natural, right, that don’t cause the spike, and yet they’re still feeding the tastebuds.

Mary Miller Brooks 50:48
So there’s, you know, the nice thing is says, like what you consume you crave. And I, it’s the same thing. I feel like when people go on a lot of these keto snacks, we’re not really doing yourself any favors. Now, maybe if you’ve got just like terrible cravings, and you gotta just have that stuff, but I just think you’re kind of like, is it creating? Health? Maybe, yeah, initially, if you’re just but no, like, I, I really think we need to stop kidding ourselves that it’s that hard, you’re gonna have, you’re gonna feel bad for about two to three days. Come on, like you can do that you can. And I would say, use it as an opportunity. What I when I used to do detoxes which I have shrunk a little bit when I say that I did them, but I used to run them. And, but what I would teach people was that they needed to be prepared for like, the emotional component of that then when they weren’t using all the chemicals and all the food and all the self soothing, they would be present to how they feel. And that was kind of how I realized like, okay, so you feel like you need a glass of wine at the end of the day. What could you do differently? Can you be present to your emotions? Can you face your Can you sit with it? And I know that sounds cliche, but that that not to

Courtney Townley 52:10
work? Don’t be like, yeah, Courtney always makes us talk. You’re talking about that, right? Being with your emotions, and not not numbing them not wanting them to do

Mary Miller Brooks 52:19
that. And it won’t take long to break the cycle two to three days. But your question is, so I personally, you know, I’m kind of the Julia Child of nutrition. If it ain’t real, I’m not using it. I’m just not sure that’s how I’ve always been. Yeah, if I’m going to eat ice cream, I’ll go get Haagen DAAS or get the good stuff in have a little bit and be done with it. So I do the only thing that I use so I am a huge fan of element T I use that Yep, almost everything and

Courtney Townley 52:52
explain to me what elements Yeah, I know what it is but people listening might not know,

Mary Miller Brooks 52:57
electrolyte drink

Courtney Townley 52:59
yet. Just north of me, by the way, the founder. Yeah, he lives up in Kalispell.

Mary Miller Brooks 53:05
All the Keto people are using it. But what I what I realized is that you know, you need the minerals. You need the salt, you need the potassium, you need the magnesium. I am a huge sweater, I sweat you in a no. My shoes, my spin shoes. When they dry, I can feel salt on them. So I do use that in my water. That’s like my sports drink but I also drink it because when I’m stressed I feel like it replaces those electrolytes that has stevia in it. I know you can use monk fruit, but I’m not super familiar with it. But all the other sugar substitutes the brown rice cereal, the honey the maple syrup. They’re no different.

Courtney Townley 53:53
Same thing in your body. I mean, right? It’s all right, it’s converting to sugar. I mean monkfruit No, it’s different because it doesn’t spike glucose. But I think going back to what we were saying earlier, I think we’re both in agreement on this that using it as a transition food or as an occasional thing to cook with if you want to fine but be careful of replacing all of your sugar with something else that tastes like sugar because you’re not really solving the problem.

Mary Miller Brooks 54:19
You can’t you can’t tunnel vision and do something and be like okay, that’s doesn’t spike my blood sugar. But it’s still garbage food like yeah, you know, that’s that that doesn’t make any sense and but while we’re on it if I can just say it was this whole thing about fructose and fruit being bad this is driving me batty. I know. Like I’m sorry, but nobody got fat from eating fruit. Yeah, it’s only when we add so much fruit. So yes, you know there are less glycemic fruits, but in the name of we need the fiber from them. We need the anti Accidents from them. Can they be a component of your diet? Yes. Do you need to make a daiquiri like smoothie in the morning? No, you know, a little bit of fruit goes a long way. But to your question, which I think was if you will move to a more savory diet, if you eat more proteins, and vegetables, and fats, part of our problem is our food supply is very sweet. Corn is bred to be sweet. Everything is sweeter. So we are in the that’s the food industry doing that to us. So I do not think you need to you need to get yourself off of all of that just and the one thing I will say that I I am a bit of a hard ass about is don’t drink your calories down. Drink a juice. Drink good. You don’t even I used to do juicing. Like I used to juice vegetables, which I might do. But in terms of a blood sugar spike, probably not your best. Your best friend. Yeah. Yeah, you don’t the sugary coffees? I mean, no. So like juices, what else green drinks? Well, like you, we

Courtney Townley 56:07
had the smoothies, like when somebody shows me their smoothie for the morning. A lot of times, it’s like, it has the milk base, it has the fruit, it has the yogurt that has a sweetener in it like there. It’s literally like a milkshake. And so making sure that when you you make smoothies that you’re throwing fiber in there, remember, fiber helps to slow the rate of blood sugar, but also your fats, your MCT oil, your avocados, things of that nature, your greens, and absolutely your protein.

Mary Miller Brooks 56:35
But I will tell you that a well composed smoothie was one of the least had the best, like, best score on blood sugar. Yeah, they were they were fantastic. Really just just what you said that would keep me full, no headache, no needing to snack, and it would have this nice, solid thing. And that’s what we want, like in terms of the blood sugar monitor, you know, if you’re eating and we can talk about, you know, if you’ve never used a monitor, what do you need to do? How do you need to, you know, game your day? Yeah, you can do that. But you want those nice steady curves, because you get stable energy. Yeah, we didn’t say this. The other thing is, when you’re in sugar burning mode, your body is saying, I don’t know what to do with this. So it’s pushing this into the cells. It’s like saying, I don’t know what to do with this. I have no room, it slows down the mitochondria, which we don’t want to do. We know we want

Courtney Townley 57:36
our energy production centers, chunky,

Mary Miller Brooks 57:39
right? And we’re not realizing it. The reason we feel so tired is that blood sugar, and we can’t burn fat in that, in that in that stage. So you know, I’m, I’m I barely dabble in fasting, I don’t really, you know, have any, like one school of food that I eat or don’t eat or whatever. But that having that stable blood sugar really set you up to sleep to have less inflammation, to burn fat, to have your hormones not sort of be in in chaos. And if you do have these swings, which we can have had for years. Yeah, they do point the needle towards autoimmune. Yeah.

Courtney Townley 58:22
Yeah. Which, which makes sense to me. So I mean, I know we covered a lot of ground. I know there’s a lot more ground we could cover. And there’s probably more detailed questions that we could answer in regards to glucose monitoring. But I’m kind of I think this is like this is heavy, like this is a lot within an hour to for people to process. Hopefully, it’s easier to process based on the stuff they’ve already been studying. But I’m sure some questions will come out of it. So I am going to just invite you to maybe answer those separately. And we’ll see if questions come up. I will field questions to you. And maybe you and I can just quickly answer those. Yeah, but I think this was great. I think it just gives people a little bit of a review. I think it gives people some new insight definitely hearing about the value of glucose monitoring, how they might embark on that journey. All of that is well and good so I just I love you I adore you I mean I’ve had you on you know in the community and on the Podcast 1000 times and probably will 1000 times more. Is there anything you want to say to wrap it up?

Mary Miller Brooks 59:27
No, I mean, I think that you know, level one would just be be very vigilant about protein, fat and fiber. You know, start your day with a high protein breakfast, don’t eat your carbs alone. You know, get a little movement if your are going to want to treat you have the treat but have it closer to the meal. All of those I saw those in real time. However, yeah, if you I would start there. I think most people if they would really pay attention to that can if you ever did one, look at it from the standpoint that you’re not sick and you not broken, and you’re not going to freak out if you get an occasional spike or dip, doesn’t mean you’re going to die. But it could just kind of give you a little bit of a better framework for how do how is you know what’s going on inside your body that you don’t know about? And then take that knowledge and then continue to implement it on your, you know, on your own once you’ve seen it.

Courtney Townley 1:00:24
Yeah, well, and I think also, like, I really hear the value of doing it. Because if you’re open to it, if you want to, you know, invest in that I can see the value in it, in that we have normalized, feeling crappy. And a lot of times, it’s like, we think we’re doing okay, right. And then we, we do track food for a while, or we track our blood sugar, or we track something that really gives us better data. And a lot of times, it’s like, Oh, I see. Right, like, the story is actually different from the one I was telling myself. Because when Yeah, I get this all the time with food journaling, people saying, I know what I eat, and I eat really well. I’m like, great, just record it. Like, and then you look at the journal, it’s like, well, there’s a few gaps here, like, you know, and you start addressing the gaps, and people start feeling better.

Courtney Townley 1:01:16
Oh, well, I mean, if I could have $1, for every person who says I eat clean? Oh, yeah, yeah, I think we’ve gotten to where we think I claim because I don’t eat fast food, and I don’t drink soda. Yeah, that’s really what it comes down to. But we’re not really understanding that we’re under eating. We’re skipping meals, were eating a really like a carb loaded dinner. And we don’t understand why we feel fatigued afterwards that we’re inconsistent. And we’re making our body do all of that stuff. And I think that a be process of the body, when you really understand that whenever something goes up, when it comes down, it doesn’t come down to baseline. Oh, it goes lower. Yep, go. And then if you’re also using that, I think Kuperman talks about that. It’s like the sugar is also a mental thing and emotional thing, then, you know, you’re, you’re it takes more and more and more of that dose, and you don’t realize how manipulated and controlled you are. Yeah. So from that standpoint, I mean, you know, I’m a little bit of a data geek, but it doesn’t mean like, you know, you’re an idiot, if you don’t do it at all, it’s just, you know, maybe you want to take a look at it, maybe you don’t, but for some of my clients, I insisting on it, or really strongly suggesting it has been so helpful.

Courtney Townley 1:02:37
Yeah, I could totally see it, I can always bring it back to banking. You know, I know nobody really balances their checkbook anymore. Like we all just go on, you know, we can go online at any time and just make sure we’re not overdrafted, whatever. But understanding the mechanics of kind of budgeting to some degree and knowing like the, you know, the expense of things and the money coming in and the money going out like that basic education requires a meticulousness at the beginning. Right. Sure.

Mary Miller Brooks 1:03:06
I mean, it’s, it’s like, you know, trying to say, I don’t know how much my oil, how much oil I have, I just think I’ll just go by feel right.

Courtney Townley 1:03:15
You know, I think I’ve tried two times, actually.

Mary Miller Brooks 1:03:21
And I also think, you know, I always use gardening as a metaphor, but it’s like, you know, we all want the pretty plants, right? We want the we want the thing that looks good, it’s really starts in the soil, like, invest in the soil before you buy the pretty plants, because with pretty plants, and with the bad soil, it ain’t gonna work out too well. And it’s not fun to invest in that. But that’s the truth. So blood sugar is kind of one of those things like, I would say, Yeah, mental and emotional health, nervous system, but try to calm your nervous system when you’re writing this.

Courtney Townley 1:03:54
It’s so hard. I know. I always say, right, it’s like, it’s the chicken and the egg conundrum. It’s like, you’re not going to have the motivation to do the mental and emotional work if your chemistry is always jacked, and chemistry. Nervous System? Yeah.

Mary Miller Brooks 1:04:10
Yeah. I mean, I think if those two probably if those are your bookends, yeah. And you know, we didn’t talk about settlements, which we don’t need to, but like, you do that first. Do those things first and do it for a good month. You know, don’t think Oh, I did it for a week. And now, I did it Monday through Thursday. Now I’m going to go off on my weekend. That’s the other problem that now we’re doing inconsistently. They’re only really being consistent four out of seven days of the week. If you’re monitoring blood sugar managing all the time.

Courtney Townley 1:04:45
Yeah. Yeah, I’m so with you. Okay, well, thank you. This was awesome. So immensely helpful, and I’m excited to share it. So thank you. Thank you.

Courtney Townley 1:05:01
Thank you for listening to the grace and grit Podcast. It is time to mend the fabric of the female health story. And it starts with you taking radical responsibility for your own self care. You are worth the effort and with a little grace and grit anything is possible