Ep. 131 - The Underlying Blood Sugar Related Effects of Walking | Free Intermittent Fasting Plan for OMAD

Uncategorized Jun 28, 2022

In this episode, Dr. Scott and Tommy discuss the underlying blood sugar-related effects of walking and the importance of improving the post-meal glycemic response for reducing cardiometabolic disorders.

 

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Fasting For Life Ep. 131 Transcript
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Hello. I'm Dr. Scott Dr. Watier.

[Tommy Welling]
And I'm Tommy Welling, and you're listening to the Fasting for Life podcast.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
This podcast is about using fasting as a tool to regain your health, achieve ultimate wellness, and live the life you truly deserve.

[Tommy Welling]
Each episode is a short conversation on a single topic with immediate, actionable steps. We cover everything from fat loss on health and wellness to the science of lifestyle design.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
We started fasting for life because of how fasting has transformed our lives, and we hope to share the tools that we have learned along the way.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Hey everyone, welcome to the Fasting for Life podcast. My name is Dr. Scott Walker, and I'm here, as always, and my good friend and colleague Tommy Whelan. Good afternoon to you, sir.

[Tommy Welling]
Hey, Scott, how are you?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Fantastic. As always, my friend. We are going to dove into the magical art of walking today. You guys are new to the podcast make. Wait a minute. This is a fasting podcast. Yes. But we are going to be talking about the underlying blood sugar related effects of walking. And then also how we actually eat our meals. So I'm excited today, Tommy.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
We've talked about walking in the past, but never from this viewpoint or vantage point. And a couple of big takeaways I think are going to be impactful for everybody today. So if you new to the podcast, I want to welcome in you the new listeners. Tommy and I, I've been doing this for a couple of years now. If you want to hear more about our story, head back to listen.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Episode zero, Episode one and 30 minutes or less. By the way, we appreciate Your Grace because we are brand new figuring it out, but our stories are there to give you some insight into why we do this every week, why we have the Facebook community group where we can come together and talk about the fasting for life lifestyle and how fasting can reduce the weight, improve the quality of life, and give you the long term results that you're looking for.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Then as always, a shout out to the OG listeners that have been with us on this journey. We are so appreciative of you. If you guys would, as we know, go ahead and give us the our favorite type of review. Drop a five star on your favorite podcast listening app. And that tells us tells the Facebook gods or excuse me, the podcast guys that we are doing something of value and we're just going to continue the conversation time.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So walking now funny story here. I'll make this quick, but my wife knows we've been married now for a while. I was going to say two years, but we have two anniversaries. We got married twice and I didn't know which one to use, so I got caught up in here.

[Tommy Welling]
OK.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
I met my wife back in 2011. So we've known each other for a while now, right? Yeah. 11 years. So she knows that one of my least favorite things to do is to go for walks. I like the idea of a family walk. I'm like, now I go on vacation, I go for a walk now like I just do.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
It is not something that I enjoy. So we do it from time to time when it's not hotter than the sun. Here in Texas. And it's not my favorite thing to do. But I will say that when I do do it, I now know why I feel the way I do, especially when it comes to cravings, hunger, energy levels, et cetera.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And that's why I'm excited about today's conversation, because we're going to look at walking from the perspective of its effect on blood sugar.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. And like I had always heard from parents, grandparents, older folks over family and friends like that. And I would just observe them kind of like getting up from from usually it was from dinner and then just kind of taken out, taken a wander around the neighborhood. Going to take a stroll is kind of like an aimless thing.

[Tommy Welling]
It almost kind of seemed like a waste of time to me. You know, because I was like, well, if I want to get some exercise, I don't need to do it right after I eat. In fact, I'm definitely not going to the gym right after I eat. Like, I would feel terrible. And what's the point of really walking right after that?

[Tommy Welling]
It just kind of I don't know, it just seemed like a like a weird thing that I didn't really need to do. I didn't see the point of it. But it's interesting when we start to look at what's actually happening physiologically, what's actually going on, and some of the magic that happens, you know, especially right after we eat and the potential for just putting in a little bit of deliberate walking and then leaning into some of that old school wisdom that you may have heard like no, always, you know, go for a walk after dinner.

[Tommy Welling]
It turns out it can be all the difference for you on the on the scale as well as what you alluded to, like how we actually feel, too.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. It's interesting, as you just said, that I just flashback to my mama and papa his house back in the day. And we'd always go for Sunday dinner and then everyone would go and walk to the end of their street and back. And I remember like losing it as a child, right? I'm like seven years old. I'm like, I don't know, I just want to sit in you know, whatever Grandpa's Machine shop and play with the stuff I shouldn't be playing with, right?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Or I want to do something fun, like go play wiffle ball in the field or whatnot. But, yeah, they would, they would walk in. It's it's so interesting that, you know, when the world chaotically enough shut down a couple of years ago and everybody was home in the initial few weeks here locally, I remember like driving through the neighborhood and being like, is there a community like food truck event today or is there a is there a carnival like in our.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, in our community like you know, a lot of late joy area like block party because.

[Tommy Welling]
There were.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Tons of people walking.

[Tommy Welling]
And I'm like, yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Wow. This is cool to see. Like we're getting outside. Like I've been home all day. I need to go walk. Right, right. And ever since, you know, here, you know, things have return to normalcy. It's like, I don't see the same, right?

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. No, they're back inside.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, now they're back inside. But there's power in the walking and looking at it from like, why are we talking about this? How does this apply to fasting? Well, or the fasting lifestyle. It's always we want to talk about the main players which is the insulin resistance, not necessarily the blood sugar, the blood sugars, the downstream effect, but or the glucose in the bloodstream.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
But the the insulin effect, the insulin resistance. Why you can't lose the weight, why it gets harder year after year, why you have cravings, you know, why the blood, the blood work slowly starts to to tick off a little bit, you know.

[Tommy Welling]
Year after year, decade.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
After decade, like how do you end up, you know, in a blood sugar, diabetes or metabolic dysfunction state well, what can we do tangibly, which is something that we pride ourselves on is what is it with this podcast? And the content we put out is like, OK, what is the thing you can do today? To know that you're having an effect on the insulin resistance, right.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And the blood sugar response. So you can start to control the blood sugars lose the weight and keep the weight off.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. And what about the fact that as the years go by, the if I regain the weight it seems to come back even faster than it did last time, right? Like add that to the list, right?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And it's harder to get off.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. Yeah. And, and it seems to not just come back to the previous baseline, but maybe it ticks up just a little bit from there. And if I if I was used to seeing, you know, 180 on the scale, now it tick back up to 182 and is like, OK, well now it's a little bit more work then I need to get off and you know, so it starts to make sense when we, when we take a look at what's happening physiologically and the data here shows that, you know, if, if we just go out for a 30 minute walk after a meal, we just put that as our action step.

[Tommy Welling]
There's a substantial difference in what's actually happening. Blood sugar wise. And I, I, I feel like I wish I had a time machine and I could convince my younger self that this was an important thing that I could do to actually dampen the effects of if I was making a suboptimal food choice or as I was trying to lose the weight that I had been accumulating since since I was young.

[Tommy Welling]
This is actually having a substantial dampening effect where I could have slowed the process or even started to like turn turn the tide much earlier in the process.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So the thing about this study that we found really interesting was, you know, the improving the post meal glycemic response is really important for reducing the cardiometabolic disorders. And it's not just in like in this case, the healthy individuals which we'll talk about in a minute when it comes to the amount of insulin or the amount of elevated blood sugar under a time curve will explain that.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
But that this can also be really important in patients with pre diabetes and diabetes. Like if the whole goal is to minimize the blood sugar spikes. Right, to keep their blood sugar in a healthy range. And we know that having blood sugar outside of a healthy range can lead to the excess weight, which then leads to all of the co-morbidities and, you know, heart and medications and cholesterol and all the other stuff.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right, the metabolic disorder stuff. So it's like, OK, well how can we control it? What can we be doing to control that? You know, the studies showed that a 35 point increase was possible simply by doing what our grandparents told us to do and.

[Tommy Welling]
Simply by getting up and moving 30 minutes after that meal. And then we had this just drop this 35 point drop in that spike in in blood sugar. And the crazy part about that was this wasn't healthy individuals.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right?

[Tommy Welling]
So as we get older and as we get less healthy, as we put excess weight on the the difference only gets more and more exaggerated in those blood sugar spikes. Because these weren't these weren't folks seeing a 200 point blood sugar spike or a 250 or a 300 like a lot of folks that that that we see. And then we talk to.

[Tommy Welling]
So the fact that we can have this substantial impact on what's happening and then what you just mentioned that that time under the curve becomes important too because it's not just about that one time spike it's about how long does that blood sugar stay at that elevated level because then that starts to determine what what our whole body is is is soaking in in our blood while we're while we're going through that elevated blood sugar period.

[Tommy Welling]
So if we can shorten that period and shrink the height of the spike, now we have some some serious some powerful ammo against the problem.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
That 35 point swaying can take you from pre-diabetes to diabetes or from normal to pre-diabetes and vice versa. So when you're doing, you know, we did a whole episode on to Mojo and people like, well, when should I test? Well, the the way they test and the industry standard is doing the oral glucose test. Obviously, you can't do that at home.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
That's why the key to mojo comes into play. But what they did in the study was they looked at that two hour mark. So what you were just talking about, that time under the curve, like just imagine, you know, drawing a bell curve, you know, on a piece of paper and you ingest the food. Right. And they looked at different, you know, increasing the carbohydrate content of a mixed meal versus consuming a carbohydrate drink alone.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And then, you know, it was definitely less effective in improving the glycemic response you know, after the meal had more carbohydrates in it. And we'll talk about how you can kind of get stuck there. The things you were just alluding to about the older we get, the more creaky our joints get, the more pain we get, the more inflammation we have, the longer that insulin is in the blood stream causes the CRP and inflammatory markers to go up.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
It decreases the effectiveness of our hunger hormones in them acting on our brain chemistry. So you really can get stuck here. But when we're looking at, you know, that that that two hour window and again, back to that bell curve. So if you normally have it spike to a certain amount and then decrease within 2 hours, right. In a healthy individual, we saw that it could be disrupted by 35 points.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. So in an unhealthy pre-diabetes or diabetic situation, that that bell curve then turns into a spike and a very like a bunny trail picture, a bunny trail on a mountain, right? If you guys have ever skied, you're going to have that 1530, maybe 35% incline coming down on the other side of that bell curve where all of that time under that that line is going to be elevated numbers.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
It's not going to be that big spike, but you're going to be shutting down the ability for your body to actually burn off that energy, which again then turns into you know, abnormal blood chemistry, more stored fat, more brain fog, more fatigue, more inflammation. And the worse you eat, the less you want to walk and and the less effective it is.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. Wow. Talk about a perfect storm right there and like and the like talking from from personal experience, the worst I had eaten, you know, the worse of a meal I had consumed. Thanksgiving, less. You're right, Thanksgiving. Or it could even just be like like a Friday night, pizza night or something like that. And you think I felt like getting up and going for a walk after that?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
No. Maybe this is why I hated walking all these years because I was on these macro plans and you know, kind of my calories and making sure I had a balanced plate and, you know, all this different stuff. And, like, I just didn't feel good all the time. Never mind if I added in an indulgence or a date night or a pizza night or or an IPA or something.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right? Yeah. So the tough part is, is like the more carbohydrate intake in the meal, the less effective the walking was. Right? So that was one thing. But that should be encouraging that making a few small changes and we'll talk about the order of the food here in a minute can have a drastic a to make it easier.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
All right. How do we how do we tangibly accelerate this process? Right. So you make a little bit better decision. You decrease the carb content, right, a little bit, add in some more protein and you're going to eventually combined with fasting start feeling better to the point where you know what going into a 15 to 30 minute walk after meal because this was all based on 30 minutes in the beginning.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. It's probably not going to be fun if I had to do it like thinking about it right now, like, oh, I don't really want to do that. I don't love walking right now. I'm like, Wait a minute. 35 point difference extrapolated over the course of a year yeah. That's a lot of time under the curve that you're now taking out of the equation.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, think about think about that time under the curve. I mean, think about on a day to day basis and then weeks and months. I mean, it, it adds up and it adds up really quickly because that that's, that's where the magic happens. It's not just in that one time spike. It's that time under the curve. Because that's where that's where the results get multiplied.

[Tommy Welling]
Either the, the pizza that I had or, you know, way too many carbs in one sitting and then sedentary then I just sat there, you know, like watched TV or did something just completely sedentary versus a little better food choice. Choice. And then did the walking and then that time under the curve. I mean, that's a substantial difference.

[Tommy Welling]
You could you could be looking at a 60 to 80% reduction in like in the overall insulin effect that that happened. And then now you're talking about being able to actually be in maintenance or fat loss mode versus just storing fat all the time because the insulin is so high and it's staying there that I'm forcing my body to store more fat.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And you're going to be surprised by this next thing you can do to accelerate it, right? Well you can fast consistently. Sure. You can do intermittent extended fasting consistently and that is going to increase the insulin sensitivity or the effectiveness of the insulin. So when you have this big spike, if it took you 4 hours when you first had this meal six months ago, now it only takes you to what you've just reduced your diabetes like you've reversed it.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
It's gone, right? So how do we have it? Stack how do we stack these things? How do we pour gasoline on the fire? Will you stay consistent with your fasting windows? You make a little bit more of intentional decision to decrease the carb and increase the protein during your eating window. Eat intentionally, right? And then the third thing, which is really simple, is the order that you eat your plate yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And some of you listen to this guy. Is this is this real? Like a kidding? No, really. Listen. Yeah.

[Tommy Welling]
So needle movers, veggies.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Then your protein and fat. So think you're going to have a four course meal now, OK, like, think of this. You're at a nice restaurant. I've never done this. I've only seen him on TV. Where you go and you get like this fancy plate with like a bite of food. That's course one, right? And then, of course, two, three, four, four courses, right?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Veggies, number one. Eat those first then your protein and your fats. Eat that second, then your carbohydrates and or your sugars, like your dessert type stuff.

[Tommy Welling]
OK.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And here's a real life how I thought about this and was like, whoa, that could be true. How many times after a Mexican restaurant you brought this up, tell me or after starting with the chips and salsa all the way through the fajitas, the margaritas to the end are the dessert menus at Brazilian steak houses and hibachi restaurants and Mexican restaurants really robust?

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
No, it's typically like you got the fried ice cream at hibachi. I don't even know. I've never been able to even look at a dessert menu at a Brazilian steakhouse. And you don't get, you know. Yeah. Slaw, right. And then one or two things and then Mexican like, I don't know, ice cream for the kids. I don't even know because at that point, I don't even want to get there.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Like, I don't have the I don't have the room for it, right? So it's like, yeah, they won't even offer it to you. So making sure that you start with the veggies and the protein and the fat, by the time you get to that stuff, you're going to be less. You're going to have less less room or less desire for it.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Now, if you eat really quickly, then, yeah, you're still going to have that ability.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. And here's the here's the, the thing to like look at those common offenders in some of the foods too, because like this study showed that there was a there was a substantial difference in the effectiveness of the walking when you had like a meal that was 70 grams of carbs versus 140 grams of carbs. So like having a hamburger versus having a hamburger with ketchup and other sources on it and a substantial helping of fries versus like a small helping of it.

[Tommy Welling]
So, you know, just the order and then the, the actual dosage of the carbohydrates too, you don't have to change everything all at once. You don't have to have like the perfect meal in the perfect order and then a really long, you know, exercise or walking session afterwards. You can you can make a few tweaks here and it have a substantial difference on the bottom line.

[Tommy Welling]
I think that's the really cool part. And then like you said, when you stack on some some intentional fasting, do that too. I mean, you you can you can still keep a lot of the things that you're used to and that you really enjoy and that you don't want to just see go away or go by the wayside and start having a sizable impact on the scale like immediately.

[Tommy Welling]
And I think that's that's what the really cool part is. And again, that's what I wish I could just go back and tell a younger version of myself, like, hey, know, like, you don't have to change everything you could you could make a difference right now.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. And it's it's incredible that, you know, if you start looking at walking with, you know, the non exercise activity thermogenesis and how it really does increase the ability of your body to efficiently process the energy that's consumed. It's really cool. And I forgot to mention, you know, we've got the 35 point decrease with the walking, we've got the balancing of the insulin resistance versus insulin sensitivity with the fasting.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
But you can get a 75% reduction in that blood sugar again by just eating your meals in a certain order. We're not talking about like difficult things here going to the gym every day after work.

[Tommy Welling]
Right.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
You know, for the next 12 weeks and completely augmenting your favorite foods and remitting and restricting and eat less, move more, bring your way into suffering. We're talking about simple things that you can do and I'm not going to let my wife know that we recorded this episode about walking so she is not allowed to whatever episode number of this is because you'd be like, oh, see, I told you.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, ok ok but I will put this out there during the day when I do have lunches as my home and meals, I will make sure that I get out and I take those dogs for a walk. Nice because, you know, we're on this journey with you. We're leveling up our experience or covering up our knowledge. That is why we have the Facebook community group where you can come and continue the conversation, share your tips, get your questions answered.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Because what we found on this journey of making fasting a lifestyle as it is being more socially accepted, you there's still a big gap in the support and the guidance that's needed. Tommy So yeah, I don't know. I think you already do the walking thing, even though you want it to go back and tell your younger self. Yeah, I'd like to go back and thank my grandparents because they were right, that generational wisdom and that has been replaced with a screen yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So I'm going to commit to it. Not going to say it's going to be every day. I'm not going to yet tell my wife. Yeah. Cause she would love to go on walks like she loves it. So we do it periodically. But with three kids under five, I don't feel like it's a walk. I feel like it's more like chasing chickens around trying to catch them.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. Wrangling cats.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Wrangling cats. Right. So as we wrap up today's episode, head to the show notes, click the link for the Free Facebook Community Group. Come on down, continue the conversation. With like minded people that are on the same journey as you and I are. Tomi, as all of you listeners, appreciate the conversation today as always, and we'll talk soon.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, thank you. Bye.

[Tommy Welling]
So you've heard today's episode and you may be wondering, where do I start? Head on over to be fasting for Life.com and sign up for our newsletter where you'll receive fasting tips and strategies to maximize results and fit fasting into your day to day life.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Why are you there? Download your free fast start guide to get started today. Don't forget to subscribe on iTunes. Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Make sure to leave us a five star review and we'll be back next week with another episode of Fasting for Life.

 

 

 

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