Ep 3: The Power of Food: Preventing Type 2 Diabetes with Diet

[00:00:00] Adrienne Maye: Diabetes is a condition that can totally take over your body if you do not manage it properly.

[00:00:08] Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell: One of the first steps to preventing type 2 diabetes is making lifestyle changes. So, in this episode, we'll talk about healthy eating. 

[00:00:17] Oscar Camejo: I was released from the hospital and first thing I did was order a diabetic cookbook.

[00:00:23] Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell: We'll also learn how food impacts blood sugar. And most importantly, we'll hear how people living with prediabetes can make changes to their diet to help prevent developing type 2 diabetes. 

[00:00:36] Dr. Robert Oh: I took out a lot of the sweets from my diet.

[00:00:39] Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell: Plus, we'll tackle some of those common nutrition myths. 

[00:00:44] Adrienne Maye: A lot of people have just been told to stop eating everything that is white. White rice, white bread, white flour.

[00:00:54] Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell: This is the Preventing Type 2 Diabetes Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. BCW. The Preventing Type 2 Diabetes Podcast is a production of Mission Based Media and was made possible with the support from the American Pharmacists Association Foundation. This series is for educational purposes only. It is not a substitute for formal medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. So please, if you have questions about your health, talk to a qualified healthcare provider.

We've all heard that certain foods like sugary treats and white bread are not good for us, and people with prediabetes and type 2 diabetes shouldn't eat too much of them. But why is that? How does the food we eat affect our bodies? Let's start with the basics. 

[00:01:41] Rebecca Lindstedt: There's three macronutrients in every single food you're going to eat: protein, fat, and carbohydrate. 

[00:01:48] Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell: This is Rebecca Lindstedt.

[00:01:50] Rebecca Lindstedt: I'm a registered dietitian in Reno, Nevada. I specialize in diabetes and I love talking about food in general. I love food. 

[00:01:58] Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell: As Rebecca said, protein, fats, and carbohydrates are the three main macronutrients in the food we eat. Macronutrients are nutrients our bodies need for energy.

[00:02:09] Rebecca Lindstedt: Some foods have a combination of all three, some foods just only have one of the three or two out of the three. But of the three, carbohydrate is going to be what raises your blood sugar. So let's say you eat a carbohydrate like bread or pasta, you digest it in your stomach and then the carbohydrate breaks down into glucose.

[00:02:27] Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell: Remember that glucose is just another word for sugar. So if carbohydrates are converted into sugar in the body, are carbohydrates bad for you?

[00:02:37] Rebecca Lindstedt: Carbohydrates help you think, they help you breathe, they help you run, lift weights. All of those things are important.

[00:02:46] Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell: Rebecca's patients say they're avoiding carbs because they believe carbs are unhealthy. But that's not exactly true. And it's one of the most common nutrient myths.

[00:02:56] Rebecca Lindstedt: It's like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. You don't want too much, you don't want too little, you just want the right amount. 

[00:03:02] Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell: Eating a balanced amount of carbohydrates is important for a healthy diet. And it's also important to eat more natural carbohydrates, like fruits and beans, instead of a lot of processed carbohydrates like candy, cookies, and soda. It's also important to combine carbohydrates with other macronutrients we talked about, fat and protein. 

[00:03:23] Rebecca Lindstedt: The best thing to do is to pair a carbohydrate with a protein, and that will help with blood sugar control. 

[00:03:30] Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell: This is because protein is digested slower than carbs, so it helps slow down the entry of sugar into your bloodstream. This means you don't have big blood sugar spikes. Fats do the same thing, so it's important to eat fats in moderation. The key word is moderation. 

[00:03:48] Rebecca Lindstedt: Eating fat, dietary fat, so a piece of meat with lots of marbling, fried food. That can raise your cholesterol levels in the blood, which can lead to heart disease, which is linked to diabetes as well. So watching your fat intake is also important. 

[00:04:05] Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell: Like carbohydrates, a balanced amount of fat is good for you. Too much or too little is not. And some foods like eggs, fatty fish, avocados, and even dark chocolate are better for you than foods like burgers, hot dogs, and french fries. There's a lot to learn about making good food choices. And this is where education programs like the National Diabetes Prevention Program can help you adjust your diet so you can eat healthy food and still enjoy it.

Of course, making changes to your diet can feel difficult, but Rebecca has a really easy trick to help you get started. It's called the plate method.

[00:04:45] Rebecca Lindstedt: Get a paper plate because you're going to fold it in half to make a nice line down the center. And half of the plate you're going to fill with non-starchy vegetables. Tomatoes, cauliflower, broccoli, lettuce, asparagus. Then the quarter of your plate is where your starchy vegetables will go. Corn, peas, potatoes, and orange squash. Or if you want pasta there, you could swap out white pasta for whole wheat pasta. You could do brown rice instead of white rice. You could do whole wheat bread instead of white. And then the remaining quarter of the plate is going to be your protein, preferably a lean cut, so a lower fat.

[00:05:22] Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell: Lean proteins include foods like fish, skinless chicken breasts, beans and lentils, and even low fat dairy products like cottage cheese and yogurt. If you've ever heard of the Mediterranean diet, the plate method is very similar.

[00:05:36] Rebecca Lindstedt: Actually, the plate method is based off of the Mediterranean diet, and another term is the DASH diet for lower sodium, so they're all three kind of the same thing, the plate method, DASH diet, and Mediterranean. And basically what it focuses on is more food from plants. 

[00:05:51] Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell: Oscar Camejo uses the plate method and follows a Mediterranean diet when he eats.

[00:05:58] Oscar Camejo: Half of my plate is vegetables with every meal, whether it's a salad or if I'm sautéing veggies. So I cook with variety. 

[00:06:07] Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell: We met Oscar in a previous episode. He was diagnosed with prediabetes in 2018. 

[00:06:13] Oscar Camejo: And I didn't take the news seriously enough to make wholesale changes. I was given a one sheet document that said, hey, start eating better and try to exercise so you can prevent getting type 2 diabetes.

[00:06:31] Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell: Over the next two years, Oscar didn't make a lot of changes to what he ate or how he exercised. Then he went to the doctor for a routine blood test. His doctor called him on a Sunday with an urgent request. 

[00:06:44] Oscar Camejo: And said, go to the emergency room, now. I dropped everything and was in there for five days, and that's when I learned that I had developed type 2 diabetes.

[00:06:55] Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell: Oscar now lives with type 2 diabetes, because as he said, he didn't take his prediabetes diagnosis seriously enough to make healthy lifestyle changes. He wants his story to inspire and inform others that type 2 diabetes can be prevented with the right steps, and that those same steps can help people living with type 2 diabetes manage their symptoms.

For example, Oscar doesn't need to take medication for type 2 diabetes and his blood sugar is back under control because of the healthy lifestyle changes he's made starting with his diet. 

[00:07:30] Oscar Camejo: I was released from the hospital, I think that Thursday or Friday, and first thing I did was order a diabetic cookbook.

[00:07:39] Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell: If you're listening to all of this and worrying that having prediabetes means you'll never be able to eat some foods ever again, you're not alone. We all have our favorite foods that aren't necessarily the healthiest options. And the thought of giving them up forever can make us feel like achieving a healthy lifestyle is impossible.

[00:07:59] Rebecca Lindstedt: I think it's just the way the human brain is wired. If you can't have something, you're just going to think about it a lot more. 

[00:08:05] Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell: This is especially true for foods that connect us to our families or traditions. 

[00:08:11] Grace Silverio: When you think about nutrition, you have to take other people's cultures and ethnicity into consideration.

[00:08:17] Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell: Grace Silverio is a registered nurse and certified diabetes care and education specialist who lives with prediabetes. 

[00:00825] Grace Silverio: I am Puerto Rican and Dominican. When you think about rice, that's a staple for a lot of cultures, definitely for me. 

[00:08:34] Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell: So it doesn't have to be about cutting out foods like rice completely. It's about finding healthier ways to enjoy them in moderation.

[00:08:42] Grace Silverio: Brown rice for me wasn't an option. I tried it and I was like, I don't really like it. I don't want to do brown rice. But understanding you can still do the white rice. Just think about portion size or serving size. 

[00:08:55] Oscar Camejo: Some of my problem foods or challenging foods were rice, bread, potatoes and pasta. Because I come from a Caribbean family and those are kind of staples of our diet. I still love Caribbean food. I may go to get some Caribbean food every once in a while, but if I do get it, rice is probably like a spoonful of rice just for the familiar taste, but not necessarily to get full off of it.

[00:09:22] Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell: And of course, don't forget about drinks. Alcohol and sugary drinks can be high in calories and make your blood sugar spike. So it's a good idea to cut back and only enjoy them in moderation. You can also change the way you make the recipes you love, swapping out unhealthy ingredients and cooking methods for healthier ones.

[00:09:42] Oscar Camejo: Eating should be enjoyable. Food shouldn't be highly restrictive. My thing was pizza and wings. Every Thursday was pizza and wings Thursday, you know, so that's fried food, heavy fat food, high carbs. So, rather than just say, okay, well, I'm just going to completely eliminate wings and pizza, what, is there an alternative version? You know, they have cauliflower pizza that tastes just as good. I used to eat fried wings, I don't eat fried wings anymore, I eat baked wings. 

[00:10:18] Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell: You can take these same strategies, eating food in moderation and swapping unhealthy choices for healthier ones, and you can apply them anywhere, even at celebrations and holidays.

[00:10:30] Miguel Cruz: I'm originally from Mexico, and when I go to a party, yes, the smells, the aromas that they come from the food, they just trigger that sense that, ooh, I'm going to eat a lot, right? I'm going to enjoy it. 

[00:10:43] Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell: This is Miguel Cruz. He's a lifestyle coach with the National Diabetes Prevention Program and with Project Impact Diabetes run by the American Pharmacists Association Foundation. Miguel helps people make the changes that can prevent type 2 diabetes. 

[00:10:58] Miguel Cruz: But at the same time, you already are making the conscious effort to say yes. I can eat maybe two tacos and instead of five, and instead of drinking a couple of beers, I might just have a little bit of water.

[00:11:10] Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell: Nutritionist Rebecca Lindstedt also tells her patients it's okay to indulge in a little sweet treat at a celebration every now and then.

[00:11:18] Rebecca Lindstedt: I always tell my patients, my rule of thumb for sweets management is I pick homemade cakes and cookies because I know the quality is going to be so much more satisfying versus store bought. But if you're at a birthday party, you know, and you've had a meal that day with that right balance of naturally occurring carbohydrates, healthy fats and protein, there's no reason why you can't have a little piece of cake, as long as it fits in with your blood sugar goals and your medications.

[00:11:48] Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell: Ultimately, Miguel and family nurse practitioner Ryan Aiazzi recommend that the best way to turn these individual choices into long term habits is to take things one step at a time and to be kind to yourself.

[00:12:02] Miguel Cruz: We don't have to change from zero to a hundred. It's a gradual process. And once we find our rhythm, our own rhythm, then we're going to be able to start consistently and make those particular changes, a permanent changes.

[00:12:18] Ryan Aiazzi: If every day you're making 50% improvement in your diet than what you had prior to being diagnosed, that's a win, right? If you have a bad day and you slip up, just get back on the horse tomorrow and keep going because one day doesn't define you. 

[00:12:36] Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell: In the next episode. 

[00:12:19] Adrienne Maye: For some people, they may not have an actual grocery store.

[00:12:43] Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell: How do I access healthy food if it's too expensive or I'm in a food desert? We'll cover some ways to find nutritious food through local and national food programs. 

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Preventing Type 2 Diabetes Podcast. Remember, we have plenty of resources to help you on your health journey. Go to healthunmuted.com/resources for links to useful items like the National Diabetes Prevention Program, information to enroll in a lifestyle change program, and links to book like Beating the Sugar Beast, which was written by our guest, Adrienne May, and created specifically for people of color living with prediabetes and type 2 diabetes.

I'm Dr. BCW, and this show is part of the Health UNMUTED audio library by Mission Based Media. It was created with support from the American Pharmacists Association Foundation. To listen and learn more, visit healthunmuted.com and follow our show on your favorite podcast player.