Data Matched the Feeling: An Inside Look at Health Coaching - Session 3 Joanna

Hi, Joanna. What is new and good with you? Hi.

Hi, Donna. I'm okay.

Yeah.

What's new and good? It was my birthday and had a nice weekend and I ate all the things.

Of course, it's your birthday.

Yeah. But I did.Speaking of eating all the things, I wanted to report back to you because I did make two of your recipes from your booklet, and they were well received all around. So kudos to you. Yeah, we really liked it was the peanut butter curry with lime and the quinoa chili. Oh, nice. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Excellent.

It's not kudos to me. It's kudos to you. You made it. I just.

That's true. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, we did it. So I hope to make a couple more recipes. I had my eye on something else, too, to make.I don't remember which one right now, but no.

Excellent, excellent. I have to just quickly update also our listeners because we were chatting via WhatsApp between our calls because we had a long stretch this time.I was busy celebrating my sister's wedding, so I couldn't have our call as frequently as we usually do. But you did update us that you through work, or maybe you want to kind of talk about it through work, you had to do some sort of thing. Food diary.And you were wearing a cgm. Is that correct?

Yes, that's correct. So, yeah, for a project at work, we did a study and I joined it. We were a CGM and we did a food diary and we tracked our mood.So I'm still waiting for the extracts of that, but it was very interesting to just kind of note what my typical eating habits would do to my glucose levels.

Mm.

So, for example, I noticed. So in the afternoon, typically after lunch, I would have a snack of, you know, fresh fruit, like maybe some grapes or a plum or something.And I noticed that would cause a massive glucose spike and that would be sometimes sustained until dinner time, which I learned you don't really want that. You want it to go up and then come back down relatively quickly. So that was a good learning for me to maybe shift.And then, Donna, you had already mentioned, like, maybe just starting with a bit of protein. So I shifted a little bit to, like, having some nuts before fruit.But actually, if I. I noticed that if I was careful about my lunch and also started with a, you know, healthy sort of protein, ish thing and a lot of vegetables, and I didn't really crave a snack between lunch and dinner, so that was also really good learning for me.

Excellent.That's a huge Learning, I would think because yeah, that's why I love CGMs, not because I think everyone necessarily needs it to see if they're pre diabetic. I think it's just a really great learning on what are our habits and what, how does that affect our body and what can we do?Like what are the small changes we can do to actually affect those positively?And it sounds like that was actually working to your benefit just being on that project at work, which is just so, you know, it was just beautifully cosmic, just the way things work. So I'm super excited when you told us about it. Great. Any other learnings from, from that? We are waiting for me to be able to scan through it.But I'm sure that you, I mean you're an information person and you do love that kind of stuff. So I'm quite curious if there is anything else that you discovered or something that may have surprised you along the way. Just doing that.Was it just 1, 1 CGM? So like two weeks worth or was it a month?

It was, it was supposed to be two CGMs. So 20 days because they were each lasting 10 days. But my second one, I don't know if I attached it correctly.So it had kind of readings that were all over the place and then it fell off after three days. Correct. Okay. So I got really like one good set of readings out of it.But I'm interested to try it again maybe like outside of the context of the study and maybe do a little bit more experimenting. I also recognize that food logging is very difficult, especially so a thing that I learned about myself.Well, I knew about myself, like I'm a taster while I'm cooking. So I, you know, we'll, we'll taste things as I go along. And I didn't know how to log. I mean, well, I knew how to log it. I'll be honest.

Who has time or energy for that?

That's the question. One, half a teaspoon of tomato sauce. Okay. Testing it.

Okay.

Five like pieces of the cauliflower before it goes in the pan. No, I didn't bother with that. So yeah, yeah, I think the food logging is the best effort. I would say like 85 to 90% of what I ate is log.

That's great.

Yeah. So yeah, it shows me that you always have to take that stuff with a grain of salt.But even the knowledge like I'm going to be logging whatever I eat, I felt shifted my behavior a little bit and I was like, do I really want to write down that I ate this piece of chocolate.

No.

So maybe I won't have it.

I love it.That's funny that you bring it up because we did have the same conversation with someone else that we're working with, and they also were just kind of pondering out loud while we were talking about food log if it will change their ha. You know, if it will change it just because they have to write it down. And it's funny because for some people it doesn't. For some people, it doesn't.And it doesn't matter if I say, like, you know, I'm not going to. You know, I come with zero judgment, so don't even think about me.Just really write it down so you notice what's going on, you know, because the risk of not logging it when you do write your food log is that as soon as you don't, you will go back to that habit, which, again, it might not be bad. Like, you're talking about a piece of chocolate. If it's 75% dark chocolate, I'd be like, yeah, just have it. Actually, there. There's more benefit to.To. To bad when it comes to that kind of chocolate. So, yeah, that should be okay.But, you know, we tend to go back to old habits very, very quickly, which, again, there's no right or wrong there.It's just for you to kind of also try to notice it when you're not food blogging to be like, if I was food blogging, what, you know, would I be happy to write this down or not? I find that with some of my clients, especially those who find food blogging challenging for any reason.If it's time, if it's shame, if it's whatever is to just.In your calendar, whichever calendar that you're working with, whether it's online or a manual one, to just mark a little red dot for a day that you feel like you had something, it doesn't matter what it is something that you feel you'd be ashamed to blog an orange where you're like, well, this was the best choice and it's not that bad, but probably not the best solution. Now that you've done the cgm, you might actually know. So you're like, I had grapes without starting with knots.It wasn't the best for me, but it was grapes. So mark it as orange and then leave blank or mark green. The days that you're like, oh, wow, pat on the back. I was. I did really good today.And the reason being is that because life is so hectic and especially since you were talking about kind of your memory not necessarily being as great as it used to be, through the grind of life, we tend to forget what has happened yesterday, two days ago, what did I even have for breakfast? I don't freaking know. So when you mark it, then at least you see an entire week.And when you see one red dot in an entire week, you should be super, super excited and very proud of yourself. But when you see it every day or every other day, you're like, oh, I didn't even realize that it was that frequently.So it's again, it's just bringing stuff to your, to your knowledge or to your consciousness of, okay, this is something that I need to look into. This is something that I need to worry about or not.But I'm really glad that you got to do that because as you say, it just brings a lot more awareness to just the everyday choices that we make. Do you feel that after? So, so you said that it was basically supposed to be about a month. The second one didn't necessarily work.So you did have a gap where you didn't wear the cgm. I assume you still food blogged and stuff like that, but you didn't have the black on white information. Did you feel that there was a change there?And do you feel that there's a change since you don't have to food log?

Yeah, that's a good question.So one thing that I really wanted to do when I was wearing the CGM was try to understand what a glucose spike or excursion feels like when I'm having it. And I noticed that sometimes I would feel tired if my glucose was spiking, but other times I wouldn't feel anything.So I thought it was really cool to be able to see. And I was like obsessively checking what are my numbers, what are my numbers. But after I stopped wearing it, I sort of lost that granularity.So just had to rely on like my imperfect memory to remember, like, okay, what kind of food choices were good and I didn't really. Yeah, I think the effect of it, like rapidly decreased.And now that I've stopped food logging, like, only stopped on Saturday, I still kind of have it in the back of my mind, but we're still fresh off of it.So I did find it useful because think I may continue just for a couple more days to really kind of get in the habit, since I feel like it's kind of a habit already to solidify that. Yeah, it just helps me to be a little bit more aware. I Guess like, oh, I'm eating this now. I'm going to write it down.Versus mindlessly just eating things. And there were, you know, there was a day when everything just completely went off the rails. And, you know, it ended up.The car broke down and we were, you know, halfway across the country and I was stuck alone with the girls and, oh, no, the only thing open nearby was a gelato place. It's like, obviously, you know, you gotta do what you gotta do.

Exactly. Any. Any sensible person would,

you know, like, surviving the dinner time with gas station snacks and ice cream and. Yeah, yeah, it was. It was not great.But, yeah, I think just in terms of, like, bringing an awareness and like you said, having an awareness of your habits, whether they're good, whether they're not so good, it was really valuable.

So, yeah, excellent.

I think that's what I learned. Yeah, that's really, really good.

I'm always going to be a fan of food logging.If you feel that it is more comfortable for you to just send pictures to me in our chat of whenever you grab food, just take a picture and basically send it over. That might actually be easier and less time consuming for you as well. Again, zero judgment from my end.

I. So I have to say I actually hated the photographing.I hated having to have my phone out at every meal and especially dinner time when we sit down, you know, the kids. And the kids started going, no, phone's at the table. And then if you go back for seconds, it's like, oh, I gotta get the phone out again. Yeah.So I. I liked the paper version better. It just felt a little bit. But have a hard time estimating portions.I know Megan was saying she's, you know, weighing things in the kitchen all the time.And, you know, it might be worth it for me to just spend kind of a week, like, weighing out, you know, how much yogurt fits in my favorite bowl or, you know, how much milk. When I have milk with my coffee, which now I'm doing every other day, more or less bulletproof.If I put milk in my coffee, how much is it that I typically put? Because it's always kind of the same.You know, this was one of the things somebody else in the study was saying, like, we're creatures of habit, right? Like, we tend to go for the same foods and we eat the same amount of foods.So it Just to know, like, how much is in my typical yogurt with fruit and nuts, or. Yeah, how much milk do I put in my coffee? Or, you know, the. Those kinds of things.If I measure it out once, then I know that might be a good next step to just make that easier.

Well, let me ask you a question, though. How would that help you?

Well, just to say, if you write down versus taking a picture, like, I can write down a bowl of yogurt, and if I would show it to you. You don't know if. I mean, you know, like a soup bowl, a salad bowl, you know what we're talking about, like pot of yogurt, big, small.So just to make it a little bit more precise.

Okay. And then so we've.

Well, I don't know. So this is my. If I would give it to you and then you would say, like, oh, this is great. This is not so great. I don't know what you.I. I didn't have the food log to give to you, so I don't know what you would do with one. If I would give it to you.

Yeah, no, it's not a problem. I'm just kind of provoking you to, to understand what your motivation is for that.To me personally, and not everyone works that way, as we heard, Megan, doesn't necessarily work that way, but I, I do. To me, it's more about what you eat. That's the quality versus quantity.So I'm a true believer that, you know, if you eat the right stuff, you can happily overeat it and you won't necessarily have such a bad effect.It's more the quality of the foods, or the lack of quality of the foods that we're consuming that have more weight on our weight loss journey, on our gaining health journey and all of that versus am I having two heaped tablespoons of yogurt or four? So again, if it brings something to you and you think you want to invest that time and effort into it, by all means, go for it.If you think that that's going to be helpful to you, um, for me personally, not so much. Like, if we get to a point where your consumption is pretty great, right.That we're both happy that you even see that with a cgm, like, wow, my body is really, you know, maintaining the glucose levels that are healthy and that I don't crash and I don't become tired and I don't, you know, whatever, crave sweets or blah, blah, then you know, at that point, you're doing really great for a couple of months, but you're not managing to lose weight. Then we'll be like, okay, then let's now talk about portions. Like, do you have one Serving spoon of rice with your dinner or are you having three?That would obviously make a difference. But to start with, I think you know, instead of. And you should tell me if that's kind of your characteristic or not.But a lot of people, they'll, like, hit the ground running and they'll do everything that they can, but it becomes very old very soon.And that makes you kind of go back to your old habits a lot sooner rather than just kind of going like, good, okay, all I need to do is make sure that those red dots in my diary or in my. Are less than what they are at the moment.

Let's keep.

Keep to once a week instead of maybe three times a week. I don't know. Right. This is just off the top of my head. I didn't see your food log. I think that is a healthier kind of way to move forward.Because let's not forget that Megan has been doing this for years. And so for her, that was maybe the next step or maybe because she's very.She's a calculated kind of like facts on paper person, it works well for her. But you. You really need to find your best way. And if that's something that will overwhelm your. Your.Your senses and will make you just kind of go like, oh, screw this, I'm going back to my old habits and this is too much, then that's something to consider before you actually do that. Go ahead and do that. Does that make sense?

Yeah, no, absolutely. So to answer your question, I think I am kind of the sort of person to try one thing. Like, I will.I don't like to just, like, change everything all at once and then, like, go back to my old habits. I like to sort of change, play around, like, with one variable, let's say, and. And try that for a while.But I get a bit frustrated when I don't see results after like, two, three weeks. And then I'm like, okay, well, obviously, like, that wasn't the thing. So I don't know, go back to the drawing part. Try something else.

Yeah.

And so. Yeah. And nothing really has seemed to move the needle that much for me. Like, I think I just have a really hard time sort of. Yeah.Like, I don't see that the weight has shifted at all with the past, like, 10 months to a year despite, you know, like, eating healthy and moving and exercising and stuff. Like, sometimes I'm like, what is the thing that needs to happen? Yeah.So I feel a bit frustrated, but I also feel good about it because I know you Know, it's been slowly improving, you know, or at least always trying to improve. So it's not like I get depressed about it and then I'm like, okay, I'm going to go eat McDonald's.I mean, I don't eat McDonald's anyway, but whatever, eat a whole pizza or something.And so I, I would say to the extent that I, like yo, yo, or go up and go down, up on my, like, what I'm eating, what I'm focusing on, it's a much smaller fluctuation.

Okay. Yeah, so let's, let's do this. Because you did say I didn't see much change in the last, let's say, year.

Right.

Let's maybe start looking at that timeline from when we started working together.Because when you wore the cgm, you did notice that there were certain choices that you made that you considered healthy and your body didn't take it as such.And so you, you really need to keep that in mind because sometimes we're doing the best that we can with the knowledge that we have, but that knowledge that we have is not enough. Or there are other things that we need to consider that we haven't even researched yet. Yeah. Okay.So I know how frustrating it is, and I know, you know, I think I probably mentioned it probably the first time that we spoke on our consultation call that like, you know, we want things to happen yesterday, and that's just a characteristic thing. We're doers. We need shit done, and we want to see that.The salad that we ate today made us lose 10 kilos with a snap of a finger, which unfortunately doesn't happen. But it's something to always, always keep in mind is that what we're doing now is not. It's not a quick fix.It's a sustainable shift, which means that the weight will also come down slower.The metabolism takes time to actually start moving because we're not making such huge shifts, like all of a sudden fasting for 24 hours and then, you know, doing, like, crazy exercises. The shifts that we're doing are not huge, so we can't expect the change to be that big.And also, I would even challenge you to not even look at your timeline from when we started working together, but rather from when you started food logging and, and noticing things and then shifting those specific things that you noticed. Does that sound reasonable?Yeah, I know it might feel like, okay, time lost kind of thing, and I've been, you know, trying and struggling, but it is something just to give you that grace of. Yeah, you did, you tried your fricking best and more. Plus, you know, kids, plus work, plus hobby, plus everything that is life.But you now are starting, you're, you're now moving with different knowledge that you haven't had before. And so now is the time to be like, okay, great, how do I feel? And that's the biggest thing.You know, you said, do I feel differently when my glucose levels are high? That's how people become, you know, wake up one morning and they're like, What, I'm type 2 diabetic. Like, how did that work?You don't necessarily feel those changes. Yeah, sometimes as you said, energy. But that's more because of the carb load and things like that. Not necessarily because of the glucose shifting.We don't necessarily feel that. But to keep all of that in mind to give you the grace that you deserve and to just be like, great.So now I don't have to go crazy, but I do have the information that can, that can serve me correctly. And the shifts don't have to be big, they just have to be. Makes sense.

No, absolutely makes sense.

Okay. Yeah, yeah.So keeping all of that in mind, what do you think are, you know, the few changes that you either already started implementing, you want to continue to implement, especially now without the food log or, you know, without the cgm. And that's kind of black on white information or things that you had in mind during that project and would like to try.

So you mentioned, you know, carbs and feeling tired. I noticed like a, the having carbs would give me a glucose spike even if I had protein first.

Okay.

But like the meals that were mostly just, you know, like veg and like hard boiled egg or something, there would be very little fluctuation and it also felt better afterwards. So for me that's, that's like a win win.So I want to keep, keep up with that or at least like if carbs then you know, sort of the, the whole grain because then you can have, I mean I noticed that I can have a little, a smaller amount of that and also feel like really full and satisfied.

Yeah.

So I want to keep it that sort of meal. What is the word I'm looking for, like composition and so that's one change I'll bring.Moving forward, it sounds like it might also be useful to continue with the food logging. Just paper based.

Yeah.

Maybe try that for the next, I don't know, until we meet again or so.

Yeah, I would love that. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, yeah. I'm having, still having a Hard time avoiding processed foods. Okay, what do you, what do you

categorize as processed foods?

Or let's say what are the things.

Yeah, what are the.

Yes, yeah. That I've been crutching on, let's say to sort of get through like busy days.If I forget to pack lunch or something, you know, I'll have like a package of skier, you know, this yogurt, yogurt stuff. Or sometimes I have to go for the, the packaged coffee, you know, the Emmy latte, the zero sugar one.But so that one causes a glucose spike as well, even though it has no added sugar. It's just milk, but kind of a lot of milk, I guess. I don't know.

Some of the, some of the substitutes also do that and, and even if they don't show it, they emulate that in the body. So that's definitely something to think about. But yeah, okay. Yeah. Yeah.

I mostly do like hard boiled eggs, nuts and cottage cheese. I don't know if cottage cheese counts as processed. Yeah, I think the, the definition is so wide and doesn't really like mean anything.In a lot of cases it is.

That's why I wanted to ask you because, you know, any other, any other kind of specifics that you notice resurface

in terms of like easy go to foods that I lean on specifically? Well, it's hard to avoid the noodles. I tried to switch to whole grain, you know, like whole wheat noodles. But yeah, we still end up with those a bit.But you know, what I had.This is not diverging from the question, but man, I've warmed up some garbanzo beans and I put it with the tomato sauce and it was so good I didn't even want the noodles. I prefer the taste.

Perfect.

But yeah, you know, we had the late arrival back from travel and you know, just made a quick dinner and used some, you know, like store bought packaged sauce, put on the garbanzo beans and I thought, okay, well I'm having the beans instead of the noodles, so it's a win. Or at least like the beans and you know, a couple spoonfuls of noodles. Not a lot, but yeah, you know, okay. Yeah.And I don't know, like smoked fish as I like smoked trout sometimes for, for that sort of like the healthy fish. But I guess that also counts, right? So I don't know.

So out of the things that you mentioned, I have to ask the skier, are you talking about the sweetened kind of flavored one or just the yogurt?

I do the flavored one with the Least sugar. Okay.

So I would say, because I don't like Kimpli. Yeah, So I would definitely say that.That I definitely would consider as processed or at least as sugar added, you know, where potentially you could do that on your own without the added sugar. The, the coffee, of course, you know, the as you saw, does affect also the glucose and the noodles. So those are the three that I heard.The other ones, I mean, like, obviously hard boiled legs and nuts go for it. Best to have nuts that are not roasted and salted, if that's really difficult. Roasted, salted, you know what I mean?So there's different levels to it. But I'm always happier when you have nuts versus a bag of potato chips. So that's always going to be a win, even if it's roasted and salted.It's just in the hierarchy of things. But so a couple of ideas for you, which again, you can choose to look into or not. I think we spoke about one type of noodle that I love, the

Hearts of palm.

Hearts of palm, I love that song. But, you know, acquired Tespa. I love it.But you can also actually find in the supermarket in Switzerland, in Migros specifically, I think zucchini noodles.You can make them, of course, on your own, but you can buy zucchini noodles and that I think, I think we just want that extra kind of like volume and that extra, you know, something to go along with that sauce. And so that might actually be a good solution for you.Instead of the noodles, of course, you know, if you can have just the garbanzo beans with this, with the tone of sauce. Yeah, that's great. But why not add a little bit more veggie, a little bit more fiber, and some more vitamins into the mix.That's always gonna be great. So either getting a spiralizer, don't get the cheap ones, they're garbage.Like the handheld ones, but like the ones that stick to the countertop and you just kind of go like crazy. And then you can do it with carrots, you can do it with zucchini, you can do it with anything. That's a really great solution.

Have one that's languishing in the back of my kitchen. There you go.

Time to revive. But I think that would actually be a really good. Again, step one, step forward. So, yeah, we talked about, you know, like, of course you can buy a.What is it called? The, the, you know, to go cups and, and make your coffee, have a little mixture at night that you just put stuff in.You just need to add Boiled water to it and, and that swig of milk that you have and you can take that to go. That's little things that you can kind of think, okay, how can I solve this specific problem for that specific product that I am trying to avoid.But of course we're unfortunately running out of time. So we can definitely Discuss it via WhatsApp if you need some ideas or if you feel like, oh, you know what, yeah, I want to change that.How would that work? And then I can shoot over some ideas for you.But I think you're goals at the moment, what you said, which as if we, if I can repeat is basically to more the protein and veggie and hopefully good healthy fat meals and relatively low on the carb or at least on the more simple carbs which I'm sorry to say that whole whole grain noodles I consider as, as simple carb just because of the way it breaks in your body. And you might have seen it with the CGM or sorry. And to keep the food log going for a little bit longer whichever way you feel comfortable.And then we can really dig into the nitty gritty next time. Even if you just have those two weeks of food log, we can already kind of see what else we can do. How I can help you kind of tweak little things.Does that sound okay to you?

Yeah, that sounds good. That sounds manageable. I can, I can handle those goals.

Oh, I know you can. I know you can.

Okay, quick question before we wrap up. What is your take on homemade popcorn?

This is coming from a person who ate only popcorn. When I was pregnant with my boys. That was like my dinner was a huge bowl of popcorn. Anything popped, unfortunately is going to.And I don't know if you had it when you wore the cgm, but you would see that it actually affects a lot on the glucose.So everything popped, made into flour, made into whatever that's basically pre digested for you and as soon as it touches your tongue, it become dissolves into sugar. So I would say it's not the worst snack. But just keep that in mind.And especially if you said I had protein before and it didn't actually help with certain carbs. First of all, you can try with, if you get another cgm, try with fiber, have broccoli before you eat, whatever and see if that helps.But yeah, unfortunately it's not as great as we would like it to be. But it is delicious.

It is. So

unfortunately I don't have better news about the popcorn.

Okay, no worries.

Any other questions that you have kind of.

No, no, that's good. I feel like I have some things to work on before the next time we meet and.

Wonderful. And I hope you're really proud of yourself for the changes that you've already made and the realizations that you've had, because those are awesome.Thank you. Pat on the back. Thanks.

Yeah, it's a journey, but, you know, we're taking it step by step. Exactly.

Just take it with stride and everything will work. Yeah.

And. Yeah.

Okay.

Sounds good. So talk to you in a couple weeks. Excellent.

Joanna, I will speak to you then.

Bye.