Reverse Prediabetes In 16 Weeks

We break the myth that prediabetes is “borderline” and lay out a practical 16‑week plan to lower A1C with small, repeatable habits. We share a personal reversal story, the diabetes plate, stress and sleep tactics, and how to build discipline over motivation.

• prevalence stats and why language matters
• what A1C measures and the prediabetes range
• insulin resistance and early cellular damage
• simple nutrition wins using the diabetes plate
• anti-inflammatory foods and everyday swaps
• walking, light resistance and 150 minutes a week
• stress rating, sleep hygiene and cravings
• tracking weight, inches and weekly goals
• a 16-week roadmap from baseline to maintenance
• mindset shifts from motivation to discipline

You can reverse pre-diabetes in 16 weeks

Chapters

• 0:00 Why Prediabetes Is Not “Borderline”
• 2:29 Prevalence, Risks, And A1C Basics
• 5:00 Insulin Resistance And Early Damage
• 8:40 Language, Awareness, And Medical Gaps
• 10:40 A Personal Diagnosis And Context
• 13:40 Stress, Caregiving, And Hidden Drivers
• 17:00 Weight, Body Fat, And Risk In Midlife
• 19:00 Why 16 Weeks: Testing And Timelines
• 21:30 Identify One Nutrition Challenge
• 24:00 Find One Nutrition Win To Leverage
• 26:00 Activity Barriers And Simple Starts
• 28:10 The Stress Scale And Sleep Reality
• 31:30 Inflammation, Food Choices, And Cravings
• 34:20 The Diabetes Plate Made Practical
• 36:30 Tracking Weight, Inches, And A1C
• 39:00 Movement Goals Without Gym Pressure
• 41:00 Sleep Hygiene As A Metabolic Lever
• 44:00 Preparing The Mind Before The Plan
• 47:20 Grief, Habits, And Honest Audits
• 51:00 Small Sustainable Swaps Beat Overhauls
• 54:00 The 16-Week Roadmap: Baseline To Maintenance

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:03

Welcome to a special edition in the Beautifully Well Lifestyle Program. Today's conversation is a conversation where we're going to focus on what I call an underrated condition. Pre-diabetes. Back in the day, we used to say borderline. Even a physician would say, oh, borderline, not quite type 2 diabetes, but you're like right in the middle. So your glucose numbers or blood sugar levels are a bit elevated. This conversation is for you for two reasons. So you're tuning in, one, you're looking to make some lifestyle changes, and you know that although we're talking about pre-diabetes, that most chronic conditions require the same type of lifestyle adjustments. So you're going to get not only some lifestyle adjustments, but I'll get to fuse in some of the behavior change psychology that has to take place in order for us to implement these changes. Or you've tuned in to this conversation because you or someone you know have been diagnosed with pre-diabetes and you're ready to get rid of it. And you know that you can. Because this conversation is called reverse prediabetes in 16 weeks for a reason. So let's chime in. We love to use the chat. If you have questions or experiences, feel free to uh plug it in the chat, and I promise I'll get to it. Prediabetes is a serious disease, it's not just borderline, and we have to take that language out of our vocabulary because when we say borderline not quite there, it leads people to believe that we have time. It leads some people to believe that since, well, I'm not quite type two, that I don't even have to put forth effort to get my blood sugar down. But let's talk about the prevalence first and then let's link it to other reasons why it's a conversation that we have to have. And while we're going through this conversation, I don't know if you knew this or not, but actually that stat has not changed. That one out of three adult Americans have pre-diabetes. One out of three. For Americans 65 and older, the stat is one out of two. 98 million adults in the U.S. have prediabetes. Pre-diabetes is starting to affect our children too. But for the sake of this conversation, we're going to stick with adults and this opportunity to reverse, reverse engineer your blood glucose. So we'll talk a lot about blood sugar and glucose throughout this conversation. If you or someone you know have prediabetes, and that's a strong stat, one out of three, and I can assure you, if you did the numbers on that, you may not realize how many people you're in close proximity to that have been told, hey, your blood sugar is elevated. We're gonna talk about what those what those numbers are, what makes it elevated. But the reality of prediabetes is that normally we don't see any symptoms. And yet our body is already exposed to some of the damage that occurs with insulin resistance. And we're gonna talk about that. Prediabetes, I'm gonna focus on the A1C statistics because most lab work has A1C. A1C is a critical test that helps to determine if you have prediabetes or if you're creeping to it, because the A1C measures the blood sugar, it measures sugar levels over an average of three months. That's what we want to know. And so the symptoms are rarely ever visible. But did you know that before a pre-diabetes diagnosis occurs, that you must first be going through some changes in your insulin? Insulin resistance is the first red flag, but it's not something that we feel, just like we don't feel symptoms for pre-diabetes, but in order to get to pre, our glucose levels, our insulin levels are already compromised. So the pre-diabetes diagnosis is really just a red flag, it's an alert, and we want it to be an alert because let's face it, A1C numbers for pre-diabetes is 5.7 to 6.4. 5.7 to 6.4. Really important to recognize. An A1C of 5.6 or less is considered normal blood glucose numbers. But we want our blood glucose numbers to hit the lower fives if possible, right? 5.6 and below is is normal. And of course, a type 2 diabetes diagnosis can occur at 6.5 or above. So if we're diagnosed with prediabetes and our numbers are 6.0, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 6.4, you don't know how much time you have before eventually the prediabetes diagnosis becomes type 2. You don't know that timeline. What you do know is the longer you wait to do something, y'all, because we know a chronic condition is a progressive, a progressive condition. So the longer we go without making steps, of course, the worse the condition gets. So thank you for joining us. Um, the pre-diabetes, what we're doing right now is just taking a minute because for us who are here, kudos to you. If I could put reactions on, I would cheer you on for taking the time to join us because it says you're serious about your health. But we also know others that we want to take pre-diabetes seriously too. And here's why. So when we think about insulin and how insulin works, our insulin is what keeps our blood sugar stable. Blood sugar is not stable the moment that we begin to elevate to pre-diabetes. What happens with our insulin when the insulin is no longer working the way that it's supposed to, then the sugar isn't sugar is not going to get to the cells where it needs to in order for us to work, for the body to function. So our cells are going through some issues, and now because we have more sugar than we need, then we'll start storing this stuff in the liver, the muscles, and that extra fat. So when our insulin is high, when our insulin is in trouble, it can lead to weight gain naturally. But insulin resistance is when that cellular function stops working, which means we can't sleep on pre diabetes. We can experience some of the same symptoms as someone diagnosed with type 2 diabetes because of insulin resistance, we can also be at a higher risk for heart disease, stroke, and kidney issues. But I'm not going to beat us over the head about all the reasons why pre-diabetes, that language in these conversations, needs to change so that we can see the awareness. And let me tell you, kudos to you because I've been in conversations. November is diabetes awareness month. I'm always in conversations with physicians, endocrinologists, primary care physicians. And guess what? The lack of education, awareness, and seriousness is not just us when we don't know. For many of us, we have health care partners or our primary care physician or healthcare team, they're not making it serious. It's so naturally. Do a couple of things, and in six months to a year, we'll check it again. Then it must not be that bad. So it is not all us. And this is a non-judgmental conversation. This is an empowering conversation. And I'm glad that I get to share it because you're looking at someone who had to reverse pre-diabetes. And so I wanted to share this story. This is one of one of the few family portraits that I still have access to. And yeah, that's me. I'm the oldest. At one point, I was the tallest. And then later on, of course, both my brother and sister began to outgrow me in height and weight. Good for them. But um, what's interesting about this pre-diabetes story, you can ask yourself, were you surprised if you were diagnosed of pre-diabetes, were you surprised when you got the news? Because, see, here's the story. At the time of my pre-diabetes diagnoses, I only weighed 120 pounds. I went from uh weighing about 132 pounds. A dramatic weight loss for me was a 12-pound weight loss that was not intentional. Um, I didn't know, even though people around me could see that I was dramatically losing weight. Um, and the last thing I would have thought was pre-diabetes. During that time, I didn't know I was dealing with a few other health issues that eventually were diagnosed and led to uh colon surgery. But the pre-diabetes diagnoses didn't shock me as much as my doctor thought it should have. And I'll explain why. So in 2019, let me get the numbers right. 2017 has been that long. In 2017, I literally had just stopped teaching Zimba classes. Zimba was my side hustle. So you're you're talking about someone who was a uh three-time certified health coach, certified in chronic conditions, certified in nutrition, certified in family health, certified in behavior change psychology, and an avid Zumba instructor, now diagnosed with pre-diabetes. In 2017, I was my dad's caregiver, and as he battled uh terminal cancer, what I didn't realize, like many of us who become caregivers, or many of us who have to become a pillar in the family, we don't realize the impact on our health when we are truly diving in to help and support others. I look back, I wouldn't have had it any other way. It was truly a gift and a privilege to be there for him in that way. My mom and dad at the time were divorced. Um, they both had remarried, but they were the best of friends. And my dad and his ex-wife at the time were on the out. So, what does that leave? The oldest daughter has to step in because the two crazy younger siblings just don't get it. I'm not judging, I'm just saying. I know my brother and my sister. But what I didn't realize six months after my dad's death, I was diagnosed with pre-diabetes and a string of a few other um conditions that all were manageable. But the irony of it is the timing of it all, which is why we also want to change the stigma surrounding pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes as if we are consciously putting ourselves at risk with uh food habits and exercise habits, stress connects to it. And so we have a critical window. So I personally, in three months, reversed pre-diabetes. I was able to get my numbers down nicely to the low fives in three months. Um, I knew exactly what to do, but before I even talked about the strategy to get those numbers down, because I promised my doctor I would, I needed to first identify the cause. So let's let's jump in for let's jump in for a minute, for a moment. Are you deep in the root of where you are right now in life? Have you identified your stressors? Are you in a place where you recognize that life is changing and shifting? Maybe all the things you could do five years ago, now if someone put all those things on your plate, it's exhausting, but you're still not saying no. What you're doing could be driving yourself crazy trying to force what's not naturally supposed to happen. You are wondering why I am unable to do the 38 things on my to-do list now when I could back in 2017. And so the fight is not the list of things, the fight is your ability to be okay with giving yourself the grace that's needed because you're not supposed to do 38 things on the to-do list. Some of those things don't belong on a list, they belong with somebody else. But guess what? These things like stress impact glucose numbers, which is why part of this strategy to reverse pre-diabetes, we're going to talk a lot about stress and some of the things that I had no choice but to do in order to get those glucose numbers down. Because although my mom and my dad both uh were had type 2 diabetes and a slew of family members along them, including their parents, I knew that I didn't have to. So these lifestyle changes that reverse for me. Now remember, did I need to lose another pound? I was already 120 pounds looking like the walking dead. I kid you not. I tried to find a picture. I'll I'll figure out how to share it later. And you'll say, uh, that couldn't have been Nick. And my hair was black at the time, too. So you'll recognize the face, but definitely not the body. But if you have been told that it's necessary for you to lose weight, let's also look at weight loss a little differently, too, right? Because weight loss, there was a time where I appeared to be fine. I got my weight back up, but guess what can come along with it, especially in that paramenopause, menopausal phase, body your body fat percentage increases as well, which also increases your risk for pre-diabetes. But it is proven that if weight loss is on your radar, that literally it's only going to take a 5 to 7% weight loss reduction to get you there. Um, I actually gained weight. I gained healthy weight uh during my during my um three-month reversal. Of course, the healthy eating, we'll dive into it, movement, stress reduction. And the sooner we start, the better the number. So, like I said, if your pre-diabetes A1C is in has moved into the six, like the 6.0, 6.1. I'm not saying don't move with the swiftness at a 5.7. You should, because remember, insulin resistance has already happened in the body. But if you are in the sixth, you've reached those six digits, it's it's it's time for action. The great thing about the actionable steps is that we do not have to alter our entire being. We just don't. We just have to be consistent with what we decide to do. And so this says 16 weeks. And the reason why we say 16 weeks, because remember, the A1C test is based on three months, so that's 12 weeks, right? Well, you have to first hit that 12-week point, go and get a new A1C and see what that is, and we say 16 weeks because you're going to need to get those results and make sure that you have been actively calculating all the great steps you've taken over the past three months to reverse this thing so you can continue working along those same lines. So many of us don't have to do a whole 180, trust me on this one, because I did not. What I did, I'll get to stress management and habit formation in just a moment. But here's the question for you with nutrition. First thing to identify is what is the challenge? What is the challenge with nutrition? And I want you to get super, super clear with only one. You don't have to name everything. What is the one challenge? Is it is it the uh fried fish? Is it the fried chicken? Is it not eating enough? Is it struggling to eat more than two meals a day? Is it time? Because you find that things like meal prepping just feels like it's overwhelming. What's the one challenge to nutrition? Because here's what what you're gonna do. You're gonna take that challenge that you have in nutrition and create a goal, a very slow, short goal, to help you overcome that challenge. Because these tweaks to our health does not have to be a 180. You found the one challenge. Second, with nutrition is you want to identify what's your what's your healthy what is the one healthy thing you got going for yourself? There could be multiple, but what's the one good thing that you can say about your nutrition habits? You do have one, trust me, you you have one. Could it be that you love vegetables? Could it be that you stop late-night snacking? Could it be that you always take lunch for work? Could it be that although you know you can make some adjustments in nutrition, that you typically get three meals? Find the good. You know why? Because that one healthy nutrition, uh, that one healthy nutrition habit is going to help you overcome that challenge that you have. And what is your five percent weight loss goal? If you were to take out your smartphone and do the math on that, what is that five percent weight loss goal? Welcome. You know, what is it? It does not take a lot. Remember that previous slide said five to seven percent. The third thing you want to ask yourself, we're gonna go back to the challenge. What challenge are you having with physical activity? Y'all, let me let me break this down. Okay, we're talking about reversing pre-diabetes, but guess what? It's not uncommon if we've been diagnosed with pre-diabetes, that we also have issues with our cholesterol. Now, I'm not asking you to talk about it out loud, but I'm just saying our metabolic health is impacted when blood glucose numbers are impacted. When blood flow is impacted, period, and we are struggling with a sedentary lifestyle, it is not uncommon that along with your goal of reversing pre-diabetes, that you're also looking at making sure that your cholesterol numbers are normalize as well. And so when it comes to your physical activity, this is not just going to help you with your blood sugar levels, this is gonna help you with your heart health. What's that challenge with physical activity? You feel like you need a gym? Well, guess what? This is this is the season. You feel like you need a uh personal trainer, or maybe you haven't found the type of exercise that makes you feel like you can't wait to do it? What is the one challenge? And guess what? Even if you're living a sedentary lifestyle, I'm still gonna ask you, then what is the good habit that you have related to physical activity? Are you a walker? Maybe the gym isn't for you, maybe the influencer on YouTube with those 15-minute videos is not for you. Um, but what is a good habit that you have or you want to hone in on with physical activity? Y'all, these are the basics. In a moment, I'm going to guide us through a very important aspect of the reversal, and that is the stress management. If I were to ask you right now, how would you rate your level of stress on a scale from one to ten? Uh, one meaning I don't even know how to spell stress because in my world it does not exist, and I doubt that I see a one. And ten means you probably should be in the ER right about now. Or talking to somebody with quite a few letters behind their name and not virtually. You should be in front of them if it is definitely a 10. So evaluate the 10, right? You could be stressed out, but if it is a 10, seriously, that shows that what you are dealing with is really, really, really taking a toll, right? So this stress scale from one to 10, be realistic with yourself. You don't have to put it in the chat. And if you find that your stress level is above five, then yeah, we're in overwhelm. If your stress level is pushing into the eights, the nines, now I made that joke about the 10, but realistically, some of us have reasons, valid reasons for feeling stress. But I will tell you, stress definitely increases blood sugar levels, blood pressure levels, and it has an impact on our heart health. So, although we talk about nutrition, I'm going to talk about nutrition first. At the end of the day, if I'm stressed out, am I trying to rush home to eat a bowl of broccoli? When I'm stressed out, am I going to YouTube to find Mr. London, one of my favorite trainers? For good reasons. He's a good trainer, he really is. But when we are stressed out, are we aiming to make the healthiest choices? Of course not. Which is why an underrated method to reversing pre-diabetes and keeping it off, and I mean we're talking pre-diabetes, but this ties to any condition that we're dealing with that is considered preventable or chronic. Stress helped get us there. Some of it is the stress eating, some of it is how stress impacts sleep, some of it is that stress becomes such an overload. You see here, you see my little chalkboard here, the buildup of inflammation. We've heard that over and over and over again. Our bodies are in toxic overload. If your stress level is in an eight, guess what your body is saying? Your body is sending stress signals already. Is it fatigue? You're tired out, you don't even know how you're still awake on this car, right? Um, inflammation. We know our bodies are overloaded with inflammation when we are tired. We may have headaches. Guess what? The body might break out in a rash. We may have brain fog. I mean, brain fog is associated with numerous conditions, but inflammation can literally cloud the brain, a foggy brain. So when we think about nutrition and weight loss, then let's let's tie the food in to this inflammation driver, right? You know they're anti-inflammatory foods. So we want to load up on those anti-inflammatory foods because they have to fight off some of the inflammation that's naturally built up by stress. So when you think about when you evaluate, now we're going back to nutrition because I will tell you the mic drop on this yellow. You know how something sounds so simple, it's like, Nick, this can't work. If this this is too, this is so simple, like then why don't my doctors say it? If this is the simplest method, then how come why are the stats up for pre-diabetes, type 2 diabetes hypertension? I'm not gonna talk about that. Not on this call, but I sure will on another one. Maybe it'll be a podcast episode because the diabetes plate, the plate with half your vegetables, a quarter of the protein, a quarter of the starch or your rice, preferably a grain, that is that plays a big role in the reversal. The question though becomes when we look at nutrition, how realistic is for you to make sure that most of your meals that you consume have more vegetables than anything else? It might not be a big challenge for some, but if we're struggling with how we prepare our vegetables, if we feel like we need guidance with this, how can I get a vegetable in for breakfast? You may not need to have a vegetable in the morning for breakfast, but you could in that egg omelette. I personally eat salad for breakfast. That's just because I really like lettuce. I'll eat salad, I'll eat salad for a midnight snack if I was to wake up in the middle of the night. I could eat a salad for a snack. And I'm not bragging, I just I like vegetables. Um, but I like chocolate chimmer cookies too. But when you think about nutrition in the simplest form, you can simply ask yourself, how can I get more vegetables in? Point blank period. How can I get these vegetables on my plate? When we think about weight loss, how are you tracking? Are you doing your weight every single week, y'all? No scale shame here. Name your scale after someone you love. So you want to step on it. Okay, let's change the way we see the scale. It's just a tool, anyway. It doesn't tell a whole story, it's not gonna tell us that you decided to walk away from that candy bar at lunch. The scale doesn't show that you've lost two inches on your waistline, so now the jeans fit a little snug, and that cheetah print belt that you put on, you can go another hole, right? The scale doesn't do that, and that's cool. We just want the scale as a baseline measurement in terms of weight loss. But this is not the weight loss journey per se, right? This is this is weight management, and this is the gain life journey. So your scale, if you're not tracking, how will you know what's happening? On top of that, measure because we lose inches faster than we drop pounds. So you're noticing your body naturally contour. And what is your A1C? Y'all know your numbers. You guess what? I I bet you know, you know how much money in your bank account. If you use Cash App, you know how much you can work with. If somebody sent you a request for$10, you know whether or not you could fulfill it. Do you know your numbers? Do you know what your A1C is? Which is why it's super critical that we know, because we can't put a timeline on how close we are to a type 2 diabetes diagnosis. There's no such thing as knowing exactly when the this it's going to turn. Physicians are still saying within a five-year period, but every person is different. And five years based on what? Right? It could have been four years, my glucose has been elevated, and I'm just now noticing because I finally have a physician talking about it. All this time, I didn't I've been pre-diabetic for seven years, and no one said anything until it's 6.3. How far back can you go back to your labs? Your physical activity, and for those of you who are on this call, if you are over 40, woo-hoo! Guess what, y'all? We don't have to do Tabo. We don't have to join a CrossFit gym. We don't have to go and look up P90X again. It does not take rigorous, strenuous exercise in order for us to accomplish the 150 minutes of exercise a week. 30 minutes a day, five days a week. Or 10-minute increments three times a day. Every five minutes will count. We don't have to do a whole lot. Walking is amazing, but how much can you walk? Are you actually increasing the step? Are you eventually breastwalking? Are you eventually going from one mile to two miles to three miles to four miles? What's the traction with it? Um, are we lifting weights? Can we add some free weights, right? You you know, yes, you know where you are in terms of safety, safety, right? So I'm not prescribing an exercise routine. I'm just saying we're exercise is always going to come into play. When we incorporate exercise, we are also helping our bodies' response to elevated cholesterol to reduce. So I'm gonna talk about cholesterol too, right? Because this is overall health. Bring that LDL down, that bad cholesterol with your um exercise activity. Get the 150 is proven and it's evidence-based. Now I asked about your stress levels on a scale from one to ten. You know what that number is. What is your sleep number? How many hours at night are you getting that restful, peaceful sleep? You could be laying down, but is your body truly at rest? You've parked a car, but the key is still in the ignition. It's running, waiting for you to get up the next morning and just hop in a seat and go. Our bodies are doing the same thing if we do not turn it off before we go to bed. If we're going to bed, thinking about all the things we have to do on repeat the next day, guess what happens when we wake up? Those things are right there. To reverse prediabetes in a 16-week period, before we can even start thinking about meal prepping, how much exercise activity can I get? This is a time where we dive deep and we ask ourselves how can I position my mind and body to get ready to prepare for the changes I want to make? Because y'all know we can be gung ho, we can get excited. I put on Beyonce, and I tell you, I if that Beyonce album lasts for about an hour and 50 minutes, I'm moving for an hour and 50 minutes. But as soon as that that music goes off, what am I doing next? Motivation is fleeting, and motive motivation. That's another topic. Let me just say this the biggest step that you can take in reversing any condition is to first decide how you are going to prepare the body to get ready for the change. Knowing that stress has a direct impact on our glucose levels, are you willing to take some time to sit still, breathe a little bit, and identify the stressors? Some of these stressors are not going anywhere. We already know it. But can we identify them and put them in a category? Right? Um, are some of these stressors really anxiety because things haven't even happened, but because of things in the past, do you think that the same thing is going to repeat, but it hasn't even happened yet? So now you have a combination of some anxiety that may require a little bit more support. If we're not getting sleep, if you've ever been on a weight loss journey or um and you're doing all the things and nothing is coming off the way that you want, how frustrating is it? And then someone says, Oh, but wait a minute, are you are you getting about six to seven hours of sleep at night? Are you really resting at night? Well, I'm in a bed, but I'm I'm up at four o'clock in the morning and can't go back to sleep. But I'm in a bed. Sleep is rejuvenation. Remember with glucose management when our blood is impacted, when we we're dealing with the sticky blood, y'all. Blood is not flowing properly through the through um through our cells. Energy is not getting properly. Our energy, which is the food, the sugars that we eat, the good sugars, right? The good carbs, the the simple carbs, that means that our cellular system is compromised. Sleep rejuvenates our cellular system. Your sleep hygiene matters when it comes to the reversal. So when we begin to prepare our bodies for the change that we want to make, and and trust me, y'all, this is this is not hard, hard, I'll say, right? We're picking out hard right now. Life can be hard, period. Living with a chronic condition can be hard. It has its challenges. This journey to better health, I'm not gonna use the word hard. I'm just gonna refer to this as a decision that can be made. And that when we make this decision, that we can feel good about deciding to invest in our health. And that health investment, we see now it's gonna go beyond the decisions you make about nutrition and fitness. Because we can, and I will tell you this for years I was a fitness coach. I've helped people lose 100 pounds naturally in a year. I've watched people lose 70 pounds and without a personal trainer. Um, I I've watched myself lose 10 pounds in a month just by identifying some of the things that were causing the weight gain. This this stuff is true. I can show you my lab work when I went from pre-diabetic to um normalized A1C in a lower fives. It it was a grief cycle for me. And I didn't even realize I was going through a grief cycle. I didn't realize that a habit I formed after my dad passed was were these trips to the Wegmans four times a week during my work week, grabbing some chocolate chip cookies and uh fountain coke. Now, those two things were not the only things that contributed to it. It definitely played a role, but the other part of it was the stress, the toll of grief to my system. I definitely was not paramenopausal. Um, I was not menopausal. Um, I was dealing with grief, and the grief effect affected the choices that I made. So at the moment of my pre-diabetes diagnosis, remember y'all, I'm a health coach, three times certified at the time. I'm teaching Zumba classes part-time. You don't have to tell me how to be happy, how to be healthy, but what did I have to do? Although I knew the formula for success, I had to sit still and figure out how did I get there? What put me here? What brought me here? And now that I'm here, what are some of the things that I have no choice but to do differently? Small sustainable habits. Yeah, I was going to Wegmans four days, four days at lunchtime. The common, the why Wegmans, my dad never made it to Wegmans. Foundry Row had gone through this total revitalization. I moved to Owings Mills in 1999. I said, My children are going to be raised in Owings Mills. I did the research, I like the school system, and we headed that way in 1999. Foundry Row was new, and I said, I'm taking my daddy to Wegmans. We're going to go to Wegmans, you know, like it's this fancy restaurant. I just I like the food bar. And we're going to go and we're going to have a good time at the Wegmans. Well, of course, it never happened because his illness progressed. Part of that time that I had to sit still and evaluate how did I get there, what is this connection to Wegmans? And why does Wegman's have to happen four days a week? I had this routine. The office I worked at was just, I mean, the car ride was less than five minutes away. Everyone knew who I was, and they knew exactly what I was coming in there to buy. I never changed it. I stuck to the same thing: three chocolate chip cookies and a medium fountain coke. So here we are with how did you get here? What stressors can you manage and control without overwhelm, right? Some things we can't change. But what we can change is how we allow it to affect us. Because now we're not just talking about how we feel mentally, we're talking about our metabolic health. If sleep, if you're not close to the six hours, y'all, I'm I'm in a seven or eight-hour club. I will have it no other way because I recognize that in order for me to do what I do, I have to be well rested. Um, I have a uh sleepless night from time to time, but I'm one of those people. When it's time to go to bed, I am out. So evaluate that sleep because your sleep is your rejuvenation and your sleep helps with blood sugar management. And of course, you want to get support and accountability. Who are you telling that you're on a journey? Now let's walk through really quickly. I want to get some questions too. If you have any questions, you can feel free to put in the chat so that I can um make sure I get to those questions that you may have. How do you reverse pre-diabetes in 16 weeks? I talked about my 12-week reversal, but there's a roadmap to this. I've talked a little bit about some of the things that have to be incorporated in this roadmap, but how do we realistically make it happen? Week four, 30 days, y'all, month one. That is the baseline. This is where you know all of your numbers, weight, muscle mass, body fat mass. You've done your measurements. You may have even measured your neck, you know your A1C, and guess what? You know your blood pressure reading, you know your average, you know your cholesterol numbers. Because as you work towards this, other aspects of your health are going to naturally improve. So you want to be able to see the improvement. You're going to set goals, but these goals are very clear and simple, and they're only happening one week at a time. We we are not setting three goals a week. It doesn't work. Trust me, it doesn't work. One goal a week, and you're using the support of proper meal planning specific to glucose management and heart health. So your first month, this is where remember I said we're getting clear. We're going, let me prepare my body for this, let me do the necessary work. Um, let me work on, let me know what's my big goal by week 16, and let me backtrack with the goals that I need to accomplish one goal at a time, week by week, to get there. In that middle, those two months, weeks five through 12, because now that you've built up momentum in month one, now you are working. We are working on consistency, y'all. This is not about motivation. I'm sorry. I think motivation is played out. It's a word we're using way, way, way too often. And motivation is a word that is gradually replacing the real deal, which is discipline. If we have children, we know what discipline means. And at first it might not feel great, but in the long run, it brings a reward. Those crazy kids are honorable adults of society because we did not hold back. Some all they needed was a look, and others needed you to do what you gotta do. When we are disciplined in this, and how you build the discipline, it's going to help you align that important C-word that we all talk about, we wish we had, and that is the consistency, which is why your 30 days, the first 30 days, is just building the plan. Two months in, you're just going to strengthen what's going on, and we're going to monitor. Because you would be surprised at the wins that you are achieving simply because maybe they're not big enough for you to see, or life is just showing up, so you don't even realize that you're not even eating the sunflower seeds anymore. You don't even have a craving. You stopped putting sugar in your coffee, you forgot because you're you're in a flow, you've been consistent with walking. Maybe you had a time, it was a family vacation, and you kind of got off track a little bit and forgot that you snapped right back back into your routine. So the middle two months, those are the times where we hyper hyper focus on building on the we're elevating, we're elevating those habits. You're you're replacing the habits that got you here with the habits that are going to get you to where you want to be by week 16, and you're monitoring it as you go. So, in that last month, those last three weeks, you are assessing again with the new A1C uh test. You are going back to review all the successes and everything that worked, and also some of the things that proved to be a challenge. And now, because you have actively for four months engaged in a plan, now you're going into maintenance. How do I keep my A1C from creeping back up? How do I stay on point? Because remember, when it's lifestyle driven, you you've already built it in, y'all. 21 days to a new habit. That's why the first 30 days are critical. And did you know from a scientific position that our cells, our cellular system changes every four months, 16 weeks? Four months, you're literally changing. When I say whole new person, in four months, you're a whole new person metabolically. If you allow your body to be given a chance to rejuvenate, to reset, if you'll allow your mind to get excited about what you know you can achieve, you don't have to be motivated to do this, you just have to decide to do it. That's it. And I know it sounds so simple, but how we're able to do it is when we start with small basic steps, right? You may need motivation to get to the 150 minutes of exercise activity a week. If right now you're only doing 30. You're like, okay, how do I how do I get there? No, we're going to first focus on the discipline with a very clear plan. And 16 weeks from now, you'll be glad that you positioned yourself to do it. And the Beautifully Well Lifestyle Program, um, which is our CDC recognized program, it is evidence-based. It is from a holistic perspective. And what do we mean by holistic? Holistic simply means, just like our discussion, we're considering you as the whole person. Holistic means that we go beyond the basics, food and exercise. There are the factors with consistency week by week by week, with tracking week by week by week, you can reverse pre-diabetes. In 16 weeks, you say, what if it's not reversed, Nick? Well, guess what? If you're doing the work, there is no way on this planet that your A1C will not reduce. There's no way on this planet that your blood pressure will not go down. There's no way on this planet that your cholesterol numbers will not go down. It's evidence-based and it's proven. And now all you have to do is be determined to do the work. So, um, oh, that is an excellent question. I want to get to um these questions here. We actually have a whole meal plan, Helen, that's anti-inflammatory. Christy, the dietitian, put it together. Um, and I'll give you just a real quick example, right? Anti-inflammatory foods are going to be the foods that are the least processed as well. Um, our vegetables fall into the anti-inflammatory category. And then there's some vegetables that just dominate the category, like garlic, onions, scallions. Um, we have beets that have nitric oxide that um to eat beets, the fresh beets or beet juice, allows gives the body a chance to reduce toxicity in the body, um, in the cells. And then you have um when we think about anti-inflammatory, we're also just thinking about those foods that inflammatory foods, of course, are going to be the foods with a lot of additives, preservatives, added sugars. The opposite of that, of course, is going to be the foods that are within in their purest form. So uh good question. I can make sure you get the uh get that meal plan because you can incorporate it. And it's nice to be able to identify what those foods are. And yeah, so good to see you, Mr. Derek. We um I feel you, I know it. And uh, Mr. Tyrone is waiting for you. So um let's let's connect, be if at all possible, be for 10 a.m. tomorrow. Oh, love this question, right? Remember, we said your your plan and your program is going to be specific to you. So if you have um challenges, one of the challenges to exercise could simply be the um, you know, it could involve just limitations in terms of movement, then the question becomes, what can I do? Ooh. We have a bunch of experts on here, y'all. There are a lot of things that you can do. It also speaks to the anti-inflammatory that uh Helen brought up. Because think about it, y'all. When we're dealing with joint pain, when we're dealing with other conditions, what is the trigger? 90% of chronic conditions are caused by inflammation. So when we reduce inflammation through food and exercise, it supports natural pain management. And so that means that there are a couple of things, Miss Pat. I hope we get a chance, Miss Patricia. I hope we get a chance to talk because it sounds like your plan has to also incorporate ways to begin to watch your body begin to respond to some of these changes in a good way. And the last thing you want to do is cause further injury. So there's a way that you can prep prepare your body to be able to do what it can as it leads up to being able to increase exercise when it's safe to do so. Thank you for sharing that. Um thank you for sharing. Oh, yeah, we got to talk, Mr. Dirk. Um, and yes, the mindset. So let me put this in the chat. Woo-hoo. I believe I may have mentioned this. Let me do a stop share because I want to be able to add this information in the chat. So, what I'll do because I want to open it up to some more questions and then dive a little bit deeper into the mindset. Um, as I'll close out, you can reverse pre-diabetes in 16 weeks. The secret to success is not the belief that you have to do a complete 180 and flip your life upside down. As a matter of fact, it is just the opposite. In order to reverse this chronic condition, the first step is to build awareness around how you got there. Identify those stressors and identify those other habits, especially as it relates to sleep, so that you can see that there are some barriers beyond food and movement that are that could be contributing to an elevated glucose uh numbers, including hormonal changes for those of us in perimenopause and menopause. And then that next step is to identify very specific short goals and build the consistency. And part of building that consistency is also to be able to praise yourself for the steps that you are making, the goals that you are achieving, so that you continue can continue to build discipline through the consistency. And that, my friends, is how your destination to success, which is reversing a pre diabetes diagnosis with that simple success formula.