Insulin Resistance and Snacking with Dr. Chelsea Azarcon [Ep. 24]

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Hi, welcome back to the eat. Well, think. Well live well podcast. I'm Lisa Salisbury. And my mission is to help women stop obsessing about everything they eat and feel confident. About their ability to lose weight without a diet app. This week, we're going to be talking about hunger, hormones and snacking. Do you find yourself snacking throughout the day? Just constantly grabbing food in between meals or every time you pass through the kitchen. I used to think that eating six times a day or even more was actually the healthy thing to do. And that I was keeping my quote metabolism going. But the truth is there are many, many reasons to avoid snacking or eating between full meals. My guest today is Dr. Chelsea Azarcon. Who has a naturopathic doctor in Northern California. We talk about her journey to health and healing herself along the way with treating her patients. And then we get into the meat of this episode with learning about hunger, hormones, insulin resistance, and in sensitivity and snacking. You'll learn about the many benefits to avoiding snacking and what to do instead.

Lisa: 1:05

Welcome to Eat Well, Think Well, Live Well; the podcast for women who want to lose weight, but are tired of counting and calculating all the food. I'm your host, Lisa Salisbury. I'm a certified health and weight loss coach and life coach, and most importantly a recovered chronic dieter. I'll teach you to figure out why you are eating when you aren't hungry, instead of worrying so much about what you are eating. Welcome everybody back to the Eat Well Think Well Live Well podcast. I have Dr. Chelsea, forgot to ask how you say your last name, Azarcon. Is that right?

Dr. Chelsea: 1:39

Yeah,

Lisa: 1:41

Okay, great. She's a naturopath here in, my area actually, we connected on Instagram and I instantly was like, I love everything she's talking about. I'll let her introduce herself and then we'll go from there.

Dr. Chelsea: 1:55

Thank you for having me. I'm super excited to chat today. so as you mentioned, I am a naturopathic doctor here in the Northern California area, and I. I got interested in naturopathic medicine through my own journey with lifelong health issues. I'd been all over to the Mayo Clinic in UCLA hospital and all kinds of, Naturopathic doctors and nobody quite knew what was wrong. So I really got interested in integrated medicine through that. Um, so I think one unique thing is that I am, I am healing while I'm helping people heal. Back when I was looking for answers, there wasn't. This explosion of functional medicine like there is now. So testing that everybody knows about now, it took me years and years to find, and so as a consequence of that, I'm healing. But it's really fun because it gives me just this focus and this drive to always be learning something new for myself and because I know what my patients are going through. So integrated medicine with a personal.

Lisa: 2:56

Awesome. Uh, thank you so much so tell us what's going on with your health? Is it something other people struggle with that they might get some benefit from Learning about what you, what you have going.

Dr. Chelsea: 3:06

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's kind of been a, a long journey of mystery illnesses I was a very colicky baby and that kind of turned into lactose intolerance. And I actually went to an iridologist, which is this kind of woowoo type of alternative practitioner that diagnoses by looking in your eyes. And she put me on a grain-free, sugar-free dairy-free diet. Like back in the nineties when nobody was doing that. Um,

Lisa: 3:30

That is early.

Dr. Chelsea: 3:31

yeah, there was nothing like that out there. You know, some of the only people doing it. And so, I got a lot better after that. And then I ended up having, when I was a kid, a bacterial in function in my lymph nodes. And we, we still don't really know what caused it. I got a big dose of antibiotics for that, and that kind of turned into a lot of GI issues, a lot of autoimmune type conditions that they know are caused by autoimmune illness, but they couldn't find an autoimmune illness. but I, most recently, I was diagnosed a few years ago with, with Lyme disease, which you think with all the mystery illness someone would've found before. A few years ago, I actually ended up treating that myself, um, with the mRNA therapy and I've been doing really well as far as the lime stuff goes since then. But I've also been working on toxins for about the. Six years in recently mold and chronic inflammatory response issues. But I think as a lot of people in the functional medicine community know those things affect a lot of other systems. They affect your metabolism, which I know we've connected about. They affect your hormones. So there's a lot of pieces that I'm working on, um, with the toxicity issue, and then there's post mold and there's post lyme, and I'm healing from.

Lisa: 4:47

Okay. It's a lot. Yeah. And just for those listening, that might have some mystery illness by the way. Sorry, my dog is barking.

Dr. Chelsea: 4:55

worries. It happens to me if I text

Lisa: 4:58

it's like so many packages being delivered we're recording right before Christmas, and so she's like, has to tell me every time someone comes to the door,

Dr. Chelsea: 5:05

no worries.

Lisa: 5:07

It's helpful for people to hear, to like keep looking and, you know, if you, you know your body best, if you know something's going on, like don't take, there's nothing wrong with you as the first answer and just you know, keep going. So I think that's really important

Dr. Chelsea: 5:23

Yeah, I agree. I had put this, uh, cool question on my Instagram the other day, like, what are your obstacles to working with a functional doctor? Because, you know, I had this decades long history of trying to find answers, but. I can give a patient in a single visit all those labs that took me years and years and years to find. And so I think there's lots of good functional practitioners and coaches that people can work with now. And I asked, what's your obstacle? And somebody answered, finding somebody that I trust. And I think that's important. If you feel like there's something wrong with your body and your doctor's not agreeing, invest in yourself and go find somebody who will help you explore what you're intuitively.

Lisa: 6:03

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Well, today we're actually not gonna be talking about autoimmune and those other kinds of things. Dr. Chelsea's gonna teach us, a little bit about our hunger hormones, how they play a role in our body. This is something I go over with my clients as well, but I am so excited to have, more of a authority on this than me to really go through this because, As you'll hear, insulin resistance is one of the biggest obstacles with weight loss, and so knowing what's going on with our hunger hormones in the body is actually so important. So tell us what those are and what they do.

Dr. Chelsea: 6:44

So there's three main players when it comes to hunger hormone. The first is leptin, and leptin is our satiety hormone. So it signals to our brain that we're full. And what it basically does is it shuts down the feeding processes in the brain. Um, and leptin is actually secreted by our fat cells in proportion to the amount of fat that we have. So when we have more. We're secreting more leptin to tell our brain, Hey, we don't need to be upregulating feeding processes. Right now, the compliment to leptin is ghrelin, and ghrelin is our hunger hormone, and ghrelin is secreted by the same cells in your stomach that secrete hydrochloric acid. And so when our stomachs get empty, When we're hungry, when we have stimulation of digestive processes, growlin is released and it tends to peak before a meal to tell our bodies to eat. And then insulin is kinda the coordinator

Lisa: 7:35

sorry, I'm gonna interrupt you for a second. Let me ask you a question about Grelin. I have learned that it can also kind of turn on by the clock, which is why like, I'll have clients, especially that are teachers that have lunch break from 1214 to 1234, whatever it is. And so they're, ghrelin gets activated right before that, and so they feel hungry. even if maybe they've had a snack earlier or they, you know, had a big breakfast, so they may not actually need food, but they get this hunger signal, which is kind of a false hunger signal from that grehlin coming by the clock. Do you find that to be accurate?

Dr. Chelsea: 8:16

You know, I've not seen the research on that, but most of the hunger hormones do have a, like a time related pattern, and so I'm sure that's true and it makes sense. If you think about like a lot of times when people are practicing fasting, Little bit hungry in the mornings. Um, but sugars will be fine. And if you kind of push through that hunger in the morning, your body will kind of stabilize and you won't, you won't feel hungry or depleted all day. But it's just that kinda, that clock your body gets used to eating at certain times.

Lisa: 8:48

Yeah. Okay. All right, so then insulin was the next one you were gonna talk about.

Dr. Chelsea: 8:53

Yeah, So insulin is secreted after we eat and insulin, I like to describe it as a doorbell. So it basically lets ourselves know that sugar is here and it's ready to be taken up into the cells and to be used for fuel. So it gets our sugar out of the blood and it gets our sugar put to.

Lisa: 9:13

Okay. And, what happens then to that sugar? what cells does it go to? What if there's too much sugar? What does the insulin do then?

Dr. Chelsea: 9:23

Yeah, good question. So usually we want our, our sugar to go to skeletal muscle tissue. We want it to go to our brain tissue, so tissues that's actually going to use that glucose. And then it's put through a series of chemical reactions for your body, for your intracellular compartments to make. Energy. So if there's too much sugar in the blood, your body wants to get glucose outta the blood cuz glucose is a pretty abrasive or damaging molecule in the blood. Um, it can damage neurons. damage blood vessels, and so it will actually go and shunt and store glucose in fat. And I think there's two consequences to think about there. I think for a long time people focused on, well, glucose is going to fat, it's causing weight gain, which is totally true. But then what happens if your glucose isn't getting into the cells? It's not being used to make energy, so your cells are starved. You feel like you haven't gotten enough Nutri. but the problem is actually that you're not using your fuel to make energy.

Lisa: 10:26

Okay. So what happens then with insulin resistance? Cuz this is, I think most people know this is kind of the precursor to getting into pre, pre-diabetes, diabetes. If you're insulin resistant, then it's confusing because it's like you have all this insulin but it's not working properly. How can we understand that for like, how can we dumb it down for the rest of us

Dr. Chelsea: 10:50

Yeah, good question. So there's a couple things that can go wrong with insulin. It would be when you're secreting too much of it, and from too much, I mean, a functional perspective. So if you have insulin that's out of range on a lab value, that usually is caused by like an insulin secreting tumor. So I'm not talking about a pathological amount of insulin, I'm talking about when you're, you're creating too much insulin. And I'll explain why in a minute or. When you have insulin are being secreted too frequently. So it's around all the time. And what happens in both of those scenarios is that the receptors stop becoming, um, responsive to insulin or they stop listening to insulin. They kind of tune it out. And then you

Lisa: 11:31

like, it's like teenagers when they're like

Dr. Chelsea: 11:35

well,

Lisa: 11:35

can, when your parents are.

Dr. Chelsea: 11:37

Uhhuh Sometimes I'll say, cause I describe insulin as the doorbell. You know, someone just taped the doorbell down, or you got like that annoying kid at the door that's pressing it over and over. You just kinda tune it out. That's what happens. That's what's happening with your cells in response to insulin. And then that leads to, you have. In many cases, more than enough insulin because then your body starts making more insulin to try and overcome this lack of responsiveness. So in many cases, you have more than enough insulin. That's not the problem. It's that you, the machinery, the communication pathway has broken down. So even though you have fuel, you have the hormone to get the fuel into the cell, you're still not making energy from that.

Lisa: 12:18

Okay, and so what is the consequence as far as our weight when we have that insulin resistance?

Dr. Chelsea: 12:25

So the glucose is going to be stored in fat, so it's gonna lead to increased body mass, uh, as far as fat goes, and weight gain. But the other piece of that that I think is important to think about, as far as weight goes is it's creating metabolic chaos because you're not using your fuel. As I mentioned earlier, cells are gonna be starved, so you're probably actually gonna feel hungry. A lot of times people with high blood sugar will actually feel low blood sugar because their cells aren't getting the nutrition that they need, and so it perpetuates the cycle because you feel hungry. you eat. A lot of times when there's insulin resistance, people aren't making good food choices and so they'll, they'll choose something that will spike their blood glucose and then drop it later, and then they're hungry again. And it just creates this cycle where we're eating all the time, which is worsening insulin resistance. But the insulin resistance is what's driving it, and so it can be really hard to break that pattern and reverse. to get weight loss or shifting of body mass to more muscle, um, when the insulin resistance is in the picture.

Lisa: 13:33

And I think we're gonna talk a little bit more about some strategies for insulin resistance later, but I, I would like to ask here is how can we know like what, what our insulin levels are doing? I mean obviously we can get blood tests from our doctors. I've seen continuous glucose monitoring. If you've heard like Huberman lab, they'll talk about that like, to do some of those continuous glucose monitoring, but most of us aren't doing that. So how would we know if we are experiencing insulin resistance?

Dr. Chelsea: 14:04

Yeah, so I think the first place that I start is looking at your eating windows when I'm trying to assess with this with somebody. And I think eating and fasting windows are pretty controversial topics, especially when it comes to women and female hormones. But I think if you just kinda zoom out. and look at as humans. I don't think our bodies were made to be eating constantly 24 7 nonstop. We were made for periods of feasting and famine because there, there's, life happens, especially if you're living kind of more connected to the earth. There's oftentimes when. Food or resources can be scarce. So our bodies are made to be able to adapt to that. So a very simple thing I do is look at, can somebody go 12 hours overnight without eating? And I don't even consider that fasting. I just consider that a healthy window for your body to be able to switch in and out of. So if someone can't do that, I automatically know there's insulin resistance on board. They're getting way too many hunger.

Lisa: 15:03

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Chelsea: 15:04

at is symptoms related to food. So one would be potentially fatigue after eating, and that can be caused by. you are not using your food to make energy, so you actually, you get fatigued also, a lot of times it can correlate with foods that are pro-inflammatory. It's a lot for the digestive tract to handle, so that can create fatigue. But sometimes I'm also looking at symptoms with not eating. So a lot of times people think I don't have a blood glucose problem because I get symptoms of hypoglycemia after, you know, if I don't eat for two hours. Well, I put a glucose monitor on a lot of those people, and oftentimes the symptoms of hypoglycemia are actually related to high blood sugar because the person is not using their their glucose to make energy, and even if they have a true hypoglycemia, unless they're calorically restricting in a significant way, oftentimes that's secondary too. They ate something that spiked their blood glucose. and then sometimes when your body tries to get the glucose out of the blood. In this situation of insulin resistance, when um, your cells aren't responsive, it'll kind of overcompensate and it'll pull the sugar out too quickly. And so then you end up with a blood glucose drop, and that's where we're seeing a hypoglycemia. So symptoms around food in general, whether it's hyperglycemia symptoms or hypoglycemia symptoms, both can be related to issues with insulin. Re. and then if somebody's snacking all the time or eating all the time throughout the day, that can also indicate insulin resistance because that, indicates to me that they're getting too many hunger cues. And if I, I like to zoom out and think, if you can't switch between hunger and fed and sustain that for a good period of time, you're metabolically inflexible so you don't switch very well between being fed and being hungry and your body should be metabolically.

Lisa: 17:01

So, tell me more about that. Like, it should be easy to switch, you should be able to recognize your hunger cues, or what do you mean? Tell, tell me about that, what that means exactly.

Dr. Chelsea: 17:11

Yeah, so let's say somebody was working on their insulin resistance and they were actually becoming more sensitive, insulin sensitive, I would actually expect for them to go longer, period. Be able to go longer periods of time without eating. or let's say, you know, they're, you're out. We've all had this happen where you're out, you get hungry, you don't have food. Hangry sets in, less hangry type of symptoms, things like that because your body knows how to, okay, I don't have fuel on board. I can switch into my, I can break into my glucose stores. most people are probably not starting to burn ketones in the amount of time they're experiencing hypoglycemia symptoms throughout a day. But your body is learning how. backup fuel, available fuel, different types of fuel when you become more metabolically flexible. So a lot of the symptoms around food usually clear up. People can go longer without eating because their bodies are able to, to use the mechanisms we have for food scarcity.

Lisa: 18:06

Yeah. When I, when I talk about this, about the space between your meals, that first hunger signal when we kind of say like, okay, this is just the first one, and we let that. Kind of go down, it will come and go in waves. And when I call that first drop, cuz you know, you get hungry and then you get busy and you realize like, oh, it's been like 30, 45 minutes and now I have another hunger signal. And so I kind of, I call that dining in because we're using some of that onboard fuel that we stored. You know, like your body knows what to do. If you give it too much fuel, it, it doesn't make you ill immediately. Your body's just like, no problem. We'll just store this for later. And so then that later has come, you're like, I can't bring on any outside fuel right now, so we're just gonna dine in and. eat a little bit, quote unquote eat, but use the fuel that you have on board. And so yeah, the more often that you can do that and be comfortable and know that hunger is not an emergency because I, I like what you're saying, like you're gonna see less hangry meltdowns because when we get that kind of hangry feeling, it's somewhat emotional because you're like, I have to eat right now. But when you kind of learn that hunger is not an emergency, and I like to sort of remove the word starving from our vocabularies, because if you ate breakfast, there's no possible way you're starving

Dr. Chelsea: 19:30

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Lisa: 19:32

I, I love when my clients are like, well, I ate such and such for lunch cause I was starving. And I was like, were. Where you though

Dr. Chelsea: 19:40

Although the, the tough thing about that is when there's insulin resistance on board, you can also become resistant to other hormones like leptin and it basically turns on a starvation physiology in the body where you think that you're starving, but you're actually not. And one of the ways to reset that is actually going without food. Because when you go without food, your insulin kind of pays more attention. And then when there is food in the body, you start listening to the insulin again. And you know, the other thing I like to tell people is when we're shifting your marrow metabolism, it's like exercise. You know, it's not like you go and look in the mirror one day and say, I'm outta shape, and then the next day you're lifting like your goal amount at the gym and you're super fit. Sometimes you start small. And then as your fitness grows, you increase what you're able to do. And I've noticed that in my own journey with working on blood sugar and fasting, I used to not be able to fast at all. I mean, I would vomit sometimes if I skipped breakfast, I would vomit. I was that sensitive. But as I slowly worked on things, then my time window, it increased and it increased and it increased. And I, I recently, this week, went about 10 hours over my usual. and when I reintroduced it, it didn't go well. So I, I realized, okay, I do have a limit still. This is where it's at, but it's increasing. And so you'll see shifts like that. It doesn't have to be all at once. You're, you know, the super metabolic person you hear about on podcasts,

Lisa: 21:07

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So speaking of starting small, I always start with snacking before I try to increase, um, eating windows, which, like you said before, we're mostly just talking about like 12 hours. Like, let's, let's stop eating at a regular time after dinner and wait until it's breakfast in the morning, which typically can be 12, sometimes even 14 hours. But what, what we start with really is eliminating some of those snacks because. This eating, stopping, and then eating again does help with your insulin. So tell us what happens when we're snacking all the time and how that can affect us.

Dr. Chelsea: 21:46

Yeah, so when we're snacking all the time, insulin is constantly being released and what our insulin wants to do is it wants to be released with a meal and then to rest in between meals, kind of gives your receptors a sense to reset and when a meal comes along, it's sensitive to insulin and can use up that sugar when we're snacking all the time. insulin is being released all of the time, and that leads to that insulin insensitivity or insulin resistance. So cutting out snacking is a really good place to start.

Lisa: 22:16

And, we're not talking about like a vast reduction in energy coming in calories. We don't count calories in my program, but you can actually just combine those things, things that you love to eat for a snack. We combine those. We just, I just call it consolidating your meals. And so you're just putting whatever that mid-morning snack is that you like to eat, either add it to your breakfast or add it to your lunch. Is that how you do it?

Dr. Chelsea: 22:41

Exactly. I did the exact same thing. And you know, I like to stress two things when I'm cutting out, snacking for people. One is we're not necessarily taking away joy foods. You know, if you really love chips or you just have to have a sweet after dinner. I mean there, there's some issues with that. We wanna work on reducing cravings for those foods, but when we're first starting, a lot of times they'll say, why don't we just have you eat it? As soon as you finish dinner, then you're gonna have your sweet as soon as you finish lunch. you know, have your handful of popcorn or whatever. and we're not reducing calories. So there's some research where they looked at two groups. They had the same amount of carbs and the, the same amount of calories, but one group spread the carbs and calories throughout the day and one group condensed them at meals, and the group who condensed them at meals had much better. Metabolic outcomes. And so it's really about more when you're eating than what you're eating. And the reason the group had the better metabolic outcomes was because they had better insulin sensitivity. So I will sometimes notice, uh, when I cut out snacking, I actually started eating much bigger meals than I used to. And I'll notice that in my patients too. I'll tell 'em it's okay if you're eating more at a meal. You know, maybe the reason you felt the urge to snack anyway was because you weren't eating enough nutrition. You should be able to feel sustained for three, four hours between.

Lisa: 24:06

Yeah, that was actually gonna be my next question. What would be the, timeframe? So three or four hours would show us that we're not having a lot of insulin resistance. If you can comfortably go three or four hours, that's a good sign.

Dr. Chelsea: 24:19

I like to say at least three hours because there are gut benefits to waiting three hours as well.

Lisa: 24:25

Oh, okay. Tell us about that.

Dr. Chelsea: 24:27

Yeah. So, um, we have this migrating motor complex or M M C in our gut, and it's basically a series of contractions and secretions in our gut that cleans the gut out. So I mentioned earlier that grelin is secreted by the same cells that secrete hydrochloric acid. So when we're getting that hunger feeling, we're also. Digestive secretions and if we just let that ride when we don't feed, what happens then is that those digestive secretions go to clean up cell waste. They go to clean up digestive waste, and then the contractions help us expel it. Um, it takes three hours for that to be stimulated, and it's also stimulated by grelin, so you have to get hungry. You have to go a certain amount of time between meals. I do. I do wanna put the asterisk though. some of my chronic illness patients, they don't necessarily feel hunger as in like hunger nine in your belly because of some of the inflammation and dysregulation going on in your body. There's different hunger cues, so you know, I don't want somebody to listen to this and go, you know, 12 hours medically unsupervised, not eating anything cuz their body has an issue creating that hunger signal.

Lisa: 25:42

Sure. Yeah. And typically, my listeners are, women of generally good health. Most of my, most of my listeners are not chronic illness type, situations. so typically We want to get to some hunger signals. I teach a lot about the hunger scale to wait for hunger. One of the things I think that about snacking is that we're not really waiting for hunger. We get a little bit hungry and then we. Get a little tiny bit full from the snack and then we get a little bit hungry again and a little bit full. And we don't ever feel like true hunger and then true satisfaction. So I always just say like, let's just wait until we're actually hungry enough to eat a meal. And then do that. And so it sounds like that's also just excellent for your gut health because when you are waiting that long and if you are a typically healthy, uh, a somewhat healthy person, and you have healthy hunger signals that you just have been ignoring or that have been sort of distorted by your insulin resistance, if you don't have other chronic illness in the way of that, then we wanna wait for hunger and let that happen. Yeah.

Dr. Chelsea: 26:50

Yeah, I would totally agree. And I, I think the other thing to keep in mind, I think a lot of times women will get nervous. Like, if I don't eat well finish that. What, what is gonna happen? Are you gonna pass out? I mean, if you're going to, there's definitely some insulin issues probably there if you're passing out, if you don't eat, but maybe you need a more nutritious meal or maybe, but most people are not gonna pass out. Sometimes we're afraid that something bad is gonna happen if we don't. but in most cases, as long as you have a healthy meal plan on board when you're eating and you're not starving and eating junk food like in a restricted eating or uh, disordered eating type of process, you know nothing bad is gonna happen if you push past your hunger a little bit.

Lisa: 27:34

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Again, I think people are worried about the hangry, you know, like, I gotta eat now. But yeah. Really hunger is a normal process and I like to think of it just like when you're out and about and you're like, I don't really wanna use that public bathroom. I'm just gonna wait till I get home. That's a normal process. Your bladder is like, Hey there, I'm full. We should probably empty me And you're like, yeah, I totally will when I get home. And I think of it as the same. kind of thing with our hunger signals. It's like, Hey, there, I could use some food. And you're like, yeah, I totally will when I get home or when I get food. It's not like a tragedy, you know? It's like, okay, it's getting urgent to maybe use the bathroom or to feed. But I think that when we. bring it up into an emotional thing with hangry, getting mad that we aren't eating, like that's where we have some emotional hunger going on as well, which is separate

Dr. Chelsea: 28:30

Yes, definitely.

Lisa: 28:31

Um, tell me more about, other benefits of cutting out snacking, because this is actually something I think people don't realize. You know, you get on Pinterest, So often it's like 30 healthy snacks. 30 snacks to help you lose weight. And I'm like, how about just not And I remember, I feel like I see that all the time on Facebook. Anyone have any suggestions for low calorie snacks? I'm like, just, just not just eat up, mealtime, It makes me crazy. So I think it's out there so much and people don't realize how many benefits there are of consolidating your meals.

Dr. Chelsea: 29:09

Yes. So I think the main thing that I would say is eating more nutritious meals. And as I mentioned earlier, if you're feeling the need to snack all the time, Maybe you're not eating enough calories at mealtime. Maybe you're not eating nutritious enough foods. When you're really sitting down to a meal, a lot of times it gets you thinking about what am I going to consume? What is going to sustain me? And you kind of get an idea for what holds you throughout the day. and what doesn't. I think it also creates more mindfulness around eating, which is important for digestion. So the first stage of digestion actually happens when we start thinking about and interacting with foods. So a lot of times snacking is kind of done mindlessly while we're working, while we're doing other things. Whereas if we're sitting down to a meal, we're really focusing on that and that actually supports your digestion, so better digestion. and then there's all of the benefits that go along with reducing insulin resistance, insulin resistance, doubles, risk of cancer. I think that is just such a staggering statistic. And most people, yeah. I would say like 95% of the people that I check for insulin resistance have some form of it going. even ones who eat pretty healthy. and also reducing insulin resistance reduces your risk of cardiovascular disease, of diabetes, of hormone imbalances, of weight issues. And then I also see that a lot of times people are sleeping better, when they're not snacking because our, our elevated blood glucose, a lot of the hormones that have to go along with. are not friendly for quality sleep. And so that can be a benefit as well.

Lisa: 30:48

That's a huge list.

Dr. Chelsea: 30:49

Yeah,

Lisa: 30:50

I mean, just your chance of cancer, like that's crazy because of insulin resistance. I did not know about that connection, so that's,

Dr. Chelsea: 30:58

yeah. That really got my attention when I first heard that I, I had to go back and listen multiple times, uh, to make sure that I heard correctly, so.

Lisa: 31:06

One of the, challenges I see with my clients with snacking is that more often than not, the snacking is what I call emotional hunger. I've alluded to that a little bit this episode, but physical hunger is coming from the body. It's a signal you're feeling physically, and then your brain becomes aware. Whereas emotional hunger is your brain being like, you know what would be good? Right? A snack. You know what would help me with get this email done is having some chocolate at the same time. And I notice what my clients struggle with. Like I had someone yesterday just say, um, Every time I finish with a client, they're a tax accountant. Every time I finish with a client, I go have a snack, and then I have another client meeting and then I have a snack. And in the snacking is actually not being driven by hunger. So much is being driven by discomfort and soothing emotions. And so what's happening is we, get this emotional hunger and then we're messing up our insulin. Causing us to then want to get the snack even more often. So I feel like it's like this vicious circle of emotional hunger versus the physical hunger.

Dr. Chelsea: 32:14

Yeah, it's good to know the difference between the two. I do think, you know, food can, Food is nourishing and anytime something's nourishing there. it has a comfort element to it. And so I don't think gravitating to more comforting foods under stress is necessarily a bad thing. I mean, I'll confess when I'm stressed, I eat more dark chocolate. Just I do, you know? Um, but I think when we are relying on. To be our stress relief. You know, if somebody's kinda eating, I'm gonna, I'm stressed, I'm gonna go home and I'm gonna cook this recipe that my mom always cooked growing up. Like that's a very appropriate way to get comfort. Benefits of food. Yeah, exactly. But when we're using it, we don't have any other stress relief and food is it That I think is when we really see a lot of problems.

Lisa: 33:05

Yeah, definitely. When food becomes our main source of comfort and stress relief, then that can be an issue. And then just the idea of if we decide, okay, I think what they're saying is a good idea for me, that I need to cut out snacking, then we have to address some of the emotional reasons of why we are snacking.

Dr. Chelsea: 33:22

absolutely. And discomfort will come up. And I think to me, that was one of the hidden blessings of. Chronic illness. I'm not calling, you know, chronic illness good and intrinsically, but there are things I learned from it and for me. you know, there are certain foods that it is just not an option for me. You know, a lot of people think, well, 80 20 rule, 80 20 rule doesn't work for me. For most things, you know, for the things they need to avoid, it's a hundred, a hundred, you know, and um, and when you go through the process of coming off of it, I mean, you have to remember food caused your brain to release dopamine. It causes your brain to release serotonin. All these like reward and happy chemicals, food can trigger the release of those. And so when you're coming off of it, you can't have a drug-like withdrawal. And I remember certain things like feeling angry or feeling left out that I couldn't eat what everybody else was eating. and then I kind of had to tune in and think to myself, well, do I wanna look at myself as a victim? Like, poor me, I can't eat ice cream in everyone else's, or do I want to, do I really wanna give ice cream that much power? That that's what gives me a sense of belonging with other people. But that's what connects me with other people, that that brings joy in a situation. And so I was able to recognize there definitely were ways that it was looking to. To, you know, create bonding and connection and stress relief that I didn't have to live like that anymore. I could live in a more empowered way, so you will have discomfort come up. But I think it's a really good opportunity to take a deeper look at what's going on inside of you.

Lisa: 34:54

Yeah. Perfect. I love that. Thank you so much. Do you have anything else to add? This has been a great conversation. I think people are really gonna benefit from learning about all of this.

Dr. Chelsea: 35:04

Uh, thank you for having me. I've really enjoyed it. I would say, you know, kind of go with what feels right for you from what we've talked about in this podcast. Don't be afraid to start small. and I do have a metabolic restart protocol. It's not available yet. I'm working on some resources to help make that really readily available to people in ways that, will help them, empower them to take control of their own health. So keep an eye out.

Lisa: 35:31

Okay, perfect. Well, we'll, definitely link to your Instagram and your website so people can connect with you and watch for that coming out in the next few months. That'll be really helpful.

Dr. Chelsea: 35:41

Thanks, Lisa. Thanks so much for having me.

Lisa: 35:44

Okay. Thank you. hey, thanks for listening today. If you're ready to get some personalized coaching from me, I'd encourage you to schedule a free strategy session. Visit www.wellwithlisa.as.me or it's easier just to find that link in the show notes. We'll talk about where you currently are with your weight loss goals. And I'll give you some actionable tools. You can start implementing right away. Before you go, make sure you subscribe to the podcast so you can receive new episodes, right when they're released. And if you're learning something new and enjoying the podcast, I'd love for you to leave me a five star rating and a review. Thanks again for joining me, Lisa Salisbury in this episode of Eat Well, Think Well, Live Well.