248. The Truth About Insulin Resistance That No One Tells You

In this week’s new episode, I had the incredible opportunity to be interviewed by Casey Ruff, podcast host of Boundless Body Radio, a trainer and also a nutrition coach.

In our conversation, we discussed the importance of a proactive approach to health and the need to address insulin resistance and inflammation. We also highlighted the significance of mindset in achieving health goals, prioritizing sleep, and proper nutrition.

Join us as we explore these essential topics and share valuable insights to help you on your journey to optimal health and well-being.

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Resources From This Episode
>> Join Zivli
>> Test Your Insulin at Home
>> Free Low Insulin Food Guide

Have a question? Email us at: support@zivli.com

Transcript

Morgan (00:00.172)
You see the high blood sugar, you see the high blood pressure, you see the high triglycerides, you see the belly fat, you see the muscle wasting, you see the Alzheimer's disease and the vascular dementia and the heart attacks and the strokes, the peripheral neuropathy, the falls, but you never see insulin resistance. You see them just looking at the symptoms and treating disease in silos.

You go to your cardiologist for your heart medicine and your endocrinologist for your diabetes medicine and your neurologist for your brain medicine. And it's just so disjointed and inefficient. And then I realized, holy cow, all roads lead back to insulin resistance. If we can help people live a low insulin and inflammation lifestyle, we kill the most birds with one stone. We reduce their risk

all of these insulin -related diseases.

Morgan (01:01.934)
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Boundless Body Radio. I'm your host, Casey Ruff, and today we have another amazing guest to introduce to now. Dr. Morgan Nolte is a board certified clinical specialist in geriatric physical therapy. Recognizing a lack of preventative education and care that focused on reversing risk factors instead of just treating symptoms, Dr. Nolte founded Zivli, an online course and coaching program that helps adults reverse insulin resistance for long -term weight loss and disease prevention, including obesity, type 2 diabetes, and

Dr. Nolte's content has reached millions of people through her podcast and YouTube channel, which now has over 100 ,000 subscribers. Wow, that's pretty good. She's been a guest lecturer for local physical therapy departments, state and national physical therapy organizations, and has been a guest addressing insulin resistance on top rated wellness podcasts, including the ultimate health podcast with my friend, Jesse, the Drew Proett show and the extremely popular everyday wellness with Cynthia Thurlow, one of our favorite former guests on our show. Dr. Nolte's extensive knowledge of

and commitment to the reduction of insulin resistance has made her a trusted voice in the health and wellness field, as well as a soft after speaker and educator. Dr. Morgan Nolte, what an absolute honor it is to welcome you to Belmont's Body Radio. Thank you. I'm so excited to be

It is such an honor to host you. really, really, really love your work. In our introduction, we didn't even talk about your podcast. I would love to hear about your experience podcasting. looks like you've been at it a little bit earlier than I've been at it. It seems like all of this just started a podcast in 2020. We had nothing else to do. I guess. Yeah. So I don't I just started it because I thought, the heck? You know, I think I was doing YouTube already and I wanted to connect with other experts and hear their opinions

thoughts on things and learn from them. And I really love listening, honestly. I love being the host because I love to just sit there and listen and gain wisdom from other people. And so it's a very natural strength of mine, that reflective listening. And so it was very natural for me to start a podcast and I've really enjoyed it. It's been fun to get to know the people that you mentioned. And now I'm kind of becoming a guest on more people's podcasts. So it's fun to see how they do it too, but it's been a fun journey.

Morgan (03:13.9)
So awesome. I absolutely love it. Do you ever listen back to your episodes after they're all completed and then released? Sometimes. And it's so interesting because I think when you're the host, you're so focused on listening actively and not missing anything. And I always try to listen from the listener's point of view so that if there's gaps in the answers or follow -up questions, I'm very attentive to try to ask those from the listener's perspective. So I always learn something new if I go back and listen.

sometimes even when I'm on someone else's show, like I went back and listened to the, to ultimate health with Jesse Chavez podcast. And I'm like, yeah, that was a good point I made. That was a good point I made. So once in a while, I'll listen back to mine once in a while, listen back to a guest. If I'm like, I need to listen to that again, cause there was a lot of good stuff in there and I was too busy hosting to really reap all of it out of there. Yeah. Gotcha. Okay. Well, I have to say that episode you did with Jesse on the ultimate health podcast was absolutely.

Amazing. You should be very, proud of that episode. I don't think you can get a better host. I've heard your show, you're a great host as well, but Jesse, he's just all time and he can go for hours and hours with his guests. He's so good at extracting great information. That's really nuanced without being too judgmental or too dogmatic about anything. I really love his. I do too. He was great.

That's awesome. Well, congratulations on that. And yeah, that's kind of what I was driving at when I asked you when you listen back to the podcast, like as cringy as it is to listen to like my own voice afterwards, which I hate. It's funny because I'll sit there be like, I had this conversation with this person. I tried to be there and present as much as possible, but you learn so much just listening back the second time or maybe even a third time. Like, wow, how did I miss that? How do they see that from a different angle? It's been really fun. Yeah. And I think for me, part of my job is becoming

really good at communication. And it's a constant learning area for me. And sometimes listening back helps me identify my own gaps in communication. How many times did I say or like or and or so really trying to tighten things up, creating better metaphors and analogy for people to get it to click, you know, because that's really my job is to help it click for people, to motivate people, to inspire people and take action.

Morgan (05:30.86)
And if I'm just sitting there spurting off information and facts, that's super boring. And that's been very interesting. I did not understand that that would be part of my job when I started the business because I'm really comfortable just sitting there, spurting off information, telling people how to do stuff. And that usually just goes in one year and out the other. So it's been a very interesting personal evolution to figure out how to communicate in a way.

that is more engaging and motivating for people to want to take action. Yeah, I love that. It's certainly a process. It is a gift to be able to refine that kind of stuff. And for the listener, next time you judge us for saying, and, just know that you do it just as much as we do and you're not being recorded. So that's the only difference you said, just as much. Now we use it. So Riverside, we use Riverside for our podcasts now, and they actually have a function.

where AI removes all of those arms and spaces and hands. We don't use it because it's backend editing stuff, but it's a really cool feature if you just want side -by -side faces talking the whole time. So I do believe that AI is coming a long way in helping people like us to sound better online maybe than if you actually do. We appreciate you AI. That's great. Yeah, my editing software just came up with something like that where it can eliminate.

gaps in the conversation or eliminate the arms. I don't often use them, but sometimes if somebody is maybe a little bit older of a guest and there's more gaps and it's harder to kind of follow the conversation, that could be helpful. But yeah, it's just a natural part of conversation, but good that we're trying to refine it as best we can. As far as your podcast goes, my favorite episode that I've listened to so far is when you interviewed Dr. Ben Dickman, beloved person in our space who obviously has literally written the book about insulin resistance. And you know, since

being able to host him and host many people on the show, getting to have them define insulin resistance has been super fascinating because everybody who has come on, who's been an expert and obviously can understand it, but they understand in a slightly different and nuanced way. So I love collecting different answers to what is insulin resistant. But before we go there, I would love to hear about your own health story, how you got interested in geriatrics and why that eventually led you to, you know, insulin resistance as a topic. One might not kind of connect those two things immediately.

Morgan (07:49.606)
Absolutely. I don't know of another geriatric physical therapist in this online space. So I kind of feel like a lone wolf out here. I'm representing all the PTs here. So I just loved older people growing up. I was so close to my grandparents. Eight out of nine of our grandparents were at our wedding. We had a really special dance that was just for grandparents and parents. And that was so cool to see the hundreds of years of marriage there on the dance floor. learned.

So many core values I think I inherited from my grandparents. And what I realized was I wanted to pay that forward. I knew the positive impact that my grandparents had on me and they couldn't have done that if they were in ill health. You know, you have to be alive, number one, and in good health, number two, to really be able to actively engage with your family as you grow older. And I wanted to pay it forward and help other grandparents be able...

to be that influence to their children and their grandchildren like my more for me. And that's what drove me into geriatrics. It's funny, I always joke if I'm with in a room of people in their 30s and 40s, I don't really have anything to say. Sorry, I'm so much better at talking to people in their 50s, 60s, 70s. It's always been my nature. And so I just really adore that population. I think they have so much wisdom, so much insight. So it's like, I'm helping you improve your health.

You're just giving me gems of wisdom and I love them so much. So what I realized in physical therapy though, was I was working with people who were 60 and in worse health than my grandparents at age 80. And I thought, holy cow, they have a decade of life that's gonna be really crummy. Their quality of life is really poor, their health is poor.

They have had to spend down all of their assets to be able to afford healthcare. I've worked with people who had to move their home and get on Medicaid and just, it's devastating. The level of heartbreak that I experienced as a geriatric physical therapist was nothing short of complete burnout. So I got totally burnt out as a geriatric physical therapist, but also a little bit bored. Like I think that boredom can sometimes lead to burnout too.

Morgan (10:08.172)
because you would see the same types of people over and over and over again. We called them repeat offenders. If somebody with diabetes or heart disease, they fall or they have a medication that goes awry or they have an acute exacerbation, they go to the hospital, they go to rehab, they go to home care, around and around and around, over and over and over. And I thought, this is ridiculous. We're spending way too much money, way too much time, way too much effort, reactively treating disease.

And if we could be more proactive, if we could work with these people 20 or 30 years earlier on lifestyle changes to prevent the disease in the first place, how much time would they save in not having to go to the doctor and not needing these preventative surgeries and not having to go to the pharmacy to get their prescriptions filled all the time? How much energy could they save? How much more productive could they be because they don't have to take a nap after every meal

and sleep all afternoon. How much more, like how many more memories could they make with their family if they were able to physically walk around the zoo or go to the park with their grandkids? I was just plain heartbroken and burnt out. And I knew that if I was gonna continue to work, I had to do it in a way that was in line with my values. And one of my values is health and being proactive.

And so I started my business to really help those people that I wanted to reach earlier, because I felt like it was too little, too late, too often in geriatric physical therapy. And when I did that, that really forced me to dig deeper than what I had learned in school. Nobody wants a preventative physical therapist. Nobody thinks they need, which is fine. That's totally fine. But I had to figure out a lot of things.

about preventative medicine that I didn't learn in school. And all roads led back to insulin resistance. And only then, only after I had kind of left traditional PT and started this independent study, did I put all these pieces together. And I'm like, my gosh, this has been staring me in the face for years. And not once have I ever seen insulin resistance on a past medical history. But I did see

Morgan (12:30.462)
all the symptoms of insulin resistance. You see the high blood sugar, you see the high blood pressure, you see the high triglycerides, you see the belly fat, you see the muscle wasting, you see the Alzheimer's disease and the vascular dementia and the heart attacks and the strokes, the peripheral neuropathy, the falls, but you never see insulin resistance. You see them just looking at the symptoms and treating disease in silos.

You go to your cardiologist for your heart medicine and your endocrinologist for your diabetes medicine and your neurologist for your brain medicine. And it's just so disjointed and inefficient. And then I realized, holy cow, all roads lead back to insulin resistance. If we can help people live a low insulin and inflammation lifestyle, we kill the most birds with one stone. We reduce their risk

all of these insulin -related diseases. And then I'm like, okay, great, this is so obvious. It's all about insulin resistance and inflammation. What a simple thing. But the thing is, nobody knows about it. Doctors don't even really know about insulin resistance. So here I was for years talking about insulin resistance, so I was blue in the face and no one really understood. Nobody really thought it was applicable to

And then what I realized was that's because they think their problem is high blood sugar. They think their problem is high blood pressure. They think their problem is stubborn weight loss or belly fat or fatigue. And so I had to meet them where they were at and start speaking to those problems so that people understood, actually high blood sugar is just a symptom. Obesity is a symptom.

and the underlying cause has been high levels of inflammation and insulin. And once I fix these, these symptoms go away. And that has been years in the making. Just to figure out how do I communicate with people that we need to care about insulin when even their doctor doesn't care about insulin. Because look at your last blood count, and I guarantee over nine out of every 10 people watching this,

Morgan (14:48.782)
did not have a fasting insulin on their last blood panel. Doctors are looking at fasting glucose and hemoglobin A1C to determine if you're diabetic. And only then are they gonna do something in the form of like writing a prescription for metformin or genuvio, whatever the latest pill is. And so my mission is to help people understand that fasting insulin can predict type 2 diabetes up to two decades.

before you're gonna see the rise in glucose or A1C. And you don't need your physician's permission to check your fasting insulin. So I think we have a lot of people, a lot of people in this gray zone of like, I'm not that sick yet. Well, I'm not diabetic yet. Well, my blood sugars are still in a normal range, but we're not looking at insulin. And if we were, we would have a more sensitive marker to your metabolic health and have 10 to 20 years of a heads

of a caution sign, of an alert, like you need to do something now instead of waiting until you have a problem and then putting a bandaid on it in the form of a medication. As you know, all of my answers are long winded. So that's my answer to that simple question there. I absolutely love it. That's such a great explanation. I always try to come up with like different analogies to try to explain this. And I almost always have to kind of draw this out on a curve where

You have to put one line that stays flat for a really, really long time and say, this is your blood glucose. This line is going to be flat for a really long time. And then above that, you're going to see a line that's starting to increase over time, but then at the end, kind of eventually that kind of plateaus. Now this is your insulin and your insulin is rising and rising and rising and rising over all these years, but your blood sugar is staying normal. So if you're looking at that marker, you're thinking like, great, I look

my blood sugar is normal, feel fine, but you don't realize it's an increase, an increase, an increase of insulin that is keeping that blood sugar down. Can you explain what happens over time and why that becomes a problem later on? Absolutely. And for people who need that data, the Kraft test is what I would recommend. So let's start there. The Kraft test is like an oral glucose tolerance test. They checked your glucose and your insulin at baseline and then at like 30 minutes and one hour, two hour, three hours.

Morgan (17:06.23)
and they give you a glucose curve and an insulin curve. And your glucose curve may look perfectly normal, but that's gonna catch those rising levels of insulin in the background. So it's the Kraft Test, K -R -A -F -T. People can also just get a fasting insulin test. We have them on our website, or you can go to ultilabtest .com if you wanna do like a walk -in version of the test, and that should be less than six.

Why is this happening? Why do we see this and why is it a problem years down the road? Well, over time, your pancreas can only produce so much insulin. And when you have high levels of insulin, because of an unhealthy lifestyle, which we can get into, over a period of time, your cells become resistant to the signal of insulin. What's the signal of insulin? Lowering blood sugars. So over time, your pancreas gets tapped

your cells start to tune out insulin, become resistant, and then you see the rise in your blood sugar. This is a problem. This is a problem for a lot of reasons. But primarily, high levels of insulin are inflammatory. And we know that insulin and inflammation drive each other. That's why we can't just focus on one or the other. It really needs to be that blended combination of both. Because if you don't, like what are the consequences

What are the consequences of insulin resistance? I like to think of it like a tree. And so if you're thinking about like the root system is insulin resistance and inflammation, and then the branches are different manifestations of prolonged insulin resistance, prolonged inflammation. It could be Alzheimer's disease. could be cardiovascular disease, erectile dysfunction, PCOS, obesity, diabetes.

All the things that I saw in geriatric physical therapy, like non -alcoholic fatty liver disease, certain types of cancer. And how do you know? Like, so which one's gonna manifest, right? Are you gonna get Alzheimer's? Are you gonna get diabetes? Are you gonna get heart disease? That depends on your specific lifestyle and genetics. So somebody, for example, who eats a ton of sugar and smokes is gonna be more likely to develop diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Morgan (19:24.096)
or more advanced cardiovascular disease. Somebody who drinks alcohol on a regular basis and eats too much sugar is probably gonna be more likely to get some level of cognitive impairment as they age because that's a high oxidative stress in the brain. So the bottom line is that if you want to avoid all of that and you just wanna age well and you wanna enjoy your retirement and you wanna spend your money, time and energy on what you want instead of like being sick and giving it to the doctor and.

big pharma, you need to learn how do I lower my insulin and inflammation and how do I keep it low? And I think that that's kind of a nice segue into the conversations of like, we've got to make it a lifestyle. That's my passion. That's my heart. I don't teach a diet. I teach a lifestyle because it takes, I teach five systems, right, to be proactive against insulin resistance. We need all five systems running at optimal capacity for optimal health.

and it's your nutrition, which is what you eat, how you eat, and when you eat. It's your exercise, your stress, your sleep, and then all of that is bound together with mindset, which is probably my biggest passion. I think a lot of people feel like they need to get healthy and they need to lose weight, right? Everyone focuses on like the external weight that they wanna lose.

And I like to say a lot of times the external weight is a symptom of internal weight, of mental weight. Some sort of limiting thought attached in a leave that we need to release and let go of so that the actions that you are taking can actually be effective. So it's like having one foot on the gas, one foot on the brake. All these limiting thoughts, beliefs, negative critical self -talk, that's the foot on the gas.

You're already doing the dieting, the exercising, you're trying to do this other stuff, but you're just burning yourself out, right? So I think part of being a really great coach is giving people the tools and strategies to take their foot off the brake so that what they're doing can actually be effective. Yeah. I think this is what we often miss, frankly, and this is what I love about your work the most is yes, nutrition, a core component. We could probably talk about nutrition all day. We talk about all the time on our show. Of course, it's the biggest thing.

Morgan (21:46.092)
You probably should eat less sugar. could start with that. But there's other things that we could do. Obviously that that would be a big one that you could maybe start with. But I often look across my clients and see some of my clients were able to pull it off. And some of them just are exactly what you described. One foot on the gas, one foot on the brakes. And with coaching, you're trying to like motivate them and get them over that hump. And like, man, like I've got people that could really benefit if they just like did just a little bit more and like you'd lose weight and get off medications. I can see it. And they just.

The self sabotage you see with so many of our people, it's just devastating. And you know what it's like when you're trying to coach somebody, do you want it for them so much? cheers. It's worth it. But what I always tell myself is my job is not to get you better. My job is to meet you at the 50 yard line. I love football, so I love football analogies. My job is to give you the resources, the coaching, the systems and meet you at the 50 yard line. I can't step over that line for you.

You have to meet me there too. You have to do the work. You have to get up. You have to be self -motivated. Of course, there's things that I can do to help with that. But at the end of the day, I don't put the food in your mouth. I don't do your pushups for you. I can't. That's not my job. That's your job. And I ultimately don't want you to need me forever. Like my ultimate goal is for every single person to become their own expert coach, to become their own mindset coach.

to be able to have the skills and strategies required to get back on track after a vacation by themselves. But it's like, I'm here, I'm here to help you, but you've got to help yourself. Is that where you start with people? Like when you're talking about these five different pillars, obviously this is going to be very highly individualized, but is the mindset the key component that you really like to start with with most people before getting into some of other pillars? It really is. Yeah. So our curriculum is interesting. We run a 12 week online course and coaching program.

And I like to teach in a very linear fashion. So in that program, we start with nutrition because most people are like, just tell me what to eat. Like, all right, I'll tell you what to eat. However, I always give the caveat and these 12 weeks are a learning phase. Take all the pressure off yourself to implement because I want you to just be like a sponge and absorb things. I like to think of it like a bargain, right? We have a huge garden, we live on a farm, my mother -in -law's.

Morgan (24:10.702)
fantastic gardener. So we have a huge garden. And if we were to just plant the seeds into a bunch of weeds, they would not do well. First, we have to pull the weeds. Then we have to till the soil. Then we can plant the seeds. After we plant the seeds, we have to continually water them and weed them. And that is very similar to a healthy lifestyle. So I view the first 12 weeks of really just giving in -depth, evidence -based education on nutrition, intermittent fasting.

stress, sleep, mindset skills, and then lifestyle systems. Because I think just having the information without a framework on how to implement and execute is not as helpful. So we've really worked our, we call it our system for success. What do you do on a daily, weekly, monthly basis to be sure you're gaining continuous traction in your health. So I teach it in a linear format, but then we have something called our Zivli habit hierarchy.

And that's the implementation format. And why we wanted to do that was I view it as like dominoes kind of stacked up on each other, right? If you tip the right domino first, the rest of the dominoes are gonna fall down easier. So the first domino in our habit hierarchy is the daily mindset routine. And within that, it's very simple. We help them create kind of like a personal wellness vision statement. We want them to do three specific gratitudes.

within the last 24 hours, because that's gonna really raise your vibrations, put you into a more receptive state. And then we like to do one thing you're proud of, and you'd be so surprised where if I asked somebody, what is one thing that you're proud of, a result, an action, a non -reaction, you know, that you didn't do in the last 24 hours, and then you're like, I... And I forget sometimes that having a strong, resilient...

positive mindset is not only required for good health, but it is a skill that can be practiced and developed. And so that is the first thing that we start with is that morning mindset routine. Why? Because it's free, it's fast, takes no physical activity, and builds self -esteem and self -confidence faster than anything else. Because if you can be consistent with that, you can be consistent with the next habit, which we'll get into.

Morgan (26:36.45)
And I think that the other thing it does, it's almost like you put on your glasses for the day with that morning mindset routine and everything that you look at has a new lens. So part of my personal faith formula, which is what we call it, is I am a present, intentional and engaged mom, compassionate, empathetic, patient, supportive wife. So when I'm looking at the curing machine that my husband uses and it's empty,

Does a compassionate, empathetic, wife leave that empty or does she fill it up? When the toilet paper roll is empty, does a present mom leave that toilet paper? No, they refill it. And so I'm always thinking through the lens of my daily actions, how am I gonna show up and live today from my values, from the goal? But if I didn't keep those values and goals top of mind, guess what? The old programming runs,

We all have old programs and old habits. And so my passion is really helping people rewire their circuits, rewire their programs, and it starts with a daily mindset routine, 100%. Now after that, what I really suggest is like a weekly check -in. So my husband and I, don't know if you do this together, but we love to have a weekly meeting where we talk about the schedule for the week. We have two young kids, and so we really need to be on the same page of where are they going, who's

And then there, what's responsible? We do our meal planning. That way we are efficient with our groceries and we do our budgeting. So we look at our budget so that we're physically responsible and we look at bucket filling activities. So what is something on our calendar this week that we're looking forward to that is going to fill our buckets either personally or relationally together? And then what's our one big thing? I love that one. So that's like one habit.

that's driving the other person a little bit crazy or like for me, it's just shutting the door behind me. We live in hundred year old home, it's not energy efficient, I gotta practice shutting the door. So just those little things that sometimes in relationships can build up and cause stress and resentment, it's like we're nipping them in the bud. What does that do? That improves my marriage, that reduces stress overall, right? And we need to do that to lower insulin resistance.

Morgan (28:58.542)
So that's kind of the second habit is really getting better at life management because we all have the same 24 hours in a day. So we can't manage our time. It is what it is. But we can manage our activities. So I think part of helping people get healthy is helping them learn how to be better leaders of self. And then from there, we focus on sleep because if you're going to try and eat better and exercise and do all the things that you want to do,

It's so much easier after you are less stressed out, which is where the first and second habits come in and well rested. So that's kind of our approach with that is that we have it hierarchy one, two, and three is mindset and sleep. I love that. What kinds of things do you do to help people get better sleep? Because I think it's easy to tell somebody like, you sleep better, but there's a little bit more to it than that. So much. Well, the first thing I did, which was amazing is blue light blockers and guessing you wear

I sure do. Yeah. He's probably grabbing them right now. Yeah. There we go. How's that? Perfect. Yep. So I wear those about two hours before I want to be asleep, sometimes an hour and a half. And for people who don't know or you're not watching on YouTube, you can't just like get a little lens in your glasses and like, yeah, there's a blue light filter in my glasses. That doesn't cut it. If you want proof, go look at like your coffee pot with that little blue ring or blue light, any little blue light. If you can see

It's not blocking enough. So you want the amber or orange colored blue light blockers. I like the spectra like four, seven, nine ones or $30 on Amazon or so. What that does is it helps lower your cortisol levels at night because blue light stimulates cortisol to keep us alert and awake. And if cortisol is high, cortisol is on a teeter totter with melatonin. Melatonin cannot come up. So we need to lower the cortisol. Don't watch

It's funny that I say this on the day of this recording is the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump. I was just going to say, don't watch stressful things before bed. I think it's going to be more entertaining than stressful. my husband and I are so looking forward to that. I just, can't, there's just so many funny things that could happen. All right.

Morgan (31:21.87)
Don't watch stressful things. Don't scroll through social media that stresses you out. And please, wear blue light blockers because even blue light from your lights, you just gotta be mindful of your light environment. If it's dark outside, it should be dark inside. Get that circadian rhythm reset with blue light blockers. And then speaking of that, you can get outside and get some morning sunlight within about 30 to 90 minutes of waking

Go outside and walk around a little bit, even if it's like just a tiny bit, any bit is better than none. That's gonna really get the light into your eyes and help reset the circadian rhythm. A couple other things that have been so powerful for me are not drinking caffeine. And I am cautioned to use the word giving up because we must understand that with any lifestyle change,

there is some level of sacrifice. And the question is, are you going to make a small sacrifice now or a big sacrifice later? So for me, the small sacrifice that felt big at the time was giving up my four cups of coffee a day. And I cut back to two and then one and then decaf. And even when I switched from one cup to decaf, I had fatigue for six weeks. So I was very dependent upon caffeine. But what it was doing to me,

was it was waking me up wired at like three or four in the morning. And I'm like, this is not a sacrifice that I'm willing to make long -term. So reducing caffeine, reducing alcohol and reducing added sugars and refined carbohydrates will do wonders for your sleep. I think a few other just kind of general recommendations, there's always supplements on the market for sleep of course.

I don't get too, I have like a supplement table for my members, but we don't get too into supplements. think trying those natural things first, blocking the blue light, reducing those, the stimulants is like essentially reducing stress, getting that morning sunlight. All of those are great. But the temperature is very important too. Again, 100 year old farmhouse, no insulation upstairs in our closets. And it was like 82 degrees in our bedroom.

Morgan (33:42.804)
my goodness. And then if you go in the closet, it's like you're walking into a sauna. Like who needs a sauna in their basement when I can just go in my closet. It's crazy. my goodness. So we got an eight sleep because we're like, what are we going to do here? Like what do we do about this? We got an eight sleep, which has been a game changer for people who don't know what that is. It's a mattress cover and it has like a phone app. And so we can turn.

the temperature down so that we can sleep better, because we were just overheating something awful, especially for women in menopause having hot flashes, this can be a great solution. Again, it's an investment, it's not a cheap solution, but what's the sacrifice? You know, we're spending a third of our lives sleeping and that other third affects, that third affects the other two thirds. So you better believe that we're making our sleep a priority. And if anyone's struggling in a similar hot house environment,

it's dual control too, which is great because my husband's a hot box and I'm, you know, cold and we love to cuddle. And then that was a problem because he'd get too hot. And so now that we have like our side by side, mine's a little warmer. He's just a little cooler. We can cuddle and everybody's happy. So it's kind of like, you know, it's an investment in our sleep and our quality of life and our relationship. Those are the things that I would start with when it comes to sleeping better. Yeah, I love that. That's great. And it is an investment.

And I just, always make this point. It's like, if this is too expensive for you, then let me check out your mortgage or let me see what car you're making payments on. Like there is a trade off and we understand not everybody is in the same socioeconomic position where they can just buy whatever, but there's, there's little things that don't really cost that much that give you big gains. And it's, you're right. Like you got to think of it as an investment. Just invest a little bit now for better gains later on. I believe it was Jesse showed that you mentioned one of,

one of the people you were working with was calculating basically the cost of her being obese later in life. And it was like astronomical. You could pay for, you know, 10 of those beds in a year to spend what she was going to spend in a month to be in the condition that she was going to be in. Can you elaborate on that? Yeah, I don't remember the exact amount of that particular person. It was specific to hers, but it was crazy. But I did look into the stats on how much does diabetes cost.

Morgan (36:03.245)
And on average, it was like between 3 ,600 to a little bit over, you know, 4 ,000. So what I, I was curious, I'm like, okay, so if we're spending on average, maybe $4 ,000 out of pocket expenses a year for type two diabetes, you know, our program that they join that and they reverse their diabetes that pays for itself in less than a year. Or I thought I love like looking at financial stuff and return on investments and stuff like that. So I had a couple other things.

I was like, I wonder what the average amount of time somebody has diabetes is. About 10 years is what it turns out. And if you were to take that $4 ,000 a year and invest it at just a 6 % return, you would have $55 ,000 just because you didn't have diabetes and you could invest the money differently. And that, my friend, that's just one thepola of insulin resistance. That doesn't count out of pocket expenses for like the high blood pressure, the osteoarthritis.

the obesity, all those other conditions that often accompany high blood sugar. So in my mind, I think about it like investing in a car with good gas mileage. Like I'm gonna pay more upfront for a car that is safe, runs efficiently and has better gas mileage so that I don't have to keep paying the pump. And I think that if we view our health in that same way, like I'm gonna invest more upfront to make my engine run more efficiently.

so that I don't have to keep pouring money into a sinking ship, so to speak, with my health, I'm all for that. That's a better, wiser use of my funds. Yep. I love that. And for anybody out there who's very wealthy and is thinking like, yeah, I can invest that $55 ,000 to cover that bill, why don't you go ahead and put a price tag on your quality of life and the lack of memories you're going to make and the lack of energy and how you feel every day? How much is that worse? That's worth something.

No, and I think that's such an important point. I love that point because whenever we're thinking about investment, we think about money primarily. And I love what you said about, yeah, people are like, well, I don't have the money right now. Yeah. Show me your nails. Show me your hair. Show me your car. Show me your clothes. Show me your house. Show me your expenses. And I would never want somebody to make

Morgan (38:22.85)
to make a financially irresponsible decision. That's why I put so much free stuff on YouTube and the podcast. It's like, wanna help everyone, even if you can't afford or won't afford our program. But I think it really comes down to priorities. And the fact of the matter is that healthy people make their health a priority. And so using the excuse of I don't have time, I don't have money, I don't have energy, it's like all of those are facts, evidence.

that you need to make your health a priority because money is just one currency. There's also time and energy. And so if I can help collapse the amount of time that it takes you to get healthy, that's fantastic. If I can reduce the amount of cognitive fatigue and energy that it takes for you to understand the steps that you need to take, that's fantastic. I'm helping you save in multiple types of currency, money, time, energy. And I think

Your point was so spot on because you cannot put a price tag on quality of life. I will tell you on average, people with type two diabetes die six years earlier than somebody without diabetes, but we must consider what is their overall quality of life because that's just a hard end point. I have relatives with type two diabetes and they're miserable. They're falling, they're in the hospital. And I think that people...

Don't understand the ripple effect that their poor health has on their loved ones. Because you want to know what the center of conversation is in our home is often poor health. Like some family members poor health. You don't want to be a burden on your family. You don't want your relationships to be negatively impacted by your health. You you want to be a positive role model, a positive example, a positive contributor.

to your community and your family and your society. And that is so much easier with good health. And I just love that point that you made so much, because it's not only about the money, it's about the quality of life. And what are people going to remember you for? Are they gonna remember your last several years being sick? Or are they gonna remember you like my husband's grandma, she's like 95, 96, I think she's 95, living independently?

Morgan (40:47.83)
still travels to Arizona in the winter, still dogs, still drives herself to church every Sunday. I mean, she's a warrior. That's what I wanna be like. I wanna be one of those people who's just a light in the community and a light to their family and in a disamble of what's possible. That's savage, I love that. Isn't that awesome? That's amazing. It's horrible, but that's fine.

I love that. Yeah, I called my grandpa the other day. He's 93 and he just got back from his eight mile bike ride and like same thing. Like you're such a stud. That's so cool. Amazing. That's so amazing. love it. It's a point that, you know, one of our former guests made Dr. Sean O'Mara where he was saying like the problem is as people are aging now, their health is so poor, they're gaining knowledge and experience like you alluded to earlier. It's the reason why you're drawn to people who are older. They have wisdom and knowledge.

but they don't have the physical health. And so we don't respect them because they haven't maintained that during their life. And so now we have young people who are, you know, in great physical shape, but they don't know anything about anything. they haven't had the experience. And we've got the older people who have the wisdom and experience, but they haven't maintained the health. And so maybe this is a good time to talk about what we can do for prevention in the physical space, as far as like exercise goes. I love your ideas.

as far as what you talk about, far as exercise and what you prescribe to people. And when you prescribe it earlier in life, start with this type of foundation and work up to this as you age. Absolutely. Well, I think number one for people, if they're just like sedentary, completely couch potatoes, think walking is the best first intervention because it's the most easily accessible. It's free. Most people can do it. Even if they have joint pain, they can do a little bit of it. And even a little bit after your meals can be very effective.

in helping lower your insulin resistance. So the research has shown that if you can spread out like three walks of 10 minutes throughout the day, that's actually better for your A1C or your blood sugar regulation than if you just did one 30 minute walk. So we must get out of this mindset of like, I exercise, which means I move my body for 30 minutes a day, and then I'm sedentary for 23 and a half hours a day.

Morgan (42:58.402)
We wanna work in regular physical activity and mobility and movement to our lifestyle. So for me, it's a standing desk, it's taking regular walk breaks, that kind of stuff. Now, once you have a good kind of general movement pattern throughout the day, like you're going for walks, that kind of stuff, I really encourage people to move into strength training. And there's a few reasons for this. I'm a physical therapist.

My pet peeve in physical therapy is underdosing older adults strength training. I cannot tell you how disgusting it was to walk into a gym and see a person with like a two or a three pound ankle weight on doing like seated leg kicks and seated leg marches and like, you know, heel toe raises sitting down. And I thought to myself, this is ridiculous.

One of my favorite quotes in a geriatric rehab book is the only reason that we should have somebody kicking a ball or like doing a seated leg raise is if their goal is to kick a ball from a seated position. Unless you've had a total knee, different story, rehabbing the quad, I get it. But we are under -dosing ourselves drastically when it comes to strength training.

That is not good strength training. That is not good therapy. If your therapist is doing that for you, unless you've had a total joint replacement, it's time to get a different therapist. What we're talking about here from strength training is functional movements, squats, sit to stands, pushups, planks, all of these things. I have an entire strength training for beginners playlist on my YouTube channel, absolutely free. I tell you exactly how to start strength training.

how to do it safely to reduce injury. And then I give you like 10 upper body, 10 core, 10 lower body exercises. And I walk you through how to do them just with body weights or with bands or with dumbbells or with an external machine so that anybody, literally anybody can get started strength training. And the goal is to build up

Morgan (45:03.694)
Working all of your major muscle groups, right? So you wanna work your arm muscles, your back muscles, your core, your glutes, your legs, all major muscle groups, at least twice a week at a moderate to high intensity. You do not need to be afraid of working at that high intensity. I typically don't recommend going lower than five repetitions, especially if you're lifting alone to reduce your risk for injury. I think that eight to 10 repetitions is a beautiful place.

but you got to get to fatigue. If I used to teach jazzercise and so, I taught jazzercise until I started my business and I had my son and I'm like, I cannot do this. This is too much mental load for me, but I wouldn't see people for like two years, three years use those same darn five pound weights and they were just, you know, to chat and talk and listen to Taylor Swift doing our exercises, but they weren't really building muscle because they weren't doing progressive overload.

and reaching fatigue after the appropriate amount of sets. So strength training has to be done at the proper intensity to get the results. And then we must pair that with optimal protein intake, which I'm sure you've covered on the podcast a lot. I know I've covered it on my podcast a lot. So from an exercise standpoint, those are the two places to start. Walking, especially after meals, even two minutes helps. And then moderate to high intensity strength training at least twice a week is a great starting place.

I love that for the listener who's thinking like, okay, bands, like, come on, give me a break. A few bands. Listen, Morgan and I as a physical therapist and a personal trainer could buy some $30 bands on Amazon and come over to your house and make you cry. Like you can get very safe, effective resistance using bands. They're progressive. And so the more you push them, the heavier they get, which matches your strength curve is you're gaining more advantage. You can't say enough about the simple tools you can get, even if it is, like you said, just body weight.

There are things that you can do that will challenge yourself. It's so critical what you said to understand what that intensity, word intensity. A lot of people think this means you're jumping and throwing things and, you know, risking getting hurt and boxes and all this stuff. And it's like, no, it should feel very intense. Your muscles should feel like it's quite the, the load, the intensity, the fatigue. And that's what you're after to send a stimulus to your body to actually get strong. And again, people think

Morgan (47:24.46)
Okay, strong, means muscles, they're not considering connective tissue or bone density or all these other things that are so protective as we age. So I love how you approach that. I'm glad you mentioned protein. I'm really happy that we're having this awesome conversation about insulin resistance. And we've hardly talked at all about nutrition, which again, for most of both of our listeners, this should be fairly obvious as of now, but we'd be remiss not to mention like, are some core principles of nutrition that people can be thinking of to address insulin resistance? Well,

Clean low -car is one. And when I say clean, I mean, don't be in a bunch of keto junk food because there's artificial sweeteners and food additives and chemicals and food emulsifiers that really impact gut health, contributing to leaking gut and inflammation. So we want to follow from an insulin resistant standpoint. And again, if you're very active, if you're an athlete and you're actively training,

This will not necessarily apply to you from a carbohydrate state. But most people listening, if you're a pre -diabetic, type 2 diabetic, we want to follow a low carb diet. What does that mean? No more than 90 grams of net carbohydrates a day is a really nice place for a lot of people to start, especially if they're like doing the standard American diet. That's about 30 grams per meal. I do not want you having one meal a day with 90 grams of carbohydrates. That's like, again, farming analogy, that's

it raining six inches overnight and that excess rain is going to wash off the field and just be wasted. Any like that extra energy is not going to be used right away. It's going to be shuffled off into your fast doors. So low carb. If you're very insulin resistant, you're probably going to need to do less than 90 grams a day. Ketosis is amazing. I love the ketogenic diet. I think that it's a good tool. I don't think that it's a sustainable lifestyle for some people.

So it's really person specific on their psychology, what they feel like is gonna be sustainable for them. But low carb is a cornerstone. If your carbohydrates are too high, your blood glucose or insulin will not have the chance to come down. You'll never get into fat burning mode. You're just gonna keep burning the carbs that you eat. So the second principle is protein. I usually recommend one gram of protein per pound of ideal body weight a day.

Morgan (49:46.668)
And if they will look up like a BMI chart online and go towards the healthy section, I usually say like lower, because sometimes it's a lot of protein, very intimidating. That's a really good goal. There's more specific ways that you can calculate that as well. But for most people when I say that, they're like, my gosh, I could never do that. And I'm like, yes, you can. It's not that hard. Protein is very satiating, required for muscles and bones. And a lot of people are doing this ozempic.

you know, for weight loss because it, you know, makes you feel full and so does protein and holy fat and being in ketosis. So I think there's some misinformation a little bit about that. And when you're thinking about protein, what I think even more important than that total daily goal from a practicality standpoint is the dose per meal. 30 to 50 grams of high quality protein per meal is going to be required.

to really help build and restore muscle tissue, especially as your strength training. So a lot of people I work with, like to intermittently fast. I'm like, that's great. However, we also want to balance the fasting to get a caloric restriction with the protein. We want an energy deficit, not necessarily an amino acid deficit. So I really like dirty fasting where we're kind of supplementing with protein during the fast to lose weight, to help balance blood sugars, cravings, that kind of

So like bone broth is one of my go -to's for intermittent fasting. Collagen and coffee is great. There's a lot of different ways that we can do that. And then healthy fats. So we do not want to be eating refined seed oils. Those cause inflammation. They are in so many packaged foods. They're in so many quote unquote low carb health foods. They're in low carb tortillas. The low carb protein bars are everywhere. And that's why I say we need a clean, low carb diet.

canola oil, soybean oil, really watch out for those. Like salad dressings, ranch, they're everywhere. But there's always a better alternative. So I really like the Primal Kitchen brand for their ketchup and their dressings. There's literally always a better alternative. And you want to bias whole food fats. So nuts, seeds, avocados, olives, those types of things. Those avocado and olive oils, butter, ghee,

Morgan (52:11.368)
Natural fat found in animal products is great. So that's the basic starting point from nutritional recommendations. Low carb, high protein, high healthy fat, fiber I'm an advocate of, but I also think it's person specific on which are the best types of foods for your gut to get the fiber that you need. And remember that I would not encourage somebody to up their carb intake just to

their fiber goal. Like I think it's more important to get your protein goal, get your fat goal, get your carb, like your net carb goal before you eat your fiber goal. that makes sense. I love that. think that's totally reasonable. I want to ask you something purely selfish. I've gotten in the habit of telling people this. and I want to get your takes since you're such an expert in this, when somebody has weight to lose, if they are doing strength training and they are doing some form of care minutes, asking, let me say time restricted eating. Let's just say,

They're just, they're eating maybe a lunch and a dinner or breakfast and the lunch. And for that person, it might be a bit of a struggle to get the amount of protein they need based on the guidelines. However, they're spending maybe 16 or 18 hours where they're not necessarily eating. And what I notice is they're not that hungry, but if I'm checking their body fat and especially their skeletal muscle mass on a, on a scale, they don't tend to lose muscle mass. And it seems like autophagy in the fasting state is helping to recycle proteins. Is that something you

observed or have an opinion about? Yeah, I've been observing it for myself. Absolutely. So yeah, the pro that there is some recycling of proteins, some of them are going to be still essential. So like the leucine is still essential. That's your body can make some proteins from fats from carbs from other proteins. But I think that's why some strategic supplementation and some like dirty fasting can be very beneficial. But yes, you're

Okay, that's a great answer. I love that. And for all the my fellow carnivores out there hearing the fiber word, the F word, I know, if you don't need it, don't have it. It's fine. We're talking about a small amount of fiber for some people like most people are, you know, really poor metabolic state, we don't need to get caught up in any semantics for what works on the individual basis. There's so many people out there that were amazingly with vegetable food or some fruit or all that stuff.

Morgan (54:27.81)
Don't need to get caught up in semantics there. love how you approach the protein forward way of eating. The last thing I wanted to ask, go ahead. and healthy fats, protein and healthy fats. I I really believe it's such a disservice when people are so dogmatic about their beliefs. Because everyone, it's bio individuality. Don't tell me I have to be carnivore because I have a garden of delicious green beans out there and I'm going to go eat them. They're so yummy when they're roasted in olive oil with salt and pepper.

And my gut loves them and my body loves them and it's just fine. And we don't always like, I think that when we can get out of this, like right, wrong, good, bad, like all are, I think it comes down to the all or nothing mindset. And for me, that is not a healthy mindset. So for me personally, and for many of my clients, we want to find a little bit more of a moderate approach to food and our mindset around food. But I understand strict kind of work that works great for some people.

So I know that that, yeah. Thank you very much. The day you need an intervention for eating green beans, I'll have all my carnivore friends go over there and we'll circle you around. Like, I don't think Morgan's getting fat because she's eating green beans. You know what I mean? Like I love, I love how you approach it that way. And that's the perfect segue for what I wanted to ask you is like, somebody might be listening to this and thinking like, wow, there's, you're a pro at giving practical information. And we talked about stress and sleep and exercise and nutrition and mindset. And somebody might

Amazing. I'm going to go out right now and do all of these things right now, all at once at first. You're really, really good at helping people understand that it's way better to set a tiny, small little goal and accomplish it to help you be more motivated in the future. Why have you taken that approach? It's the only approach there is to take. mean, I think otherwise you're setting yourself up for disappointment.

I know for me, it was a really enlightening experience when I learned that any disappointment that I had was a product of my own creation, because it was created by my own expectations. And so I think we have to be very careful on the expectations that we place on ourselves, because that can either lead to feelings of empowerment and confidence or feelings of disappointment.

Morgan (56:50.134)
And feelings of empowerment and confidence will spur more action. And feelings of disappointment will spur quitting and going back to what happens. So I think that's why I'm such an advocate that getting a little bit better, taking a little step in the right direction, why don't you, is better than trying to like go from A to Z tomorrow. It's just too much. That's literally not how our psychology works.

So I'm a passionate, I'm so passionate about eating psychology, behavior change psychology. And from my own experience and from coaching people, I just know that this way works better. So that's why, just because it works better. But I'd say once in a bit at a time in the right direction. I love under, I love helping people understand too. Well, what step am I at? You know, if there's A to Z on how am I at A? Am I at D? And if I'm at A, what's my next best

And if I'm at D, what's my next best step? So I think having some sort of system in place and blueprint to follow can be really, really helpful and determining your specific next step. I love that. Dr. Morgan Nolte. This has been such an awesome conversation. love your passion and your energy. This has been wonderful. I'll probably put you on the spot a little bit here, but we would love to have you back for another episode sometime. Episodes. I really enjoyed this conversation. And like I said, you're

grow at giving people really good practical actionable things that they can do to become healthier in a way that won't overwhelm them. That is that small step, just one after another to get to where they need to be. So I love it. I absolutely love your content. Where can people go to find you and connect with you in your work? Yeah, absolutely. Our website is zivli .com. So z -i -v -l -i .com. It's an interesting name. It means to live. So ZIV is to live in Croatian. LI stands for low insulin and low inflammation.

And then we teach the lifestyle. So zivli .com and then on YouTube, I met Dr. Morgan Nolte comma zivli. and podcast is reshape your health with Dr. Morgan Nolte and then on Instagram, I'm just at dr Morgan Nolte. Excellent. We will link to all of that in a show notes. And like I said, thank you so very much for all of the content and being able to organize it again in a way that people can appreciate and digest and actually apply in our lives.

Morgan (59:08.364)
I think people get a lot out of this one. So thank you so very much for all of your work and thank you for taking time out of your busy day to come on our show today. We really appreciate you. Thanks Casey. It was a pleasure.