Reversing Diabetes Pt 3: Stop Eating These "Healthy" Foods
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the Living Life. Well show the intersection of God's word, today's science and healthy living with common sense application, all based on the truth of the word of God. I'm your host, Dr. Jon Skelton. Now let's get straight to the truth. All right. Welcome back to The Living Life. Well show we're on our third episode in our series on reversing diabetes. So if you are just joining us, you need to go back and listen to the last two episodes. In part one, we talked about the real root cause being inflammation and insulin resistance. Really, the two go hand in hand to create an environment for diabetes to develop.
In part two, our last episode, we talked about supplements like berberine and alpha lipoic acid or a LA, if you will, [00:01:00] to help you get off the medication rollercoaster. But today, today is where the real work gets done today, the real, actionable, everyday changes you can start to make to reverse the diabetes.
I promised you in the last episode that we would talk about food, but not just eat your veggies. I'm gonna tell you why some of the healthy, and I put in quotes, healthy foods you've been told to eat, specifically two vegetables and a few fruits might actually be keeping you diabetic. So if you're looking to start this new year with a real strategy to lower your A1C, this is the episode you need.
So let's just jump right in. Okay, so the biggest lie in the diabetic world is that you can manage this disease. Again. I said manage while eating the standard American diet, as long as you take your medications right. Well, I'm here to tell you, you absolutely can't. We established in the last two episodes that we have to lower our insulin [00:02:00] resistance.
We have to let the pancreas rest. But here's the trap of a, A lot of patients come to me and say, Dr. Skelton, I'm eating healthy. I'm eating my veggies. But when we look at their glucometer or continuous G glucose monitor, their blood sugar's spiking like they just ate a candy bar.
Why? Just because it's low fat or low carb doesn't mean it's healthy. Even some fruits and veggies you wanna stay away from, but the list is shorter than you. You may have been told when you have insulin resistance, your body doesn't care if the sugar comes from a Snickers bar or a baked potato. It just sees glucose or or sugar spike that it can't handle.
Okay, so the two vegetables to avoid and I tease this last week and I want to deliver on it. So there these two vegetables, and I use air quotes there that I tell my diabetics when I say vegetables that I tell my diabetics to strictly avoid especially in the beginning stages of [00:03:00] reversal. So number one is corn.
So here's the truth. Corn is not a vegetable, it's a grain, okay? We think of it as vegetables, and it's almost entirely genetically modified and designed to fatten cattle. So when you eat corn, you are essentially eating a sugar bomb. It breaks down into sugar rapidly, and if you're trying to heal insulin resistance, corn needs to go.
This means corn chips my favorite. Popcorn corn on the cob, as well as anything made with corn meal. There are alternatives you can use for corn chips and and corn. Meal meal, but in general, anything with corn as an ingredient should be avoided. Okay, number two is the white potato. I know potatoes are a staple, but the glycemic index of a baked white potato can be higher than table sugar.
When you eat that potato, your blood sugar skyrockets. [00:04:00] Your pancreas has to scream for insulin production, and because you are resistant, that insulin floods your system and drives inflammation. Think of course, mashed potatoes, baked potatoes. And potato chips when you're thinking of avoiding potatoes. The reason both of these vegs need to be avoided is because unlike most vegetables, these two are pretty low in fiber.
When a food is low in fiber and high on the glycemic index. It will spike your sugars when it is high on the glycemic index and high in fiber. It may or may not spike the sugars. The best is going to be low on the glycemic index and high in fiber, so we, we can trade the potato for cauliflower mash or or lower glycemic index veggies.
We can trade the corn for leafy greens or crisp. Cruciferous veggies like broccoli and Brussels sprouts, or if you're like me and need a crunch with your salsa try cassava flour chips that are a little lower on the [00:05:00] glycemic scale. Things like the Siete brand. Okay, so fruit. Okay. Nature's candy, right?
So I said last week that this doesn't mean you can never eat a piece of fruit God gave us fruit. It's wonderful. But if you are diabetic, your metabolism is currently broken, you cannot handle the fructose load of. Certain fruits. The, there are two specific categories I want you to be careful with.
First is tropical fruits. So things like bananas, pineapples, and mangoes. These are incredibly high in sugar, and a ripe banana is essentially eating a candy bar. So if it's a little brown, it's pretty ripe. It hits the bloodstream very fast. Think if you have to go to an island or a jungle to get it, that means that it's a tropical fruit.
And for now, even the whole fruit aspect of this, we need to avoid. What is worse than eating pineapple or a mango is just drinking the juice. The juice [00:06:00] from these fruits is stripped of the fiber that can somewhat counterbalance the high sugar content. But when you juice. This goes for all vegetables as well.
You lose virtually all the fiber and some of the other nutrient value when you are juicing. Okay, so that, so that's number one. Tropical fruits number two dried fruit. So raisins dried apricots. figs, plums. When you dry the fruit, you remove the water and you concentrate the sugar. You can eat 50 grapes in the form of raisins in in two seconds.
You'd never sit down to eat 50 grapes that fast, and that's essentially what you're doing when you are eating raisins. It really concentrates that, that sugar, that's. The raisin itself and creates that, that really high glycemic load. So what should you eat instead? A good rule of thumb is to consult a glycemic index and [00:07:00] draw a line.
Generally speaking, you can stick to the berries, strawberries, blueberries. Blackberries, raspberries they're lower in sugar and packed with antioxidants and fiber that help blunt that insulin response. The second key with regard to any fruit on your glycemic chart is also to look at the serving size.
This is where I see a lot of people make a mistake. So let's look at example and look at a fructose chart. So pineapple is on the fructose chart with only four grams, while blueberries are much higher at 7.4 grams. So just looking at the fructose content, you would think that pineapple would be much better.
However, when you look at the serving size, the truth really comes out a slice of pineapple versus eight ounces of blueberries for the serving sizes of each. I doubt I can eat a single slice of pineapple, and I probably won't eat more than three to four ounces of blueberries. [00:08:00] So when I eat a half cup of blueberries, I'm only getting 3.7 grams of fructose and I am full versus a single slice of pineapple, and I'm still gonna be very hungry and unsatiated.
So for those interested, I am including a link to the fructose chart. I use with my clients in the show notes if, if you'd be interested in that. So the next practical step is to use good oils when you're cooking. So seed oils tend to break down and become inflammatory during the extraction process and the cooking process.
So manufacturing and cooking causes a lot of these oils when ingested to cause increased inflammation. This, this can happen instantaneously or more commonly over time, and this systemic inflammation can lead to. Leaky gut insulin resistance, and in some cases even trigger autoimmunity as well.
So what can we cook with? Well, olive oil, ghee, tallow, and avocado oil. These oils when they're [00:09:00] pure and used to cook with at the correct heat, and this is key, allow you to avoid the inflammation that occurs with the seed oils. So extra virgin olive oil is good for salads, dressings, and low to medium heat.
Unrefined avocado oil is good for low to medium heat as well. And tallow or the fat from around the kidneys and, and loins of an animal and ghee or clarified butter, are better for, for higher heats. So the rule of thumb with all of these is determine the smoke point for each on your stove. And then back off just a few degrees.
The smoke point is just that the temperature at which you first see smoke. This is an indication that the oil is being denatured and will have a tendency to cause more inflammation when ingested. So the best way to do this is experiment without cooking anything. Determine on your stove top the. Point for each of your choice oil, and then back off just a few degrees from there.
Now you won't [00:10:00] have to worry about it again. This will ensure you are creating a low inflammatory meal using very, very good oils that are nourishing and replenishing, and just the opposite of being inflammatory. Okay, so we've talked about a lot of things. So how do we put this into practice? Leading into the new year now 2026.
So I want to give you a simple framework. We talked about that 12 hour fasting window last week. So what that means is you stop eat at 7:00 PM and you don't eat anything again until 7:00 AM That's step one. So fluids that would be incorporated during this time would be water it would be, black coffee, unsweet tea.
These are the things that you could consume. So if you notice I didn't put in there that you're adding electrolytes to it, you're adding element or any of the other electrolyte components. These are simply going to be [00:11:00] black coffee, unsweet tea and a herbal tea and plain water. Okay? So step two is what I call.
Anchor and edges. So the anchor is developing the anchor meal that you can eat daily, that you know doesn't shoot your blood sugar up and or you know is low in sugar. This anchor meal will be developed from the edges of the store. When you go to the grocery store, you want to stay out of the aisles. The aisles are where the boxes, the bags, and the cans live.
That's all processed, right stripped of nutrient value. That's the shelf stable. Code words for not real food portion of the store. If it's not cooled, frozen, or needs to be checked daily for spoilage by a person, leave it alone. Okay? Your plate generally should look like this. About two thirds low glycemic veggies, 20 to 25% protein from an animal.
The remainder in healthy fats were nuts, [00:12:00] so. When I am talking about doing this, and specifically when we're talking about animal protein, and this can be a little bit different for different people, if you are using good sources of dairy, dairy can be something that you include, but you want to make sure that it is actually good dairy, good yogurts.
Good milks those things that haven't had a lot of added sugar to it. Notice I'm not telling you that it needs to be necessarily low fat. The main issue with a lot of these dairy products is going to be added sugar and or flavors. And so if you're looking at yogurts, you want to do Greek yogurts that don't have any added flavors or, or those types of things milk.
Whole milk is fine. Just make sure it's from a, a good source. So a good way to start this anchor meal is at breakfast, but really any meal that is easy for you [00:13:00] to, to get in during the day I is what's most important. So, if you develop this anchor meal, and really what I mean by that, anchor meal is something that you consume almost every single day, meaning, you know.
Five days a week or more. Now, for many of us, that is the breakfast meal. That's the easiest meal when we have less influence over us from outside sources, be it coworkers, be it family members. Most of us in America, I think tend to get breakfast on our own or get it on the go. So developing this breakfast, and it doesn't have to be actually the, the full you know, big, huge plate of veggies.
Okay? If you prefer to do a smoothie, put these good nutrients into a smoothie, add in some good, healthy yogurts and, and fats, even maybe nuts [00:14:00] into a smoothie and make it. That way so that you can start your day off right And that way you know, hey, I have already set myself up for success by eating this meal or.
End your day that way, if that's easier, end your day with that, that high volume of veggies, those good proteins, good fat sources. And then if, if you really do this, you will be on your way to success. So. If you do that, and if you cut the corn and cut the potatoes, swap the bananas for berries, and stick to that 12 hour eating window, you're going to see your inflammation drop.
You're going to start feeling some of that brain fog lift, and you should start seeing fasting blood sugars and hemoglobin A1C drop over time as well. Now. Now look, I, I know this is a big shift. Changing how you eat is emotional, it's cultural. [00:15:00] But you're worth it. Your health is worth it. Your family and friends know that you are worth it.
So God designed us to, to live life well, not be a slave to, to medication or food addictions or side effects, to, to medications and, and food. And so if you're listening and, and thinking, you know, this all sounds great. I feel like I've kind of done this. I really need somebody to help me through this. I wanna remind you again about the Reversing Diabetes course coming in the first quarter of 2026.
Hopefully, we'll, we'll launch that by the end of January. We're gonna have some specific items that are really gonna be good. We'll, we will help you look for, things in the grocery store to help you meal plan, to help you shop. And we're gonna have step-by-step instructions that I use every day with my clients in the clinic.
[00:16:00] So, the link to get on the wait list is in the show notes. So, go and sign up so you don't miss the enrollment window.
Now a, as a bonus, in addition to the fructose chart, I'm gonna give you my preferred veggies list as well. The ones I recommend most often to my clients. So I, I. Think this will really help get things started for you and get your new year off right, with hopefully becoming free of diabetes or at a minimum reducing constantly being on the yo-yo of up and down sugars.
Adding in more and more medications, increasing doses. All those things. So, thank you for listening. If, if this helped you please leave a review and, and share it with a friend, especially if you know someone that might benefit from this content. So, until next time go out and live the truth so you can live life.
Well, thanks and God bless.[00:17:00] That's it for this episode of The Living Life. Well show if you like what you've heard and want to learn more or want to know how to put this into practice for yourself, go to live life well clinic.com. Until next time, this is Dr. Jon Jon saying Go. And live the truth so you can live life Well, the preceding is for entertainment and educational purposes only.
It is not meant to be used to prevent, diagnose, treat, or cure any condition. The information contained in this show does not substitute the need for a qualified medical professional, nor is it meant to provide medical advice for services. If you feel information presented in this show may apply to you, we recommend you seek out the help of a qualified medical professional who can evaluate and treat your specific concerns.
