maze

Ep #30 The Workaround

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When it comes to pursuing our health goals, often we want the success without doing the work. We want to lose weight, have a normal BMI and an A1c under 5.6, but we also want the chocolate cake. These competing desires regularly cause us to look for workarounds – a way around the rule. For example, we may use artificial sweeteners in an attempt to avoid sugar. The problem is, this workaround is still causing us to crave the sweet taste. Or, perhaps we overeat chicken, almonds or fruit in an attempt to avoid eating desert. Ultimately, workarounds are a way to avoid doing the hard work of critically evaluating our thoughts and understanding why we are overeating. During this podcast, I discuss common workarounds and build a case for why doing the hard work of understanding our thoughts is so important to sustained success.

upset couple

Ep #29 Understanding Emotions

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Thoughts drive emotions, actions and inevitably our results. For this reason, recognizing true source of our emotions is an essential step towards living an authentic, happy and healthy life. When faced with challenging emotions, we like to believe these emotions are the result something someone did to us rather than our underlying thoughts. The problem is unexamined and unresolved emotions can drive unhealthy behaviors like eating foods that don’t serve your body. During this podcast, I discuss the importance of recognizing and critically evaluating the true source of our emotions. I present several examples from my own life and apply the thought model.

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Ep #28 Getting Granular to Accomplish Goals

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When setting and achieving goals, your plan of actions is more important than the goal itself. Often, goals and resolutions are too high-level, such as “I’m going to lose weight” or “I’m going to eat healthier.” These general aspirations are quickly undermined by busy schedules, responsibilities and stressful situations. Developing detailed plans that include incremental steps and specific timelines significantly increase the likelihood you will be successful. During this podcast, I will discuss how to “get granular” in your plans and the importance of sticking with your plan even when it is difficult.

Ep #27 Self Care or Self Sabotage?

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The importance of good self-care can’t be overemphasized. Simply stated, self-care are things that fuel us instead of taking away from us. They are deliberate actions taken in the interest of improving our mental health, physical health, emotional health or spiritual health. Sometimes, however, we indulge in activities after a challenging day and call it self-care. Are these actions truly self-care or are they buffering? During this podcast, I discuss the difference between true deliberate self-care activities and buffering, which can be self-sabotage. Understanding the difference between these two concepts is necessary for achieving our goals.

woman eating

Ep #26 Buffering Negative Emotions with Food

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As human beings, we often feel entitled to feeling happy all the time. This causes us to use food and other vices to buffer negative emotions. Buffering is when we exploit easy feel-good activities like food, alcohol or shopping, to improve our mood and numb the negative experiences in our life. When we buffer negative emotions, we are not experiencing the full breath of the highs and lows life has to offer. Additionally, many of these vices can lead to health issues like diabetes. During this podcast, I discuss the concept of buffering and argue that allowing yourself to feel negative emotions will lead to a happier and healthier life.

eating woman

Ep #25 What’s Eating You? Eating Anxiety

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Overeating and the associated detrimental health effects may be the result of how you approach your mealtime. When it comes to eating, many people approach meals and food with anxiety. For example, many people let the stress and the rapid pace of the day carry over into meals. The result is rapidly and often mindlessly consuming food then searching for more food in an attempt to increase satisfaction. Mindful eating, which is being fully present and aware during your eating time, is an effective tool to regain control and increase enjoyment. Common practices that increase mindfulness before meals include praying, meditation and active awareness. During this podcast, I discuss how overeating is often the result of mealtime anxiety and not being fully aware. I also introduce awareness building practices, such as prayer and meditation.

Ep #24 Decisions Ahead of Time

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Making decisions throughout the day can be exhausting. From decisions regarding food to exercise and kids to work, it’s no wonder we are often burnt out by lunchtime. As the day progresses, decision fatigue sets in causing us to make poor choices. When it comes to living a naturally healthy life, this can mean making choices that don’t serve your body. During this podcast, I discuss how to make and stick to decisions in advance. By limiting how many choices we make on the fly, we protect our mental bandwidth and ensure good decisions.

healthy couple

Ep #23 Three Tools for Reversing Type 2 Diabetes

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Does your New Year’s resolution include living a naturally healthy life free from diabetes? Many people believe that diabetes is permanent condition that gets progressively worse over time. Medical research suggests that type 2 diabetes can be resolved through lifestyle changes. For people with type 2 diabetes, this means better blood sugar control, less or no medications, and no more daily finger sticks. During this podcast, I present and overview of three tools I use with clients to reverse type 2 diabetes. No gimmicks or magic pills. I offer simple and straightforward research-based strategies to resolve type 2 diabetes naturally.

New Years Resolution

Ep #22 10 Steps for New Year’s Resolution Success

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It’s almost the New Year and the start of a new decade. What will you achieve in 2020? Will you reverse your type 2 diabetes, permanently lose weight and start living a naturally healthy life? Unfortunately, each January 1st we make lofty goals and abandon them after only a few weeks. These failures are typically because we don’t make our goals specific, focus on too many goals or choose the wrong goals. Make this New Year – and new decade – different. During this podcast, I discuss the 10 essential steps for setting, keeping and achieving your goals. These steps work whether it’s a New Year’s resolution or not, and are the same steps I teach my clients.

diabetes interview

Diabetes Free in 2020

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Change is hard, especially during the holidays! There’s never enough time or money. During this interview, Dr. Vaughn discusses how we often make excuses for not starting and encourages type 2 diabetics to start planning so they can hit the ground running on January 1, 2020.