Episode 012 - The #1 Mistake to Avoid In Your Blood Sugar Management Walking into 2022

⏰ (0:00): INTRO
⏰ (0:26): SPONSORED BY SKIN GRIP
⏰ (1:05): Welcome to this week’s episode!
⏰ (1:30): Reflecting on 2021
⏰ (3:14): Preparing to set goals for 2022
⏰ (4:10): Where do you start?
⏰ (6:04): The first mistake I always see in goal setting….
⏰ (8:48): Taking you through the KI100 method to setting a New Year’s goal
⏰ (10:12): Qualitative goals > Quantitative goals 
⏰ (12:21): Getting smart about S.M.A.R.T. goals 
⏰ (15:37): Getting the support you need… 
⏰ (20:24): Bonuses for the January cohort 
⏰ (21:25): Find me on instagram @needlesandspoons_ and send me your goal!

Transcription:

Elisabeth Poyner  00:00

Welcome to Keeping it 100 Radio. I'm your host, Lissie Poyner. Type one diabetic, certified health coach, personal trainer and founder of Needles and Spoons Health and Wellness. Inside this podcast, you'll find the real and raw conversations around diabetes management, including the lessons that we don't learn in our endo's office, my best tips and trainings, and conversations from the experts that I trust inside the community so that you can create more predictability in your diabetes management and feel empowered while doing so. Let's dive in. 

Elisabeth Poyner  00:26

Keeping it 100 Radio is brought to you in collaboration with Skin Grip, the only patch company that I trust with my diabetes devices. I started using Skin Grip about two years ago and before I found them, my Dexcom would last maybe four or five days before falling off, making it really hard to lift weights, hike with my dogs or just wanting to do the everyday things that I love. But now I can confidently travel, workout, and navigate life with diabetes without having to worry about dealing with insurance more than I have to begging for replacements and resorting to fingerpricks. Plus I'm in love with their mission: to help us live fearlessly with diabetes. You can check out Skin Grip at SkinGrip.com. And save 10% on your order by using the code Lissie L-I-S-S-I-E at checkout. 

Elisabeth Poyner  01:05

What is up everybody? Welcome back to another episode of Keeping It 100 Radio! I am so pumped that you're here! If you are new to the show, welcome! My name is Lissie Poyner. I'm your host. I'm a type one diabetic of almost eight years, certified health coach and personal trainer. And I just love coming on the podcast. If you are not new here and you've been hanging around for a few episodes, then welcome back, we're so pumped that you're listening to another episode of Keeping It 100 radio. 

Elisabeth Poyner  01:30

At the time that we are recording this episode, it's December 15th. So with that being said, there's only about two weeks left until 2022, which feels very, very weird because I keep accidentally saying that we're going to 2021, which I don't know if that speaks more to like how much of a shit show the past two years have been. Or if it says more about how quickly time is really flying by. Maybe it speaks to both. I don't know. But it just feels so so crazy that we are here. And we are in December. And we're about to celebrate the holidays. And it can feel like we're in this big limbo. And I don't know about you, but I've been thinking about all the things that have happened this past year, and really how much of a different position that I'm in now opposed to a year ago. Like for example, like Jordan and I moved to the other side of our duplex on our own, so we no longer have a roommate. My parents sold our childhood home and they moved. My brother moved. My team within Needles and Spoons has grown. We started the podcast. We got to have our first in person workshop, and all meet each other in person this year. Like there has been so much growth and opportunity in this past year, that it can be really easy to forget just how much has happened in just one year. But on the other end of things, kind of the the double edged sword of it, is that there's so many things that I didn't accomplish that I wanted to, in the beginning of the year. I might have gotten a little bit too goal happy because you know, we're coming out of the pandemic and I expected you know, things to open up and, and things to be different. And this would be the year that suddenly, you know, the pandemic was over. Didn't really work out that way, as we all know. But you know, the thing with that that got me thinking going into this year, into this upcoming year, is that I want to be very specific with the goals that I'm setting. And I want to be very smart about them. Because what happens when we have too many goals or kind of this like overall view of a goal, like let's just say something really general, like I want to improve my diabetes management. Usually, if you're listening to this podcast, it's probably a goal that you have, or you know, I want to lower my A1C, whatever it is. And that's way too broad of a goal. So then it feels really overwhelming to take the steps to actually get there and bring it into fruition, which is exactly what I did for coaching and my Instagram account and my relationship, like we have these broad goals of I want to grow my business or I want to, you know, have a better relationship or whatever it is for anybody. And it's just way too broad to really get anything done. 

Elisabeth Poyner  04:10

So I want to take this episode to really talk about moving into 2022. And the number one mistake that I want you to avoid in moving forward and setting these goals and kind of setting this expectation for yourself when you're moving into the new year and, and kind of creating that roadmap or plan to get there. So I want you to let me know if this sounds familiar. It is January of the new year. You have your endocrinologist appointment. You walk in with the data, it might not be the best because you know a lot of things have happened in three months. We've had the holidays, you've had the final stretch at work finishing up projects, you have been with family and friends and creating new moments as you should. So you're walking into this appointment, and maybe things aren't looking as great as you wanted them and they just kind of say alright, we're gonna change a few settings And moving forward, you know, carb count a little better, maybe pre-bolus a little bit more, or just get really intentional about your boluses. And it kind of leaves off at that, that. So you have this full 90 days to say, Okay, I have three months to lower my A1C or to get back on track, quote unquote, and you have no idea where to start. And things just kind of look the same, because it's really hard to change one little thing, when you have such a broad goal like that. And then three months passes, and nothing really changes, and you're kind of right back where you left off. So a quarter of your year was spent staying stagnant. Now that is what I see with a lot of people. I've seen that in my own journey. So it's nothing to feel bad about, or feel ashamed of, it is a very human thing. And I think it's okay to accept our humaneness. But that is where we are in a unique position now, as you're listening to this podcast, because right now you get to whip out your journal or a piece of paper, and get really, really intentional about setting up for the new year. 

Elisabeth Poyner  06:04

So the very first mistake that I always see in goal setting is the motivation of the goal. Now what does that mean? So let me just lay out an example here, and I want to see if you can hear the difference. Goal number one, I want to have less high blood sugars. Goal number two, I want to have more time in range by exercising more. What do you hear that's very different about those goals? One of those goals has 'away motivation', and the other one of those goals has 'towards motivation'. So what is 'away motivation' and 'towards motivation'? Like "away from motivation' is basically like we are running from something. So here, I want to use the example of like, think of a car, let's just say you're calling an Uber, and you tell the driver take me anywhere but the airport. There are so many places that are anywhere but the airport, he can take you to Starbucks, he can take you to the mall, he can take you to your grandma's house, he can take you to his grandma's house, there's a lot of opportunity of, there's a lot of missed opportunity there. Now think of if you hop into the same Uber, and you say take me to the airport. Sure, there might be a few different routes to get there. But the chances are, you are going to end up at the airport one way or another. Whether you're stuck in a little bit of traffic or you take the way without tolls, whatever it is, you're gonna end up at the airport. And the same goes for our goals. If we have an avoidant or away from goal, it is very, very hard for our subconscious to process and give us an actual direction to take. Whereas if we have a towards motivated goal, so something very specific that we want to achieve, our subconscious can process it and say, Okay, I hear you. This is how we're going to get there. Now going back to our example of having less high blood sugars versus exercising more to increase our time in range. Those are two very different opportunities for us to actually reach our goals. If we're just saying we want to have less high blood sugars, there's so many ways to do that, that our subconscious does not know how to process that negative and turn it into something direction oriented. Think about it. There's so many different ways to do that. We can, we can exercise more, we can pre-bolus more we can change our ratios, we can have different conversations, we can, the list goes on and on. But when we are giving ourselves a very specific goal of I want to increase my time in range by moving more, our subconscious and say, okay, when are we going to move? How frequently are we going to move? What movement are we going to do? And how are we going to get there? So we can get from point A to point B a whole lot quicker. And we can spend those three months between our appointment, taking tangible action and making real progress and moving the needle forward in a whole lot of ways. 

Elisabeth Poyner  08:48

So now that you have that example there in front of you, I want to take you through our Keeping It 100 method to setting a new year's goal. And we take our clients through this every time that they enter in the program, whether it's our Keeping It 100 program or our private coaching program, we always want to make sure that our clients have very specific goals moving forward so that they can take tangible action and actually get to where they want to be in the 10 weeks that we are working together. So step number one - you want to make that goal towards focused. So I want you to think about your goal. Is it lowering your A1C? Is it increasing your time in range? Is it having a better relationship with diabetes? Is it taking ownership of your blood sugar management? What is that goal? And take that and shift that to a towards focused goal. So think here too, this has a lot to do with our language and how we structure that statement. So we can say I want to lower my A1C, but what is the intention behind that? Do you want to lower your A1C to avoid complications? That might not be the best towards mentality or towards focused goal. Whereas if you want to lower your A1C to feel more confident or start your family or you know just feel better in your body, that is more towards focused. So kind of take a minute and think about your goal and see how you can shift the language to be more towards focused. Once you have that, we want to change the context of the goal. So I can guarantee somebody listening to this episode said, I want to lower my A1C to blank. I wanna lower my A1C to a 7.0, to a 6.5, to the 5s. So I know that it's so easy with a diagnosis like diabetes, where everything is numbers focused. We are seeing the blood sugar readings on our meter, we are measuring our A1C, we are counting our carbs, we are seeing arrows everywhere, like it can feel so easy to say, Okay, I have a quantitative goal to set for the new year. But I really want to challenge you to take that quantitative goal and shift it to a qualitative goal. So now what do we mean by qualitative? We're talking about the actual quality of how you want to feel after. So the purpose and intention behind that goal. So I'm gonna put this in a different perspective of, you know, a lot of times people go into the new year wanting to lose weight. They want to lose X amount of pounds, or hit a weight of X number. Now, when we do that, usually there's a deeper intention behind the weight loss. Usually, it's to feel more confident in our body, or it's to feel stronger, or it's to feel more energized. So in that context, instead of focusing on the number itself, and how many pounds we're losing, we can focus on what we want to feel instead. So we want to feel more confident, we want to feel more energized. That would be the qualitative goal to set instead of the numerical goal. Now relating that to our diabetes, a lot of people walk into the new year saying, I want to, again, lower my A1C to this number, or I want to increase my time in range to this number. And what that does is it sets us up for failure in a way because if we don't hit that exact number, we are feeling bad about ourselves, or we're feeling like we didn't accomplish what we want to set out to. So I want to challenge you to get intentional about setting this goal. And really think about the qualitative outcome of how will you feel when you accomplish this goal? Or what is the motivator behind it of how you will feel? Will you feel more confident in your management? Will you take more ownership over your endocrinologist appointments? Will you have a better relationship with diabetes? Will you put more trust into your body? What is the intention behind that? So once you have that, we have a towards motivated and quantitative goal, we can move forward and set our S.M.A.R.T. goals. So I'm sure a lot of people listening to this podcast have heard of S.M.A.R.T. goal, if you haven't S.M.A.R.T.is a an acronym. So it stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time sensitive. This again allows us to shift our subconscious approach to managing that goal. So you can really know into the how we're going to accomplish it, when we're going to accomplish it, and what we're going to do to get there. So when we're saying specific, we want to create a very specific goal, which we kind of already did in the first two steps. So taking the examples that we had set, I want to increase my time in range by exercising more, so I can feel more energized. Now we want to make that measurable. How are we going to measure it? Like what will be the progress indicator of actually reaching that goal? Again, we don't want to go back to the numbers of I'll see my A1C dropped from a 7.0 to a 6.5. Or I'll see my time in range go from a 60 to a 65% time in range. Instead, we want to see what will be the progress indicator? Well, two things, we will be able to see our numbers become more predictable, and then two - we'll probably feel more energized. We'll feel better waking up in the morning, we'll get better quality of sleep. So again, just kind of take that time to get very clear on what are my progress indicators in a way that I don't have to reach a certain number. Number three is the A, so we want to make something attainable. So this being said, you know, you don't want to say I'm going to work out five days a week, if your schedule doesn't allow for it. You know, there's a big difference between saying I'm going to work out five days a week, and I'm going to move my body once a day. So we want to make sure that it's something attainable something realistic, that will actually be set forth going forward. And that's kind of where the R comes in too - realistic. So the last letter in the S.M.A.R.T. goal is time sensitive. So when what time period, do we want to reach this goal? I always say like it's okay to set three different goals here. Kind of moving in a step by step approach. So what goal do I want to do I want to set in the three month range? What goal do I want to set for six months? And then what do I want to accomplish overall, for the next 12 months? You can break it up in that way, so that you are accomplishing little chunks of goals that allow you to move the needle forward for the entire year. So you're not just saying I'm going to lower my A1C before the end of the year. What is that really going to do? It's gonna put you at November and say, oh my god, I haven't learned my A1C yet. What am I going to do in the next month? So I want you to sit on that and repeat it back. What is your goal? How are you going to measure it? What are the progress indicators? How is it attainable and realistic? How is it towards motivated? And how is it set for a qualitative goal? Once you have that, write it down. And I want you to write three bullet points of tangible things that you can start with in the new year to really get on the right foot to get to that goal. Now, I know this to be so tedious to do, but trust me when I say there's no better way to get a start on your goals than doing just this. 

Elisabeth Poyner  15:37

Now, if you are somebody who maybe you don't have a support system behind you to help you get to this goal, maybe you're just really not sure how to break it down enough to actually take action and you need that accountability and that person next to you to really break it down with you, I want to invite you to go into the shownotes click the link and set up a call with myself so that we can break down our exact framework and make sure that you have an action plan moving forward. Inside this call, we are going to break down your goals so that they're so specific and you have an exact 10 week roadmap to get you there. So that your goals are accelerated, you're accomplishing more in 10 weeks than you thought you would in 6 months. In this call, we'll also discuss our specific framework to make sure that it is the best way to get you to that goal. Our signature coaching program Keeping It 100 is enrolling for January 4th. So you can join us and get your year really moving on the right foot with the right support and the right accountability behind you. We know that you don't just need another program where you're lost in the midst of so many clients that you struggle to get noticed and properly supported. We know that you don't need to keep just downloading free things that don't actually give you real tangible results. And we know that you don't just need another passive course where you are getting the information but it's not customizable to your personal experience. But we do know that you need a personalized blueprint for your own diabetes management based on your preferences, your patterns and your lifestyle. We know that you need a proven process so that you can stop second guessing yourself and actually bridge the gap between your personal life and your diabetes management. And we know that you need multi dimensional support. We know that one coach can't possibly be an expert in all things, which is why you're supported by a team of three coaches, each with a different level of expertise ready to serve you. Now Keeping It 100 is not just a self-study program where you're left with a list of trainings and no idea how to implement them. We guide you through each phase of the process and customize it to your personal experience. And not only that, but we know that one the one size fits all approach does not work specifically within the realm of diabetes. And we know that your management is unique and that what works for one person does not work for everybody. But Keeping It 100 is a 70 day integrative experience that offers a true 360 degree support that's missing from day one of our diagnosis. From real life applications, science backed education, trackers, and hands on support, you cannot fail inside this program. Keeping It 100 is a program that takes a round table approach with coaches specializing in nutrition, dosing, exercise, hormonal health, mindset, and a complete holistic lifestyle. And really, this is the most hands-on a program can get. And trust me when I say I've done that research. On the inside of Keeping It 100, throughout the entire 10 weeks, what you'll find is weekly step-by-step trainings delivered straight to your inbox. So to avoid information overwhelm, we dedicate each week to one strategy so that you have time to actually integrate the changes and master each tool as it comes. You'll learn everything that you need so you can feel confident in your decision making skills, trust your body, and increase your energy levels, all while lowering your A1C and average blood sugar and longer times in range. With that we invite you every single week into our weekly Clarity and Question coaching sessions. So each week you'll have the opportunity to submit questions on the weekly trainings, implementing blood sugar strategy, feedback on your weekly homework, nutrition, exercise, hormonal health, mindset support, and so much more. So that you can get personalized feedback from the entire team. We dive into each strategy, teach you how to implement it in your own unique lifestyle, and anything else that you need to know to succeed in every step. On Thursdays we invite you into our weekly data assessment and implementation calls. So we know the importance of confronting the data, not as a report card, but as a means of making impactful decisions and changes for the upcoming week. So inside these calls, we'll support you in identifying critical patterns for breaking barriers in your everyday blood sugar management and come up with a plan to create positive changes. Looking at and understanding the data will help you have a better relationship with food, exercise, and the number. Not only that, but every single week we'll send you a personalized recorded feedback helping you create action steps, identify trends, patterns, and really break through any roadblocks that you might be seeing on a week to week basis. When you join, you also get a private nutrition intensive with our Registered Dietitian, Jess. We are not about cookie cutter meal plans, and we're also not about cutting cookies out of your diet. Here, we will be making the foods that you love, work for you and your everyday diabetes management. You'll leave your nutrition intensive feeling confident taking on new foods and fueling your body in a way that feels good and aligned for you. Not only that, but you get a 24/7 Slack support from the entire team, including a private channel with myself. So you always have a container to ask questions, share your wins, get live feedback and connect with the other members inside of Keeping It 100. 

Elisabeth Poyner  20:24

Now we do have a few bonuses for the upcoming cohort. So along with the entire program, you're also getting access to the T1D online accelerator, which is our signature course guiding you through the foundations to a holistic lifestyle with type one diabetes, so you always have something to refer back to and get started on right away. You're also gonna get access to our Fitness and Blood Sugar Blueprint Bundle. So this is your entire course on teaching you about the what, the whys, and hows of blood sugar management during exercise. And our very special bonus is our brand new Insulin Sensitivity Syncing Method. So this is a brand new interactive guide that we just released that you're going to get entirely for free. And this is your four step process to syncing your body, blood sugars, hormones, nutrition and movement. All in one four week process. Combined, this is over a $600 value that you're getting completely for free. Now this sounds like the support that you need in your blood sugar management moving into January, again, go into the show notes, click the link and we can set up a call making sure that this is a perfect fit for you. 

Elisabeth Poyner  21:25

Now what I want you all to do is go on Instagram. Find me @needlesandspoons_ and send me your goal that you had set so I can support you and hold you accountable the whole way through. This was such a great episode. I cannot wait to hear your goals and how you plan on moving forward into the new year. We will catch you on next week's episode.