#1472 Tao of Tom
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Tom, 29 (T1D since age 8), overcame resentment, weight gain, and stigma to take control of his diabetes while working in commercial real estate.
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Scott Benner 0:00
Here we are back together again, friends for another episode of The Juicebox Podcast.
Tom Taylor 0:14
My name is Tom Taylor. I'm 29 years old. I'm from the New York City area. I work in commercial real estate analytics, I was diagnosed as a type one diabetic when I was eight years old in third grade. Please
Scott Benner 0:26
don't forget that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan or becoming bold with insulin. Don't forget to save 40% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com All you have to do is use the offer code Juicebox at checkout. That's Juicebox at checkout to save 40% at cozy earth.com AG, one is offering my listeners a free $76 gift. When you sign up, you'll get a welcome kit, a bottle of d3, k2, and five free travel packs in your first box. So make sure you check out drink, AG, one.com/juice, box to get this offer. Are you an adult living with type one or the caregiver of someone who is, if you are, I'd love it if you would go to T 1d, exchange.org/juice, box and take the survey. When you complete that survey, your answers are used to move type one diabetes research of all kinds, T 1d exchange.org/juice, box. It should not take you more than about 10 minutes. The episode you're about to listen to is sponsored by tandem Moby, the impressively small insulin pump. Tandem mobi features tandems newest algorithm control iq plus technology. It's designed for greater discretion, more freedom and improved time and range. Learn more and get started today at tandem diabetes.com/juice box. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the Dexcom g7 the same CGM that my daughter wears. Check it out now at dexcom.com/juicebox,
Tom Taylor 2:07
my name is Tom Thaler. I'm 29 years old. I'm from the New York City area. I work in commercial real estate analytics. I was diagnosed as a type one diabetic when I was eight years old in third grade, and I have had quite a journey managing the disease. I've been relatively independent about it since I was young. I come in contact with a lot of folks who recognize my pump or my CGM in public, even though my my omnipot receiver usually gets mistaken for a second phone. I'm not nearly that cool to need two phones. I think it's very, very interesting community, and I really appreciate the work that you do, Scott and educating people about it.
Scott Benner 2:44
Oh, thank you. Did you see the omnipot app came out yesterday? I
Tom Taylor 2:47
didn't. I've been waiting for that for so long. Oh, I can't wait to get rid of this device. So,
Scott Benner 2:53
yeah, the app came out yesterday. I put a link up, got hit like 1000s of times in the first 24 hours. I was like, Wow, that's amazing. So people
Tom Taylor 2:59
were obviously really excited waiting for it. Well, thank God you're on top of it. Yeah? Al, I mean, in fairness, I get a text from somebody who says, hey, the app just came out, so I'm a little ahead on stuff like that, nevertheless. So you've had diabetes for 21 years. Your Diabetes can vote, drink and all that stuff. That's right, yeah, that's exactly. Has it ever gone to Vegas for the weekend, left you alone? Yeah, yeah. I think it has, I think it's gotten away from me from time to time. And then, you know, it'll, especially when I was younger, you know, I'd come back and, metaphorically speaking, you know, the disease would kind of say, hey, you know, you've been feeling terrible for a few days. This is why you need to get a grip on this. You know, over time, I've definitely found, you know, rhythms and mechanisms to kind of regulate it. And I think that, you know, it's a blessing in disguise, in retrospect. In fact, actually, I wrote my my college essay on type one diabetes and the phenomenon of high blood sugar and just how unfortunate the feeling is, I likened it to, and this is pretty nerdy, so stick with me here for a second. But there's a there's an old epic poem called The rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. You know, this guy kills an albatross and and all of a sudden, the world kind of collapses around him. And he's, he's sailing on the high seas, and the seas kind of turn to molasses. And I, you know, when you when your blood sugar is high, it feels like your blood is molasses, and everything is just kind of, you know, prickly and painful and slow. And so, you know, I think that feeling, which when I was younger, was probably like half of the time I was awake, something like that. What it makes you appreciate just feeling normal and all the little things in life. Gotta accept everyone, but it's definitely a blessing in disguise. In that way, you mentioned that you've been taking care of this since a pretty young age, but it wasn't because you were doing awesome at it. It just wasn't. It was because that was what was needed to be done. Exactly right. Exactly right. You know, it was no one in my family had this disease prior actual that's we found out when I was diagnosed. I have a very large family, and my mother's one of nine, my father's one of six. We've got a lot of very close blood relatives that are all very close. Geographically and as far as spending time with each other, but nobody else got was diagnosed with type one diabetes of the, you know, I can probably count, you know, 60 to 80 close relatives I could probably name for you right now, I was, I was the lucky one, but our great grandmother, on my mother's side was a diabetic and and she apparently had to use one needle that she would boil to sterilize and bore insulin. Insulin from a bore because they didn't have synthesized one readily available in the early part of the 20th century. And so, you know, we kind of figured out what was available as far as equipment and stuff. My parents and I kind of got into a routine when I was young, but I was very much left to monitor my own blood sugar, to set a schedule, to inject myself with the help of school nurses as well. When I was, you know, enough to be in school, basically, I think that the kind of epochs of time for me in managing, you know, type one was when I was younger, in elementary school, and I was diagnosed in third grade. School Nurses were a big part of the regulation, because that was the time I was away from my parents, and I would have to go to the school nurses, as you probably hear all that all the time, and check my blood sugar and take insulin ahead of lunch and whatnot. So they were very integral in establishing some structure there for me and having some accountability, which I think is important for a young kid dealing with the disease. There's a fine line, frankly, between accountability and, you know, oversight kind of taking away that sense of internal accountability for a kid. So I think that, you know, I was very fortunate to have some great school nurses when I was young, that that really made me accountable to managing the disease myself. But also, you know, giving me oversight and checking in to make sure that I had the help I needed to
Scott Benner 6:43
what was the level of expectation 21 years ago? What kind of insulin were you using? What were your outcomes like, and what were your goals? I remember,
Tom Taylor 6:52
you know, being diagnosed. Then it was November, 2003 you know, I kind of had in my head. I think I'm a fairly managerial person, and that I'm always kind of tracking progress in some way, whether it's my health or, you know, my work or whatever else. So I would think about these things in the way, a couple of different gages. I would think about my blood sugar on a day to day basis. I would think about my a 1c in the long term. And then, you know, just kind of how I felt, the expectations were, you know, you're going to have some swings. In retrospect, I kind of wish that the knowledge, I think that is kind of widely disseminated now, about how food affects you and what cycles we have immediately after eating, how much pre bolusing can help. Due to CGM, that wasn't really in my consciousness yet, so it was kind of like, All right, well, you're going to eat, you're going to then take a shot. You're going to feel probably pretty bad for a while, but then it'll come down. And, you know, if you run around a lot and you're active, that'll probably help control it, but you know, just good luck kid, you're gonna, you're gonna have probably feel bad for a lot of the time. But before I was diagnosed, so, you know, who knows exactly how long it was that I was diabetic before, you know, we realized it. And I'm happy to go into the story too, of how I was diagnosed. But I remember, I was in third grade. It was my first year playing tackle football, you know, I would think about the number of bathroom breaks I could take in a day in terms of, like, time outs for, you know, a college basketball game or something. You see the amount of time outs on the screen, on the crayon on the bottom, and they've got, you know, five a half, or whatever it is. I was, you know, left my own devices. I would have gone to the bathroom probably 20 times a 20 times a day, but I tried to limit myself so I wasn't, you know, in and out of class and disrupting everything. And the teachers would get upset with me. And wherever I was, you know, I had to find myself having to go to the bathroom every 1520 minutes. So during football practice, I would urinate on myself at least twice a practice. And there's a tremendous amount of shame, you know, and it was just a very unpleasant and confusing experience, you know, I remember speaking with, you know, my coach about the problem and just having having no answer, being, you know, being eight years old, yeah. But, you know, in retrospect, like everything was better than that, you know, finally getting in some of my system, I kind of just thought about it incrementally. You know, I went from having an A, 1c in the double digits, I remember, you know, at eight, and then by the time I was, you know, probably 10 or 11, I got it down into the, you know, the sevens, and then, you know, eventually that was kind of the plateau, yeah, I think it was probably in the, in the kind of low sevens. And then I went off of the pump for a while, because it would just kept coming out. And I hated tubing. That was very active kid, you know, I'm a golfer as well. And just anytime you have twisting and sweating, the pump is going to come out. So I switched to injections, until the last couple of years, honestly, in my mid 20s, I went back on the pump. And that, combined with the CGM, you know, has me now in the in the fives. Well, you know, I think my last ANC was like 5.3 or 5.4 and I'm, you know, trying to optimize, to hopefully be as close to a non diabetic as possible. I have a clarifying question. Back when you're talking about the football practice, is that prior to your diagnosis or after diagnosis, you were still using the bathroom that frequently
Scott Benner 9:53
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Tom Taylor 12:01
Okay, I remember, I was diagnosed November 7, 2003 which was, you know, toward, toward the latter part of the football season. But, you know, I had had most of it already. And I, you know, I go, basically at a doctor's appointment, at a regular checkup with our pediatrician that day, that November they, you know, test my blood sugar. As part of that, it's 350 or so. We go to the hospital, to the hospital, to Greenwich Hospital in Connecticut, and I stay for the weekend, and I remember just the, you know, when I finally got an insulin drip and tremendous relief that I felt. I didn't realize, you know, how what the cause was from my horrible, just kind of state of existence for the prior several months. But yeah, going forward, that was not a problem anymore.
Scott Benner 12:41
Okay, are there autoimmune in your family besides type one? Not that
Tom Taylor 12:45
I'm aware of, no some thyroid stuff, but yeah, nothing, really. This is a kind of a lone wolf,
Scott Benner 12:50
but there is thyroid people have hypothyroidism or Hashimotos, I
Tom Taylor 12:55
believe so. Yeah, and you know, not to pry too much into their lives, but I know that there is definitely, you know, some metabolic dysfunction going on, but, and you know what, I have this suspicion that a lot more people are diabetes than they that are actually diagnosed, but, but, no, I was, I was the lucky one out of, you know, a few dozen family members. Wow.
Scott Benner 13:16
You feel like there are people that have diabetes type one that don't know in your family, or what
Tom Taylor 13:21
do you maybe not in my family specifically, but you know, it's kind of, it's kind of strange how much it's come up that, you know, I'll have a friend say, you know, I've got this crazy brain fog, and you know, I'm just, you know, I'm out of it, and you know, I'm going to the bathroom a lot, and I'm always like, Okay, well, there's, there's a clue we should look into this. And I'm also one. I always keep extra land sets on me or my backup meter, and I'm always testing people's
Scott Benner 13:43
blood sugar Tom's like, I'll get, you know, I was like, we'll figure out what's happening right now, I always offer. I always offer. And when I was, have you ever found one? Have you ever unearthed the diagnosis? Thankfully,
Tom Taylor 13:54
no, I guess, for better or worse, you know, I wouldn't want to, you know, unnecessarily bring anybody into this. But, you know, I just maybe it's my, you know, whatever, just seeking misery loves company. But I do think that at some point I will probably find somebody is just suffering day in, day out, unnecessarily, who could be helped by, you know, just the regular course of of type one treatment, obviously type two is proliferating. You know, as a mild tangent, I do also have this pet cause that I think we should probably come up with a new name for type one diabetes. I know there's juvenile there's, you know, diabetes mellitus, but I just think that there's a lot of association that people have with type one and type two diabetes that is really not, you know, helpful for for the top of public consciousness. And, you know, I don't know if it affects research dollars or anything like that, progress toward a cure, but I think that their disease is enough that separately, that hopefully one day we can call it something different, and it would maybe, maybe lead to a better understanding.
Scott Benner 14:55
I'm always interested, because I find that some people have that feeling, and some people. Don't like. But what do you think the the confusion is because I know nobody understands type one diabetes versus type two diabetes out in the general you know, in the general world, they don't know this diabetes to them. But once you understand what it is like, once you have it type one, you know the difference. And why does it matter to you if other people don't,
Tom Taylor 15:23
you know, I think there's two realms to it. One, you know, having had this since I was a kid, and having it, you know, it's not, I don't think it's a main feature of my identity, but it's definitely part of my identity. There's definitely some judgment and some shame whether not people realize they're doing it. I think a lot of people do these things without intending to, you know, I think so too explicit. But I think that a lot of people here, you know, you say you have diabetes, and they're like, Oh yeah, you've got the fat disease. You know, are you where you're responsible or you don't take care of yourself? And it's like, well, no, I've got the genetic one actually,
Scott Benner 15:52
right? And
Tom Taylor 15:53
so whether that is even true or not, it doesn't matter to you, right? Like, you don't want to be associated. You're looking to have one less thing on your on your head, and if they're looking at you thinking, Oh, you have diabetes. This is a thing you had a choice in, and you did it, and you just, you would just like it if they understood it was a thing that happened to you. Yeah, yeah. And maybe that's, you know, a victim mentality, and I don't know why. Maybe it's not productive. And I've, you know, I've gotten over a lot of the resentment that I had just put this, you know, luck of the draw. Obviously, I couldn't control it. And I guess, you know, part of me, just my, you know, animal brain wants people to know, like, Hey, I, you know, this was just a, an unfortunate draw that I got, and it wasn't my fault. Yeah, I've largely gotten over that. It doesn't really, you know, keep me up at night, but I do think it would be productive, you know, for the discourse, just maybe, maybe, maybe, just for me, but to to have a different kind of label, because I do think that the way that the diseases work to, you know, I explain it very simply. I just say, Look, my auto immune system thought that my pancreas and the islet cells producing insulin were a foreign, you know, invader, and shut it down. And so it's more of an autoimmu disorder than diabetes, which is insulin resistance type two, which is, you know, a function of this kind of that, you know, avalanche effect, snowball rolling downhill of more insulin having less effect, you know, due to numerous causes, but oftentimes due to a level of a, you know, body mass that
Scott Benner 17:17
is so well, first of all, the first part, I completely agree with you, and I understand why you would want in a world where everybody misunderstands why type two diabetes exists almost, you know, like you don't. You just don't want people looking at you and going, like, you did a thing to yourself, like, like, all right, I got enough going on here. I don't need that. I also think it's interesting. There's a study recently, and I did it on one of the I forget it's been in an episode, so I'm going to get some of the numbers wrong. But they did a study with GLP medication and people who were pre diabetic, so people who were all, you know, looked like they were on their way to type two. And they put these people all on a GLP medication. And something crazy, like, in the mid 90% of them are no longer pre diabetic. Wow. My thought is, like, I know some people take in more calories than they need, and I know some people's activity level is lower, but I also think that a lot of it is genetic as well, because we're all basically out here eating the same food. And to say that, like, the impact it had on one person versus the other person, like one person's lucky enough to not have insulin resistance, and the other one does, I don't know that anybody's out there making like there are some people who are eating great I'm not saying that, but I'm saying of all the people that are out there who are just eating everyday foods that are available to them, that they can afford. Some of them get type two diabetes. Some of them don't, yeah, I don't know. Like, we're blaming people now for the food they can afford. Like, the only mean, like, it's, it sucks, right? Because if you go back a number of years, probably before, and I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but probably before, we were using all the processed foods and the chemicals on foods and etc. Like there's just one again. Details are, you know, you can go look them up if you want, but somebody chemically engineered a weed killer so that it wouldn't kill, I think wheat, yeah, yeah, you can basically just drop it all over a field of something that you're growing, and everything dies except the thing you're growing. Because they genetically, I don't know how they obviously, I don't know how they do it, but they make that that that poison so that it won't attack the thing that you mean to be growing. You're still spraying it on the food right before we did that. I mean, I'm assuming, if we go back to before things like that happen, you're going to see much less insulin resistance, type two diabetes, autoimmune issues, you know, inflammation, type stuff. You know, people saying, I can't eat my stomach hurts like that stuff. So, I mean, if this is how the food's made, I wish people could say it looks like we're caught in a thing here. You know what I mean. Like it's, no, I don't think you can blame one person or the other, but you also can't fight that fight as a type one. You're just looking to not have people point fingers at you, whether they're right or wrong about what they're saying. You're looking for them to just leave you the hell alone. It all makes sense to me.
Tom Taylor 20:15
Yeah, make a great point. And you know, I do have a lot of I think we're very aligned on the root causes of a lot of this stuff, you know, as a type one, I think again, one of the blessings is the part of the disease that is most dangerous for me. I can also, you know, have have some degree of control over, right? I can. I can manage my blood sugar. I try to be as efficient with insulin as I can. I try to maintain activity and not, you know, cause a snowball effect of inflammation. You know, I take medications. Originally, I was on humanogue and Lantus, and now I'm on, you know, mostly hemolog, just, you know, with my pump and I can, I can I can, you know, make lifestyle changes. And I'm very fortunate to be able to mostly afford, you know, to do what I want when it comes to food, and eat whole foods and not rely on processed and fast foods. You know, talk about snowball effects and momentum. You're right. I mean the prevalence of processed foods and glyphosate and other other weed killers that are illegal in many other countries. People always talk about going to Europe and you eat pasta for, you know, a week, and you come back having lost weight, and your stomach doesn't hurt, and you feel good. And, you know, who knows if those effects are over blown? I'd love to see like a real study on that. But, I mean, we all know it, right? I mean, the American food system definitely has inputs that are less desirable, whether or not it's specifically the volume of food, which I also do think that just because the food is so calorie dense, but nutrition low and made basically to be addictive in terms of its texture, its color, its crunch, its whatever its flavor, its sugar content, it's high fructose corn syrup. It really does create this compound effect where people, people can only do so much. You know, there there are stronger forces. There are people whose jobs it is to design addictive substances, whether it's slot machines, whether it's Doritos, whether it's social media, and they're really smart and they're really well paid, yeah, they know how to do it, that's for sure. And it creates this, this cycle of inflammation, where the insulin resistance is just inevitable. You know, again, there's no single solution to all this, but my my answer in my life has been, you know, the best I can to try to break those cycles. You know, people have different methods for it. You know, there's the, I forget the name of it right now, but there's an index that basically says, you know, how much food causes you to crave more food? You know, it's carbs and and the simplicity of carbs. And if you eat a very simple carbohydrate, heavy diet with low protein, low fat, you're going to just crave that dopamine hit of more food, and your body is not truly satiated. So I go high protein, high fiber, high healthy fats, low carb. And, you know, my body composition has changed dramatically. You know, I was a relatively chubby kid. When I graduated college in 2017 I was 290 pounds, you know, now I'm down in the low two hundreds just, I think, largely because I reversed the effect the momentum. Well, good for you. You're 290 How tall are you? I was 290 Yeah, I'm, like, between six one and six two. Wow. I was pretty rotund. There's a, you know, I was always a bigger kid. You know, when I was playing football, I had to wear an X on my helmet because I can only play line. Otherwise, I guess would have just fell on, fallen on some smaller kids and broken them. But, you know, I was never small. But then, you know, college, which is difficult to manage for any diabetic, definitely got a little out of control. And you know, I was definitely in a bad cycle of just eating and not exercising. And you know, alcohol doesn't help. And you know, being able to reverse that once I kind of got some resources, you know, once had my first job and could buy the food I wanted and whatever else made a big difference. And it's just amazing how good you can feel every day when you put a lot of effort into deliberately crafting your
Scott Benner 23:50
body. So even though, and you can now afford to do these things, but still, something has to motivate because you also could have afforded to buy a pizza every day. So like, what happened to you? I'm kind of going to your notes here, like you're talking about a journey of struggle, resentment, self pity. Like, why don't you walk me through that, and then let's get to where you where you are now, totally, totally, you
Tom Taylor 24:09
know, I think you're real. This is one of the things I love about your show, is you get to the heart of the matter there. So, yeah, as a kid, I definitely felt sorry for myself that I had this, you know, disease. I had this befall me. Why me? Why me? But it could have happened to anybody. And then that just kind of, I think I got better at it, but I never quite fixed the underlying issue. I went to a college where there were a lot of folks who had just a lot more resources than me. And so, you know, I'm thinking here, why have I gotten such a bad, bad break? And then you fall into a hole, and you and you say, Well, you know, if I wasn't given what other folks were given, as far as health, as far as you know, financial resources, as far as you know, guidance, what's the point I'm never going to win? And I think that that was a very destructive cycle for me. It really led to me not doing. Anything that I could have done in retrospect to make a little bit of a difference. And so it comes to a point where I am, you know, 22 years old. I'm sitting in my parents house because I had, you know, graduated college without a job. And, you know, I'm not a very efficient person, really, in any way. And I remember sitting in a room in my parents house without a job and just having a moment, and I don't know what it was, you know, I'm not well attributed to any specific phenomenon, but I kind of said, All right, what are we going to do here? Here's the path that you're on, doesn't it doesn't seem like fun. So are we just going to kind of roll over? Are we going to become, you know, just somebody who gets by? I think I'm I think I'm better than that, and then that that I think I'm better than that moment, I think is what was the spark, and it's not better than anybody else. I'm better than what I currently am. Yeah,
Speaker 1 25:47
also, you weren't. It's so interesting. You weren't. It's not like you were starting in some horrible hole. You weren't as advantaged as some of the people you went to college with. I hear that. Listen, my son told me once, when he went to college, he was, I am the poorest person here. And so I think I understand what you're saying, right? But at the same time, if you look at the country as a whole, I'm not asking you exactly where you fall, but like you weren't poor, am I? I grew up. I had food to eat. I had a home. I was blessed my you know, I had two parents in my house. I and then so that, that spark of, you know, I'm better than this is why? Why? Because I have been given opportunities. And, you know, there are billions of people on this earth who would kill for the life that I have. So you know what? Let's stop feeling sorry for ourselves. And you know what I just said, let's give it a shot. Yeah, let's give it a shot. Let's let's give a shot trying to not be at war with the world and not feeling sorry for myself. Let's try to reverse it. And it's not as if everything changed that day but that minute, sure that spark, you know, became flame. And maybe that's not the perfect metaphor, because I guess it would be something like a forest fire, but, you know, I turned it around and I said, Hey, look, I'm gonna try to make incremental progress here. I'm gonna keep working at getting a job. I'm gonna keep working at I'm gonna start working on my my health, my physique. And, you know, I found a friend of a friend who was a nutritionist and a personal trainer who was willing to, for, you know, a friends and family rate help me out with a nutrition plan and a workout plan or starting slow. It was probably the fall of 2017 after I had graduated college, and it took me three or four months, but I, you know, I lost 80 pounds. I worked out, really, for the first time in my life. And other than playing sports as a kid, right? I learned about food. I learned about, you know, what makes my body feel good, what makes it doesn't what makes it not feel good, and then, and all that momentum just kind of built on itself. And I really do think that the way you and I'm not treading new ground here, this is, you know, millions of people have made, have made statements publicly, but, but but I just, you know, you have to, you have to really believe it yourself. And then, you know, the whole the diabetes thing really fits into it, because it's like diabetes is a momentum disease, type one especially, and if you do the little things right consistently, you're going to be fine. You're going to feel better, build and compound. I understand what you're saying is that you're not, you're not saying anything magical the world's never heard before, but in your life, it was the first time you thought about it. Pretty much it is new information. You know what I mean, like, because you I mean, I don't care what people can have their own opinions, obviously, but I look at other people and I think that we're born and, you know, we say, Oh, here's our kids, like, we'll give them all the advantages that we can possibly go forward to give them, and, you know, the sky's the limit. And then you tell the kid the sky is the limit. The kid thinks the sky is the limit everything, like, nothing's gonna hold me back. And then when real life gets to you, you know, like, when someone beats you out for a spot on a on a baseball team when you're eight, or when you, you know, graduate with a degree, and you're like, No one's hiring me like, what's happening? Like, you know, all of those things, they're speed bumps, right? And, like you said, you keep going and you keep going, and you get past them eventually. But the knowledge that that's possible, I don't know that we talk about that, right? Because everything sort of just happens for you as you're growing up, like your parents pull you along from thing to thing, and bail you out along the way, and then all of a sudden, you know, this diabetes is on me. I've, I've gained weight at school, I'm not getting a job, and it feels like it's sink or swim, like, like, right? Like I gotta, I gotta do something here. But some people don't feel that way.
Tom Taylor 29:18
Like, no, totally. And I think you're right, and I think that knowledge is was probably underlying that, that spark, right, you know, I probably, you know, ingested a lot of this, you know, motivational talk or examples in my head, and just, you know, whatever it added up to, it eventually bubbled at the surface. And, you know, look, I, I love my parents very much. They had their own struggles in life. And we were actually on Medicaid for a large portion of my kind of teenage years, you know, so getting insulin was always tough sometimes. And, you know, navigating the health insurance process kind of radicalized me on that. But coming to this personal philosophy, this kind of like outlook on life, where I wake up every day and I say, You know what, certain things. Things are going to impede you. It's truly the biggest thing that makes a difference in getting over those things and building momentum forward is just that first moment, that first moment when you get bad news, or whether you know something doesn't go your way. And you know the first pin is like, you know that anxious, angry, negative feeling, if you can kind of accept that for what it is, process it, digest it, not hate it, because it's never going to go away, but just digest it and then step over it. Yeah, and you can actually do something, and then also appreciate other people. I think everyone has a cross to bear. Like I said, I, you know, I've, I've dealt with with my own struggles, and, you know, being on, you know, public assistance for health insurance made me appreciate like, you know, look, I respect people who can't do it, who have, you know, don't have help. Aren't there yet, but I'm not there yet. And I think it's just to think of life as a continuum, and you're never done, you're never tapped out, and you shouldn't be, and diabetes is just one realm for that. If you're a 1c is bad right now, and you just feel bad and you don't see a way out, like, just accept that, process it and then start over.
Scott Benner 31:09
I do think that everyone is at some point gonna think, Why me? Like, I have to, I'll be honest that maybe six days ago, for the very first time, probably since she was a little kid, like Arden and I were talking about, like, personal, like, you know, stuff about her, and she got upset, and she's like, I don't understand why this is happening to me. And she's talking about a number of different things, but I think diabetes was mixed into it. How come? You know, the things that are trying to feel like they're trying to stop me, like, I don't see them happening to other people all the time. And I just told her, I said, I think everybody generally gets something, some people get more, and some people get less. And it's pretty random. I just shared with her. I was like, Look, I for me. I just get up every day and I start over again. Like, you know, whatever happened the day before we took care of the things we couldn't take care of we couldn't, you know, and the things we could we did. And then you keep moving, you know, if you think backwards to something that was really horrible in your life a decade ago, that thing probably doesn't exist anymore. And so the thing that's happening today won't exist at some point either. And Scott, yeah, that's just how it occurs to me. Is that? Like, I mean, people say it by saying, like, keep moving. You know that that kind of thing. But in my mind, stuff's not, not important. Like, you know, you need to be kind to people, you need to make some money. You got to pay for your things. Like, all the things that have to happen have to happen. But if they don't like, you're still going to keep living. And then it's up to you to decide how that the life as it's reflected back to you, like, how you accept it, feel it and and treat it like, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, I don't want to say you can be happy anywhere, because I'm sure there are places I couldn't be happy. But you know, you could try to until you can move forward.
Tom Taylor 33:04
Well, it's a couple of things that I'll build on that, because I think you make fantastic points, you know, there's a lot of, you know, you can borrow from different philosophies, right? But a lot of the philosophies I buy into, most are kind of talk about thinking of life as, as something that's, that's motion, that's, that's movement. It's not. There's never a perfect moment, right? There's never a snapshot in time where everything is going to be perfect and everything's going to be good, and you're going to have this shining, perfect feeling, you know, and no anxieties and no sadness and no loss. It's motion. Life is constantly progressing forward. So let's think of it that way, and let's think about progress. And let's be gracious. Let's have gratitude for the get the things that are good and realize that everything that is good came because somebody got up, put their pants on, that's what I'd love to say, and went to work, yeah. And the buildings you live in, the art you watch and the music you listen to, is because somebody thought, and they were probably told at some point, like, you know, that's dumb, or they had self doubt, but they did it anyway. And one thing I also think about in terms of time and that kind of motion thing is, you know, somebody once, I was at a wedding a couple years ago, and somebody told me, like, Oh, I just, you know, I wish I lived in the 19 and the year 1900 you know, I just think all this natural stuff would be so much better than what we have right now. And I said, Look, if I was born in 1900 I wouldn't have lived past age eight, yeah, and I was eight years old when I was diagnosed with diabetes before 1920 when, you know, the some unbelievable doctors in Toronto synthesized insulin, you know, kids just fell into comas and then they didn't wake up. Yeah. And so I was born in 1995 I for whatever reason, I was fortunate enough to be born then, and I have insulin, and I can live a life that prior to then, I would not have been able to for all of the, you know, million plus years of human evolution. Let's build on that. Just take that, that gratitude, and, you know, think like, All right, well, if I was born at a different time, whatever you weren't, I don't understand
Scott Benner 34:55
that. People don't understand that today is the best time, and they'll. Yes, in the history of the world, to be alive, and the only thing that's going to beat that is tomorrow, smallpox, tuberculosis, malaria, typhoid, diphtheria, syphilis, pneumonia, cholera, the plague, leprosy, 1900 that all just kills you, probably, childhood mortality, yeah, I mean, and we don't have to, you know, everything isn't rosy and gold. There's still work to do, but there's, you know, we get to do that work, and that's great, and all of this is because people worked. It didn't just happen. Not that attitude is, is big. I wonder, sometimes I am not clear on purpose about like, how, like, where I fall politically, because I don't think it has anything to do with this podcast, but I think I speak in a way where I believe liberals hear me and think I'm liberal, and conservatives hear me and think I'm conservative, but I just take that as doing what you just said, which is kind of just taking good ideas from where they are, things that make common sense to me. I think
Tom Taylor 35:54
that's very advanced. I mean, it's not these sort of tribal as to say, you know, my team, my team, and I'm always right about this. You're just trying to find, I'm just trying
Scott Benner 36:02
to get trying to get through this thing, yeah? Like, I'm trying to get through this whole thing, like, and in the moment, what makes sense is, what
Tom Taylor 36:07
makes sense in order to run a government, you do have to, you know, eventually form coalitions and stuff. But when it comes to just people talking about stuff, yeah, we I just, I don't get how people can side with the camp and say, you know, look, I'm on this team. You know, you're wrong, because you're on the other team.
Scott Benner 36:24
I believe what I said earlier about type two diabetes. I think that if it progressed the way it has over the decades, it's clearly outside influences that are impacting people. And yes, people could continue to make better decisions. But that's not always as simple as it sounds. So I think a liberal person would hear me and go, My God, Scott is he's such a lefty. What a lovely thing. And but you know, like you, everybody deserves a chance, and you know, it's not your fault and everything, like all that stuff, generally speaking, I believe that. I also think that the world works because of people that get up off their ass and do stuff, and that complaining about your situation and expecting people to treat you in a certain way, I find it to be childish. And so, like, that's why, if you ask me where I am politically, I'd say I'm probably nowhere. Politically. You don't even mean, like, I know people are insulted to say that you're in the center and you see both sides. Like, it's like, well, I'll pick a side. I'm like, I'm picking our side. You don't even mean like, I'm picking your side. Like, there's some people have good ideas on all different kind of ideologies. You should try to soak them up as best you can. I don't. I just don't understand. And it's this time of year. And I mean, in fairness, the political cycle now runs like two and a half years. So it's like, you know, 18 months after an election, it goes away, and then it's back again pretty quickly. But I don't understand not wanting something enough to work for it, and I don't understand blaming somebody for being run over by a system or a world that is out of their control. And
Tom Taylor 37:54
that's, I think, the key there, is the out of your control, because I, you know, having been a kid, needed needed some help, needed some help, needed some instruction, and needed to learn some lessons for myself. You know, I do have a lot of sympathy for for folks who just taken it on the chin. Man. I mean, like life is a series of choices, and it's a series of inheritances, luck, whatever it is that you're getting, but neither are determinative. The choices are probably more determinative. But, you know, some people were born on third base and nothing hit the triple, and some people keep swinging and missing, and they don't realize they're facing the wrong way, you know? So it just all I can take it is, and your head starts to swirl, if you think about it, all at once. But from my perspective, all I ever want to do is try to make people's days a little bit better. I try to smile at people. I try to say hi to people, and then if I'm fortunate enough to tell my story, and you know anything about my outlook on life, I think it's about trying to elucidate, cast light upon the real choices that you make every day. You know, if you prioritize that there's like, also a sequential order of things you have to get an order in your life. I think, I think that it's like, you know, it's your physical body is very important in order to have order in your life. Then it's, it's clean your room. It's, it's, it's good, get some sleep. Find peace in your relationships. It's drop your resentments. Be honest with yourself about things, and then be honest about what it is that you want. You want validation from your peers. Do you want praise? Do you want security? You know, I think we all want those things a little bit, but I think just basing them head on is the first step. And like I said, you know, the batter facing the wrong direction keeps swinging and missing. If you just turn them around and say, hey, look, the pitcher's over there. Now they got a shot. A lot of people never get that shot. Yeah, no.
Scott Benner 39:33
And it's also can be very, very off putting to continue to put effort into something and watch it fail over and over and over again. I get that like, you know, in your parents didn't point you in the right direction, and you're just beating your head against the you know, like you said, you know you're facing the wrong way. You're beating their head against the wall. There's people too,
Tom Taylor 39:53
and you gotta, everyone's gotta just take accountability at some point their own life, do their best. And then we, you know, who have. Platform and, you know, have kind of come to these realizations. We just do our best to tell people, you know, the lessons we've learned, and hope that they can do it themselves as well. Yeah, well,
Scott Benner 40:10
for sure, listen. It doesn't change my life one way or the other people listening are like, I'm gonna try. Or they don't like, I just, I agree with you. I didn't know what you were going to talk about when you got on today. Now I know we're going to call this episode The Tao of Tom, you know, interesting to have the conversation and to let people listen and think maybe I am putting my effort in the wrong place. You know what I mean, like, because I'm not one foot in front of the other, one foot in front of the other. And if you're a diabetic, who was like me in my teens and 20s, who you know, was just like, you know, this sucks. Was given a bad deck of cards. You know, no one else has to deal with this. I'm playing life on hard mode totally. But you know what? That's gonna be a great story when you figure it out, and you will have earned it, when you feel good every day, and then that's something you can build on. I genuinely believe in that, like, I think that nothing feels better than something like hard fought, yeah, to be able to step back at the end and say to yourself, like, I started in a hole, and I got out of that hole, and then I looked around, absorbed some sunshine, made some good decisions, made some bad decisions, I'm moving forward. Don't hold yourself up against other people. I just think that in the Kim Kardashian world of like, you know, watching rich people do rich things, and thinking, that's my goal, I don't think that's your goal.
Tom Taylor 41:29
No, it's about again, it comes back to that snapshot. It's like, you know, you imagine what it's like to be. Insert celebrity here. Insert whoever your you know, load star is. And you think, oh, you know, they must feel perfect all the time. You know, they're beautiful, they're rich, they don't have any worries. They don't have the anxieties that I do. Yeah, they do. What is the one thing that every rich and famous person says is it's like, you know, you think you get all this and it's going to make everything better, and it doesn't, you know, you you know, my favorite public people are the ones who say, Look, you know, I have fears and anxieties just like you. It seems kind of condescending in a way, and pedantic but, but I think it is true, and you just have to understand that there's no easy way life is is motion, it's progress, it's work every single day. If you are willing to accept that and just be present in the moment and do your best every single day, no matter how you stumble, then you can actually find that thing that you're searching for and just realize it doesn't feel like this imaginary, perfect snapshot that you think it might
Scott Benner 42:29
right. What you're trying to do is hone your life and your situation, not create someone else's. And examples
Tom Taylor 42:35
are good, by the way, example, I think examples are good. That's why I kind of, you know, we do this, and you need to be able to point to somebody and say, hey, look, all right, I don't feel like I can do this, but they did. If you
Scott Benner 42:45
listen to the podcast, you know, I agree with that too, because it's been for a long time in the diabetes spaces. You don't celebrate in public because you make people who aren't doing as well feel bad. No, you gotta show them how. I always think like if you're not having success, nothing could be easier than looking at someone who is and asking them, like, what are you doing? And then looking at yourself and going, they said they're doing this. I'm not doing three of those things in diabetes. The way it occurs to me is you go putting up a graph that somebody else would kill for, and then they come ask you, Hey, what is it, you know, I don't know. And they start telling you about, like, well, I got my settings right. My basal is good, you know, like, that kind of stuff. And they're like, Oh, I haven't looked at my basal in years. Or, you know, like, you Pre Bolus a meal, like, of all the crazy things, yeah, go for a walk after you eat. All these little things, they add up. Like, all these different like, so wait, I know I can Bolus for a bag of chips, but you're saying you don't eat chips. You don't even like back all that stuff like so you hear what? And then you can keep some of it. You can say, Look, you know what? I'm still eating chips, but I will Pre Bolus for them. I didn't realize that, and let me go find out what the math is on my basal insulin. And then you have some successes. And you say to yourself, like, wow, that worked. Now you fine tune and hone. And then one day, you find yourself back in that square. You know, often for me, it's either being on the podcast as a guest or being in the private group. And then you put your graph up and you go, you know, six months ago, this is what my graph looked like. But look at it now. And then someone else comes along and says, Oh my god, that's amazing. How did you do that? And then it all starts over again.
Tom Taylor 44:18
Hey, man, you know one of my favorite lines of all time, and you know, a song, or any kind of media was, you know, song, Atlantic City, the guy, he says, you know, there's winners and there's losers. I'm south of the line. There is no line. There's no line. You are not south of the line. You're not a loser. And, you know, all it takes is little choices, believing that you actually can make a difference. And I hope that doesn't sound too you know, cliche or, you know, or repetitive, but it's real.
Scott Benner 44:42
Well, you know how it sounds Tom to people who have done it and it's worked for him, it sounds like scripture. And to people who were struggling, it sounds like, yeah, the point is, is that everybody who made it was struggling at some point, I felt like a loser. I felt
Tom Taylor 44:57
like this wasn't going to happen for me. You know? It. Never was going to but then little things every day, you know, for instance, like losing weight. Like, one of the things I tell you to do is take progress pictures every, every single day, because you can't notice it's not one day to the next. You're not going to lose, you know, an inch off your waist, but over after a month or two, you will Yeah, and it motivates the hell
Scott Benner 45:15
out of you. After you realize it too, exactly, yeah, you go, Wow, this actually is working. Because you can't you get, you know, they say things like, you get sick the same way you get well, like, that stuff like, you know, slowly and, and it's very true, you didn't notice yourself. Like, you didn't notice you going to 290 pounds. You didn't notice it on the way. And you might have noticed it coming down a little bit because it happened more quickly. Because you're lucky and you're young and you were, you know, you put something into action, start happening. But if you're an older person, you're trying to lose 50 pounds, it could take you years,
Tom Taylor 45:46
yes, but it's worth it, yeah. And you got to zoom out and say, I'd rather you know if I'm 40 years old and I want to lose 50 pounds, yeah, it's going to take you two years. But you think about when you're 50, and you look back and you said, Thank God, I did that. And yeah, it took some time, but I've got a lot more time now on the back end, because I did that an earned feeling. We're talking about is
Scott Benner 46:04
that losing weight, finding a job after college, or honing your diabetes care. In the end, they all work the same way. It's slow and steady, right? Like again, I like checking in and saying, here's where I'm at. I can see progress. This is awesome, and give yourself some credit for it, because you can get tired, you know, I listen. I watch my son come out of college. I'm gonna guess, based on what you do for living, your degree and my son's degree are probably reasonably similar. Are you doing this? Yeah, basically, are you doing coding in your job?
Tom Taylor 46:35
Little bit, yeah. Little bit, okay, yeah, writing, analysis, modeling, coding. So
Scott Benner 46:40
he comes out of school and he's got a an econ degree, and then he comes to me one day and he goes, I don't want to be involved in like, money. Basically, he's like, I know I have this degree, but I have it because I'm good at math, like, not because I wanted to go get involved in finance. He's like, I don't want to do that. My son's had a couple of opportunities coming out of college that he's turned down for personal reasons, that I was proud of him, because they're not things I could have turned down when I was like, right? And one of them was like, somebody got him an interview at a at a place, and he interviewed, and he said, I don't want to work for a company like that. I'm not going to do that. And I'm like, okay, and it's a big company, and it would have done well for him, trust me, but he just that's not the part of society I want to be involved in. No, it's important
Tom Taylor 47:26
to him and unfortunate. You know, obviously he's had, you know, good parenting and tutelage to be able to recognize his values. Well,
Scott Benner 47:34
it's also, and I don't say privilege very often, but is also privileged, because when I was 2223 I needed a job. Like, I would have, like, if you came up to me and said, like, Hey, we're gonna pick dead skunks up off the road, here's what it pays. I'd be like, All right, I'm there. Let's do it. Yeah, my son might have been like, I'm gonna hold out for something better. So he has the opportunity to hold out because of whatever, but he still made a choice for, like, a valid reason. He was trying to be a better citizen. Like that was really the answer. There's another job. Another job would have been great for him. And he said that, I do not want to carry a gun. I can't take this seriously. And I was like, Okay. I was like, well, then stop talking to them. But he was super interested in the rest of it. He just that one piece of it. He's like, I don't want to do that. All this progress in life is about realizing what matters to you, whether it's your health, whether it's being around, whether it's feeling good, whether it's it's, you know, being a good citizen, and then figuring out what you can control about it, and then doing those steps every day. You can do those things for your diabetes, though, is, I think what Tom's saying, and what I'm obviously been saying for years, so, but you can't be mad, like you can't hear this, and go, Sure, well, it's easy for you. At some point it wasn't easy. Like, I didn't know what the hell I was doing when Arden was younger. Like, I actually heard a woman recently say it helped me a lot to go back and listen to the beginning of the podcast to realize that Scott's been on a journey too. I came in so late, it was hard not to just look at him and go, like, well, sure, you can do it because you're the guy from the thing. But she's like, and I realized he hasn't always been this person, and that really, like meant a lot to her. She's like, I can grow too. Then I think that's
Tom Taylor 49:11
why humans love stories of journeys, right? Whether it's the Odyssey or whether it's, you know, a person's life journey, sure, it's like, we all started somewhere, we got a path to take, and we're all gonna end up somewhere. And yeah, your journey, my journey, their stories of figuring it out slowly but surely, having patience and you can control your diabetes again. It will not be a flip of a switch, but it is worth it to put in the time and to when you zoom out on your life that year, whatever it takes will be minuscule, and it'll be worth it.
Scott Benner 49:39
Yeah, what do you think you learned along the way that got you to where you are? I know you made a decision to do better for yourself, but once that decision was made, what are the steps that got you there?
Tom Taylor 49:49
I think it was a relatively slow process at first, but you know, like anything with inertia, you know, there's resistance to change, and then then all of a sudden, the change, kind of it has momentum in and of itself. You know, I think the biggest things were those realizing those values, you know, and what I wanted to, you know, you think about what makes me feel good, right? And you think about, some people think about their bank accounts. To think about, you know, how many friends they have, any likes they get, whatever it is that you get these sources, basically, of dopamine, you know, I thought I really want to feel good, you know, I just feel I wake up and I feel blah, you know, I'm tired, I'm sluggish. I want to see what it's like to feel good. I would love to know what it's like to be fast, to be able to run quickly. So I, you know, I started kind of searching. I asked friends, but you know, they do friends who are in shape. And eventually I connected with a friend of a friend who's a trainer and nutritionist, and you know, he said, you know, I'll help you out. And so I got a plan, and I we talked about my goals, and I said, I want to lose weight, and I want to get strong. Want to get stronger and faster, and I want to feel good. And so we come up with a plan. And it was a, you know, a 16 week plan, or whatever it was. And, you know, there were time I remember, you know, a couple months in, I injured my shoulder because I really had never lifted before. So he said, All right, so downshift and do something else. Do active recovery. Do you know, until your shoulder heels up and then get back on the horse? Because this isn't permanent, and you need to keep it up. And this is a lifestyle once I've figured out that created that virtuous cycle for myself, where working out, eating, right, sleeping, hydrating, being on top of my Pre Bolus, saying and going for a walk, figuring out the right dosages for my insulin, checking my blood sugar, making sure I'm good before bed, all that made me feel good. It was over. It was it was a cycle from there, and all of a sudden my motivation wasn't the quick dopamine hit from the bag of chips. It was, No, I'm gonna feel worse and I'm honest with myself, yeah, worse about having that. I'm gonna feel worse when I look at myself in the mirror and myself in the mirror. And I wanted to look in the mirror and feel good as well. And eventually I got
Scott Benner 51:48
to a place I wouldn't say I'm fast, yeah, never
Tom Taylor 51:50
was. And I feel good when I look in the mirror, and I feel good when I wake up every morning. And you know what? I know that I earned that.
Scott Benner 51:57
Yeah, my wife bought something that she thought I wanted, like a food product that she thought I wanted, right? I like it. I like what she bought me, but it's like a frozen, kind of processed version of something that I like. And then I saw it in the freezer, and I was like, Well, I am in a hurry today. I do like this. It's not my choice to eat it, but my wife bought it for me, and that made it feel like I should eat it. Like, do you know what I mean? Like that idea? So I had it, and I wake up the next day, I'm like, two pounds heavier than I was the day before, because it's, you know, like, processed, and there was, like, all this crap in it and everything. And I thought, What in the hell am I doing? Like, why didn't I just throw that away? Why didn't I just say to her, thank you so much for getting this for me, but I know if I eat this, it's gonna hit me tough, and I don't want that to be involved, but I did. I ate it and then, but then the next day, I thought, do something right now. And I went downstairs, and I grabbed what was left, and I threw it in the trash. And I was like, I was like, I lost a couple of dollars there. But I think it's better than eating it out of guilt and then throwing off the next three weeks of my life somehow, which is what it would have done. Like, I know that sounds crazy, but my body is I'm delicate.
Tom Taylor 53:07
I hate Listen, yeah, I feel you. And, you know what? I just take that as you know again, what motivates you and what motivates you, I think it's sweet is you want to, you know, make your wife feel good for getting having gotten something that you appreciated. And you know, you, but you then you have these competing values and priorities, and you're like, Well, you know, in this moment, the appreciation that I had for her, and let's be honest, a little bit of self indulgence won, but it's not permanent. And you said, All right, well, you know what? I'm gonna make this other competing priority take precedence over that going forward. And you're a human and you can't beat yourself up over it and just say, Yeah, learn a little lesson there.
Scott Benner 53:44
Yeah. I think I was eating it for her, because she was like, she bought it out of love. And I was like, I didn't want to reject it and make her feel like, oh, I try to do something nice and that. So I had some and then I'm like, she's not even gonna remember this is in the freezer, like, I can just get but I'm gonna tell her, I'm just gonna tell her, Look, I really appreciate it. From now on, let's get this version of that food instead of that. And
Tom Taylor 54:04
you appreciate what she's trying to do for you. But this is, you know, this is something I want to be, you know, this is, this is something that I prioritize and, you know, I appreciate it, I acknowledge it. But you know what? Let's, let's stick to something a little bit more clean or, you know, whole food or whatever, whatever motivates your diet.
Scott Benner 54:20
Yeah. I mean, listen, we're like, we're cooking. We're having people here for Thanksgiving this year. And I said to my wife, I'm like, they don't expect me to, like, make carrots with like marshmallows on it, or something, like one of those things that people eat. I'm like, I'm not doing that. Yeah, I'm not doing that. I'm, uh, I'm gonna make like, staple foods. I'm gonna make it out of Whole Foods, and they can eat what they want. And if that's then we'll have a pie. And if that's not enough, then they should, you know, they'll bring it with them or get something from somewhere else later. But like, I'm not, like, I'm not gonna make candy food. That's okay, right? My wife's like, I don't think anybody cares. I was like, All right, I might be the only
Tom Taylor 54:57
one anyway. And I have found, I think one of the. Kind of, like last highlights from my experience with diabetes that I had to come to understand the hard way was anything with syrup or any kind of, like, crystalline sugar structure like that is just deadly.
Scott Benner 55:09
Hits you fast, hard, you know, and
Tom Taylor 55:13
it just, it just accelerates. And, you know, I rarely ever, and I take pride in this. Get the, you know, the double arrows and my my CGM like it's rising rapidly. You know, I always say, you know, if I have some maple syrup or something, that's, there's my day, you know, honey, it's unfortunate, because that stuff is great. But, you know, when I was a kid, I would just spend entire days just feeling terrible. You know, high blood sugar is, is a very low, slow burning health that the syrup is. I mean, it's heinous. And the fact that high fructose corn syrup is in everything, it should motivate people as well to be conscious of the ingredients they're putting in themselves. If it's a plastic packaged product, it's probably not what you want, and just anything with syrup or high fructose corn syrup, whether or not you're diabetic, it's gonna cause inflammation, it's gonna spike your blood sugar, and you're better off without it. You just don't realize how it throws you off. You know, so many people walking around saying, Oh, I'm tired or, you know, but then sometimes they go back to it again because they felt good when they were eating it. So like, oh, I eat this crappy food. I'll eat more of it because I get a nice jolt when I eat it, but then it ruins hours of day cycle. Yeah, and it's remembered. It was, it was the glycemic index. That's what I was trying to recall earlier. This phenomenon where, like, you know, you eat something with a simple carb, no other nutrients, and, you know, it causes a large insulin release, and that's inflammatory, and it also causes you to crave more carbs, and then you're just, you're a snowball going on a hill, versus, if you break that cycle, it's hard. You're probably gonna have basically withdrawals. But if you can power through it, and you can zoom out and say, this is worth it, protein, fats, whole grains will break that cycle, and you won't need to crave the simple carbs, and your body will have less inflammation. And you're you're on a much, much better path.
Scott Benner 56:48
First of all, there's an episode in the Pro Tip series about glycemic index and load. There we go. It doesn't mean you can't have something sweet once in a while. It's just you're not on a Benner that you don't realize you've been on for years. You know, like conscious of what
Tom Taylor 57:00
you're putting in your body. I love ice cream. I love chocolate, but, you know, like and to my detriment, I have a tremendous sweet tooth, but it's a treat. It's got to be a treat. And you can't be sitting there housing a bowl of ice cream every night. And I think that, just in general, in life, giving yourself a little bit of work for to earn an indulgence, and not just making it a given is also a great I mean, that's a great I mean, that's a personal philosophy. I'm not prescribing anything for anyone, but this is what works for me, and I feel a lot more imbalance with my life and everything else, especially my health. If the treats are treats, and they are not just part of my diet, and you're conscious of the ingredients you're putting in
Scott Benner 57:36
your body, yeah, no, I appreciate you sharing that. Is there anything we didn't talk about that we should have, anything that you have on a list somewhere or in your head.
Tom Taylor 57:43
No, sir. We covered a lot. I'm really appreciative for the opportunity I love, you know, trying to help folks the best I can. I'm really appreciative of what you do. You know, I listen to probably 90% of the episodes. I think you're doing really great work. And I hope that, you know, diabetes is, is obviously a topic close to my heart and thinkers, but I think that this is a message that's applicable to everyone, and that's kind of why I wrote my college essay about it. I think whatever it did, you know, helps me get into the schools I got into because I learned a lot about life from having to deal with this. I think a lot of people probably do too, and if they haven't yet, there's an opportunity to it's any any obstacle can become a vehicle, you know, if you just kind of orient it correctly and figure out how to ride it.
Scott Benner 58:26
Well, that's awesome. No, I appreciate that very much.
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