Michelle Tubman
Colleen, welcome to the mindful weight loss podcast. I am thrilled to have you here with me today. Thank you for having me on. And today we're going to talk about type one diabetes, maybe what it means to have it what it means for your life, the thoughts that we have about it, and maybe some strategies to continue to have an excellent life and type one diabetes at the same time. How does that sound?
Colleen Mitchell
That sounds amazing.
Michelle Tubman
Can you start by telling us a little bit about yourself.
Colleen Mitchell
Yeah, so my name is calling Mitchell. I am a life coach for women with type one diabetes. And I've had type one diabetes since I was two years old. So as we record this, I'm coming up on 27 years with type one diabetes, which is kind of mind blowing, considering you know, I'm an adult and every time I look at little kids, I'm like, am I the adult in the room? Oh, I am the adult in the room. That's kind of scary. But like type one diabetes has always been a part of me. It's been my normal because I was diagnosed at age two. And I haven't known anything else. But it took 24 of those 27 years to figure out that diabetes is not the reason I felt like emotional crap all the time. I felt like emotional crap all the time because of how I was thinking about type one, but that didn't occur. To me until I was exposed to coaching and became a life coach myself.
Michelle Tubman
Yeah. And were you blaming diabetes on all of that beforehand?
Colleen Mitchell
I mean, I have to say, Yeah, at some level, I was like, I was stopping doing things that I love doing because I thought that diabetes was responsible for me stopping a really good example is hiking. I love hiking and I've like I stopped hiking because I was so upset when I got to a trailhead. I my number was too high, or my number was too low or I had to turn back in the middle of the hike because my blood your blood sugar was dropping. I was making the diabetes responsible for how I felt about the activities I was doing. And then blaming it for being the reason that I had to stop doing or change what I was doing to manage my blood sugar's
Michelle Tubman
right. Yeah. And many people are diagnosed at a very young age with type one diabetes, but not all. And so in your experience coaching women, and if we look at you know, both groups like women who grow up with type one diabetes, being a part of who they are, and one who maybe are, you know, a little bit older in their teens or whatnot when they're diagnosed is, is there a common theme out there about how people view their diagnosis?
Colleen Mitchell
Yeah, I mean, there's differences to both of those just because if you don't know anything before the diagnosis, it's just part of your life. But there's also that desire to be normal in the eyes of everyone else, and that includes people who were diagnosed young because they see themselves typically as something different because they have this other condition that they've lived with for so long. But then if you're diagnosed in your teens or in adulthood, then you have a clear memory of life before of that of what was normal to you before that diagnosis ever came along. And so I see a lot of people who are diagnosed as adult wish they could go back to the way they were before. And at some, sometimes it's like they never feel normal again, or they never feel right again, because they still have that clear memory of before. So there's this theme of wanting to be normal, even though normal is kind of a lie. It's a construct and an illusion. And we all get caught up in wanting to be normal, but like, who actually defines what normal is and the answer is the person who is defining what's normal should always you
Michelle Tubman
Yeah, yeah. And I know from a physician standpoint here because since I became a life coach, I to understand that how we think about things and how we're framing things, affects our experience of that thing. But I was a physician long before I was ever a life coach. And in the emergency department. I see people with type one diabetes all of the time, either they're there because of a complication of it, or they're there for some other reason, and they happen to have it. But even before I became a Life Coach School, you could clearly see a difference between patients with diabetes who had accepted that this was a part of their life. And had a positive attitude about it tended to have very different outcomes than you know, patients who were angry about it. Patients who were just, you know, making comments about other things they could be doing instead of being in the emergency department. And it's just been it's not it's just not not just type one diabetes, like I've most, you know, chronic diagnoses. I see this and so, I think it's crucial that people learn how to manage their thoughts around all of this, not just the diagnosis, but how your life changes on the day to day because of the diagnosis. And how do people get there if they've never heard of coaching before?
Colleen Mitchell
You know, I think some people just kind of stumbled into it. It's it's a mindset thing that you don't really have to be taught. Some people are just naturally more positive and naturally more accepting of things. But if if people are struggling to accept a diagnosis, the first thing I would say to them is recognize that as a diagnosis, you can't change it. So now what so it's it's really fighting against reality when people are not accepting a diagnosis and that just makes the entire experience of the world worse.
Michelle Tubman
Yeah. Well, you know that that is exactly it. And we talk about that in the weight loss world all of the time to is, you know, people you have to accept your body, where it is right now and all of its beautiful glory. Before we can make any changes. And what I love about that is so many times when, when women get to that point, they realize, oh, you know what, I'm okay with my body as it is. I'm done doing the work I'm going to go on and and live my life and that you know, that that acceptance piece is just so important.
Colleen Mitchell
Oh, yeah. I mean, so I've lost over about 60 pounds with type one diabetes, which, before I did it, I didn't think it was possible. But I also thought that losing the weight would make me feel better, and I lost the weight before I ever found coaching. And now I understand that losing the weight is not what made me feel better. It was my thoughts that changed along the way right? And even even like changing my my weight didn't really help my view of myself with diabetes. I still thought it was a problem, even though my blood sugar's were way better with it. Even though I fixed quote unquote, fixed all of the things relating to that like aspect of it. I still kind of felt emotionally miserable, but it had nothing to do with my weight and nothing to do with my blood sugar's
Michelle Tubman
sure and what was your motivation in the first place for wanting to lose the weight?
Colleen Mitchell
Oh, man, I so I reached my personal level of disgust with myself. I was I reached 225 pounds and I'm five foot eight. And I was just so tired of trying to lose weight and not being able to because as a type one diabetic, I grew up being taught that I could not give up carbs if I wanted to live, right. Like I was required to have carbohydrates in my diet. It was a thing that you were required to have and every doctor that I've talked to, or every doctor that I had encountered up to that point, at least in the diabetes world, like nutritionists, dieticians, all of those people, it was you have to follow the FDA guidelines, like the mind play and you have to have carbs in your diet. And I'm like, something's not working here, because I keep trying all these things to lose weight. And sidenote, none of those doctors actually ever told me how to lose weight. They just said that I should
Michelle Tubman
agreed. Like, why do you think I do what I do? Agree?
Colleen Mitchell
Right? And so, like what really triggered my personal level of disgust was my blood sugar is not my weight itself. I went through a period like a single day where my blood sugar's went up to like 400 and then down to 40, up to 400 down to 14, like huge, huge roller coasters. And the last crash I had my glycogen stores were just tapped out. It took over 300 carbs just to pull me out of that low, right. And after that, I was like, Okay, this is not working. I'm doing low carb. I'm trying keto. And before that point, I had been kind of trolling through the Reddit sub for keto and seeing other success stories of type one diabetics who have tried it. And I was like, Okay, it's next day. I'm just gonna do straight like no carbs. See, to see how it works. I had the best blood sugars of my life. So I like telling people that I started keto or low carb for the blood sugars, and then I stayed for the weight loss.
Michelle Tubman
Yeah, yeah, you know, fair enough. And I love so many things about that story. I don't even know you know where to get started. I just first want to say Canadian listeners and my plate is the US version of the Canada Food Guide. Same same different names. There we go. I find you know, we could have this whole other discussion on how far behind the medical field is in treating diabetes in general, but specifically in regards to diet and the same is true for weight loss decade or more behind what the science actually says. So I first of all, I think it was amazing that you decided to go out and try something on your own and see how your body reacts. And lo and behold, you discover something that that worked perfect for you. So I think yeah, I think that's brilliant. And you know, a lot of people listening to this podcast don't necessarily have type one diabetes, but they do have type two and although the you know the, the pathology behind those two are actually quite different. The story that you just told would be applicable to everyone with with diabetes, for sure. And I so I, I love how also your thought process changed from you know, be beginning beginning to end and I want to take that back to something you said at the very beginning, when you were talking about being on that hike and getting upset if you're, you know, your sugars were too high or too low on a hike and, you know, that's something that we hear all the time too, and so can we talk about? What does it mean, when your numbers are not in line with what you want it to be?
Colleen Mitchell
It just means that your blood sugar is a certain number that has a medical meaning to it. It has nothing to do with your ability as a type one diabetic? Absolutely either it's representative of you had too much insulin in your system. Maybe you didn't give the right kind of bolus ahead of time. Maybe what you ate didn't sustain you properly. Maybe you didn't turn off your insulin in time. I've actually on a recent hike this year, I got to the trailhead and found out that my insulin pump had given me an auto bolus when it shouldn't have. Oh no. So I got to the trailhead with like point eight five units on board and I had I still went on the hike, but I made it. I didn't make it mean that I couldn't do it. Right and I didn't make the like the tech malfunction or the tech doing what it probably shouldn't have done in the moment mean that I was a bad diabetic. I just realized like okay, this has happened. Now what how am I going to move forward with this? How am I going to complete this hike with knowing that I have to now deal with this extra thing that I wasn't planning on?
Michelle Tubman
So what did you tell yourself in that moment? Right you got this extra bolus, the old you might have gotten you know really pissed off about all
Colleen Mitchell
of this. But when I might have like driven back home and not even done might not have you might not even gone so
Michelle Tubman
what did you tell yourself on that hike that allowed you to still feel good about everything and continue on?
Colleen Mitchell
Like, Well, that happened. Okay, now what? It really comes down to everything that you don't expect in your life is a plot twist. Yeah. Just how are you going to deal with the plot twist?
Michelle Tubman
I love that phrase. Yeah, yeah. How are you going to deal with plot twist? I love it. I love it. And I you know, I just want to emphasize again that what we're saying here is if your numbers aren't perfect, it says nothing about you. Absolutely. Nothing about
Colleen Mitchell
you. Yeah. And it's really it's really difficult for people to stay between the lines, because they will they'll put so much effort and work into trying to have the perfect blood sugar's but as soon as the number goes outside of that range, they're like, Okay, what did I do wrong? What's wrong with me that I can't keep my numbers in line? Right. I thought I had this under control is a really that's kind of a poisoned thought is thinking I thought I had this under control.
Michelle Tubman
Yeah, right. And I to bring this back to weight loss. I mean, we see this all the time. too, when women think they're doing perfect things to lose weight and then they step on the scale and they don't see the number that they want. And I could list you a dozen reasons why that scale might not say what you want it to that have zero to do with you and your ability to eat in a healthy way. Right. And so I'm always asking women to look how you showed up for yourself. In the past week. If you feel good about how you show up for yourself, and you like the decisions that you made, then you know who the heck cares what the scale says? Right? And that that's, that's really important. But if you look back and say, You know what, I don't like some of the decisions that I made. I didn't feel physically good with the food decisions I made. Well, then, you know, we've got to look at those decisions and figure out how we're going to do just a little bit better next week. It's never about the number. And I think with diabetes, to some extent, it has to be a little bit about the number. I mean, if that glucose goes way too low, then you're in trouble, right? So you have to be mindful of it. But I love this idea of thinking that there's just so many things that go into it and you know, unless you I don't know if you just we have a donut store in Canada called Tim Hortons. It's like sugar from here to here. You know if you go like eat 17 doughnuts and then are wondering why your sugar is high. I mean, you don't have to be diabetic for that to happen. Right. So So there might be some instances where you have to look at your decisions, but for the most part, that number means nothing about you.
Colleen Mitchell
I mean, I have a great story about an entire dozen Krispy Kreme Doughnuts a hike and then a whole bunch of low blood sugars.
Michelle Tubman
Well, that also makes sense. That all that also makes sense. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Colleen Mitchell
You want me to tell the story? Why not? Let's
Michelle Tubman
hear it.
Colleen Mitchell
So this was before I figured out weight loss and all of that. Yeah, we went to so my brother in law got married on a beach on like the coast of Washington. And it was like a mile hike from the parking lot to the beach. We stayed overnight on the beach. And I brought a dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts with me. Because why not? Because it's a wedding. You're gonna have doughnuts. And it turns out that I ended up going so low that night that I kept having to eat doughnuts, just eating the donuts. Yeah. And I'm like, Well, this is great because I have the donuts. I don't need to use a different little snack. But I mean, in hindsight, probably not the best decision eating like a dozen donuts just to keep my blood sugar's up, but you know, work with what you got.
Michelle Tubman
Right? But then the key there is you also don't beat yourself up for the doughnuts, right? Oh, yeah, you made a decision. Maybe it's not the same decision you would make up the next wedding. That you you go to, but you made that decision. You had a consequence from that? For sure. But then you forgive yourself and move on. Even that doesn't make you a bad person, like 12. Krispy Kreme doughnuts or not, it doesn't make you a bad person.
Colleen Mitchell
And in the moment, I would have probably, like maybe I shouldn't have had that. But looking back at it, I can say okay, I only made the best decision with the information I had at the time going into it. Because I can I can easily fall into the trap and so many other type ones can to have thinking, knowing what I know now, I should have done something differently back then. But we can't ever do that. I mean, it's a great question to ask and to answer just for other people because that's the question I ask on the podcast is asking, Well, if you if you knew what you knew now back then would you change anything and that's more to give listeners an idea of what they can change now, but the more we stay stuck in the past of I should have made a different decision, the less we are in the moment making a decision we need to make right now.
Michelle Tubman
Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. I love that. And I just want to circle back to the Keto thing for a second. And I don't want to talk about keto, per se like we're we're nutrition agnostics on this podcast but I want to talk about that journey that took you from believing that you had to always have carbs in your diet because that's what you know, the medical professionals and the nutritionist have told you to feeling safe to try the Keto and see how your body reacts. Because, you know, the reason why that's relevant to me is because I will hear women say variations of this. It's like I've been told for 20 years that I have to avoid fat to lose weight. I've been told that I have to avoid carbs, like everybody has, has their thing that they're hanging their hat on. And I'd love to talk about how like in your own mind you made you made that safe space for you to try something that everyone told you was was not an option for you.
Colleen Mitchell
Yeah, I want to preface though that keto is not for everyone because of bio individuality and everybody will respond to different foods in different ways. I just happen to figure out that low carb specifically not not exactly keto is best for my body. And part of that had to do with my dad's journey with weight loss where he found out that he is super carb sensitive and like Well, that makes sense for me then that I can't do like a lot of high carbs which type one diabetics, carbs in general kind of bad for you just with blood sugars in terms of that, but so let's see. Like how I how I made myself safe was taking ownership over my health for me. I see a lot of diabetics, putting the like the ownership of their health and the ownership of their condition on their doctors and on and different authority looking to someone else to tell them what to do. But I had tried a lot of the things that other people had told me how to do. I had tried diets that were like you limit the the grams of sugar that you have not like total carbs with low grams of specific sugar. That didn't work. I tried different like weight loss gimmicky pills. And things like drink green tea, how these green tea pills drink this specific coffee. I even tried sembalun which is a synthetic Amblin which is something that tries to inhibit your appetite. I tried that in college, but it turned out that it just made my number drop really low. So I tried all of these different things, never really understanding that the way my body works with food is very different from the way that somebody else's body might work with food. And so once I figured out that there were other people who had had success with this different way of eating that I had never seen before. And I've never seen a doctor recommended before. I was like maybe I can try that. And maybe that will work. And if it does, I'm taking complete ownership of how I how I like manage my blood sugars and my diabetes. So I'm not going to put the like the blame if it doesn't work on somebody else. I'm going to take that blame if it doesn't, right because I want to find out what works best for me. I'm willing to experiment with the different things to find out what works in my body, not just take the word of somebody else like a doctor or nutritionist who might say you can't have this because of XYZ or you should have this because of XYZ
Michelle Tubman
right? Yeah. I love that so much because that I mean that's what we talk about in the weight weight loss world as well. Right is you could turn to your doctor or any guru out there who has I mean, my doctor for you know, told me to drink apple cider vinegar, and that that would you know, solve everything. Right?
Colleen Mitchell
I mean, if only
Michelle Tubman
if only right? Yeah. And he knows I'm a physician too, but my point being is we get advice from people that we believe should have the answers for us. And, you know, as a physician, I'm certainly not saying that you should just disregard everything your healthcare providers tell you but I am saying that you get input into all of this as well. Right. And so, you know, taking this this approach of taking responsibility for your own body, and you know, I'm hearing you say that you're really just approaching this a little bit like a scientist is like, I tried this Well, that didn't work. Okay. That goes in the no pile I try this that didn't work that was in the no pile too. I read up about this. I'm just gonna give it a try. You know, I've got some genetics in me that might, might work in my favor. Let's just see how it goes. And then lo and behold, you found something that worked for you
Colleen Mitchell
Yeah. And another thing about that is it's not going to be instantaneous. You're not going to find the magic answer with the first try. And a really good example of this is my hiking journey this year. I'm trying to do 52 hikes in 2022. And it took me 18 or 19 of those hikes to figure out how to not go low when I'm hiking. Right. And if I hadn't been willing to do 18 or 19 hikes and tweak things in between, that I never would have gotten to the point where I'm at hike 25 And I didn't go low at all
Michelle Tubman
right? And it's also about understanding that failure is part of the process. And that's not even failure. Right? I mean, you have to you can't do something once and then give up on it. You have to, you know, stick with something a little bit and keep, keep working and learning from the things that don't work so that you can use all of that data to figure out the next step. Everybody sucks to the beginning. Everybody sucks the beginning that didn't doesn't even matter what, what what it is you're doing. So a little bit of patience is required. And I think like sometimes that's difficult because we decide we want something and then we want it like yesterday. Right? Just like the patient's becomes a little bit of a problem. But I think you know, the best part of this whole story is that it took you What did you say 25 hikes to turn 18 or
Colleen Mitchell
19 just to figure out how to not go low and then 20 the 25th one was the one I didn't go below 130 All right,
Michelle Tubman
great. Well, that's brilliant. But like let's let's talk about, like, what thoughts you had what you said to yourself to keep going after the 15 or 16 hike where your sugar still went low? Because I bet you a good portion of people would have just given up on hiking long before that.
Colleen Mitchell
Yeah, I didn't want to let my blood sugar's be determining if I was hiking or not. So it's like I'm going to figure this out no matter what and then that let me feel committed and I'm I'm 100% committed to this goal of 2052 hikes, right? So no matter what I'm going to get through the hikes but also while I'm doing that, I'm going to figure out my blood sugar's for those hikes, right?
Michelle Tubman
I think that's probably one of the most powerful thoughts ever. I'm gonna figure this out. Like, I will figure this out. I love it. I love it. I'm gonna use that thought. I like borrowing that one for my my own life. I'm also a big hiker. It is my passion. My husband and I do it all of the time. And I mean, I've been overweight my entire adult life and most of my adolescence as well and my weight has never been a thing to stop me. From doing heights. But I see it be the thing to stop to stop the other people I know from doing hikes or doing other, you know, activities that they think that they need to lose weight first to do and I don't know. I love that thought. I'm just going to figure it out.
Colleen Mitchell
And no matter what, I can always figure it out. Yeah,
Michelle Tubman
yeah. And actually, that isn't mine I've been using in my own life. So we have as an emergency physician, I do shift work. So my hours are always very different. And there's one shift that goes from noon till 8pm And I can't for the life of me figure out how to eat on this shift. So it's like I follow I eat when I'm hungry and I don't eat and when I'm not and all other shifts. I'm fine. On this shift. I am ravenous from the start. To the finish, like and it's really just it's like really disruptive. And I've been experimenting with you know, eating different things or eating different timings before I go and you know other things and I also know that if I eat too close to bed, I have a bad sleep. I feel like crap, you know, so I don't want to eat you know, late in the day. And I have been saying, I'm going to figure it out. I am going to do it. So every noon shift, I'm trying something different. And I haven't figured it out yet. But I do keep saying I will figure it out. So I like that that the curiosity there. Yeah. Yeah, that's brilliant. All right, Colleen, I think we've had a great conversation here. Is there anything else you'd like to add messages out there to any listeners who might have type one diabetes?
Colleen Mitchell
Yeah, it's a lot of people who have type one diabetes have never met another type one in their life. And so they feel very alone with it. Like they're the only person in their group who understands them who understands their own struggles. And because of that, sometimes I think the consequences they don't think they can do the things that other people can I just want everybody who's listening to know if you have type one diabetes, there is literally nothing you can't do, except perhaps the military. And that's like a very special case. So if you want to go scuba diving, you can go scuba diving, if you want to climb a mountain, I know somebody who's training right now to climb Mount Everest and he has type one diabetes. It's like there's so many options available to you in your life. You do not have to let type one prevent you from doing anything, including lose weight.
Michelle Tubman
I love that. I love that so much. And Colleen you have a podcast too. Can you share with our listeners where people can find you? And then also can you tell me Is it okay if I send patients to your podcast? Because I'm sure that, you know, I see women all of the time who could benefit from the wisdom I know you share there.
Colleen Mitchell
Absolutely. Yes. So my podcast is called this is type one as in type one diabetes. It's on all of the major podcast platforms. You go to either this is type one.com, just with the number one or you can always find all of my stuff at inspired forward.com. And yeah, that's that's where the podcast is. That's where I am and you can definitely share it with whoever needs it.
Michelle Tubman
I absolutely will. In fact, I have a colleague whose daughter was recently diagnosed in the family is just going through this. The whole family is going through a change to you know, to learn how to do things a little bit differently to support her. And I am sure the whole family would would have things to learn from that podcast, so I'm going to share it for sure. Absolutely wonderful. And we'll put all that information down in the in the show notes so people can find you whenever they need. Thank you.
