Is there a limit to how much insulin you can take?

In this video I share my thoughts on one of the most popular questions we get asked inside The Training Lab. Is there really a limit to how much insulin you can take? Watch this video to find out.

3 Things Every Diabetic Worries About! (& how to fix it)

In this video I talk about the 3 main things every diabetic is scared of. I talk about how they used to scare me and how I beat self-doubt, took action and got rid of the fear. I hope this inspires you to think differently and take ownership of your diabetes.

It doesn’t matter what the circumstance is, whether you’re at a social event, work, making love or, exercising – when blood glucose is outside of normal range, you can be a difficult person to be around.

Just bumping into and spending time with yourself when you’re going through a high or low….

Would you like that person?

I definitely wouldn’t like me!

I often laugh and tell people that diabetes has given me three personalities. One called healthily, one called high and the other called low.

In order to protect yourself from the complications of diabetes, you need to be proactive in managing your condition. Just like I say in my book, The Diabetic Muscle and Fitness Guide,

‘Any area of life you don’t control – someone else will.’

This is so true, especially in relation to diabetes. If you don’t look after your health – you’ll require a team of people to look after it for you.

Knowledge is Power

If you want to get the most out of life, you need to master diabetes and all the aspects that control it: diet, exercise, lifestyle and medication. That’s exactly why I set up the Diabetic Muscle and Fitness Training Lab.

You need to be selfish.

I know this sounds negative, but please hear me out.

When your blood glucose levels aren’t in range, it’s hard to be your true self. Those anxious, short-tempered personalities of diabetes take control and usually end up giving us a bad name. It’s surprising, just how many people are afraid to stand up and manage their diabetes in the public eye.

Do you worry about what other people think?

Ask yourself the following questions…

Are you afraid to inject insulin in public?

Are paranoid about having your CGM device or Insulin Pump on show?

Are you self-conscious to eat or drink something in certain circumstances to treat a hypo?

Would you be embarrassed to ask for money to buy food to treat a hypo if you’d forgotten your wallet?

Do you feel humiliated nipping to the toilet during a family meal to dose your insulin?

Are you mortified checking your blood glucose level before or, during sex?

There is an endless number of scenarios you will have to deal. The worst thing you can do is suffer in silence.

On Saturday past, I was invited out to dinner with a group of old friends. Our table was booked for 7:00 pm at one of my favourite steak restaurants in Belfast City Northern Ireland.

I arrived at the restaurant and realised that I’d forgotten my insulin pen.

DRAMA!?

Not really. The first thing I do in this kind of situation is ask myself two questions,

Q. What can I control?

• Can I ring anyone to bring my insulin? No
• Is there a chemist open nearby? No
• Do they keep insulin in the restaurant? LOL No
• Should I fast and eat nothing? No chance
• Should I just go home and meet them later? No, I want to enjoy myself

Q. What can I cope with?

• Can I eat what I want and cope with being high for a few hours? No
• Should I just stick with meat, veg and water – even though it may make me go high? No

Luckily, I lived only 15-minutes away (30-minute round trip) from the restaurant. Having also arrived 10-mins early I figured I had a window of opportunity to nip home and grab my insulin as most restaurants take around 20-45mins to serve their food. So, I stood up and told everyone I was nipping home to grab my pen, and of course, there were a few sarcastic comments and sighs about being me unorganized…

I understood where the guys were coming from. At the end of the day, they were hungry and worried I was going to hold the meal up. I left my order with one of the party members before I left, advising them to order my meal just after 7:00 pm. This would buy me enough time.

I drove home, grabbed my insulin and was back in the restaurant for 7:23 pm. I promise I kept within the speed limit. (maybe telling a white lie…)

By the time I got back – the food still wasn’t out yet. It’s funny how we all tend to play the worst case scenario in our heads. Everyone was chatting and getting the drinks in. My absence went unnoticed.

Here’s the moral of the story and why you need to be selfish with your diabetes.

I wanted to enjoy myself, and the people at the table deserved me at my best. If I was to sit through the meal, not eat or, eat and cope with the annoying symptoms of hyperglycemia I know for a fact I wouldn’t be a nice guy to be around.

So, for the good of myself and the table. I decided to be selfish and put diabetes first. I’m so glad I did. I was able to relax, enjoy a great meal and empower myself with the confidence that I was in good health.

I urge you to think the same, no matter what your situation…

• If you need to nip home and keep others waiting, do it.
• If you need to inject and correct a high blood sugar with onlookers, do it.
• If you need to leave the table and check your blood glucose, do it.
• If you need to open a tin of drink or, open a noisy packet of sweets in the cinema to treat your hypo, do it.
• If someone gives you a sarcastic remark, go and fix yourself up first, then come back and give them hell! Ha-ha

If you’re not proactive with managing your diabetes – don’t complain about developing complications. You can’t help anyone, or be your best self if you’re stressed out and not feeling good.

There’s nothing that takes up more time and space in your head than a volatile blood high or low blood glucose level.

I hope this article has inspired you to think differently and put yourself first. Protect your health.

2. Persuasion is the best way to win an argument.

3. The reason why success often doesn’t feel as good as it should do is because your idea of ‘success’ is based on what you want other people to think about you, rather than doing it for yourself. If you’ve had success this year, great! But, in order to keep advancing and developing make sure you evaluate yourself and commit to developing all the other areas of your life. This allows you to go to the next level. If you’re sitting down to plan your 2018 over the next few days, then do yourself a favour and set goals that serve you! At the end of the day, no one really cares how successful you are. Don’t waste your entire year trying to fit in again!

4. A great way to tell you’re not being true to yourself is when you say things likes, “I have to, should do…”

5. It’s wise to do things because of priority NOT history.

6. Pride gets in the way of mastery. Really cocky = tragedy.

7. It is easy to get complacent and find yourself doing low-value s**t if you do not plan your day or have a vision (goals).

8. Important distinction. At the level of the soul, we are the same. At the level of the physical senses and awareness, we are not.

9. Opinions are the cheapest opinions on earth – especially those that circulate the most. By the time the truth reaches – the lies have spread around the world.

10. The minute you put someone on a pedestal you blind yourself to their downsides. Everyone has another side, a dark side – including you!

11. Anything you repress always surfaces at some stage. It’s wise to dissolve your drama, understand how it served you and affirm it- rather than live through it.

12. In order to really not give a f**k what other people think, you need to know and love yourself. You’re the author of the most important story in the world – your life.

13. It’s ok to turn your phone off and shut your inbox down. Your social media and email accounts aren’t going to vanish and will be waiting for your patiently when you return.

14. For the amount of people that love you – there will be an equal amount of people that dislike you. So what! Live with it and stop trying to please everyone.

15. It is wise to have an inner vision rather than conform. Be …’in the world, not of the world.’ (John 17:16)

16. You will merge and unmerge with people over the course of your life. Learn from every relationship and embed the new found knowledge into the next relationship.

17. Expect people to be disloyal, dishonest and at times an enemy – People only live according to what they perceive is the best option for them. They did what they felt was best for them at the particular time. Don’t hold a grudge over that – you’ll only get ill.

18. 5 ways to embrace your entrepreneurial spirit. 1. Find something you really love doing. 2. Solve a problem that hasn’t been solved. 3. Be able to build the solution yourself. 4. Know when to be patient and when to act fast. 5. Manage your emotions.

19. Stop getting attached to the fantasy of being a success 24/7. If you’re attached to success you’re on your way down. Futile. The majority of your current success is a result of hitting rock bottom.

20. You get most creative when you’re challenged. Invite criticism. It’s kinda useful.

21. 1 true friend is better than 10,000 fake ones. Stop sweating over how many people follow you on social media.

I hope you found immense value in my life lessons from 2017.

Let’s smash 2018 together!

Life is beautiful.

Phil Graham

If you’re into health and fitness you will have heard of Intermittent fasting at some point.

Intermittent fasting is a dieting strategy used by athletes, celebrities, and high performance entrepreneurs to improve health, body composition and mental clarity.

Like any diet, intermittent fasting works as long as you can sustain it.

The concept behind intermittent fasting is simple.

It involves,

• Periodic bouts of fasting (i.e. going without food and calorie dense drinks)
• Which leads to reduced meal frequency and a smaller time frame to eat.
• This gives the dieter an opportunity to eat larger, more filling and satisfying meals in the specific limited time window.
• Since you can only eat so much at one meal, fewer calories are consumed.
• This helps prevent fat gain and speeds fat loss (provided your calories are set at the right point) – for how to set your calorie baseline read here for men and for women here.
• Eating windows can range from 4-12 hours – it all depends on which strategy suits you best (I cover all the different IF strategies inside the members’ site)
• The fasting periods increase counter regulatory hormones that liberate fuel for body stores for energy and also suppress appetite (win-win for fat loss)

…But, what about people with diabetes?

Q. Does it work for us?

Q. Is it dangerous?

Q. How do you manage insulin and blood glucose levels when you fast for hours?

I discuss all of these questions and more in a personal video blog I recorded in Barcelona City earlier this year.

Enjoy.

PS. For those of you who are control freaks about saturated fat and carbs in the diets of people with diabetes, please do your homework and consider my context is different to yours.

It’s 11:41 pm on Tuesday 4th July 2017.

I’m just finishing up some writing work and preparing for a podcast with Diabetics Doing Things tomorrow at 9 am. I can’t wait to get on and share my story with 1000s of others.

Anyway, about today.

I had an awesome post workout feed of crunchy fresh sourdough, grilled bacon, runny eggs, avocado and a slab of real butter spread over, (hungry yet?)

I eyeballed the nutrition of the meal to be in and around 680kcals.

67g Carbs

43g Protein

27g Fat

Having written my fair share of nutrition programs and weighed more food than I care to imagine, my figures are always pretty accurate.

Blood Glucose Pre-meal: 9.0 mm0l/L

Activity Status: 1 Hour Post strength training (looks like those stress hormones haven’t tapered off yet! as I was 6.0mmol/L at the start of training)

Insulin Dosing Strategy: 6 Units Novorapid after the first bite.

I dosed slightly less insulin in comparison to what I would normally need on a non-training day. Here’s why,

1. Post training stress hormones like Cortisol and Adrenaline inevitably wear off and the glucose disposal effects of strength training kick in- increasing the risk of hypoglycemia.
2. The fat content of the meal was relatively high, due to avocado, egg yolks and bacon. High levels of fat slow the release of carbohydrate and amino acids into the blood resulting in a slower increase in blood glucose compared to eating the bread (carbohydrate) alone. Always keep that in mind!

Blood Glucose 3 hours post meal: 6.5 mmol/L (NAILED IT)

Anyway enough talk about insulin and diabetes for the day…

Let’s talk about bread.

I love bread!

A no-nonsense, easy to prepare carb source that stacks well with pretty much any protein source.

Animal and human research does show wheat consumption has the potential to increase a condition called intestinal permeability (1). Don’t panic just yet.

For those of you who don’t know what Intestinal permeability is, here goes…

Intestinal permeability, commonly termed ‘leaky gut’, is a condition that occurs in the body when tight junctions in the bowel lining become irritated, inflamed and “leaky”.

This barrier plays a role in absorbing nutrients and preventing most food particles, bacterial toxins and germs (pathogens) passing from inside the bowel into the bloodstream and potentially causing widespread immune responses and inflammation throughout the body.

It has been proposed that leaky gut is a result of a range of factors including yeast or bacterial overgrowth in the bowel, poor diet (including bread) and overuse of drugs like antibiotics.

Increased intestinal permeability has been associated with autoimmune diseases, including our very own type 1 diabetes (2)

Don’t freak out if you eat bread.

Keep reading.

The current body of research on wheat (the cereal grain used to make bread, being the root cause of intestinal permeability) is non-conclusive.

‘Until now, human epidemiological and intervention studies investigating the health effects of whole grain intake were confounded by other dietary and lifestyle factors and, therefore, well-designed intervention studies investigating the effects of cereal grains and their individual components on intestinal permeability and inflammation are warranted.’

The area of gluten, bread and human health is a highly debated topic.

Respect there’s a big difference in how you’ll feel eating bread when you have a generally shitty lifestyle, diet, and are highly inactive, vs. eating bread as part of an energy controlled diet built for exercise performance supported by mindful living (sleep/stress management etc.)

There are so many other factors to consider for your ‘bloating’.

Take a reality check on stress, chronic anxiety, medications, illness, and too much alcohol before you start blaming bread.

If you think bread is a culprit – don’t do Google.

Get a clinical test and get to the bottom of it.

Like I say in my book, there is no such thing as a good or bad food.

You must consider the dose and frequency of any food you eat.

If you want to know more about Gluten and human health listen to this great podcast I recorded with Danny Lennon on the subject of Gluten: All You Need To Know In 30mins.

References

1. Karin de Punder at al. The Dietary Intake of Wheat and other Cereal Grains and Their Role in Inflammation. Nutrients. 2013 Mar; 5(3): 771–787.
2. Ultrastructural mucosal alterations and increased intestinal permeability in non-celiac, type I diabetic patients. Secondulfo M, Iafusco D, Carratù R, deMagistris L, Sapone A, Generoso M, Mezzogiomo A, Sasso FC, Cartenì M, De Rosa R, Prisco F, Esposito V Dig Liver Dis. 2004 Jan; 36(1):35-45.

It’s 10:31 pm on Sunday 2nd July 2017.

I’m sitting reflecting after a pretty productive day and planning my week ahead.

After spending several hours developing content for the Diabetic Muscle and Fitness membership site (which is due to launch in August 💪) on Saturday night, I was busting to get into the gym this morning and thrash legs.

I woke up a little high at 9.2 mmol/L (166mg/dl).

We all know what this feels like 😂🙈.

I hate waking up with high blood sugar.

It literally feels like a train has hit me.

There’s a high probability anytime I wake up high I’ll be grumpy AF and late (as I always hit snooze.)

Just recently, I’ve started programming my mind and body to JUMP OUT OF BED the minute I wake.

Why am I doing this?

Simple reason: to avoid sleeping in, procrastinating and get more shit done!

Sleep is important but there is a fine line between enough and time wasting.

Anyhow, If you’re high it’s imperative you bring yourself back to a rock solid blood glucose levels, before doing anything else.

My thoughts on correcting high blood glucose…

When correcting high blood glucose levels I like to keep things ultra simple.

Let me explain…

It’s important to isolate and remove any factors that may influence your blood glucose levels at the time you correct.

This includes eating (especially carbs and leucine rich protein sources), stimulants, stressful activities and exercise, especially weight training.

Accuracy is everything.

Blood glucose corrections get very confusing when multiple factors occur at once. And, this only leads one big problem…

Blood glucose levels that bounce around for the first half (or all) of the day is one sure way to zap your mood.

 I wish I could put a sign on my head saying DON’T TALK TO ME! when this happens.

Take note – Large fluctuations in blood glucose (i.e. high to low) isn’t cool and extremely unhealthy.

😅 Anyhow, I managed to correct myself pretty fast, get to the gym and knock out an awesome leg session.

Check out the footage of me training below (from my Instagram account)

Program Split went as follows.

A1. Butt walks, (try these pre squat/deadlift – thank me later)
B1. Heavy ass Leg press (worked up to 20+ reps of 400kg)
C1. Single leg high knee lunges (these challenge your core and gluteus big time)

A post shared by Diabetic Muscle & Fitness 📘📖 (@diabeticmusclefitness) on Jul 2, 2017 at 12:53pm PDT

Until the next time,

Phil ‘Correct it’ Graham

In this video, I share my personal story about being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes as a teenager.

I discuss my mindset, coping strategies and general lifestyle principles of living with the condition. I talk about the importance of gratitude and how type 1 diabetes was the driving force behind building a successful career in the fitness industry and writing the world’s best-selling book on diabetes and fitness – The Diabetic Muscle and Fitness Guide.

Without diabetes, I would never be doing what I do – educating and motivating 1000s of people living with diabetes all over the world to live healthier, stronger lives.

Comment below if you live with diabetes – I would love to hear from you!

Yours in Strength,

Phil Graham

 THE BOOK I WAS JUST TALKING ABOUT…

If you want to learn more (much more) and master everything there is to know about strength training science, managing your diabetes and becoming your own personal strength coach and nutritionist, then you need to check out The Diabetic Muscle and Fitness Guide.

With over 400+ pages of evidence-based theory on how to build a stronger, better-looking body with diabetes, this is an absolute must for any dedicated gym goer living with diabetes.

They say a photo speaks a thousand words.

So far 2016 has been crazy. I’ve met a lot of new people, learned a lot of new things, but not many experiences come close to this.

The little girl you see in the photo travelled with her mother to come and hear me speak at the SFN fitness exhibition in Scotland earlier this year.

She’d just been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes a few weeks previously and was going through a tough time with her health. Her mother was incredibly anxious about her daughter’s well-being and future. It turned out this kid was pretty gifted at gymnastics, training at a very high junior level with tonnes of potential.

Since being diagnosed her body and mind had taken a hit. She couldn’t perform, enjoy or hope like ever before, forcing her to feel down and question her identity.

Seeing such a young kid with limiting beliefs hit a nerve with me. In fact, I saw myself and what I went through.

There was no chance on earth I was letting her (or her mum) leave the building and live another day feeling hopeless and accepting things just ‘wouldn’t be the same again.’

F*&K THAT!

It was in my nature to help. I had to! No two ways about it! I shared every piece of motivation, experience and practical knowledge I had.

Here’s the kicker.

Before going back on stage, the little girl looked me bang in the eyes, smiled, gave me a fist pump and said with a tear in her eye ‘life is what you make of it.’

^ Mind blown! Penny dropped, and I said to myself, ‘That’s why I do what I do.’ smirked and went my way.

I’ll never forget it.

We live in an era where everyone wants to automate their business and make as little human contact as possible. Don’t think like that. If you want to make a BIG impact on this world, personal touch will always trump automation.

Bearing hope is one of the most powerful things you can do. The world would be a better place if people did it more often!

^ Bear it every day!