Episode 1: A Mom’s Fitness Journey

🎙️ Welcome to Fit 40 Studio Podcast Episode 1: “Strength, Diabetes, and Empowerment: A Journey with John, Sherry, and a Barbell”

In this energizing episode, John, a seasoned fitness professional with 13 years under his belt specializing in powerlifting and athletic training, and Sherry, a devoted dietitian and diabetes educator, delve deep into the intricacies of health, fitness, and lifestyle. 🏋️‍♀️🍏

🌟 Episode Highlights:
1. Sherry’s Multifaceted Life: A dietitian, diabetes educator, mom, and fitness enthusiast living with type 1 diabetes, sharing her life experiences, fitness journey, and her passion for educating people about health. 📚💪
   
2. John’s Rich Experience: An overview of John's 13 years in the fitness industry, working with diverse athletes, and his unique approach to fitness. 🥊🏈⚾️
   
3. Battling Diabetes through Fitness: The duo shares insights on managing diabetes through strength training and the significant impact it has on blood sugar levels. 🧘‍♀️💉

4. Empowering Generations: Learn how Sherry and John are instilling values of strength and fitness in the younger generation, promoting body positivity, and changing the narrative around women and strength training. 🏋️‍♀️🌸

5. Fitness Goals and Future Plans: Discover their inspiring future goals, aspirations in fitness and strength training, and their contagious excitement for upcoming powerlifting meets. 🌟🏆

6. Special Moments: Emotional and heartwarming moments shared about family, encouragement, and shared goals. 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦❤️

7. Health Advocacy: A sneak peek into the revolutionary program assisting people with the cost of medications, impacting lives, and Sherry’s joy in making a difference. 💊🌈

🛠️ Tools & Tips:
- Practical advice on managing diabetes and diet. 🍎💡
- The transformational power of strength training. 🏋️‍♂️✨
- Real-life applications of fitness and its role in daily life. 🌿🚶‍♂️

🔑 Keywords:
Fit 40 Studio, Strength Training, Diabetes Management, Empowerment, Health and Fitness Lifestyle, Body Positivity, Dietitian, Powerlifting, Athletes, Fitness Journey, Health Advocacy, Medication Assistance, Family Goals, Transformation.

📢 Call to Action:
Embark on a journey of strength, wellness, and self-discovery with John and Sherry. Tune in, get inspired, and unleash your fullest potential! Subscribe to never miss an episode of empowering conversations and transformative fitness insights! 🌟🎧

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This episode is a treasure trove of information, insights, and inspiration, revealing how strength training is not just a physical endeavor but a powerful vehicle for self-improvement, empowerment, and lifestyle transformation. Whether you're a fitness enthusiast, someone living with diabetes, or anyone seeking to transform their life, this episode has something for everyone! 🌈✨

Transcript

0:01

Welcome to the fit 40 studio podcast with John and Sherry here to get you educated on a health and fitness lifestyle that best suits your needs, your goals, and get you to the destination. You see a healthier you. I've been in the fitness industry for 13 years. I work with fighters, football players, baseball players, basketball players. I've helped athletes in powerlifting and I'm even quite known for the whole powerlifting thing. So at the same time, over the last 13 years, I've had the pleasure to help a lot of women get into fitness. Now today I'm going to introduce you to one of my clients and quite frankly, a friend of mine. I've actually known her for 10 years before we actually started working together to help her get in the lift and weight. And I think you'll learn a lot from her story and enjoy the podcast we decided to do together as we go over some of the things that we see in the health and fitness world. All right. Thank you for tuning in now without further ado. Well, Sherry, go ahead. Introduce yourself. Let everybody know who you are. All right. Well, guys, I'm Sherry. I am, a dietitian by trade and a diabetes educator as well. And I also have type one diabetes. So providing education for people is really a passion of mine. Helping people manage and navigate this is something that I really like to try and help people. Do. And then as far as just who else am I? I'm a mom. I have four kids, twin boys that are in college. I have a daughter who's in college and a junior in high school. I have two dogs and a great supportive husband. So that's kind of me in a nutshell. All right. Thank you for taking the time. We're going to do a couple of these. We're going to do quite a few of these and try to help a lot of people kind of understand how this whole eating thing works, especially as it relates to training or understanding how training applies to your life every day. Well, that's the goal. So Sherry you have type one diabetes, right? And you're a dietitian, but you're also, you were A runner for a very long time, too, right? Yes. So how did those three things kind of like all mesh together? Oh, well, it was kind of crazy. So I had decided that when I was finished having kids that I wanted to be more active. And so I decided I could do running because it would be something I could push a stroller with. And so I started running. And with diabetes, you have to be really careful about cardiovascular work because it can, especially long term cardiovascular, slow and steady, which I was very slow and steady when I started and you have to be really careful about your blood sugars dropping. As you do that. So I would pack my stroller with with juice boxes and or I would run a lap very close to home. So if I started to feel like my blood sugar was dropping, I could go home and get get some juice or something to help me continue on. But having. having diabetes and running kind of made for my blood sugars to be a roller coaster. Like I would have those lows and then I would treat it. And so then it would go high and then I would take insulin to bring the blood sugar back down and it would be be low again. So So there's a lot to it that I didn't really know about how to manage that, even though I was a dietician and having diabetes exercise can really impact you differently depending on the day, depending on cycle, depending on whatever the weather is. So there's a lot to it. So, but it was, I mean, I enjoyed running. It was good. It was something I feel like I could see accomplishment with. Cause each time I would go out, I could go a little bit farther as I started training for longer distances. So did you actually, you, you actually did like races too, right? Yeah, I did. The farthest I ever did was a half marathon. And I was training for a couple of those and we lived in Japan when that earthquake hit and Back in March of 2011 and the tsunami. And so that day was my longest run. It was eight miles was the longest I had gone, but then the race that I was going to do in every race after that was canceled for a little while. So so I didn't get to run them, but then when we moved back to the States, I I did finally get to run my half marathon and I've done tons of five K's and 10 K's you know, as I trained and did all of that stuff. You know, anytime there was. Something, some sort of charity or some sort of just fun run with my kids and stuff like that, we would always run those. Right. So when you became, all right, now it's kind of funny cause like me and you met through, we were doing online university with Brian and we were talking and it was based on personal training. And I always, so my next question to you would be like, when you look at, Generally, when people come to you, especially for a diabetic patient, and they have, and they're sitting up there going through those struggles with blood sugar and stuff like that. What are some things that you tell them that you relate to or that you feel that would actually help them kind of see their diabetes a little different as related to training? So now I really try hard to talk to my patients about strength training and emphasize strength training for patients because because in my experience it has stabilized my blood sugars. better than anything has ever stabilized my blood sugar. So of course, a lot of the patients I see are adults that are in their forties and fifties and sixties. And they've, a lot of them are overweight. A lot of them have never exercised before. So They, they get scared when I tell them that it's, you know, to do strength training. So I have to be really careful and how I approach it. And I have to start with you know, telling people that we can be slow, you know, they have to be slow. And it doesn't mean that they have to go and look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, you know, their first time out at the, at the gym, because most of those people, you know, know who that is. So in his prime, so they all know who that is. And I tell them, you know, it doesn't have, you're not, you're not going to look like that right away. You know, I tell them that we have to start slow and that it will really help with their blood sugar control. But a lot of the patients I have it's all brand new to them. Like somebody. Like a lot of times they've just been told, you have diabetes, go eat better. So they have no idea what it really means to eat better. And they have no idea what it means when the doctor says go exercise. So my first line of really trying to get them to do something is just to move. You know get up, start walking, take the stairs, you know, all the little steps that you have to take. And that's usually where we start and then once they get past that, then we start talking about how, you know, exercise can really impact their blood sugars. And while I do tell them that at the beginning, but they start to see it. Once they start actually doing, you know, doing the walking, then they start, they come back and they're like, Oh my gosh, my blood sugars are so much better. And so then it's a lot of reinforcement and educating them and, you know, reminding them how the hard work they're doing is paying off and the walking is really helping, and then hopefully they'll start to progress into more strength training. Right. Because I think that's really key. It's like, it's kind of funny. Like, everybody, it's always some kind of personal record. You want to make some PR. Whether it's walking, whether it's making sure you get your food in. You know, one little step. can give momentum to the next one. So my next question is then, like, when it comes to food for a diabetic person, what would you suggest, what are some key things that they could start out with when they want to take control of their health? Like, simple stuff, like you said, because, like, a lot of times that can be really overwhelming because they don't know. And they're, like, 34 years old, and they're sitting there, like, Well, Eating better, you mean like have a salad or have this and it is like to them, it sounds like they're not living. You know, right. Yeah. So that, that is really hard. So I always tell my patients when they first come in that I'm not going to tell them they can never eat something again, because as soon as you tell them they can never have something again, that's the only thing that they're going to want to eat. So my theory and my, the way I practice is a lot, a lot, a lot about portion size and really trying to Show people how much food they're actually eating. So I focus a lot on using portion sizes to help them manage their blood sugars. We talk about the sources of carbohydrates,'cause one thing they'll tell me is like, all I eat is fruit. The doctor said to eat better. So all I eat is fruit. Well, fruit has a lot of carbohydrates in it. Again, not that it's bad, it's not that they shouldn't have the fruit, but if all they're eating is bananas and grapes and all of that stuff, too much of that's going to impact their blood sugars, so it's going to, you know, not give them the numbers that they want. So we talk a lot about portion sizes and using. Portion sizes to dictate how much food they can have or we do a lot of carb counting is what I really try and help people understand that that half a cup of rice is got, you know, about 30 grams of carbohydrates are two thirds of a third of a cup has about 15 grams of carbohydrates. So when I show them what that looks like. They're like, oh my gosh, I fill my whole plate up with rice, you know, or I fill my whole plate up with pasta. Again, it's not that they can't have it, it's really trying to get them to see how much food they have. Or how much they're eating and how that will impact their blood sugars. You know, it's funny one of my favorites is, and I always find it funny, was that people, one of the favorite, like, diabetic foods is oatmeal. And people who eat it, and they'll be, it's like, they're either going to overdo it, or they're going to add something to it because they need to make it taste better. Right. And so it's always funny. I always tell people like for me, when I was trying to get bigger, like growing to 300 pounds, oatmeal was one of my favorite things to eat. And it was because like, I was like, cause like I can sit and I can totally ruin that and grow. Yeah. Oatmeal has so many carbs in it. I usually tell people if they really like oatmeal that they need to get the steel cut oatmeal, you know, because if they're doing the instant oatmeal, that's just going to send their blood sugar sky high. And then they're going to be starving because it has nothing in it to really last them. So I'm like, okay, if oatmeal is your thing, then let's have half a cup. And make sure you're, you're putting it with protein. Protein helps so much because it slows down how fast the sugar impacts the body and so that's. What I always tell them, if, if, if you have to have oatmeal, then you have to have protein with it. Yeah. It's, it's funny. Cause like, you know, it's like everybody thinks, oh, well it's healthy pause or worse. They make that whole assumption of good and bad foods. Now. So the next thing I want to talk about, we're going to keep this. So for you with like training and everything, so tell everybody about how I tricked you into strength. Well, so I was. I had signed up to do this run across North Carolina. It was a virtual run. And I wanted to you were talking about my commitment level to doing that, and strength training, and how I said I wanted to do a pull up. And you said I could do a pull up if I was committed to running, I could commit to lifting and doing a pull up. And so I was like, okay. I'll try. And I was like, I've never been successful at strength training. I mean, even when I was doing personal training and I was teaching bootcamp classes and we did all the HIIT training and we did all sorts of stuff, man, it was fun. And I could create the most creative program and put exercises together. That would be a lot of fun, but I could still never really do. Very many pushups. I could still never really do a lot of weight training. So I didn't really put much stock in it. And then when you told me you could help me and I was like, okay, I'll try. And I think within the first week I was like hooked. I was like, oh my gosh, this is so fun. And my blood sugars did fantastic, which was, which was great. It wasn't a roller coaster. And then, so with that, when like, cause it kind of goes back to what we were just talking about a minute ago, just like, once you start seeing the small, the, those little, the little win, they mean a lot now with your journey into strength training, one of my favorite things is that you, because like you said, you didn't have the success with it. And you didn't understand what the journey actually looked like. So for two parts, now I'm going to ask you a little personal question because another thing that people don't understand is actually, while being a diabetic, you also had like body image issues, which can be even harder to deal with because the way you look at food, the way you look at. The way you even look at running and training and everything else probably. Now, how has Strength training impacted the way you look at those things now. Okay. All right. So I should start with my eating or body image issues. So when I grew up my family kind of joked that I had a big butt and they all thought it was funny, but to the point where I was super afraid or intimidated or self conscious about wearing Clothes that were straight, like everything had to be flowy if I was in a dress, I couldn't wear anything that would show my butt off because then I would be super intimidated by it and it carried on through my adulthood and even looking back at pictures, I'm like, why did they say that to me? I was not, I didn't have a big butt, but they all joked about it. So it was very Intimidating or I don't know, it's hard to overcome that. My mom was a huge yo yo dieter. So that's all I saw about food was that food made you fat and then you would starve yourself and then you would. Get to your number and then you would eat again and you would gain all the weight back. So that's what my experience was kind of growing up. And my mom's a fabulous person, but, you know, she just had her own diet issues and body image issues probably too. But even still, she's super, super concerned about what the number on the scale is. So it makes me like really. Nervous sometimes to think about what my number is like, Oh, my gosh, that's my self worth because it's not what it's supposed to like, what is on the BMI charts or whatever. And so it makes me very nervous. Even last week or so, I went to the doctor and it was higher than I had, it was expecting it to be. So of course, you know, John gets. The earful of me like, Oh, my gosh, I'm super high. And so so, yeah, so my body image wasn't very good, even though my husband's never said anything. My kids have never said anything, but I would never go to a pool. And put a bathing suit on unless it was like covering absolutely every part of me. And then I would wear cover ups because, you know, I can't let anybody see me because I just felt so bad about how my body looked. But strength training has changed that for me tremendously. I mean, I feel confident. I feel like if I can go and lift 160 in a deadlift that, you know what, I can do this. And it has just, I mean, it's just made all the difference in the world with how I feel about myself. It even gave me confidence. I had taken my daughter to go visit a college. And we had to drive in a town that I wasn't familiar with at night on these freeways. And I was like, okay, I can lift these weights. I can drive in this town. I can get to where I needed to go. So it's just really made me more confident in who I am and to learn more about Sherry. If that makes any sense, it's kind of crazy, but, so I tell everybody now, like all of my patients, I'm like, strength training is the way to go. It helps you. It just, it just helps my brain. It's helped my hair. It's helped my fingernails. I mean, all of these things that I think I can only attribute to really the difference being is strength training. But then how I look at food with it I do have to be careful because strength training for a lot of people with diabetes actually will raise their blood sugars and then they crash afterwards or they'll go down afterwards. However, since I've been consistently strength training with strength training, now my blood sugars go down. So I have to think about actually keeping my blood sugars a little bit higher. Before I go to the gym and make sure that I'm like, you know, 180. 190, which is a little bit higher than what I like to be, but then I know if I'm there, I'm pretty good and I'm not going to have a crash. But then there's times where I can be at that range and I'm working so hard that it does still make me crash and I have to stop, which I absolutely hate doing, but sometimes I have to because it's not really a smart thing to be lifting something heavy and trying to like Not fall over while you're holding it. So but yeah, so I have to make sure that my evening meals have more carbohydrates than what I'm used to doing. And I always have always thought about food and how it impacts my blood sugars, but I'm learning that I have to think about food and how it impacts my ability to be to get stronger, which I'm still working on. Still working on that one. It's a big, it's a different thing when you're focused, when your food is focused on performance, it's a little bit of a different viewpoint. And oftentimes it comes to the point now that I tell you, okay, take the day off, but it's a big deal to recognize that you're eating to perform. And even more so one of the more important things that I've even been able to observe with you is the fact that like, it's also recognizing that when you actually look at who to perform. Or food to perform with diabetes or even with thyroid conditions and so on and so forth. It's really important to understand those things are just hormones. And with those hormones, we're trying to perform our best. Our body is trying to perform its best. It's important that we fuel the body to allow it to be able to do its functions and job properly. You know and it's crazy. And I've had a lot of fun with you on this journey this past year. Especially cause like you had a lot of wind. So it's amazing to see, and it's why I coach. And so, and of course, like I tell everybody, I can change your life. If I get a barbell in your hand, I agree. I agree with that. 100%. You thought I was joking when I first told you, you're like, that's silly. Yeah. So here we are a year later and boom, I mean, I do so I, I don't do a new year's resolutions because I never keep them. But this year I said I was going to do something easy, not easy, but something I felt like I could accomplish. Right. And so I started with 21 pushups. And I was able to do 21 pushups and that was already six months after starting with you. So I was like, okay, I can actually do pushups now a little bit. And so but doing them every day, now I'm up to 40 and now I'm trying to do them all close, you know. Really close to that. Those are harder. And so but I've learned to give myself grace. Like if I don't get 40 right away, which I can't do 40 close ones. At a time, but I can do 20 close ones at a time and it's okay if I stop and it's okay if I have to rest for, you know, 30 seconds or whatever. And then I finish. And sometimes some mornings I'm like, I can hardly do, you know, the last few, it takes me like 2 pushups. Stop for a second, two pushups, but I'm doing it. And that is what is so exciting to me is I haven't given up. And it's just amazing how much better I feel about myself and everything because I can do something, I can be strong and that was, never something that was taught to me, you know, growing up because girls didn't, according to my mom, girls didn't do heavy stuff. Girls didn't lift things and leave that for the boys, leave that for your brother, leave that for your sons, you know, even still, I'm like, no, I, I can do this. There's nothing wrong with me being able to pick up this bag of 50 pound bag of dog food, you know, so yeah. And then, so, and then we're going to go with this last part we're going to talk about today is that it's also, it's kind of fun and funny for me in that with it, you learned really strength training. Like you said, you're doing pushups every day. Strength training is like its own physical form of an affirmation. You know, each time you're showing you're developing a habit, you're developing another muscle, which is your willpower, your ability to be consistent. And with that consistency builds up on all those other traits we mentioned today. So for you at this point, and like you said, you already shown a lot of the things that have helped with your own diabetes and your body image issues and your patients and how you transferred that. So what are some things, what are some goals you're looking toward doing as we keep making these videos and we keep talking about this, what are some things that you want to do? Just like, like strength training wise goals, training goals, body image goals as a dietitian, helping your clients kind of told me something really cool a day, anything that you got going that like. For you, what is it that makes you excited to be a dietitian right now? All right, so what makes me excited to be a dietitian? Well, today was super exciting that so I work at a rural hospital and out in Missouri and we are rolling out A program, and I don't really know much about how the program is funded or exactly how it works, but it's a program that helps people pay for medications that, are really expensive, and I'm sure you've heard that insulin can be really expensive. Like, seriously, if you don't have insurance a vial 1 bottle of insulin is easily 3 and 400 dollars. For one vial. Well, people with type one diabetes have to take two different kinds of insulin. So, that's at least two vials. And depending on which insulin you take, there's different costs. But it is so stinking expensive. But this gentleman that I was able to help today with this program, He pays you know, a significant amount of money out of pocket, but I was able to talk to the pharmacist and find a way to help him pay like pennies on the dollar for his insulin. So I am super excited for him and I was able to make a real change. For someone because he's not he doesn't have a solid job right now, so he doesn't have insurance through his job. So he has a marketplace plan and you know, some plans are better than others. It just depends on what your needs are and what you're able to afford to pay for and all of that. But I'm going to help him save over, you know, 100 dollars every month on on his insurance, which again may not sound like a ton of money, but for somebody who's really. Pinching pennies and, you know, trying to do things that's, that is huge. So I'm super excited to be able to help this person with his you saying, you know, you say me 10. I'm happy. Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm super excited for. I mean, that's a lot of money and he wants to be able to get some of the other technological pieces to care for diabetes, like an insulin pump. And those are not. inexpensive. And so that savings will allow him to be able to get the supplies that he needs for his hopefully to be able to get him an insulin pump. So so yeah, so it's just really a huge, huge savings for him. And that just made me so happy to be able to help him. People will come in to see me, and I'm sure you've experienced this as a coach or somebody that wants information about weight loss or they just want to fix it right away and they don't wanna put the work in. So being able to help this person who's newly diagnosed and help him save this money, I felt like I was able to do something right away and see instant results. And so that was really just really encouraging to see. Yeah. But yeah. But then as far as like my strength training aspect, so one of the things that I've been able to do this summer is have my daughters come to the gym with me and it kind of makes me cry, but you know, I shared how my mom thought about strength training and I was with my youngest daughter the other day and we were. You know, we always compare muscles and we always like try and get, you know, show our definition, you know, and even though you may not see a lot, we can, like, we find little lines and we like, Ooh, look, there's some coming in. But she said to me that she wanted to have big muscles to show off in her homecoming dress. Well, it just made me so happy because she wasn't saying I want to be skinny in my homecoming dress. I want to, you know, show off and be super thin. So for her to say that she wanted to show off her muscles in her homecoming dress, just really made me happy to be able to hopefully teach her that. Being strong is okay. Being strong is, is what we need to do. And I don't know, that was super encouraging. And then my other daughter in college, she's at a military prep school right now. And she said that she was able to do like 50 pushups for her For her physical fitness tests that they have to do. So knowing that she had come to the gym with me all summer helped her get to that point. So you've helped my daughters and you don't even know that, but seeing them be excited to be strong and not feel like they have to step back and let. Somebody else do it for them. So that is super, super encouraging. And and then I'm super excited. I moved a little bit more on my pull up, still working on that one. Hey, it'll get there. No, a lot of times it's Hey, you just got started in this whole strength. Trans journey, you know, you're still a baby. It's, it's just been so good. Like my, my son see me doing it. My husband comes with me and you know, we just, we're doing it together. And of course his muscles are showing, but he's a guy, so it's, I'm like, I'm going to be mad if you get a pull up before me and he's like, well, I used to be able to do one and so but it's been a few years. But but yeah, it's just, it's been so good for all of, all of us to see how we can be healthy and strong and. It's helping my daughter in her cross country cause she's able to run more and using her shoulders, you know, to, so yeah, it's just been really positive. Fantastic. So, I mean, that's the whole point. That's kind of why I wanted to do these with you so that we can like give a message to help people and to kind of see how nutrition, fitness, strength, training, running, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all that fitness stuff kind of goes together. Yeah. Plus how. You know, yeah, I, I mean, my goal is ridiculous. People see me and they just think I just lived heavy or that I don't like cardio or whatever, but it's just that it doesn't fit my goal. Doesn't mean my clients have to, my clients do not have to be me. You know, I want to be as big as inhumanly possible every day of my life. My clients don't have to be me until the goal is to kind of try to show them that, Hey, the whole point of this is for you to find your fitness journey and for you to go to where you want to go in your life. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm super excited to try and do a meet at some point. I want to, I want to do that, you know, power lifting meet and my kids are excited to see me. And I mean, I've gone to every single thing of theirs. Well, not everything, but you know, I go to. Most of their things that I can. And they all said, they're going to come and cheer me on. So, you know, it's just, it's just a great, great way for us to be together and encourage one another. And I don't know, I've just, I've loved it. I'm I've, I've drank the Kool Aid. All I just heard right now was we need to do a summer meet. Yes, summer will be good. I should be done with my, my, my school. I should be finished in May. So summer, I'll be doing my internship in the fall or in the spring, so we got to do a summer meet. Yes. Yeah. We're going to be shopping for that. As soon as they start dropping. Yes. And I know all the meat directors in the Midwest, so it's I'll find one somewhere. All right. I feel like I need to go watch one. I need to find one. I can go watch so I can at least kind of know what to do. That's no problem. That's no problem. Say less. Yeah. Send me a list of some, I should go watch. So that's going to be it for today's episode and thank you. Yeah. I hope you're looking forward to this. You're going to have fun. Yeah, I totally am. I totally am looking forward to it.