- A CEO lost 40 pounds thanks to recommendations from a “digital twin” on his phone.
- The Twin encourages him to walk, showing him the impact of movement on his blood sugar.
- He was also surprised to learn about the benefits of starting meals with vegetables.
Devlin Donaldson didn’t think he could take another step.
“I have to go home,” he remembers telling his wife as they walked around the neighborhood. “I’m exhausted.”
He had just enrolled in a health program designed to get off his medications and put his type 2 diabetes into remission. It’s called Twin Health, and as well as giving her personalized recommendations on her phone about what to eat and how much to sleep, it also advised her to get more movement into her days, aiming to log around 10,000 steps in his smart watch.
“Like any workout, it’s always the most painful during the first few days,” he told Business Insider. “When they told me, ‘You have to do 10,000 steps,’ I said, ‘You’re crazy. That’s not going to happen.'”
But it is.
Donaldson now says these additional measures played a surprisingly crucial role not only in managing his weight, but also in regulating his blood sugar, improving his cholesterol levels, and lowering his blood pressure.
Here are three of the main ways he reduced his risk of premature death, while putting his diabetes into remission, losing about 40 pounds and shaving 10 inches off his waistline.
Tip 1: Get up for a walk
These days, if Donaldson notices a rise in his blood sugar on his continuous glucose monitor, he feels empowered to take action.
“I now know all kinds of things I can do to stop this increase in glucose,” he said. “I know what to do to counteract this.”
One of the simplest is simply getting up to walk around. It wasn’t easy at first.
“The first time I went out for a walk, my wife was walking with me. I was like, ‘How far have we gone?’ She takes “2,500 steps”. » He was exhausted.
Today, he enjoys going on walks up to four times longer than his first hike.
“As long as I stay consistent, I feel better at the end of five miles than I did at the start,” he said.
Experts say you don’t have to buy into the 10,000-step marketing myth to reap serious benefits from increased daily physical activity, though, and Donaldson agrees.
“If someone can commit and say, ‘I’m going to do this for a month, or for two months,’ and do it for that long, and you don’t even have to hit 10,000,” did he declare. . “Reach 6,000, reach 8,000.”
Recent studies suggest exactly what Donaldson intuitively grasps from his experience.
Although 8,000 steps seems like a sort of sweet spot where many longevity benefits come into play, researchers are starting to collect data showing that even walking 2,000 to 4,000 steps per day significantly reduces the risk of death. a person, especially because of heart problems. . If you’re pressed for time or energy, even walking out the door to take another 500 quick steps would make a cardiologist’s heart sing.
Ultimately, what’s more important than how many times your feet touch the ground is actually what all those step counters indirectly measure: enough consistent movement to keep your heart pumping, that your blood circulates and oxygen circulates throughout the body.
After about three or four months of lethargy and depression, Donaldson said his “energy shifted.”
“I just hit this point, like an inflection point,” he said.
Suddenly he was running around the house, taking out the trash and doing the dishes. “I had all this energy, and it just kept going. From then on, my energy was through the roof, and it’s an incredible gift to have the energy to live life, to enjoy it and engage in it again instead of feeling heavy and sedentary and tired all the time.”
Tip 2: Eat non-starchy vegetables first, then protein, then carbs
Another tip Donaldson’s twin suggested to him was to enjoy non-starchy vegetables before the rest of his meal. Sometimes he will have asparagus, other meals it will be celery or cauliflower. He also likes to snack on some broccoli and cheese, or have a salad before the rest of his dinner.
Nutrition experts suspect that for people with type 2 diabetes, eating vegetables in this way may help control blood sugar and slow digestion.
“It’s actually very good advice in type 2 diabetes to eat vegetables and/or protein first and carbohydrates last,” registered dietitian Nicola Guess, who studies diabetes, told Business. prevention and management of type 2 diabetes at the University of Oxford. Insider. “There is good evidence that this is a good strategy.”
For people who don’t have diabetes, it’s not clear that there are necessarily many benefits to eating this way.
Tip 3: Apple cider vinegar is slightly more controversial, but may also help control blood sugar levels.
On the advice of his digital twin, Donaldson also began diluting a little apple cider vinegar in his glass of water throughout the day. He usually pours a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar into an 8-ounce glass.
He remembers his grandmother telling him about the health benefits of this type of vinegar when he was a child, but he just thought it was an old wives’ tale. Now, with his continuous glucose monitor on, he noticed that drinking apple cider vinegar actually helps lower his blood sugar. It’s a popular Internet strategy, propelled by influencers like the “Glucose Goddess” and others, but independent nutrition experts aren’t totally sold on the strategy.
“There are healthier ways to lower your blood sugar,” Guess said.
Although a few tablespoons of apple cider vinegar per day diluted in water or salad dressing is probably quite safe, Guess worries about the potential for long-term negative effects with higher doses, because vinegar Apple cider is very acidic. Twin Health says it doesn’t recommend this strategy for everyone. This is simply a technique that has worked well for Donaldson. (“We do not recommend apple cider vinegar for people with acid reflux, dental problems, or other medical conditions affected by high-acid foods,” the company said in a statement to BI.)
Donaldson, although he doesn’t like the taste of vinegar and doesn’t feel any different after taking it, enjoys watching how the blood sugar spikes in his CGM are smoothed out by his new, slightly sour potion. He appreciates how the app has taught him smarter ways to eat and move, but he also knows that all these tips and tricks are nothing without his own efforts.
“Ultimately, you’re the one who takes the walk and decides what to eat,” Donaldson said. “My twin is with me on this journey, but it’s my journey and I have to invest.”