You are listening to Hit Play, Not Pause, a feisty menopause podcast for active performance-minded women.

I am your host, Celine Yeager. Each week, I bring you advice from athletes, scientists, researchers, and other experts to help

you feel and perform you best no matter what your hormones are doing.

This show is a production of Live Feisty Media.

Hello, strong, thirsty women.

So I am really excited about this week's show, which is all about blood sugar, which we need

as active women, but we also don't want to be too high because it can damage our blood vessels

and is bad for our health. I started getting blood work done as part of my athletic journey

way back in like 2011 before I raced the Cape Epic in South Africa.

I did a series of blood draws with Inside Tracker in 2014 when I was preparing to ride the

tour of California with goo and have continued to monitor it ever since.

And despite the fact that I trained 10 to 20 hours a week, lift weights, and have always been

conscious of what I've eaten, and have tried all sorts of nutrition trends over the past 10

years, including low carb. I have always had borderline high fasting blood sugar, though my A1C levels,

which measure the average blood sugar, have been mostly fine.

And I am not alone.

In a recent Inside Tracker blog post, they reported that only 23% of their users, which you know are an active lot, have optimized blood glucose levels.

And as we've talked about on the show, insulin resistance and carb sensitivity can

increase during the menopause transition. So last year, I started testing continuous glucose

monitors, also known as CGMs, and that gave me some deeper insights into what impacted my

blood sugar levels, including stress, sleep, the timing of my meals,

and importantly, how I ate my meals, whether I was relaxed or sitting here, typing away,

...