Kayla Girgen: Why Women Over 50 Wake at 3AM, Lose Muscle, and Can't Lose Weight | #160

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (0:00)
What food is secretly spiking blood sugar?

**Kayla Girgen** (0:03)
This is a tough one.

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (0:04)
CGM. Should Every Woman Over 40 Wear One?

**Kayla Girgen** (0:08)
Yes.

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (0:08)
Kayla Girgen is joining us today. She was one of the first people to suggest using CGM to learn about our metabolism and our glucose metabolism. I do not think that we take pre-diabetes and being told that we're pre-diabetic serious enough. That's the smoke before the fire, people.

**Kayla Girgen** (0:28)
It makes me angry. You're on a rampage about bones, I'm on a rampage about blood sugar.

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (0:33)
With CGM's continuous glucose monitors, what does the data actually show us?

**Kayla Girgen** (0:38)
It really shows us everything what your blood sugar is doing in real time. If you're doing a fruit smoothie, if all of that fiber is beat and torn up, that's going to impact your blood sugar a lot. Food isn't just about glucose or grams of protein, it's woven into our fabric of life. When you're able to have the control to thread that needle like you want, it just helps make everything so much more clear.

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (0:59)
What is the one habit that makes the biggest difference beyond food and exercise? Sleep. Sleep.

**Kayla Girgen** (1:05)
Hands down.

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (1:06)
I agree.
Hey, everybody. Thanks for coming back to The Dr Vonda Show. I do a lot of things on here and you see me doing a lot of things.
Even though I don't have it today, it's like the first day in 18 months, I have not had my CGM on. And so that is apropos to today's conversation because Kayla Girgen is joining us today. She is an expert in nutrition. She's a certified personal trainer. She's written a book called Ruck Fit. And she was one of the first people to suggest using CGM to learn about our metabolism and our glucose metabolism, even if you do not have the diagnosis of diabetes. So we're going to talk about all these things today, because if you've been with me long enough, you've seen the CGM on my arm. You've seen me carrying weights around as I'm walking or doing my base training. So we're going to get to the bottom of all of it today. So Kayla, thank you for joining us.

**Kayla Girgen** (2:10)
Thank you so much for having me. I'm looking forward to today's conversation.

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (2:14)
Well, we're going to dive right in, because listen, every single week, I have women coming into my practice who are eating what they think is a healthy diet. They're exercising. They're watching their weight creep up because they're midlife, and they're feeling their energy tank, especially women who are coming in in their 40s, 50s.
And from your work with CGMs, continuous glucose monitors, what does the data actually show us as we slip out of our, what I call the critical decade, 35 to 45? Into the perimenopause chaos and then full-on into post-menopause. What is actually going on with our metabolism and blood sugar that can be witnessed on a CGM?

**Kayla Girgen** (3:04)
This is why I love CGM. And just to clarify, continuous glucose monitoring, if you've never heard of CGM before, it really shows us everything, what your blood sugar is doing in real time. And one reason why I love it is because it really shows us even beyond food what's happening. So it will show us how one bad night of sleep impacts your blood sugar. It'll show us what your blood sugar is doing while you're exercising. It'll show us stress. I think this is one of the most underrated things. And I think for a lot of women, especially in that age range, stress is something that's hard to intervene on because we can't count it. But this lets us see it. So we can count calories, we can count grams of protein, we can count points. But on a CGM, I feel like this really lets surface what that root causes, whether it's nutrition, whether it's movement, maybe it's a lack of muscle tone. But for a lot of women, I see like sleep and stress, some of those lifestyle things really start to surface. And when we have that visual baseline data, it becomes so much more motivating to intervene on it. Because like I said, you can count other things, but it's really hard to count your stress, for example. And a lot of times women in this area of life are putting everybody else first. And this just helps us take a step back and see like, okay, look at what that stressful meeting did. And I'm thinking of one client in particular, she had sent me a screenshot. And just having that data, she was able to pivot for the remainder of her day. So she was going into a stressful meeting.