Empowering Parents: Navigating Childhood Obesity with Dr. Sheila Carroll

Max Sturdivant/Dr. Fitness  0:04  
Hello, and welcome to Your Health Moment podcast. I'm your host Max Sturdivant better known as Dr. Fitness. On this podcast, I want to give you the tools to start, continue and never give up on your journey towards health. Now whether you struggle with your weight, eating the right food, hydration, exercise, or even time management, you're in the right place and I'm here for you. Now let's dive right into this episode. 

This episode is brought to you by McGowan Spinal Rehabilitation Centers. Are you tired of living in pain and feeling on the edge? Introducing McGowan Spinal Rehabilitation Center, located in the heart of Jacksonville, Florida, the team at McGowan is dedicated to unraveling the mystery behind your neck pain, your back pain, and your shoulder pain by employing a wellness approach to diagnose the root causes of your pain, and optimize conditions for normal function, as well as unlock a new level of vitality and vibrant health. Because you deserve to live pain-free and thrive in every aspect of your health. Visit McGowansrc.com. For more information, that's McGowansrc.com. 

Welcome to Your Health Moment. I'm your host, Max Sturdivant, better known as Dr. Fitness. And I'm super excited to be here with our guest Dr. Sheila Carroll. Now, Dr. Sheila is crazy busy. Not only is she an MD, she's a mom. She's a wife. She's probably in the PTA

Sheila Carroll  2:08  
Not a wife anymore, but I am I am on the PTO. Morning, but I'm not I'm not too too busy in general. But like every mom I'm in

Max Sturdivant/Dr. Fitness  2:18  
and, and you have a real serious passion for wellness and fitness, and obesity. And so we have the good fortune of having Dr. Carroll here today so that she can share with us what's going on now when it comes to obesity, and tie that into childhood obesity as well. And what she sees we could do next to make things better. So doc, if you can break this down for us, it'd be really helpful.

Sheila Carroll  2:50  
Sure. A huge topic, obviously. But what what we what I really would love to focus on is how can we help parents help their kids, because we are living in this current environment. And if we just take the food environment, we are living in a super highly processed food environment. And these foods are you know, for a long time you've as a doctor, I just thought they were kind of, okay, probably not the greatest to eat a lot of processed foods, but like you said, we're all so busy, we're running around. They're, they're easy, they're convenient, they're pretty economical. And also our kids like to eat them. So it's kind of you know, it's a slam dunk from that perspective, versus whole unprocessed, like more real food. Okay, you have to go shopping more frequently. Usually you have to do some cooking. And frankly, your kid may or may not be you know that on board with eating those foods all the time. And so it's more work. It's more work for parents, for sure.

Max Sturdivant/Dr. Fitness  4:10  
So when I see parents 70% of them are are morbidly obese. Yes.

Sheila Carroll  4:14  
So this is the this is the thing here, like, you know, I used to think even as a doctor, like, okay, these foods are, they're probably not great for us, but how bad can they be? But now I really, you know, I've been a pediatrician for 23 years. And I'm 55 years old myself and so living through this myself. I've struggled with obesity and struggled with overweight my whole life. And now I've just seen and I truly believe, like these foods are not neutral and they're not they're not harmless for us these highly processed foods, they're actually harming us. And when I mean to say they're harming us, it's it's actually at our cellular level. So when you get into the science of it, a lot of these foods have a lot of added sugar. And that sugar. While it's broken, it can be broken down into different types of sugar, but mainly fructose. And fructose, high doses of fructose is specially what's seen in like soda. Or I don't know what you guys call it down there. Up here in the North, we call it soda. I do guys call it pop,

Max Sturdivant/Dr. Fitness  5:28  
combination between soft

Sheila Carroll  5:30  
drinks, but even things like Gatorade, or these sports drinks that have tons of added sugar in them, usually 50% of that sugar is fructose at least, and our body, our human body, ancient ancient human body that's evolved over the, over the millennia, we our bodies have lost the ability to handle fructose and in we store fructose as fat. And we store fructose as fat in our liver. And so it's harmful for us. So yes, so my, my thinking has really changed, seeing Americans and seeing all over the world, actually, all of us become sicker, more unhealthy, and more and more not feeling good. We just don't feel good in our bodies. And sometimes I think people don't even realize how bad they feel until they feel better. And that that was certainly the case for me. I gave up flour and sugar in an attempt to lose weight or in a in a coaching program that I joined a few years ago. And at first I thought like what, who eats like that? Who, who doesn't eat flour or sugar. And I'm not talking about sugar and fruit or sugar and vegetables. It was it was mostly just add anything with added sugar, or flowers that I cut out. And within after a after I withdrew a little bit from this, you know, not having the sugar and in my brain got used to that. So

Max Sturdivant/Dr. Fitness  7:04  
you did well for withdrawal?

Sheila Carroll  7:06  
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I have a little bit of like fatigue, headache. I just didn't feel great for a couple of days, but really only two dates to tell you the truth. But I was aware that that was probably going to happen. And so I just drank more water. And I just told myself like, Okay, I'm trying, I'm just gonna get to the other side of this, and see how I feel. And when I did that, I felt I didn't even know how bad I had been feeling before I had so much more energy, like, so my, my thinking felt clear. I wasn't craving food. If this was this was the turning point for me. And the transformation for me was that when I changed the foods I was eating, my hunger level changed. And when I went to eating, no flour, no sugar and real food. I wasn't hungry all the time. And when you're not hungry all the time, and you're able to eat just in response to what your body actually needs. You're able to lose weight and or lose the unwanted weight if you have unwanted weight. So I lost 45 pounds. eating that way, I still eat that way today because I love it. I feel so good eating that way. So, so parents are probably like, What the heck is she talking about my kids, having my kids eat no flour, no sugar. That's not really what I'm 100% telling people to do. But what I would think would be an interesting experiment for all your parents out there is you try that yourself. You try going without flour and sugar. And I use the term like reset to factory settings we all know like your computer, or your loved one. That's a great term, you know, like, oh, it's it's all messed up. Okay, you know, unplug and reset. And that's kind of how we have to be thinking about our human body. Our human body was not designed to handle these highly processed foods, these highly processed foods. Some people don't even call them food. Because food is something that fuels your cells. And these foods with all the added sugars, the emulsifiers, the dyes, the chemicals, all the things, food like substances, yes, yeah, they're harming us, they're harming us. In even if you don't have extra weight, even if you happen to be a person not carrying extra weight. If you're eating a lot of highly processed foods, it's likely that your body is still experiencing a higher level of inflammation than it otherwise would. And we know that inflammation is it contributes to especially like brain inflammation, contributes to dementia, Alzheimer's disease, you know, and also anxiety Depression, mood disorders, thinking, ADHD, and things like that. So even if you don't have a weight problem, or what you would consider a weight problem, it's for your health, and eating, choosing different foods to benefit your health.

Max Sturdivant/Dr. Fitness  10:18  
Exactly. So that's a tall order to ask parents to even try. Most parents, I know wouldn't even try it for themselves. And the notion of saying, this is probably the way your kid should be eating, they go right away, I get pushback. And the pushback I normally get is their child, they should be able to have these things I had when I was a kid, how can I tell my child that he can have these little Debbie cakes, and all these little snack snacks and cheese? It's that everybody else in the neighborhood brings to school with their lunchbox, how am I gonna prove deprive my child of that? I don't think it's good. So I get that pushback regularly? How do you handle it?

Sheila Carroll  11:07  
I handle it by talking about health. And and what we need to do to protect our health. It would be one thing if these if these little Debbie's or whatever, were harmless for us. And so yes, i Those two are, I used to eat things like that, too. But it wasn't healthy for me. And I want something better for my child, I want something better for all these other kids. So I think what we're really talking about is the first is the first step is belief that it's potentially that it is harmful. I don't even want to say potentially harmful. And this is where there's so many mixed messages out there.

Max Sturdivant/Dr. Fitness  11:51  
I was just gonna say because as you're explaining the how dangerous it is, and how deadly it is. The industry has billions of dollars that they're putting into how healthy it is to have just 100 calorie snack pack. You know, if you eat a little less, it'd be better but 10 of those 100 calorie snack packs, you're back into same situation he were before. So how are you got to have your voice go above the sound of the messages that you're getting every day on social media, television, radio? What's the strategy here? What can we do to elevate your strategy

Sheila Carroll  12:37  
is education and education for people and giving, giving, because it it's when I understand why I'm doing something, it's so much easier than just Oh, don't eat that don't eat that don't eat that. But if you really understand what's going on in your body, and it doesn't have to be complicated. I mean, the truth is, it is crazy complicated. And even, you know, I think all the all of the scientists and all of the most amazing, you know, people out there, nobody really understands to totally 100% The human body that's just like a, it's a such an amazing machine, I guess one way you want to put it but if you think of I think about it like this, sometimes this is how I explain it to my son, too. I have a 12 year old. And I say our body is always trying to help us and your body is trying to protect you, your brain is trying to protect you by certain things, thoughts, you're having certain habits. And you also when you eat something or drink something, your body is okay, it receives whatever you've eaten or drank. And then he has to figure out how to process that. So storing a lot of extra weight, which is what's happening in our world right now. That's our wonderful human body, trying to help us like, geez, people, I'm not sure what you're doing, but okay, I'm just gonna keep you know, keep storing it, keep storing it because I don't know what else to do. And when and then in some people that ends up as you know, liver disease, non alcoholic fatty liver disease, or pre diabetes or even type two diabetes or polycystic ovarian syndrome. There's so many, you know, there's so many problems that are coming from so many so many health problems that are coming from our food. But if we look at it, like okay, we are this body, we are this ancient body. And we haven't evolved very, you know, our genes that are processing this food and our metabolism and our hormones. They're the same today that they were 200 years ago. You know, I usually ask kids like who's the oldest person you know, and it's Sometimes they say their mother or their father, but sometimes they go to like Abraham Lincoln, or you know, some historical figure. And I said, Okay, imagine what the food Abraham Lincoln was eating, you know, he wasn't eating, the food we're eating today. And so but our, our genes and our bodies are the same, essentially, as way back then. And so the, the, and it's the same thing with screens, actually. And social media, if you really start to think about it. So these modern, the modern food, the modern screens, the modern social media, our bodies have not evolved to manage those effectively in the quantities that we are now consuming them.

Max Sturdivant/Dr. Fitness  15:54  
Wow. I mean, total real talk. Have you have you written some of this stuff? Because their material, our blog,

Sheila Carroll  16:03  
so I write some things on that? Yeah, I'm trying, I'm going on shows like yours, just just trying to get people started with the information of, you know, we so what can we do? Because if we wait, so worse, if we wait for the government to make the food changes, I mean, that's just never happening. Because there's so much money involved. It's same thing with not to deflect, but I'm up here in Maine. And you know, we just had this terrible shooting event. And, and if we're waiting for, for people, our government to change our laws, and meanwhile, everyone is suffering, all the people are still suffering. So what can we do, especially when it comes to our food? What can parents do to protect their kids, they can control what they can control. So parents can control what they buy and serve their families. And they can control the education of their child, they can help educate their child over time, as it's appropriate for the child to understand. And they can really be the role model in that example, that their child can guide themselves after. We have to take control as parents because, you know, right, I think right now, they say 20% of kids are overweight, I suspect it's a lot higher than that. And even though it's hard to be an overweight kid, it's if you don't want to be

Max Sturdivant/Dr. Fitness  17:45  
you right, and I don't think I know, any kid that wants to be you, I have never met but but I think my thought is very, I'm here with you going wow, I I wished it was a method, like with your method to get the message out. But I think I think each person almost has to be take ownership of this message in some way to spread it, everyone has to get on board and

Sheila Carroll  18:17  
understanding a real sorry to interrupt you. But also the social pressures and the and the marketing you are up against this huge machine, you know, you know, like breakfast cereal is healthy, you know, that is like just that is 100% a marketing idea, you know, or orange juice is healthy for you. You know, so many, so many of these customs are cultural things that we do. We've just kind of accepted and, and, and taken them in in our lives. But now we have to really look around and ask ourselves, okay, is this working for for me? Is this working for my kids? Is this working for all of us? And if you think it's not, you, you do have the power to change, and it's not that hard, and you're gonna feel better. That's the good thing. You know, that's that's the thing. I wish people really like that's, that's the good news. People think, Oh, it's so hard. I used to think that I'm like, literally when i Someone said you should give up flour and sugar. Have you ever tried that? I was I literally thought that sounds insane. I mean, who doesn't eat bread? You know, I really it took me it took me but I thought about it and I thought about it. And then I learned why giving up flour and sugar with my human body. How that affects my insulin levels, my glucose levels, my hunger hormone levels when I learned Oh, if I didn't eat those foods My insulin level would stay low, my body would be able to use some of its own fat stores for energy. And then I would lose weight that way. And my metabolic health would improve. And my glucose levels would be stable all day. So when I learned the science, I was like, Okay, I'll try it.

Max Sturdivant/Dr. Fitness  20:23  
So dark, where did you come across the information? So when you were learning the science, was there a particular book read? Or material that you found that?

Sheila Carroll  20:33  
Yes, for sure. There's a wonderful book called The obesity code by Dr. Jason Fung, F U N. G. He is a kidney specialist. He's an MD who lives I believe he lives in Canada. But he wrote this, he's so he's as a kidney specialist. He's a guy who takes care of a lot of patients with diabetes, and type two diabetes. So he was seeing a lot of his patients with type two diabetes. And he was trying to give them dietary advice like the standard, like the usual standard American diet, eat less move more lose weight, and it wasn't working for them. Then he it when their blood sugar's worsened, and he had to put them on insulin. He saw them gain even more weight. And he said, What is going on? And so he's the guy who, in my mind, at least, he's the guy who, who took that first big step of like, what are we doing? How is it is this the food we're eating, and here's why. Here's why people are gaining weight, because our insulin levels are too high all the time. And our insulin levels are too high, because of two things, the food choices we're making, when you when you eat a food with added sugars, even if you eat a food, like fruit, but we're really not talking about fruit or vegetables here. But if say you have, you know, regular spaghetti sauce, or you know, pasta and spaghetti sauce, jar sauce that you that it has sugar in it. And so if you tracked your glucose level, your glucose level would spike up after that. And because glucose is toxic to our bloodstream and toxic in our body at high levels, our body does what it needs to do to lower the blood glucose level. And how it does that is, well it either uses it so getting a little bit of exercise, after you know, even a walk, even a little walk around your house or your apartment after you eat something that's beneficial better than not, you know, that's actually really good. I don't even want to say better than nothing, because it's good, because your muscles will start using that glucose. But what your body is doing is spitting out a bunch of insulin into your system to that will decrease your blood glucose level. But when you have insulin around in your system, that's a fat storage hormone. So any extra calories are going right to right to fat, and you can't burn any of your stored fat. So to lose weight, with Dr. Funds recommendation, and this is what I did to lose weight. And what I've seen lots and lots and lots of people do to lose weight is keep your insulin levels low. And how you do that is by the food choices that you make. Or the time you know, or the the frequency with which you eat. If you look back in the 19, I think it's the 1980s 70s and 80s. Childhood obesity started rising significantly with the rise of the snack food industry. So in the 50s 60s, and before that, people would eat breakfast, lunch and dinner, they'd have an occasional snack. But there weren't all of these snack foods like Doritos and chips and crackers and all of that stuff that just wasn't really a thing back then. But when we started eating frequently, especially these foods with a lot of flour and sugar, our insulin is getting activated, it's spiking up, the glucose is spiking up and our insulin is going up. So we're in a chronically elevated insulin state most of the day, I think that the average child eats between seven and nine times a day now. They have breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, snack, dinner snack, you know. And so every single if you're living in this chronically elevated state of elevated insulin levels, your body has no time to Burn, it's stored fat, the only time would be when you're asleep overnight. So if we can make some changes to the choice of food we're eating, and also, potentially hopefully not snacking as much eating really well at meals and eat enough at meals to get you to the next meal, you know, four hours, five hours, kids should be able to can for sure do that. That's another thing. We also like have this belief that our kids need snacks all the time. And and that's just not true. If

Max Sturdivant/Dr. Fitness  25:32  
you have that belief. In I guess it's coming to the point where weaning them off of the I guess the it's coming down to strategies at this point, then isn't a Doc, what kind of strategies can we offer? To help parents? So

Sheila Carroll  25:50  
lots? Yeah, lots, there's lots of strategies that we can offer parents. And so if you really think like, oh, okay, I'm going to try this, you know, I think so. Offering strategies such as meals and planning your meals in advance, and so thinking ahead, okay, what am I going to make, that's going to have protein, healthy, fat, complex carbohydrates, fruits, you know, like the whole the meal. And in your child, if you could get your child to help you in that planning, that's such a wonderful thing, too. And then they're like more likely to buy into what they're to what you're serving them, but eating protein and eating healthy fats, that keeps us more full more satiated than eating, you know, things with a lot of added sugar. So planning your meals in advance. And and so if you do have a child who eats and then a couple hours later, they say they're hungry again, okay, no problem, have something like a real food have, have, you know, some chicken or some, you know, whatever it may be, you have something leftover, or you have something coming up from your next meal, but like real out real food, just a smaller, you know, a snack size amount of real food. So I think, you know, this, yes, there's so there's so many different strategies. And I think the first one is really just having the parent get bought in that this is what's super important for their child's health.

Max Sturdivant/Dr. Fitness  27:33  
And helping them so a book for them to read that would be helpful would be the obesity.

Sheila Carroll  27:40  
That's a wonderful book for sure. Yeah.

Max Sturdivant/Dr. Fitness  27:45  
And I'd like to add one to that. And another book that might be helpful is why we get fat and what to do about it. Who wrote that? Gary Todd? Yes.

Sheila Carroll  27:56  
I love that guy. Yeah.

Max Sturdivant/Dr. Fitness  27:58  
Good, good.

Sheila Carroll  28:01  
Sugar, the truth. I've read his books. And he has such a wonderful phrase. Have you heard read in his book, that phrase, those of us that fat and easily? When I heard that, I was like, oh, that's me.

Max Sturdivant/Dr. Fitness  28:23  
I love these books, too. And for me, it was the paradigm. It was the reading material that made the paradigm

Sheila Carroll  28:31  
shift for me. Yeah, he's a wonderful. So.

Max Sturdivant/Dr. Fitness  28:35  
So if you haven't read that book, or the obesity code by Dr. Fung. Just definitely check out Gary Thomas's book. Because you will have a paradigm shift in your thinking, I believe, once you read the book, and I was a staunch believer that it was all hooey until I read the book. And he has done a great job researching the material. He has studies to really show you what happens to populations. It's pretty impressive. So it took me off my high horse thinking I know what's right for moderation of everything. I mean, it was really eye opening. And I think if you haven't taken the time to really do the research, because us talking about it, because I was introduced to it by a physician who's an oncologist. And he realized that women that were suffering from Pecos he had to switch them to this way of eating. And when he recommended it, they were not in. So he had to find ways to get them to be on board. And the book was really helpful to that end. So it wasn't just him talking about it. It was they were able to look at the research and and really see the impact. And not everyone's going to be blown away probably by the research, and that, but I really strongly recommend that you find your way to the place where Dr. Carroll is trying to get you to go. Because it's really very important to have this type of awareness because the buck stops with you. And

Sheila Carroll  30:26  
I think when if parents, most people don't know what insulin resistance even is, and, and that's normal, if you if you're not into if you're not into science, and you're not in, you're not a medical person, how would you even how would you possibly know what that was? But that's what's driving our obesity problem, one of one of the major things that's driving our obesity problem, and it's especially true for our kids, I was gonna throw out another maybe a little bit more easy to digest. If some of your parents or some of your listeners are on Instagram, there's a really great person, her name is the I forget what her real name is. But she goes under the handle of the glucose goddess, do you follow her at all?

Max Sturdivant/Dr. Fitness  31:13  
I have. I think she's out of San Francisco.

Sheila Carroll  31:17  
She I think, yeah, I don't know where she's from, to tell you the truth. And she sounds European to me in some way. But I can't remember. But what she does, she has these really amazing graphics that are her personal, continuous glucose monitor graphics, like, Oh, when I eat oatmeal, this is what happens to my blood sugar. Oh, if I eat a salad, you know, or some fish, I'm just making this up. But if I eat a salad, no good bowl of oatmeal, my glucose level has a flatter curve. So she offers people like a super engaging visualization of exactly what you and I are talking about right now. And she she calls them like life hacks, things to do to kind of flatten that flatten that glucose curve. So your insulin stays lower. And it's very understandable. And it's it's I think that's very relatable for people. So she's She also wrote she's has a couple books, and she has a cookbook out. But it's exactly what we're talking about is keeping our keeping our glucose levels stable. So our insulin levels stay low.

Max Sturdivant/Dr. Fitness  32:24  
And great and, and anything new online for you coming up to help with this, of this form of always

Sheila Carroll  32:32  
trying to put out hopefully things that are understandable and easy for people to read. I do have I do have a free guide, or it's called How to Make parenting around food feel less hard. Oh, and what it what it is, it's a tool that you know, we use this in we use this term like tool, but really what it is it's like a framework to think about the ways that you're going to feed your family. And it's it's this tool called the division of responsibility. I don't know. I don't know if you've ever heard of that. It's it's created decades ago by a dietician named Ellen Sattar and her her framework for feeding kids. And she kind of started this before all the processed food movement. But still, it's it is such a wonderful framework. And it's, it divides the the whole idea of eating into the parents jobs, and the kids jobs. And the parents decide what is going to be served, when it's going to be served, and where it's going to be served. And the child decides if they're going to eat. And if they're going to eat what the parent has decided to be served. And if they're going to eat it, how much. So if we each stay in our lane, and we let our kids decide, you know, we decide what's being offered. And then the child decides how much so there's, there's much less pressure at mealtimes, there's much less drama, there's no you know, finish your plate, or you can't go outside or finish your plate or you can't have dessert or you know, it takes it takes the battle out of the food situation. And it's but it is it is up to the parents to decide what of course that's the biggest thing.

Max Sturdivant/Dr. Fitness  34:42  
I love that when Hey, we I think that's a great place for us to end as we've run out of time. And that is a fantastic place for us to end. Now the internet's another incredibly helpful tip that people can

Sheila Carroll  34:59  
use Thank you. Yeah, they can go to my website, and which is SheilaCarrollmd.com. And then just you can download it right there.

Max Sturdivant/Dr. Fitness  35:09  
Great. And Sheila uploaded her contact information on to our show notes. So well, if you're listening to the show, you go to the show notes, everything is going to be there for you. And I think you will have the pathway to feeding your children better, as well as yourself. So definitely go to Sheila's page and get the contact information. She's done a lot of hard work putting this information together for you. Her blog is fascinating. So definitely read it as well. Sheila, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been a real pleasure speaking with you.

Sheila Carroll  35:46  
I appreciate it.

Max Sturdivant/Dr. Fitness  35:49  
Thank you for listening to this episode of Your Health Moment podcast. If you enjoyed what you've heard, you can visit our website, yourhealthmoment.com for past episodes, show notes, and all the resources that we mentioned on the show. Feel free to connect with me on social media to send me a DM and let me know what your thoughts are about the episodes that you've been listening to. And don't be shy about requesting any other show topics that you might like to explore.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai