The Habit Healers

Can you stand on one leg for 10 seconds? That simple balance test turns out to be one of the most revealing longevity markers we have, and almost nobody gets it checked at a routine physical.

In this episode I walk you through what the single leg stance test is actually measuring and why it matters more than most people realize. Researchers followed adults aged 51 to 75 for seven years, and those who could not hold the position for ten seconds had nearly double the risk of dying from any cause, even after adjusting for age, blood pressure, diabetes, cholesterol, and heart disease. I explain the six systems your body has to coordinate to keep you upright, why the nerves that sense your body’s position in space begin wearing down in midlife before your muscles show any damage, and what brain imaging found in people whose balance time dropped below twenty seconds. Then I give you a practical plan you can start tonight while you brush your teeth. Balance is one of the most trainable abilities at any age, including into the eighties and nineties.

What you’ll learn:

* What the 10-second balance test predicts about healthy aging and longevity

* Why balance declines sharply after 50 while grip strength and walking speed still look normal

* The link between single leg stance time, silent brain changes, and cognitive function

* What five, ten, twenty, and thirty second hold times each tell you

* A simple at-home balance training routine, plus how yoga and tai chi compare for fall prevention

* When worsening balance is worth bringing to your doctor

Dr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/what-standing-on-one-foot-actually

Check out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/about

Are artificial sweeteners actually safe? If you’ve been buying sugar-free products, reading labels, and still guessing, this episode gives you the answer the flat line on your glucose monitor can’t. The problem isn’t that sweeteners spike your blood sugar. It’s what they do to your gut microbiome.

I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, and on this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast I walk through what a randomized trial in 120 healthy adults found when researchers looked past blood sugar readings and sequenced people’s gut bacteria instead. All four sweeteners tested changed what those bacteria were doing, but only two impaired the participants’ ability to handle glucose from every other meal. Then we get into the nine-year data on more than 105,000 adults and type 2 diabetes risk, the 2023 World Health Organization guidance on non-sugar sweeteners, the emerging erythritol and blood clotting findings, and why allulose is the one sweetener that appears to lower post-meal glucose rather than raise it. This is not a scare piece. It’s a sweetener-by-sweetener breakdown so you can stop guessing in the grocery aisle.

What you’ll learn:

* Why a flat continuous glucose monitor reading is the right test for the wrong question

* Which two artificial sweeteners impaired glucose tolerance in the microbiome trial, and why the effect is personalized

* What the erythritol and xylitol platelet research means if you have cardiovascular risk factors

* How stevia, monk fruit, and allulose compare on the current evidence

* Why agave nectar is the most misleading product in the sweetener aisle

* A five-product kitchen audit you can do tonight

Dr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/are-artificial-sweeteners-bad-for

Check out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/about

Most people practicing intermittent fasting skip breakfast and eat a late dinner. The research on meal timing and blood sugar suggests that may be exactly backwards.

In this episode I walk you through early time-restricted eating, the version of intermittent fasting that has consistently performed best in clinical trials, and the circadian biology behind why it works. Your insulin sensitivity peaks in the first half of the day and drops by evening, which means the same dinner your body handled easily at breakfast now takes more insulin to process. I cover the first controlled human feeding trial in men with prediabetes, a 14-week weight loss trial in adults with obesity, and a large analysis of more than forty randomized trials. I also give real time to the strongest counterargument, that these benefits may simply come from eating fewer calories, and why that may not change what you decide to do. Then I get practical, including what I call Fork Down by Four, an eight hour eating window that starts at breakfast and closes in the mid afternoon.

What you’ll learn:

* Why insulin sensitivity and glucose tolerance decline as the day goes on

* How your circadian rhythm and organ clocks respond to meal timing

* What the trials show about early time-restricted eating, weight, and insulin levels

* Why the calorie-restriction counterargument deserves serious consideration

* How to shift your eating window earlier without counting calories

* Protein, muscle, LDL cholesterol, and medication cautions to watch for

Dr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/want-better-blood-sugar-and-blood

Check out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/about

Chef Martin Oswald and I work together inside The Habit Healers community on Skool, where we help people reverse insulin resistance. My Insulin Resistance Reversal Roadmap course lives there, along with Martin’s Healing Kitchen recipe vault, which keeps growing every week with new dishes and videos. I also go live every Tuesday at four PM Pacific for ninety minutes of coaching. Click here to learn more.

I know what most people eat for breakfast. I used to eat it too. Cereal from a box, maybe some toast, maybe a banana sliced on top to make the whole thing feel like a responsible choice. And then ninety minutes later you’re starving again. Or worse, you’re not hungry exactly, but something feels off. You’re foggy and a little irritable and already eyeing the pantry for a snack you didn’t plan on eating.

That mid-morning crash has very little to do with willpower. Your blood sugar just fell off a cliff, and breakfast pushed it off.

Last week on our Wednesday live, Chef Martin Oswald showed everyone how to build a breakfast that avoids that cliff entirely. It takes about twenty minutes. And honestly, it changed what I’m putting on my own plate this week.

The Breakfast Spectrum

So Martin started the session by walking through breakfast foods ranked by how badly they spike your blood sugar, and I want to give you the rundown because I think it’s useful to see them stacked up next to each other.

Cornflakes are the worst. In terms of how fast they hit your bloodstream, they’re basically pure sugar. Martin’s advice on what to do with that box of cheap cereal in your cabinet was to give it to the neighbor you don’t like, which, I mean, that’s one approach. White bread is almost as bad, and Martin made a good point about those classic American breakfast spots where everything on the plate looks beautiful and does absolutely nothing good for your metabolism. Potatoes with the skin on are better because the fiber slows things down. Kidney beans are better still.

But tempeh is way down at the bottom of that spike spectrum. The fermentation gives it fiber, the protein is substantial, and you’re getting B vitamins and potassium and calcium without the saturated fat or cholesterol you’d get from animal sources. I knew tempeh was a good option, but I honestly hadn’t thought about where it lands relative to those other breakfast staples until Martin laid it out like that.

A Chef Who Didn’t Like Tempeh

Here’s the thing about Martin and tempeh. For years he didn’t eat it. He didn’t even put it on the menu at his bistro. Twenty years ago, the stuff you could buy was, in his words, basically all mushroom. The mycelium (that’s the white fungal network that binds the soybeans together during fermentation) overwhelmed everything else. It didn’t taste like food you’d choose to eat. It tasted like a science project.

And I get that. Twenty years ago the options were limited and the product was, to put it kindly, an acquired taste.

What changed is that producers got dramatically better at the inoculation process. The Rhizopus mold that ferments the soybeans gets introduced more precisely now, and the result is a product that’s firmer and meatier, with a lot more range in how you can cook with it. Martin compared it to what happened with craft breweries. One day there were a handful of options, and then seemingly overnight everyone was making their own version. The competition pushed everything forward.

My son actually went to Thailand to learn how to make tempeh from scratch. He came back saying that freshly made tempeh tastes completely different from the store-bought version, and I believe it. The fermentation takes about 48 hours, and the soybeans get bound together by that mycelium network into something that honestly has the texture of chicken. I don’t mean sort of close. If you close your eyes and chew, the mouthfeel is remarkably similar.

Martin used to hunt mushrooms in Colorado (he still gets excited about it, you can tell) and spent years watching mycelium spread across forest floors. He’s read that mycelium may be the largest organism on the planet, because those networks can stretch for miles underground. He made the observation during the live that the same organism holding the forest together is also the thing holding his breakfast together, which got a good laugh.

And tempeh doesn’t have to be soybeans, either. Martin showed a black bean version and one with Mexican-inspired seasoning that had cumin and chipotle built right in. You can find pre-seasoned varieties at most grocery stores now. Or you can start with a plain organic block and do what Martin did, which is season it yourself.

The Cooking Rule Nobody Follows

The recipe itself is short. Tempeh cut into bite-sized pieces, marinated in a splash of soy sauce and some lemon juice (tamari works if you’re avoiding gluten), then crisped in a ceramic pan with about a teaspoon of olive oil.

But the part that I think will actually change how some of you cook happened when Martin put the tempeh in the pan, stepped back, and said three words.

Don’t touch it.

I know. Your instinct is to stir. Everyone’s instinct is to stir. But there’s real food science behind why you shouldn’t. When something goes into a hot pan, the moisture inside the food starts pushing upward as steam. If you leave it alone, the bottom surface dries out, browns through what’s called the Maillard reaction, and eventually releases from the pan on its own. If you stir too early, before that browning happens, it sticks. Every beginner cook knows that frustration of putting food in the pan and immediately poking at it and wondering why everything is glued to the surface. That’s why.

I compared it to making pancakes, where you wait for the bubbles to stop before you flip. Martin said yes, but the bubbles aren’t actually doing the work. They’re just telling you the moisture is steaming out. Underneath, the Maillard reaction is creating flavor and color, and once that browning is complete, the food lifts away from the pan almost by itself.

It works for pretty much anything you’re searing. Tempeh, tofu, vegetables. Get it in the pan and leave it alone. The heat will handle the rest.

At one point Martin grabbed a piece of hot tempeh with his bare fingers and I told him he clearly has no feelings in his hands. His response was that his wife would say he has no feelings at all. Carol, if you’re watching, I’m sure that’s not entirely accurate.

The Number That Actually Matters

While Martin’s tempeh was crisping (and I was under strict orders not to touch it), I jumped in to talk about something that I think confuses a lot of people when they’re trying to make smarter food choices. Most people have heard of the glycemic index. Fewer people know about the glycemic load.

The glycemic index tells you how fast a food will spike your blood sugar. It’s measured on a scale from zero to 100, based on a standard 50-gram serving of digestible carbohydrates. Pure glucose is 100.

But the glycemic index by itself can be misleading. It doesn’t account for how much of that food you’d actually eat in a normal sitting. That’s what the glycemic load does. It takes the speed of the spike and combines it with how many carbs are in a real-world serving. The formula is pretty simple. Glycemic index times grams of carbohydrate per serving, divided by 100.

Watermelon is my favorite example. Glycemic index of 72, which looks terrible. But a typical serving has very little carbohydrate, so the glycemic load is only about four. (I’ll be honest, I personally eat way more than a “typical serving” of watermelon. I can demolish an entire one when they’re in season. But the point holds.)

Quick reference if you want it. Glycemic index under 55 is low, 55 to 69 is medium, above 72 is high. Glycemic load under 10 is low, 11 to 19 is medium, above 20 is high. The tempeh breakfast Martin was making would land squarely at the low end of both scales, which is exactly where you want to be.

Water Sauteing and the Tomato Trick

Once the tempeh was crisped and set aside, Martin built the vegetable side in the same pan. Cauliflower first because it takes the longest to cook and he wanted it to pick up a little color. Then the onions, mushrooms, and peppers went in on top.

Now, instead of pouring in more oil (which is what most restaurant kitchens would do, and honestly what most of us do at home without thinking about it), Martin added about three tablespoons of water. That’s it. He calls it water sauteing. The veggies steam in their own moisture plus that small splash of liquid, and you skip all the extra calories from oil. Martin made the point that professional kitchens pour oil with a heavy hand because it makes everything taste rich, and the customer doesn’t realize how much went in until after the meal when they feel uncomfortably full. I thought about that for a minute and it’s absolutely true.

Then Sherry, one of our regular viewers, said something in the chat that I want to highlight. She said the next tip was worth the whole session. Instead of adding nut butter for moisture and richness (something Martin normally does, and which is perfectly fine if you’re at a comfortable weight), he used a single chopped tomato. Just one. It creates enough moisture to keep the dish from drying out without making it soupy, and you avoid the 200 to 300 extra calories from cashew or almond butter. If weight management is part of your picture right now, especially heading into summer, that swap is worth trying.

After the tomato, Martin added chopped garlic and cooked it just until the raw sulfuric smell shifted to something sweet, about a minute or two. Then he roasted his spice blend in the pan. The blend has cumin, smoked paprika, black pepper, and fenugreek, which Martin said has shown up in blood sugar management research he’s been following. His full blend is on his website if you want to try it. He finished with lemon juice and generous zest from the peel, and he made a point of saying the zest carries even more flavor than the juice. I actually never thought to put that much zest into a breakfast dish, but it makes sense.

The Last Sixty Seconds

The ending happened fast. Martin turned off the heat, dropped a handful of fresh spinach into the pan, and let it wilt from the residual warmth rather than cooking it down. He’s been reading about the chlorophyll and nitric oxide benefits of raw and lightly cooked greens, and he feels strongly about getting them into breakfast whenever possible. The crispy tempeh went back in on top. Then finely chopped cilantro, stems and all, because (and this was new to me) the stems carry more flavor than the leaves. Martin said if you watch cooks in Thailand or Indonesia, they reach for the stems first. I’ve been throwing mine away for years, so that’s changing immediately.

A few peanuts on top for texture and the dish was done.

I was sitting in my RV looking at the tempeh in my own fridge and the cauliflower and red peppers on my counter, and I’m not going to lie, I was already planning to make this for lunch. I had everything I needed.

What You Need

For one serving, you’re looking at a block of plain tempeh (organic if you can find it, any brand works), a splash of soy sauce or tamari, half a lemon, a teaspoon of olive oil for the initial crisp, whatever vegetables you have on hand, one tomato, a couple cloves of garlic, your preferred spice blend, a handful of spinach or other greens, and fresh herbs for the finish.

The order matters more than anything else. You want to marinate the tempeh first, ideally overnight, though even ten to twenty minutes will help it absorb the soy and lemon. Crisp it in the pan (don’t touch it) until it browns and releases on its own, then take it out. Water saute your vegetables in the same pan with a few tablespoons of water and add the garlic and spices once the veggies have some color. Use the tomato for moisture. Once you turn the heat off, the greens and the tempeh go back in together. The residual heat wilts the spinach without overcooking it, and the tempeh stays crispy because you’re not steaming it to death.

Twenty minutes, start to finish. Your blood sugar will barely notice it happened.

Get Martin’s recipe here.

Chef Martin Oswald and I do these cooking sessions live every Wednesday at ten AM Pacific on Substack, and the recipes keep going inside The Habit Healers community on Skool. If you’re working on reversing insulin resistance, my Insulin Resistance Reversal Roadmap course walks you through exactly how to do it. Martin’s Healing Kitchen recipe vault is where all of his recipes live, with new videos and dishes being added all the time. And I go live every Tuesday at four PM Pacific for ninety minutes of coaching. Come join us.

If you’ve ever wondered why you regain weight after dieting, this episode will change how you see it. The weight coming back was never a willpower failure. It was metabolic adaptation, your body’s built-in defense system, doing exactly what it was designed to do.

I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, and on this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast I walk through what the research actually shows about weight loss and weight regain, including the famous Biggest Loser study where metabolism stayed suppressed by hundreds of calories a day for six years, and a locked metabolic ward experiment where the same number of calories from ultra-processed food versus whole food produced opposite results. We talk about why hunger hormones like ghrelin stay elevated for a year after a diet, why GLP-1 medications like semaglutide lead to regain when they stop, and how you can support your own GLP-1 naturally through fiber, legumes, and whole plant foods. I also share why this matters even more during perimenopause and menopause, when shifting hormones make restrictive dieting backfire harder. Then I give you the Lose It Once approach, a way of working with your biology instead of fighting it.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

* Why you regain weight after dieting, and why it is biology, not willpower

* What metabolic adaptation is and how long it really lasts

* How ultra-processed food drives overeating even at matched calories

* How to boost GLP-1 naturally with fiber and whole plant foods

* Why plant-based, high-fiber eating increases satiety without counting calories

* The one small habit to start tonight

Dr. Marbas Substack: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/5-science-backed-ways-to-lose-weight

Check out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/about

We’re surprisingly bad at knowing what actually makes us happy. In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I walk you through the real science of happiness: the everyday habits with the strongest evidence behind them, and the one practice researchers now compare to quitting smoking.

It started with a Yale psychology professor who built a course on happiness and accidentally created the most popular class in the university’s history. Behind that course are eight simple, science-backed happiness practices, and today I rank them honestly by how strong the evidence really is. Some are backed by mortality data spanning millions of people. Others carry a big reputation and thin research to match. I’ll show you which is which, so you can spend your energy where it counts.

Here’s the part most people miss. The two practices with the strongest evidence, social connection and sleep, are the exact two we tend to drop when life gets busy. We’ll also get honest about what gratitude, exercise, kindness, and meditation really do for your mental health, and why understanding all of this is only half the battle.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

* What the science of happiness says actually makes people happy, and what doesn’t

* Why social connection is one of the strongest predictors of longevity

* How sleep quality shapes anxiety, depression, and stress

* What gratitude journaling and acts of kindness truly deliver

* Why meditation helps some things and not others

* How to turn insight into lasting behavior change

Dr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/what-if-your-brain-is-lying-to-you

Check out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/about

Can you sit down on the floor and stand back up without using your hands? That simple move, called the sitting-rising test, may predict how long you’ll live better than most of what shows up on your annual bloodwork. And almost no doctor is measuring it.

In this episode, I walk you through the science behind one of the most fascinating longevity tests I’ve come across, developed by an exercise medicine researcher in Rio de Janeiro and now backed by more than 25 years of data. We talk about why your body works like a load-bearing structure, how it can weaken from the inside while your labs and your weight look perfectly fine, and why the floor asks every system, strength, power, balance, flexibility, and body composition, to show up at the same time. I’ll also cover the 10-second one-legged balance test and what a low score really tells you about fall risk and healthy aging. Then I give you a specific, targeted plan to improve your score, matched to whichever weakness cost you points, so you’re not just told to “exercise more.”

What you’ll learn in this episode:

* How the sitting-rising test works and how to score yourself at home

* Why each one-point improvement is linked to a meaningful drop in mortality risk

* What the 10-second one-legged stand reveals about your balance and longevity

* The four common reasons people lose points and how to fix each one

* Simple strength, mobility, balance, and flexibility exercises that need no equipment

* How to build a safety margin that protects your independence as you age

Dr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/can-you-sit-down-and-stand-up-without

Check out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/about

Want to reverse type 2 diabetes naturally and lower your A1c without white-knuckling it? Most people quit their new eating plan around day 10 or 14, convinced nothing is working. In this episode, I explain why that is the single worst moment to stop, and what is actually happening inside your body when you can’t see it yet.

I walk you through the story of Dennis, a patient who came off 54 units of insulin and five additional medications, and I break down the five biological “clocks” that reset your blood sugar at different speeds. You’ll hear how insulin resistance really develops, why fasting glucose is the hardest number to move, and how your liver, your gut microbiome, your muscles, and even the simple act of tracking each work on their own timeline. All five converge around 30 days, which is why consistency through that window changes everything.

This is science-forward and practical, the kind of thing you can start at your next meal.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

* Why anchoring every meal with protein and fiber flattens blood sugar spikes

* How a 10-minute post-meal walk clears glucose without needing insulin

* Why your gut microbiome shifts within 48 hours, and what feeds the good bacteria

* How a continuous glucose monitor rewires your food choices through simple attention

* What a realistic 30-day plant-based blood sugar reset actually looks like, week by week

A note: if you take diabetes medication, do not stop or adjust it without your doctor. A change this powerful can lower your blood sugar fast enough that your doses need adjusting.

Dr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/what-if-30-days-could-dramatically

Check out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/about

Your grip strength may be the single most powerful predictor of how long you’ll live, stronger than your blood pressure, and the good news is you can improve it at any age. In this episode I explain why a simple dead hang reflects the health of your entire body, and how a 90-year-old set a Guinness World Record in just 30 days.

I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, and this episode starts with Ann Crile Esselstyn, who at 90 hung from a bar for nearly three minutes after barely a month of practice. What her body did wasn’t magic, it was neuroscience, and it points to one of the most overlooked markers in medicine: grip strength. I walk through the research linking grip strength to all-cause mortality, cardiovascular risk, and healthy aging, why muscle power fades before muscle size, and the difference between grip endurance and the maximal grip strength that tracks with longevity. Then I give you a simple, evidence-based way to train it at home, whether you’re starting from zero or ready to add load. If you’ve worried about staying strong, steady, and independent as you age, this one is for you.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

* Why grip strength is a stronger predictor of all-cause mortality than blood pressure

* How the dead hang builds grip strength, decompresses your spine, and protects shoulder health

* Why muscle power fades faster than muscle mass with aging, and what that means for fall risk and independence

* The difference between grip endurance and the maximal grip strength linked to longevity

* Simple, evidence-based ways to improve grip strength at home, including hand grippers and kettlebells

* How a whole food plant-based diet and lifestyle medicine support strength at any age

Dr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/how-did-a-90-year-old-woman-just

Check out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/about

Your body has a hidden safety margin, and it’s been shrinking for years without you noticing. In this episode, I explain physiological reserve: the buffer your organs carry far above what daily life demands, and why it quietly declines with age even when your bloodwork looks normal. Doctors call this slow narrowing homeostenosis, and it’s one of the most important ideas in healthspan that almost no one talks about.

I walk you through the four load-bearing walls of your health, borrowing an engineer’s logic to inspect each one. We look at your metabolic reserve and why insulin resistance can build for decades while your fasting blood sugar stays fine. We talk about strength, and why muscle power fades years before you notice lost muscle, plus why grip strength predicts all-cause mortality better than blood pressure. We get into deep slow-wave sleep, your nightly recovery buffer, and how it shrinks as you age. And we cover social connection, the margin no one thinks to measure, even though weak social ties carry a health risk on par with smoking. Then I give you simple at-home tests for all four, and the first moves to widen whichever one is thinnest.

What you’ll learn:

* What physiological reserve is and how homeostenosis quietly erodes it with age

* Why insulin resistance hides behind normal blood sugar, and how to check your true metabolic health

* How to test grip strength, muscle power, and balance at home for fall prevention

* Why deep sleep is your recovery buffer, and how to protect it after a bad night

* The “2 AM test” for measuring your social connection and building redundancy

* How to rebuild your weakest margin first, the way an engineer repairs a bridge

Dr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/how-to-build-a-resilient-body-that

Check out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/about