Hi everyone,

I am a 37yo male, weighing 280 lbs and I’m 6′ tall. I’m quite obese and until recently I used to feel quite OK and then I went to see a doctor and when they did a routine blood screening they discovered I had high blood sugar levels. Then they did some additional tests with glucose and they diagnosed me with diabetes. I was quite devastated when they told me especially given the fact that I don’t know much about this disease, but I’m trying to be being positive. I started going to the gym and working out and taking my therapy.

I would be very grateful if anyone could help me with the following: I heard that diabetes in the early stages can be cured and overthrown with good diet, exercising and with a healthy lifestyle so I would like to ask anyone with experiences in this, is that true or is it just a myth? Also what are your experiences with online blood sugar diets and programs and do they work?

Any help and advice would be more than helpful.

Jason

Welcome Jason. You might be devastated by the diagnosis but be reassured you can reverse this if you start quickly. Those under 2 years from diagnosis have had some wonderful results and there are many on here who have done exactly what you are hoping for. I am sure they will come on and share their stories. Are you on any meds, what advice did the doctor give you, did he talk about this diet or similar, what are your numbers (BG), are you testing (finger pricking) etc. The more we know the better we can advise, especially if you are on meds.

The best advice I can give is to stop eating white carbs or, if that is too hard, restrict them severely. We are talking about potatoes, rice, pasta, bread, breakfast cereals, processed foods, all wheat products and sugars. Most people think about sugar when they talk about diabetes and we can all give up the biscuits and cakes but what they fail to realise is that carbs are a form of sugar and we have been encouraged to pile our plates high with them, to fill up on them and to snack on them. Do you have any of the books relating to this site. As a diabetic I would recommend the BSD800 by Dr Mosley rather than the Fast800 as it is geared towards diabetes and explains the medical side of things in simple terms.

There is too much to tell you about in one hit so fire your questions as you think of them i.e. what do you eat instead of carbs, where can you find recipes etc. etc. All will become clear as you progress. If you are on meds and able to check your blood glucose do so as the first couple of weeks will see a swift reduction in BG and you need to know how to handle it. Let us know how you are getting on. As for using the PAID online support groups, no-one on here does but there have been some people who have gone on to do that but, of course, we dont hear from them again so dont know if they have been successful or not. Try this for a few weeks before you commit to paying out for what you can get for free here. Plus this site is supported by Dr.M although not personally and there are people with a lot of experience, both of diabetes and this diet.

Hi Jason
Firstly, it’s great that you are so committed to making the changes and, as sunshine-girl says, it’s definitely not a myth you’ve heard although there is debate about if it’s a ‘cure’ or ‘reversal’ – the phrase I’ve heard most is T2 being ‘in remission’. (I think the debate is because it’s still such early days in health organisations’ thinking that reversing T2 is even possible.)

I agree with sunshine-girl’s advice so won’t add much to this. But thought it might help to recommend some good sources of info.
The main dietary ways with a good evidence-base (that I’m aware of) of putting diabetes into remission are
very low calorie diets
low carb & high/healthy fat diets (LCHF)
fasting/intermittent fasting

very low calorie diets
– like sunshine-girl I did this diet, (i.e. Michael Mosley’s 8 week Blood Sugar Diet) which worked for me. I think his other books are also good, but you might want to take things in a bit at a time. l also read up/watched videos about the outcomes of the Newcastle diet (and follow-up DiReCT study), developed by Prof Roy Taylor. He gave patients 600 cals a day (as meal replacement shakes) for a restricted time and got good results. MM based the BSD book on Roy Taylor’s work (which MM acknowledges). I’m not saying do the Newcastle Diet but the background info about why it works etc might be useful. (Also, if you’re in the UK, his work is closely linked into the NHS). You’ll find links to his stuff on Newcastle university site, and on you tube – this is a good place to start
https://www.ncl.ac.uk/magres/research/diabetes/reversal/#publicinformation

low carb & high/healthy fat diets (LCHF)
– sunshine-girl has mentioned why reducing carbs works – there are some great low carb resources – again in the UK, there is Dr David Unwin, a Southport-based GP who has used a low carb diet to treat patients and put them into remission. He’s been recognised by the NHS for his work. You’ll find him on videos on youtube. He’s also produced some useful visual guides – e.g. carbs in common foods shown as teaspoons of sugar here: https://phcuk.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Common-Foods-29.03.2019.png
and others here: https://phcuk.org/sugar/
– another brilliant resource is dietdoctor.com – developed by a Swedish doctor it has some brilliant information, recipes etc. It’s visual guides to low carb veg, fruit, drinks etc are excellent. They do have a paid bit to the site but I’ve never used it as there’s so much free info on there. https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/visual-guides
lastly there are sites like lowcarbdownunder (yes, an Aussie site, and one of my favourites https://lowcarbdownunder.com.au/ ), PHCuk (Public Health Collaborative UK) which have loads of videos you can watch https://phcuk.org/ and https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZO0WD6hn02_6b0_MNTKPgQ/videos
– there’s also lots of good American sites of course just haven’t been on these for a while so can’t find them as easily.

fasting – you can find a lot of info on fasting and intermittent fasting but for a lot of people the go-to guy is Jason Fung, a Canadian nephrologist who has successfully treated a lot of his Type II diabetes patients, originally with low carb but mostly with fasting.

Even if fasting is something you’d never do (although I absolutely believe it works I’ve never really got into it consistently) I’d really recommend watching his videos about T2 diabetes and reading his book The Diabetes Code. (Another of his books, The Obesity Code, is good too). When I was first diagnosed in May 2016 I happened across a couple of Jason Fung’s videos on T2 diabetes on you tube, I watched them again and again, so when I went to my first meeting with the practice nurse a couple of weeks later when she was telling me I’d soon be on insulin and that T2 was a chronic progressive disease I had Jason Fung’s voice in my head telling me it wasn’t chronic and progressive; it was a dietary disease and it was reversible. I can’t tell you how much that helped me. Also, he really helps explain the causes of type II diabetes, e.g. insulin resistance etc

Jason, I’m not saying you need to read all this, it’s just a pointer to the better/best advice out there. Like sunshine-girl, I think it’s just about starting with what you can do, then going from there. About paid support, I’m with sunshine-girl.

Sorry, it’s such a long post.
Jennie xx

Edit – just to add in I was also obese when I was diagnosed T2 in May 2016. I tested my blood sugars every day and my blood sugars (which had been very high on diagnosis) came down fairly quickly and were back in the normal range within 4 months – this was a long time before I had got my weight back into a healthy BMI. I’ve heard a few ‘experts’ say this is typical. So, take heart that you don’t need to have lost all your weight before your blood sugars improve. xx

Ok – I’m going to stop talking now – anyway Strictly is about to start on telly!