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Tired of being a Type 2 diabetic? Read on!

For most people, this is a lifestyle disease, not a “medication” disease. Medications can help you live with Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), if that’s your goal. You have to decide for yourself what YOU want to do… live with diabetes, or live without diabetes. When you look at all the complications of Type 2 diabetes, why would you choose to live WITH it? For most people, it IS a choice. Make the right choices and live without it; make the wrong choices and die with it. Simple. This blog is for those that want to live WITHOUT it! Be sure to consult with the practitioners currently managing your diabetes if you’re making significant lifestyle changes that will affect your blood sugars. If you’re taking medications, hopefully they can start eliminating these, or at least decreasing the dosages.

Why are you a Type 2 diabetic?

You're not a Type 2 diabetic because you have a congenital metformin deficiency. You’re a Type 2 diabetic because your body has become resistant to insulin. You're not deficiency in insulin, either. Type 1 diabetics are insulin deficient. Type 2 diabetics typically have insulin levels that are significantly above normal. They're insulin-resistant. Their insulin quit working like it should, so their pancreas must pump out even more insulin, trying to get an effect. There are lots of reasons why this has happened, but the number one reason for most people is poor food choices... too many foods that don't offer much beyond providing you with a significant carbohydrate load. Carbohydrates, for the most part, are those things you consume that are either sugars or get converted easily into sugar by your body, like starches. Exceptions include fiber (which can have positive impacts on your body and aren't likely to raise your blood sugar) and sugar alcohols, such as erythritol (which may or may not affect your blood sugar).

Is this your fault?

Yes and no. You have knowingly AND unknowingly made poor choices. But don't blame yourself too much... you've had A LOT of help on your way to diabetes! Let's try to fix this!

Rule #1: Eat Like Your Great-Grandmother Did!

If your great-grandmother made bread, what ingredients did she use? She likely used FOUR ingredients... flour, water, salt, and yeast. These are all common kitchen ingredients, or they traditionally were, before everyone became a diabetic. What's in Wonder Bread? Wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid, water, sugar, yeast, calcium carbonate, wheat gluten, soybean oil, salt, sodium stearoyl lactylate, calcium stearoyl lactylate, monoglycerides, mono- and diglycerides, distilled monoglycerides, calcium peroxide, calcium iodate, diacetyl tartaric acid ester of mono- and diglycerides ("DATEM"), ethoxylated mono- and diglycerides, enzymes, ascorbic acid, vinegar, monocalcium phosphate, citric acid, cholecalciferol, soy lecithin, and calcium propionate. That's up to 34 ingredients! 35 if you count "sesame" that the label indicates could be a contaminant.

How many of those ingredients did you recognize? I'm guessing your answer is "Not many". A simple rule of thumb: "If it's not part of a well-stocked pantry, don't eat it!". There are SIX of these in my well-stocked pantry, seven if you count sesame oil or sesame seeds. Wonder Bread is NOT a food! It is a "Food-Like Substance". Food-Like Substances are often inflammatory and inflammation makes you more insulin-resistant (Think "more diabetic"). Avoid Food-Like Substances, in favor of actual food! Does this mean you can eat home-made bread with impunity? No, but making it yourself is laborious, so this will naturally limit the quantity you eat. Also, by avoiding the chemical preservatives ("embalming fluids"), your bread will spoil much quicker, further limiting its consumption.

Rule #2 Read The Nutritional Labels!

If you don't read the labels, you don't know what you're getting. The labels can be confusing if you don't know how to read them.

Let's take a look at the venerable Kellogg's Corn Flakes. The first thing to notice is the total carbohydrate. The total carbohydrate is a combination of simple sugars, complex sugars (like starches), fiber, and sugar alcohols. It's primarily the simple sugars and the complex sugars we're concerned about. Fiber shouldn't be a problem for you. In theory, sugar alcohols shouldn't be a problem either, but this may not be entirely true for everyone.

In the corn flakes nutritional facts, we see a 1½ cup serving with ¾ cup of skim milk has 45 grams of carbohydrate. Like most ultra-processed foods (UPF), it contains little fiber... only 1 gram. This means there are 44 grams (45 grams total - 1 gram fiber) of carbohydrates that can potentially affect your blood sugar. This is a massive amount. Some experts recommend a very low carbohydrate diet for patients with T2DM (20-50 grams/day), others recommend a higher 100 gram daily limit. Even with this somewhat generous 100 gram limit, a serving of this cereal with skim milk eats up nearly half your daily carbohydrate limit.

Do you need to limit your daily carbohydrate intake immediately? Probably not. A suggested first step is to not decrease your carbohydrate intake at all! Just log your intake so you know how much you're consuming. If you need help logging your daily intake, I recommend the MyFitnessPal app, available for iPhone and Android. While the premium plan (currently $79.99 per year) is the easiest and most helpful, even the free plan is useful. Once you've created a baseline for yourself, try taking small steps, like a 10% reduction in your baseline every month. Even if you're consuming a whopping 300 grams of carbohydrates per day, a 10% reduction every month will put you below 100 grams per day in less than a year. You might even find you don't need to reduce your carbs that low to eliminate T2DM!

Let's take a look at another example... potatoes! Look at the row labeled "Total Sugars" in the next "Nutrition Facts" figure. It says 2 grams of total sugars... that's not bad, right? Well, your body and the FDA see sugars a bit differently. A medium potato has nearly 37 grams of total carbohydrate, but only about 4 grams of fiber, giving you about 33 grams of sugar-raising carbohydrates. "Total Sugars" on the nutrition label only includes simple sugars, like glucose (a single sugar) and sucrose (a 'double' sugar composed of two sugars...glucose and fructose). Complex sugars, such as starch, are NOT included, even though they are digested to simple sugars in our gastrointestinal tract. The starch in potatoes is not sweet at all, but the enzyme salivary amylase breaks it down into sweeter sugars, namely maltose and dextrin. That's why potatoes taste so good! Further down the gastrointestinal tract, these get broken down to glucose by more enzymes.

Rule #3 Try To Buy Foods Without Nutritional Labels!

Ever see a nutritional label on a head of broccoli? Me neither! Some of the healthiest foods don't typically HAVE nutritional labels... unprocessed foods usually don't.

Rule #4 Get A Good Night's Sleep

Numerous studies have shown that a good night's sleep is extremely helpful in achieving glycemic control and lowering insulin levels. Quality sleep is important... it's not just about logging hours in bed. Another blog post goes into this topic more thoroughly. See it here.

Rule #5 Exercise Is Crucial

Continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) have given us critical insight into exercise. Timing is important. Try to exercise for 15-20 minutes after each meal to minimize post-meal glucose spikes, which lead to insulin spikes, sabotaging your attempts at regaining insulin sensitivity. While strenuous exercise is more helpful, even light exercise is beneficial. While training with resistance bands and weights is often more helpful than aerobic training, any exercise is helpful. Resistance training AND aerobic training is the very best. More on this later.

Pulling It All Together

Lifestyle modifications are critical if your goal is to eliminate Type 2 Diabetes. Follow the simple steps above and you'll be on your way to post-diabetes. Proper nutrition, exercise, and sleep are your friends!