Diabetes Update

Back in January I talked about my Type 2 Diabetes diagnosis. It is now 7 months later, and I am proud to say that I have reversed my Type 2 Diabetes.

I am still using the Diabetes:M app that I discussed before, to track my daily calorie/carb intake.

I changed my diet, I did not just continue to eat as I did before and rely upon the insulin to correct my glucose. I started off by changing to a more of a restricted carb diet, this was the recommendation from the Dr. at the hospital. This consisted of eating fewer carbs, but not what I would consider a drastic change. It was a restriction of 75g of carbs per meal.

A few weeks in to January, I adjusted even more. I went to more of a Ketogenic style, or Atkins Modified, diet. Typically, I consume fewer than 40g of carbs per day, which is not as restrictive as either of these diets, but it is what I am currently following. When I started doing this diet, I didn't even know what a Ketogenic diet was. This was just a restriction that I put upon myself. My meals consist of high protein, high fat, low carb items. My go to is Potbelly's Farmhouse Salad (sans the tomatoes, because I don't like them) with the Potbelly Vinaigrette Dressing. This is about 560 calories, and 14g carbs. Or I will have the Jimmy John's #15 Tuna Unwich (again, no tomatoes). About 650 calories, and 9g carbs. But I also go to places like 5 Guys and get the Bacon Cheeseburger… The key is to axe the bread, and fries. I eat a lot fewer calories than I used to as well. On average, I consume 1,350 calories per day.

A lot of this change in my diet stemmed from an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience with guest Neil DeGrasse Tyson. In the episode, Neil said "If a physicist wrote a diet book it would be one line: Consume fewer calories than you burn". That sentence made complete sense to me. It is so simple. So that is what I did. Also in that episode, they talked about how Terry Crews does intermittent fasting. He only eats within an 8 hour window of the day. I also adapted that practice. I eat lunch at about 11:30am (or 12:00pm) and then I have dinner at about 6:30pm. I may have a snack of like a SlimJim type of food in between. But after 8:00pm I do not eat again, until lunch the next day.

Back in December, when I was admitted to the hospital, I weighed in at 347lbs. And this was after about a week or 2 of me not really eating because I was not feeling well. As of this morning, the day of writing this, I am 265.6lbs. That is 81.4lbs lost in 7 months, for those that are counting. Keep in mind, everything I described above is dietary changes. I have not added really any exercise to my day, except maybe a little bit of walking. The next phase of this will be to work in exercise to my daily routine.

This is just the beginning of my story. This is not the end. This is not something that I can say "Oh, I can eat what ever I want again, I am not a diabetic any more".

I never liked to share pictures of myself, because I was not happy with my appearance, while I am not satisfied to call it done, I will say that I am a lot happier with how I look, and feel. The picture on the left is back from October 2015 (It was the most recent photo I could find), the picture on the right is from the end of July 2017.