Mastering Diabetes

On November 1st I was diagnosed with Diabetes. Which is disappointing in general but particularly for me as back in 2014 I went full on whole food plant based largely because I was obese and pre-diabetic. I was able to drop my weight from 192 to 137 at my lightest but generally around 145 - 150. All my biometrics came back to what is considered normal parameters - Total Cholesterol under 0, LDL under 100, cholesterol ratio around 4.1. Glucose under 100 or a touch over upon occasion.

Well fast forward in time and injuries, changes at work(generally for the positive but disruptive to my schedule), and then the pandemic knocked me out of my patterns. Particularly with the pandemic I became more sedentary and I "pampered" myself with vegan food. I want to emphasize I did not go back to eating the Standard American Diet (SAD) but just loosed up to eat vegan. I also ate more and some of those bad lifestyle patterns came back to roost - sitting in front of the boob tube after work for a couple of hours.

So I wasn't really surprised when got my results on the 1st. I already knew I was just confirming. I had begun to experience the symptoms of diabetes and one, didn't make the connection, and/or two didn't want make the connection. The results confirmed that my A1c went from 5. 1in 2020 to 10.1 and I was prescribed metaformin and rybellus to see if we could bring it down to 8 to start. We scheduled an appointment for December to see where I am at and what if any changes or other action plans to consider. Interestingly enough the number one "food" recommendation was to stay away from coconut oil (good bye vegan cheese).

Coincidentally (or not) I had been seeing the Mastering Diabetes guys' videos recommended to me as I scrolled through youtube. So I have begun reading their book. Not suprisinglingly they are fundamentally promoting a whole food plant based, low-fat diet. Which of course I have learned from the Esselstyn's after watching Forks Over Knives years ago. I took my primary care's suggestion and removed the vegan cheese but I didn't stop there. I made three other small changes - I removed peanut butter and kite hill to start. And I have greatly reduced the amount of bread I eat. All of this is pretty straight forward for me because I did it before so I am not trying to mentally, emotionally, and intellectually wrap my head around diabetes and what it means while trying to make life altering dietary changes. They are just small changes for me.

Here is the interesting thing. While I am now clearly diabetic other biometrics we good. For example, my total cholesterol is still under 150 (145) and LDL was 75. The ratio was normal as well alhtough I don't know it off the top of my head. So clearly staying away from animal products(vegan) has health benefits just not when you go the high-fat route. Another interesting thing is that as I mentioned above I made those small changes to my diet and I've already lost weight in what 11 days? How much you ask? Well I want to wait until I go back and use the same scale at the wellness center - I'm not sure I believe what I'm seeing. I am using a new scale at home so I'm wondering how much of it is the difference in scales so I'm not going to lose my mind over the results.

On 11/01/2022 I was 180.1 pounds, this morning I was 151 pounds! That's close to 30 pounds in 11 days.Like I said I will reserve judgement until I validate it at my next appointment but egads that's potentially a lot of weight lost really easily. I definitely can feel that I have lost weight but that number was like sticker shock. It was a scale problem I only lost 2 pounds, lol.