Tag: A1C

I used Intermittent Fasting to reduce my A1C from 14+ to 5.9 in less than 6 months!

Just six months ago, I was in a diabetic crisis. Flashback to January 13, 2020, I was a type 2 diabetic with a blood glucose reading of 450. I went to the doctor, and he did an A1C test.  The results (see pic) came in as 14+. My doctor said I was on my way to needing insulin.  He immediately added a second medicine to reduce blood sugar and advised me to go on a low glycemic index diet, along with daily exercise. 

Less than two weeks later, on January 21, 2020, I woke up, and my eyes couldn’t focus on anything. I couldn’t read anything, and everything was a big blur, I couldn’t read any letter that wasn’t at least 2 feet tall. My wife rushed me to the ER, and they performed a series of tests and sent me home with a referral to an ophthalmologist. I saw the ophthalmologist a few days later, and he said the blood vessels in my eyes were under distress from diabetes. He asked how my A1C was, and I let him know that I had just had a 14+ test and added glipizide to my medications to help lower my A1C.  The addition of the glipizide and a new strict low glycemic index diet had helped bring my daily blood sugar test down from 450 to about 250.  Hearing this, he knew what was happening because he said he had seen it before.  Over time my eyes and the blood vessels had adjusted to the high levels of sugar in my blood.  That was constricting the blood vessels, and the sudden decrease in blood sugar was putting less pressure on the blood vessels.  The result is that my eyes were trying to adjust to this, and he thought if I continued to lower my A1C, my eyes would self adjust in about a month.  As a result of this wait and see (pun intended) approach, I had to call into work for a week because I still couldn’t see, and the ophthalmologist recommended not get any new glasses until I had another eye exam in a month.

The drastic change to my eyesight and my recent A1C test was the epic health scare that I needed to make real change in my life.  Over the next month, I searched for a way to create a healthy lifestyle and then discovered Dr. Jason Fung and the Intermittent Fasting lifestyle. That led me to Gin Stephens and Delay Don’t Deny. On April 5, 2020, I started Intermittent Fasting. Since then, I have lost nearly 30 pounds, my vision returned to normal, and I went back to my old glasses. My daily glucose levels now register between 89-110. On June 26, 2020, I went for a checkup, and my A1C was 5.9! (See pic). My doctor took me off glipizide, and the new goal is to get off metformin eventually. I return in October, intending to be 5.6 or below.  The last six months have been an incredible journey.  I have had some successes, but there is still a long way to go on this health journey.  I have proved to myself that I can lose weight and reverse my diabetes through Intermittent Fasting. This is not a diet for me. Instead, this is a new way of life.  It is the beginning of a new lifestyle.

I tried intermittent fasting for 30 days with type 2 diabetes.

I had a blood sugar of 450, and my A1C was 14. I was told that when you have incredibly high blood sugar, your body goes into a crisis mode, and one way of getting your attention is a rapid weight loss. Well, it now had my attention.

I have been trying to lose weight for the last nine months without much success.  From July 2019 until January of this year, I lost 30 pounds, but it wasn’t a healthy way to lose weight. 

I lost weight quickly at the end of 2019 because I let my diabetes get out of control.  As 2019 came to an end, I hadn’t checked my blood sugar levels in over four months, and I was eating whatever I wanted until it put my body in a crisis.  In January 2020, I went to my doctor and found out that my diabetes was out of control, and I was on my way to becoming someone who was going to start needing to take insulin.  That day at the doctor’s office, I had a blood sugar of 450, and my A1C was 14.  I was told that when you have incredibly high blood sugar, your body goes into a crisis mode, and one way of getting your attention is a rapid weight loss.  Well, it now had my attention.  I quickly moved to a low glycemic diet and started walking 10,000 steps per day.  Within 90 days, I had lowered my average blood sugar to 150 and my A1C to just over 8, but I only lost 2 pounds.  I wanted to find a way to not only control my blood sugar but also to lose weight.  One day someone told me to look into intermittent fasting. 

Thirty days ago, I decided to try intermittent fasting to help with my weight loss and diabetes control.

I didn’t know a lot about intermittent fasting, so I did a lot of searching on google and watched a lot of YouTube videos. This was when I discovered Dr. Jason Fung. Dr. Fung is a Canadian doctor who many consider the leading authority on intermittent fasting and its effects on weight loss and diabetes.  There are a lot of videos featuring Dr. Fung. If you are interested in learning the science behind intermittent fasting, I will encourage you to look for videos featuring him. 

What is intermittent fasting?  Intermittent fasting is an eating pattern in which your body is either in a stage of eating or a stage of fasting.  There are many popular intermittent fasting cycles.  Some of the most popular are 16:8 in which you fast for 16 hours and eat during an 8-hour window.  Others include 20:4, which is similar to 16:8, and 24 hour fast periods, 36 hour fast periods, and multiple days of fasting. 

What are the benefits of intermittent fasting?  The benefits include lower insulin and blood sugar levels.  Increased fat burning and weight loss.  Improved mental clarity and concentration.  Increased energy.  And for me, the most critical is the possible reversal of type 2 diabetes. 

As a person with type 2 diabetes, what appeals to me is lower insulin and blood sugar levels and possible reversal of diabetes.  How could that be possible?  The science says that type 2 diabetes is when the body has a problem processing sugar and may have even developed insulin resistance.  Dr. Fung does a great job of comparing the body to an empty glass.  I am going to try to paraphrase Dr. Fung, but if you have a chance, look him up.  Now, imagine that your body was a glass, and you kept pouring sugar in without stopping.  Eventually, that glass would overflow unless you found a way to stop filling the glass or, better yet, found a way to empty the glass.   In a healthy body, insulin would represent a lid that you would put on the glass that would keep the sugar from building up, but if you have insulin resistance from type 2 diabetes, it would be like your lid was filled with holes and sugar kept pouring in and filling up the glass—eventually overflowing the glass.  When we continually eat all day, we are just filling up the glass more and more without giving it a break and letting it overflow.  When you fast intermittently, you are limiting how often you eat.  By doing this, you make the cup stop filling and make it even start to empty.  For a person with diabetes, this creates lower blood sugar levels and allows your body to start using up the sugar that is already in your blood and allows you to start losing weight.  Yes!  Losing weight is a good thing for type 2 diabetics. 

What I learned:

  1.  I liked to have a 6:00 PM cutoff. This was ideal for me because it allowed me to be able to break my fast around 10:00 AM and be able to have breakfast. 
  2. It got more natural over time. The first week was my hardest as my body adjusted. As time went on, I found it more comfortable and easier to go 16 hours and even to push my fast to 18 hours and beyond.
  3. I became better hydrated. I found that when I wanted to eat during my fasting periods that I could make that desire go away by drinking a glass or two of water. The side effect of this was better hydration.  I noticed my urine go from a yellowish color to almost clear during these 30 days due to all the water I was drinking.
  4. Late at night was the hardest time to fast. For me, I noticed that after 11:00 PM, I wanted to eat. Part of that may have been habitual since I tended to be a late-night snacker. This is the time of the day that I used to like to have my “fourth meal” of the day, and I would indulge in a big snack or sometimes even an extra full meal.
  5. I found myself with more energy, not less. Going into this, I thought that by not eating, I would be lethargic, but the opposite happened. I ended up waking up with more energy and ready to start my day. In fact, I was waking up even earlier than before and not feeling as tired throughout the day.

Now, onto my results.  When I started intermittent fasting, my 30-day blood sugar level average was 145, and I would usually test anywhere from 125 to 175.  That morning I had what I considered to be a good blood sugar level of 126.  After 30 days, my blood sugar level in the morning was 89.  That was a 37 point drop, and my seven-day average was 99.  That is a change from the 30-day average before intermittent fasting of 145.  My average was 46 points lower.  Lastly, you want to know if I lost weight.  Yes!  I started at a weight of 295.4, and this morning I weighed in at 284.6.  That is a 10.8-pound weight loss. Let’s just round that up and say that I lost 11 pounds.  That is great. Over the previous 90 days, I had only lost 2 pounds. 

I am delighted with my results from intermittent fasting, and I am going to continue for another 30 days.  So keep checking back to see my progress.

My health journey begins

There is a famous quote that says, “A Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins with a Single Step.” These are my first steps.

I originally wanted to call this entry my weight loss journey, but as I began to think about it, my journey is more than about weight loss… it’s about my health.  I used to be very healthy and active when I was young.  In high school, I played football and ran track.  After high school, I was involved in intramural sports in college.  As I got older, got married, and had kids, I became less active, and like a lot of people, I kept eating like I was far more active than I actually was. In high school, I played inside linebacker on our football team, and I had a playing weight of 182 pounds.  By the time I was in my late twenties I was about 235 pounds, by my mid 30’s it was 280 pounds and my mid 40’s it was about 330 pounds.  Looking back, I was putting on about 50 pounds per decade, or about 5 pounds per year.  When it’s only 5 pounds per year, it creeps upon you, and you don’t realize how big you are getting. 

About four years ago, I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, and I figured no big deal.  I will just take a pill once a day, and it will be ok.  It wasn’t ok.  One pill a day became two pills a day, and eventually three pills.  By January 2020, I was neglecting my diabetes and sometimes taking my medicine and sometimes not.  I was never watching what I ate.  Daily blood sugar testing, that was never happening.  I went for about five months without a test.  Probably because I knew I was going to have high numbers and didn’t want to deal with it.  Then in January 2020, I switched physicians and went in for a physical so that my new doctor would prescribe me the other medications I needed.  I was on different medications for high blood pressure and high cholesterol.  I was a mess.  They say that for many people, they don’t make a change until they are faced with a crisis.  This was the day that was a shocker for me.  I was in a crisis.  My blood sugar that day was over 450, and my A1C was over 14.  My doctor said I needed to make immediate changes that day, or I was in danger of becoming insulin-dependent, possible blindness, neuropathy, and possible future amputations caused by diabetic complications.  Why didn’t I do something before this visit?  I was trying to convince myself that my diabetes wasn’t that bad even though I wasn’t checking it.  After all, I had lost just over 30 pounds in the last six months and wasn’t doing much at all to lose it.  I should have known better.  The extremely high blood sugar level was causing rapid weight loss.  It was my body’s way of screaming for help.

Thud.  That was the sound of a brick just hitting me.  I immediately changed my diet that day.  Gone were all the sugar and complex carbs.  I was focused on a low glycemic index diet from now on.

Along with the changes to diet, I had to get more active.  At my size, running was out of the question, so I had to start a walking regime.  I had heard over the years that you should get in 10,000 steps a day, so that was my goal.  I started off slow at first just going on 1 – 1 1/2 mile walks in the morning, then adding a walk in the evening so that I could get my 10,000 steps in.   There is a famous quote that says, “A Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins with a Single Step.”  These are my first steps.  Follow along with me on my health journey by following along in my blog to see what happens next.