I need to take a break from blogging for a few weeks.

For those of you who follow this blog you know that in March of this year I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes and that was, to say the least, a life changing moment.  Through the help of my endocrinologist and maintaining a strict adherence to diet, exercise and medication I was able to bring my Diabetes under control and was very thankful for that major accomplishment that happened in just 3 months.

The doctor told me that I could keep taking two pills a day, watching my diet and continue with my exercise for the rest of my life and I’d die from something unrelated to Diabetes and that was my main goal.  But I have a stretch goal of controlling my diabetes without medication (and the side effects that come along with it) and thanks to the counsel of Blaine in this blog comment I have decided to give it a go.

Research at Newcastle University has uncovered a way that some people who have recently been diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes can reverse this condition through a brief period of intense dieting.

“Our work has shown that type 2 diabetes is not inevitably progressive and life-long. We have demonstrated that in people who have had type 2 diabetes for 4 years or less, major weight loss returns insulin secretion to normal.”

“It has been possible to work out the basic mechanisms which lead to type 2 diabetes. Too much fat within liver and pancreas prevents normal insulin action and prevents normal insulin secretion. Both defects are reversible by substantial weight loss.”

“A crucial point is that individuals have different levels of tolerance of fat within liver and pancreas. Only when a person has more fat than they can cope with does type 2 diabetes develop. In other words, once a person crosses their personal fat threshold, type 2 diabetes develops. Once they successfully lose weight and go below their personal fat threshold, diabetes will disappear.”

“Some people can tolerate a BMI of 40 or more without getting diabetes. Others cannot tolerate a BMI of 22 without diabetes appearing, as their bodies are set to function normally at a BMI of, say 19. This is especially so in people of South Asian ethnicity.”

The diet is not easy and basically amounts to living on 800 calories a day for up to 8 weeks and I started it today.  Suffice it to say I’m hungry all the time and don’t have much energy in the evening (when I do my blogging) so I’ll need to limit (if not eliminate entirely) my time on the computer in the evenings during the duration of this diet.  I don’t think it’ll take me 8 weeks to determine if this diet works because my BMI is already ‘normal’ at 24.5 but I’ll stick with this at least 3-4 weeks to see if this works for me.

For those who follow this blog, you know I am a slave to data and love analyzing it to draw conclusions.  So rest assured I’m taking good notes and logging my intake, weight and blood sugar along the way to chart my progress.  There will be a nice long post once this is over!

Because I stopped my Diabetes medication a couple of days ago and I’m drastically altering my diet, I’m taking more frequent blood sugar measurements and I’m happy to say that day 1 has been encouraging because all the measurements today have been between 100 and 110.  Still a long way to go and the data will tell the tale along the way.

Until then, I’ll still read blogs and tweet periodically but won’t have the time or energy at night for writing posts.  Maybe I can catch up on my reading backlog instead of hammering away on the computer.

See you in a few weeks!