Eat to Beat Diabetes
THE DELICIOUSLY SIMPLE DIET THAT COULD SAVE YOUR LIFE
FROM relying on a walking stick to happily walking six miles a day. Losing 7st in just eight months. Conquering eczema, asthma and chronic pain. And, of course, beating diabetes.
As the extraordinary stories of Mail readers on these pages show, my 8-Week Blood Sugar Diet, serialised in this newspaper at the beginning of the year, has been astonishingly successful — and not merely for the purpose for which it was created.
I wrote the 8-Week Blood Sugar Diet — a simple eating plan that uses fasting to shed weight quickly — to help those who, like me and millions of others, had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, or who were at risk of diabetes, and wanted to use their diet to slow or even reverse the progression of this disease.
I knew The 8-Week Blood Sugar Diet also had the added benefit of helping anyone who wanted to lose weight — and fast!
Indeed, the five women featured here have lost 25st between them. But even I didn’t imagine it could be so utterly life-changing for so many. NOW my GP wife, Clare (writing under her maiden name, Dr Clare Bailey), and dietitian Dr Sarah Schenker have written a new 8-Week Blood Sugar Diet recipe book to give those following the plan an even wider choice of deliciously healthy meals.
Recipes from the new book will be exclusively featured in the Mail every day next week in a series of unmissable pullouts. We’ll also offer invaluable tips for anyone who wants to join the Blood Sugar Diet revolution for the first time. IN The original Blood Sugar Diet book, I brought together all the latest science which showed how following a healthy, low- carbohydrate Mediterranean-based diet can slow the progression of diabetes and maybe even reverse it.
I could also see that the diet would reduce dependency on medication.
Indeed, after my surprise diabetes diagnosis in 2012, I was offered medical treatment. Instead, I decided to create a new type of diet — the now hugely popular 5:2 diet, where you eat normally five days a week and cut your calories down to around 600 calories for two days.
I followed it, losing 9kg in 12 weeks, and my blood sugar levels returned to normal.
I was thrilled, but it wasn’t until I met Professor Roy Taylor, of Newcastle University, one of europe’s leading diabetes experts, that I discovered why weight loss had produced such a dramatic impact on my blood sugar levels.
Studies he and his colleagues carried out show a diet of 800 calories daily for eight weeks can lead to dramatic weight loss (the average is 14kg) and is very manageable.
This weight loss shrinks the fat inside your tummy (fat here greatly increases your risk of diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure), which in turn drains the fat from your liver and pancreas.
This leads to a rapid improvement in blood sugar levels, meaning many patients can come off, or reduce, their diabetes medication.
enthused, I decided to write The 8-Week Blood Sugar Diet. It helps you stick to 800 calories a day for eight weeks in the healthiest possible way.
Its principles are simple: eat healthy fats, avoid the evils of sugar and highly processed or starchy carbohydrates, and stick to a nutrient-packed diseasefighting Mediterranean diet of fish, nuts, eggs, full- fat yoghurt, fresh meat, olive oil, salads and vegetables.
The most impressive success stories have come from people who have stuck to 800 calories a day for eight weeks. But sticking to 800 won’t be suitable for everyone. If you are on medication you should talk to your doctor before starting.
But the beauty of this diet is
HEALTHY RECIPES TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE HOW DOES THE DIET WORK?