Reverse type 2 diabetes dishes with that target your tum

HAve you started 2021 heavier than you’d like to be? Are you feeling sluggish, and sleeping badly? Join the club — after what ’s been a difficult time, many people have begun the New year fatter, less fit and more stressed than ever.

And as you piled on the pounds, the chances are your blood sugar levels, blood pressure and cholesterol have all risen.

your body may also be struggling with another hidden enemy , chronic inflammation, which is linked to a host of serious conditions including depression, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, dementia and c ancer, as well as i ncreased vulnerability to infections such as Covid-19.

The good news is you can start to undo that damage right now.

All this week the Mail will be publishing delicious and simple -toprepare recipes based on The F ast 800 easy, a new book written by my wife Dr Clare Bailey, who has been a GP for more than 30 years.

Although it is easy to do, The F ast 800 easy is a product of many years of research, including a recent study which Clare ( who has extensive experience in helping people tackle their health problems through diet) carried out with scientists from Oxford University.

Their research showed that patients who followed this low carb, low calorie approach were able to safely lose 20lb in two months — five times more than those given standard weightloss advice.

They also dramatically improved their blood sugar levels.

Not only are Clare’s r ecipes delicious (I speak from personal experience!) but the added bonus is that they’re based on kitchen cupboard staples t hat are convenient and affordable, a n d d o n’ t require any complicated preparation.

Every day this week I will be writing about the benefits of this approach for different health problems (with that day’s r ecipes off eri ng particular benefits for that condition).

Today I’m focusing on obesity and two of its related diseases — type 2 diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).

Thanks to our burgeoning waistlines more than four million people in the UK have type 2 diabetes and at least another eight million have prediabetes.

And though you may not have heard of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, it’s estimated that up to one in three British adults is now in the early stages of it. This is worrying as it can lead to serious liver damage, including cirrhosis, and liver failure.

As well as undermining your long-term health, being seriously overweight can also be dangerous in the short term.

According to Public Health england, people with type 2 diabetes are twice as likely to end up in intensive care if they get Covid-19. Another disturbing finding is that while younger p e o p l e a r e n o r mal l y a t much lower risk when it comes to Covid, this isn ’t the case if you’re overweight.

A recent U.S. study of data from more than 7,600 patients found that those who were overweight or obese were at greater risk of serious complications f rom Covid, whatever their age. Why?

This i s partly because too much fat around your gut often leads to type 2 diabetes and hypertension, which are both conditions that result in worse outcomes for Covid.

But i t i s also because the coronavirus uses an enzyme called ACe2 to infect human cells, and there is a lot more of that enzyme in fat tissue. T o properly understand the threat posed by o ur e x panding waistlines I need to go back to basics.

Although we talk about ‘getting fat’, the number of fat cells we have doesn’t increase, the cells just get larger.

When the fat cells around your gut get full, your body has to store further excess fat in your liver and pancreas. That ’s when your problems really start.

Normally after you eat a meal, particularly one rich in carbs, your blood sugar levels soar. your pancreas responds by producing the hormone i nsulin, which brings blood sugar levels down by moving the excess glucoseinto your muscles and other cells.

But when your l i ver and pancreas becomes clogged up with fat, this process gets thrown into turmoil.

your muscle cells become resistant to insulin’s knock at the

door — so more and more glucose has to be stored as fat. At some point your body can’t make enough insulin to keep blood sugar levels in check and you develop type 2 diabetes.

The build-up of fat in your liver can also lead to NAFLD.

The good news is that both conditions can be reversed through rapid weight loss, as Roy Taylor, who is Professor of Medicine and Metabolism at Newcastle University, first showed ten years ago.

In the case of type 2 diabetes, you need to lose just one gram of fat from the pancreas to change things, but to do that, you need to lose at least 10 per cent of your body weight.

The DiRECT study, which Professor Taylor set up with Professor Mike Lean from Glasgow University, showed that patients with type 2 diabetes on an 800calorie-a- day diet were able to lose — and keep off — an average of 22lb, and nearly half were able to put their diabetes into remission.

Even more impressively, Professor Taylor has recently shown that if you keep the weight off, the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas usually spring back into life.

I’ve tried this approach myself after being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 2012. I am 5ft 11in and at the time I was 13st 5lb.

I didn’t look particularly fat, but that was because a lot of the fat I was carrying was internal.

I managed to get my blood sugar levels back to normal by rapidly losing around 20lb in eight weeks.

Crucially, I lost nearly four inches around my waist, suggesting that I’d stripped my liver and pancreas of fat.

We know a lot more about the science of weight loss than we did back in 2012 — that’s why, if you are suitable, I recommend you start with my rapid weight-loss programme (where you eat 800 to 850 c a l or i e s a day f or anything between two and 12 weeks) before moving onto the New 5:2, a less intensive, intermittent-fasting phase, where you eat 800 calories on just a few days a week.

On the last phase, which is about maintaining this weight loss, you continue with the tasty, healthy, Mediterranean- style way of eating, exercising portion control but not having to count calories.

That’s where Clare’s recipes come in.

These are the kinds of recipes that have inspired and helped her patients lose weight, and now they can help you, too.