Vegan Diabetic

I've spent most of my life on quick-fix diets, cleanses and eating food I didn't like.  I learned the hard way that changing my basic eating habits was the only way to manage diabetes in the long run.

 

   One person every 20 seconds loses a limb, one person every six seconds dies due to diabetes related complications. By the time you finish reading this intro-duction 14 people have lost lower limbs and 46 will have died.  I am a diabetic.  I’d had regular health checks with full bloods and specialist support since my diagnosis.  I’d followed the accepted practice of a low carb, healthy fats diet with plenty of monitored daily exercise. My treatment consisted of 800 calories a day which is half a normal diet, with no rice, no pasta, little fruit and no processed bread, but with lots of dairy, vegetables and fish.  It kept my sugars under control because I had no sugary carbs. But without the carbs I was tired, irritable, depressed and gaining weight, lots of weight.  The few carbs I was eating weren't powering my muscles, they were layering on as fat, which didn't make sense to me.  Since my diagnoses I’d gained a lot of weight and reached 120kg (264lbs). I was getting bigger and bigger and my body was starving to death.  Something was wrong here. I got sick and tired of always being sick and tired.  I decided to use myself as a guinea pig. I had high blood pressure, depression and poor self-esteem. With nothing to lose except a few limbs, my kidneys or my eyesight, I began researching the biomechanics of what happens in the body of a diabetic, and holistic treatments for diabetes.  After a lot of re-search I found the cause of what had been happening to me. 
The saturated fats from all the dairy and fish I was eating were blocking the insulin receptors in my cells.  Insulin acts like a key that opens the cell doors to allow the glucose in to be used as fuel for the cell.  If the insulin can’t get in, neither can the glucose.  To stop my blood sugars from rising, which would lead to coma and death, my body was doing the only thing it could, converting them to fatty tissue. Hence the incredible weight gain I’d experienced. In a radical move I removed all the saturated fats (animal products and fats) and then all the unsaturated fats (in the form of oils), from my diet.  Within weeks my ener-gy started to return.  By going fat free I had more energy, as the glucose was reaching my muscles, which let me exercise more, which meant I lost more weight, a massive 40kg (88lbs) in total!  My self-esteem improved and I devel-oped a more positive, hopeful attitude to life.
My weight dropped but so too did my glucose levels. I was experiencing more lows (hypoglycemic blood sugar levels) and I needed to find a long term energy source that could keep me fueled and pumping throughout my days.  When you look at vegan athletes they're lean and full of energy.  They do this by carb loading.  They eat lots of whole foods like brown rice, wholegrain breads and whole fruit.  This gives them the energy to run a marathon, but they don't gain weight.  I started doing the same, despite the fact that it went against the cur-rent theory of no/low carb diets for Type 1 (juvenile) diabetics. Legumes, fruit, whole foods and vegetables were giving me more energy than I had ever expe-rienced before.  I was doing intense weight training without the exhaustion I ‘d experienced on the low carb diet.  I could eat until I was full, and my sugars were stable.  Stable sugars mean no complications, no blindness, amputations or kidney disease.  No threat of complications meant no depression and no de-pression meant a more positive energy. I was on a roll.