This Book Can Save Your Life
As you’re probably aware, diabetes is currently one of the fastest-growing chronic diseases in the United States and around the world.
It has officially been classified as a pandemic by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which estimates that more than 29 million people in the United States are living with type 1 and type 2 diabetes and that a staggering 86 million more have prediabetes.
In 2017, the total cost of diagnosed diabetes on the American healthcare system was $327 billion, and is expected to grow to $490 billion by 2030.
By 2050, experts estimate that diagnosed diabetes will affect 33 percent of the US population, that’s
1 in every 3 people.
To make matters even more real, people with diabetes incur an average of $13,700 of medical expenses per year, 2.3 times as much as nondiabetic individuals. Receiving the diagnosis of diabetes dramatically increases your risk for the development of many chronic diseases, making you more likely to be absent from work, less productive at your job, and at risk for premature death.
If you’ve been diagnosed with any form of diabetes, it may seem like the odds are against you. If you’re losing energy, gaining weight, facing rising medical expenses, or worried that your life may be cut short, it may be time to put the right lifestyle habits into place and avoid the slow-moving disaster that diabetes often creates.
That’s exactly why we wrote this book.
Even though the statistics are scary, the truth is that the solution to diabetes is actually more readily available than you may think. In this book, we’ll explain how people living with all forms of diabetes can optimize their diet and exercise habits to feel great, look amazing, and minimize the risk of long-term complications, including conditions like coronary artery disease, atherosclerosis, cancer, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, obesity, peripheral neuropathy, retinopathy, Alzheimer’s disease, chronic kidney disease, and fatty liver disease.
Many people are skeptical about the scientific research in support of low-fat plant-based whole-food nutrition, and often claim that the Mastering Diabetes Method has no scientific basis.
In the process of writing this book, we read thousands of scientific papers covering a wide range of topics (including low-carbohydrate nutrition) and were amazed at just how much research exists in support of a low-fat plant-based whole-food diet.
This book references more than 800 scientific articles, which is too many to print in the book itself.
We are passionate about empowering you to make informed decisions for your health, so please visit www.masteringdiabetes.org/bookinfo to explore every scientific reference in this book.
If you’re ready to eat delicious meals made from ingredients that people living with diabetes have been told to limit or avoid for years, this is your opportunity. If you’re excited to eat carbohydrate-rich foods like bananas, mangoes, potatoes, squash, corn, beans, lentils, quinoa, and rice, and lose weight, reduce your blood glucose, and minimize or eliminate your need for oral medications and insulin, then you’re going to love learning how simple changes to your diet can fully transform your health from the inside out.
If you’re living with prediabetes or non-insulin-dependent type 2 diabetes, we’ll teach you how to completely reverse both conditions using your food as medicine. For those living with insulin-dependent diabetes, including type 1 diabetes, type 1.5 diabetes, or insulin-dependent type 2 diabetes, we’ll teach you how to maximize your insulin sensitivity and make your blood glucose significantly easier to control while reducing your overall need for basal and bolus insulin. Regardless of the type of diabetes you may be living with, the system outlined in this book will dramatically reduce your risk for diabetes complications, help you achieve your ideal body weight, increase your mental clarity, and dramatically increase your energy levels.
If you enjoy eating, then you’ll love this book. Why? Because we’ll spend the majority of our time focusing on food, then venture into the world of intermittent fasting and exercise, so that you have a full picture of why each puzzle piece helps reverse insulin resistance and how to put the puzzle pieces together in your busy life.
We know this might sound crazy, but stick with us, it’s going to be a fun ride.
You’re about to get a full picture of how to maximize your total body health, and get the nitty-gritty details about the most powerful insulin-sensitizing method ever developed.
We’ll address the incredible confusion that exists in the world of diabetes head on and provide you with a complete understanding of the long-term dangers of eating a low-carbohydrate or ketogenic diet.
You’ll learn why low-carbohydrate diets actually increase insulin resistance and dramatically increase your risk for many chronic diseases in the long term.
We wrote this book not only to provide you with the evidence-based science of insulin resistance but also to give you a detailed and straightforward how-to guide that we know works from extensive personal experience and from helping thousands of people with all forms of diabetes maximize their insulin sensitivity.
We wrote this book because we want you to know that you are in full control of your diabetes destiny. We want you to know that you can reverse insulin resistance by following the Mastering Diabetes Method, which will in turn drop your risk for the development of diabetes complications both now and in the future. The exact foods that have been demonized for almost a hundred years are actually the solution, and we’ll show you exactly why.
A Note to the Reader
The information contained in this book will educate you about how to reverse insulin resistance permanently.
Do not underestimate the effectiveness of this program.
Because this information is so effective, you must implement these changes with the help, support, knowledge, and guidance of your physician.
Many people living with diabetes around the world have found that the Mastering Diabetes Method results in a strong reduction in their requirement for oral medication, insulin, or both.
Failure to reduce your medications appropriately may result in life-threatening hypoglycemia and even death.
Many physicians are unaware of the power of low-fat plant-based whole-food nutrition and may be hesitant to reduce your medication dosages sufficiently.
Because of this, it is important for you to monitor your blood glucose very carefully as you change your diet step by step.
If you are currently taking oral medications for high blood pressure or high cholesterol, the Mastering Diabetes Method is also very likely to lower your blood pressure and cholesterol levels significantly.
Work closely with your physician to prevent dangerous and life-threatening situations that could arise from not reducing your oral medication and insulin use quickly when participating in this program.
This Book Can Save Your Life
How do we know? Because we have been living with type 1 diabetes ourselves for a combined total of more than thirty-six years. Because we have extensively read almost a hundred years of evidence-based scientific research. Because our colleagues are healthcare professionals who have observed remarkable and repeatable results in thousands of patients for decades.
And what’s more, we’ve developed an online coaching program for people with all forms of diabetes that is like no other program currently on the market. Not only does it work incredibly well (we and our clients test-drive it every single day), but it also addresses all the day-in-the-life questions, concerns, and frustrations that affect those of us living with diabetes.
For more than four years, our Mastering Diabetes Coaching Program has helped people with all forms of diabetes reduce or eliminate diabetes medications while increasing their consumption of carbohydrate-rich whole foods.
Most people living with prediabetes and type 2 diabetes have been able to completely reverse diabetes, discontinue the use of oral medications and insulin, and drop their A1c to 5.6% or less.
Those living with insulin-dependent diabetes often experience a 10 to 60 percent reduction in both basal and bolus insulin use, with more stable and predictable blood glucose values, and an A1c value between 5.5% and 6.5%.
In addition, thousands of clients have been able to lose weight; dramatically lower their cholesterol, blood pressure, and triglycerides; improve their digestive function; and live without the fear of future complications.
Our clients come to us because they’re disappointed (and sometimes outraged) by the advice they have received in the past, which may have seemed attractive and logical at the time. They enlist our help because they are frustrated with a decreasing quality of life and an increasing need for oral medications and insulin. They’re gaining weight, have unpredictable blood glucose, and are constipated, inflamed, and exhausted. We hear them. The truth is, we were them.
A New Approach to Understanding, and Mastering, Diabetes
We were both diagnosed with type 1 diabetes early in life, Robby as a preteen and Cyrus in his early twenties, and as outgoing, athletic, adventurous, motivated guys, we didn’t want to put our lives on hold.
But after following the popular medically orthodox low-carbohydrate, high-fat, high-protein diet to help manage our blood glucose, we were far from being in the driver’s seat of our metabolic health.
Instead of making our blood glucose more controllable and increasing our insulin sensitivity, the nutritional steps we followed had exactly the opposite effect.
It seemed that no matter how “perfectly” we ate, our insulin sensitivity decreased and our physical and emotional health suffered immensely because of it.
Even though we didn’t know each other at the time, we each made the decision to reexamine the nutritional advice given to us by the conventional medical system. We started by looking to “alternative” diet philosophies for guidance, including vegetarian, vegan, raw vegan, and the Weston A. Price Foundation diet. Amazingly, our two different tracks led us to the same conclusion:
A low-fat plant-based whole-food lifestyle is the most effective way to gain insulin sensitivity using your food as medicine.
Even though this may seem counterintuitive at first, this form of nutrition is extremely powerful at reversing insulin resistance because carbohydrate-rich whole foods require large amounts of insulin if and only if the total amount of fat in your diet is also high, as you will learn about in detail in chapter 3. But when you eat a low-fat plant-based whole-food diet and reduce your intake of fat- and protein-rich foods, you gain insulin sensitivity very quickly, which in turn drops your need for oral medications and insulin in the short and long term.