Hiya Gorgeous,
Type 2 diabetes is pretty common these days. According to the American Diabetes Association, almost 10 percent of our population has it. I’d be willing to bet that you or someone you love is managing this disease or prediabetes, which can be a precursor to type 2. So, I wasn’t surprised when many of the people who participated in my 21-Day Total Wellness Program, Crazy Sexy You, were in the diabetes boat. And since November is Diabetes Awareness Month, I wanted to spend some time covering this topic with you.
Typically, type 2 diabetes happens as you get older or if you’re carrying around extra weight. In order to understand diabetes, you need to understand a little about your pancreas and insulin. Your pancreas produces a hormone called insulin, which enables your cells to use the glucose in your chow to produce energy. If you have type 2 diabetes, you experience insulin resistance. Essentially, this means that your pancreas still makes insulin, but your body isn’t using it to process glucose from your food properly. As a result, glucose builds up in your body and your blood sugar levels rise. No bueno. When you have high blood sugar for a prolonged period of time, it can impact your heart, kidneys, eyes, cause nerve damage and lead to other not-so-great health conditions.
Type 2 diabetes is obviously something to be taken seriously, which is why many people in our community are trying to reverse or manage it better. In fact, one of the most prevalent dietary questions during Crazy Sexy You (CSY) came from people with type 2 diabetes and prediabetes. They wondered if it would be safe to eat the carbs included in the meal plan. A low-carb, high-protein diet is often pushed on folks with diabetes as a way to manage blood sugar levels. And although it can work to an extent, it’s not necessarily the most effective or healthy approach. So, you can imagine the shock when the type 2 CSY folks ate a diet full of carbs (albeit healthy carbs, like whole grains, legumes and fruit) and saw improvements, including lower blood sugars, better energy and weight loss.
I wanted to understand why this was happening and some other ways people with type 2 diabetes could feel better each day. So, I consulted our Crazy Sexy Dietitian, Jen Reilly. She created this list of helpful tips for managing (and even possibly reversing) diabetes through diet and lifestyle. It addresses the carbs conundrum and much more. It’s certainly not everything we’d recommend, but it’s a great (and doable) start!
3 Ways to Manage Type 2 Diabetes With Food
1. Make sure all your carbs have fiber and eat them every day. Carbs can range from candy corn and white bread to lentils and blueberries. Rather than grouping them into simple or complex, or high glycemic and low glycemic, you can use the fiber content to guide you on best choices. If the food has at least 3 grams of fiber per serving, it’s likely to be a “smart carb”. High-fiber breads or tortillas, whole grain pastas or grains like quinoa, millet, oats or bran would fit into this category. A smart carb is less likely to spike your blood sugar and more likely to positively affect your Hemoglobin A1C. Hemoglobin A1C measures your average blood sugar level over a 2-3 month period and it’s higher for people who have diabetes.
Super-helpful tip: Beans and lentils are unique carbs because they’re extra rich in fiber and loaded with protein (7 grams of fiber and 7 grams of protein per 1/2 cup serving), which can further prevent blood sugar spikes and keep blood sugars steady for hours after a meal. Reach for at least a 1/2 cup of beans or lentils every day to take advantage of this benefit.
2. Eat more “resistant starch”. Resistant starch can help improve insulin sensitivity (study) and is found in whole grains, legumes and potatoes. Insulin sensitivity describes how sensitive your body is to the effects of insulin. Improved insulin sensitivity means less insulin is needed to lower blood sugars. Cooking or heating destroys most resistant starches but cooling after cooking can recapture them. So, cooked and then cooled salads made from beans, whole wheat pasta, whole grains or potatoes are tasty ways to get resistant starches into your day.
3. Eat more broccoli. Broccoli is by far the best dietary source of chromium. Chromium helps to strengthen insulin signals, which will help get sugar into your cells more quickly after a meal. This means less sugar floating around in your bloodstream and a lower A1C. Enjoy cold broccoli salads, roasted broccoli, steamed and stir-fried broccoli and broccoli leek soup to keep things interesting. The next best sources of chromium include barley, oats, green beans, tomatoes and Romaine lettuce.
I was successful permanently getting down Diabetes 3 weeks after it was diagnosed with First: a 4-day-smoothie-only-detox, and Second: then a vegan-only plus 200 grammes fish (mackerel-trout-salmon) per week (not per day) meal schedule, and this WITHOUT MEDICATION (doctor had prescribed Metformin) – from 120 to permanent average 89 – far from the “red line” of diabetes.
This goes on for 18 months now – no medication at all. I’m male, born in 1948. Health and good luck to everyone!
Congrats, Werner! Thanks so much for sharing this. 🙂 kc
Hi Werner, My husband has recently been diagnosed with pre diabetes and is interested to know what smoothies you found to be beneficial for your cleanse.
Thank you,
Susan
I hope, our host will forgive me, when I am naming my source – it may be a competitor: I took the recipes from Diana Stobo – her free 4-day-detox. Just go to her website http://www.dianastobo.com., there you can download an eBook, and just take out of it, what you want. My best wishes to you and your husband!
By far the best regular posts on health. I don’t know how Kris does this but she always posts a subject I happen to be thinking of at the time. I wish I could go to some of the events but I live in England so keep the posts coming please Kris…..you’re inspirational.
Jan x
I’m so thrilled to hear that, Jan. I’ll keep them coming. Thank you. xo, kc
great advice, thank you Kris 🙂
Being on your Crazy Sexy You programme saw my blood sugars reduced down to near normal and often completely normal. I also find drinking Rooibos tea helps to bring my sugars down so I try to drink one after each time I’ve eaten something.
You made my day, Rachael. So happy to hear it! xo, kc
So glad it made your day Kris 🙂 I’m still following the programme around 90% of the time, the other 10% is allowing for ‘treats’ or eating out, and even then I’m a lot more conscious about my food choices than I ever was before the programme xx
Diet really is key, along with some other lifestyle choices. After watching Plant Pure Nation and Vegucated, plus a few more food documentaries, my family went mostly vegan and got rid of the “man made food” and my hubby no longer has to take his multiple pills and 2-3 insulin injections a day. He is at zero meds – which only took a transition of 1 1/2 months once we made these changes in our lives. Totally worth it!
I have been diagnosed diabetic this summer ..which came as shock to me…as I’m the type “skinny outside, fat inside” apparently. I started a “raw – green food diet” which help during the time I could follow it. Now back at my place in a city where God temptation is all around I started to have again much more difficulty to say on a raw plant base diet, cold time doesn’t help. I’m now experimenting beans, legumes and starchy veggies to see if I can survive winter time and get rid of this diabetes !
Hey Glaus, here are some tips from our Crazy Sexy Dietician Jen: You can do it! Cooked veggies in soups and stir-fries are just as fiber-rich as raw ones, and there’s nothing better than a veggie chili or lentil soup on a cold day. And don’t forget to include exercise even when it’s cold out—it will keep you warm and may keep your blood sugar down too.
Thank you Kris for compiling so much helpful information and presenting it in a way that I can wrap my head around. I need help with lowering my cholesterol without going on statins. Do you have any advice?
We’ll put a cholesterol-lowering nutrition tips blog on our list! In the meantime, the soluble fiber in chia seeds can be amazing at lowering cholesterol levels. Our dietitian has seen cholesterol levels drop in her patients after just 3 months of including 2 tablespoons of chia seeds in their diets daily. You can grind them in a coffee bean grinder and add them to oatmeal, smoothies, soups, and even salads. Good luck!
Are canned beans a resistant starch? Since they are cooked first and then cool in the can?
As for canned beans, yes they have resistant starch if you eat them as is. If you heat them, though, a good bit of the resistant starch is lost and you would need to cool them again. Using canned beans in a cold bean salad would be perfect though. Hope that helps!
It does. Thanks!
Thank you for all you do Kris! While recently in Tucson I learned that the fruit from the Prickly Pear Cactus can help with Diabetes 2. I’ve been researching and even found info on Web MD. Here’s a link to Dr. Oz talking about Prickly Pear fruit and Diabetes. I am going to try it.
https://youtu.be/sS-BkBZT7Xs
I just finished Dr. Mark Hyman’s Fat Summit 2 and the experts that spoke there seemed to be saying the exact opposite of your blog. All of the speakers I listened to kept saying carbohydrates are not an essential nutrient and diabetics should cut them out. They emphasized healthy fats and proteins from meat sources. I have a huge amount of respect for you, Chris, so why is the information I’m hearing so contradictory? Help!
Hi Peggy,
Carbohydrates are probably the most controversial topic when it comes to diabetes and blood sugar control, and one of the reasons my CSY program participants with diabetes were concerned about the meal plan. There are many schools of thought on the specifics of the ideal diet for people with diabetes. But, we’ve dug through tons of research studies, our dietitian has worked with several patients with type 2 diabetes, and we’ve concluded that a diet moderate in healthy, high-fiber carbs is not only the best for blood sugar control in the short-term, but is ideal for overall health in the long-term.
This large-scale Harvard study examining mortality in over 100,000 people may be of particular interest to you. They found that not only did people who ate at least 3 servings of whole grains daily have a 20% lower mortality, but deaths from heart disease and cancer were also significantly less: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4429593/
The soluble fiber in oats, other grains, and legumes is highly effective in lowering cholesterol levels, slowing digestion to maintain blood sugar control, and also encouraging insulin sensitivity in people with diabetes. On the contrary, dietary fats—especially saturated fats from animals—promote insulin resistance leading to blood sugar spikes several hours after eating.
I encourage us both to keep a close eye on this research as things can certainly change. But in the meantime, we’re recommending whole grains in a healthy, whole foods diet for both short-term and long-term health.
xo,
Kris
Thanks for your feedback, Chris. I’ll keep experimenting to find out what will work for me.
xo peggy
Lipitor and other statins can raise blood sugar enough to cause Type 2 Diabetes, especially in post menopausal women. Please avoid all statins, if possible. Best wishes, everyone!
Dr. David Perlmutter said as much in his book “Grain Brain.” I found his comments, as well as those of Dr. William Davis in his book “Wheat Belly” very illuminating. I am thin, have taken statins for years for cholesterol, and acquired diabetes 4 years ago. It doesn’t run in my family. The vegan diet is working for me for both diseases. Still working on kicking the 1/2 tablet of Metformin.
This is a great article whether you have diabetes or not. Both my grandfather’s had diabetes. One had type 1. The other had type 2, so I know it can happen.
I try my best everyday to eat right and exercise. I’m not always perfect everyday, but I don’t know who is. Thank you for the tips!
Scientists have discovered how to treat diabetes without prescription drugs or insulin injections. Some patients are able to stop all medication in just a few weeks.
Thank you for sharing and mentioning two types of diabetes. It will help out a lot to recover the problems.
Hi Kris and everyone around!
I found this post three months ago when I was knocked out by the surprise of a diabetic diagnose, hitting 10.7 in HbAC1. I was shocked, devastated and simply down. I took immediate action and chose to be brave and following my intuition, I found this article. Thank you for that! The downward spiral continued as I had a severe allergic reaction to metformine leading to rashes, headaches, blurry eyesight, palpitations, etc. I am very sensitive to meds because I am used to old folk remedies. So, I totally changed my lifestyle: went vegan, and gluten free, mixed homeopathic and herbal preparations, exercised every day, rely upon prayer, affirmations and meditation. I bought your book Crazy Sexy Kitchen, followed your cooking lessons and got stronger! Thank you Kris, Darling! The big news: fast forward three months, now, I received my tests and helloooo!!! HbAC1 5.5 “) Everything is fine, no meds and feeling better than ever! I now for sure that some bumpy roads are a call for realignment in a higher direction! So, since I got inspired by you and the comments below, I want to share my story as a thank you and an offering of love. Happy 2020 everyone! Lots of veggie love xoxo