Strength in Numbers

My mum has Type 2 Diabetes. My mum’s dad also had Type 2 Diabetes. It seems to run in our family.

My mum has been able to control her diabetes extraordinarily well over the last six years  with a balance of exercise (long walks and then moving up to jogging), diet (eating the right amounts of the wrong foods and a lot of the best foods for diabetics), medication (Metformin) and red wine (she found that this beverage could help lower her blood sugar – not sure if there’s any science here though!). Mum’s diabetes nurse says that she is one of her best patients. 

However, with the best will in the world, she is still living with diabetes daily and taking tablets where necessary.

Then my mum discovered an amazing book by Dr Michael Mosley called The 8-Week Blood Sugar Diet: Lose Weight Fast and Reprogramme Your Body.

In this book Dr Mosley claims (and uses case studies to demonstrate) that diabetes can not only be prevented but also reversed. Mum couldn’t believe it at first but everything Dr Mosley wrote about, based on research, case studies and personal experience, made complete sense. Mum bought me the book. And then she bought a copy for my dad, who is already a massive Michael Mosley fan having been on the 5:2 diet for the last five years or more – and it has worked brilliantly on him. Mum also bought another five copies of the book and started handing them out to friends and family (some of whom have type 2 diabetes or are on the brink of developing it).

However, even after reading this book from cover to cover, twice, and preaching it to everyone she meets, mum has still not embarked on the 8-week Blood Sugar Diet in an effort to reverse her diabetes and stay off medication. FOREVER.

Dieting for Diabetes Begins… on Monday

Therefore, starting Monday, 1^st August 2016, I am going to embark on this diet alongside my mum in an attempt to encourage her through this willpower jungle. We live in a world of sugar and temptation but for eight weeks we are going to resist all temptation alongside one another. Giving each other support where necessary and calorie counting every pumpkin seed and salad leaf - TOGETHER. I could do with losing a few pounds too so it won’t hurt me. It might even prevent me from developing type 2 diabetes myself – who knows. I will be documenting our progress, daily, if I can, in a bid to further encourage us through to the end. Eight weeks may seem like a long time, but in comparison to one’s lifetime it is a blink of an eye. We CAN do this and I encourage anyone else who needs to lose weight for medical reasons to embark on this journey with us. After all, it’s strength in numbers isn’t it?!   

So… My food scale batteries are charged and ready to go… but first I am going to make some of Jamie Oliver’s old fashioned peach ice cream as my last deadly sweet treat for eight weeks…

Wish us luck.