#4 Reversal ≠ Restriction

Welcome

Welcome back, Friend!

Thanks for your patience - it’s been a minute. Sometimes the best-laid plans fall on a technical glitch (now fixed), but I’m thrilled to be back with issue #4 that cuts through the noise.

Have you ever felt like a ping-pong ball, bouncing between diet camps? One month you're clearing the house of carbs, the next you're wondering if a plant-based diet is the magic bullet.

It's exhausting. And it's based on a false premise.

Big trials like DiRECT and ReTUNE, along with major scientific reviews, all make one thing absolutely clear: reversing type 2 diabetes hinges on losing enough of the right kind of fat.

The passionate arguments about how to do that - keto vs. vegan, low-fat vs. carnivore - completely miss the point.

Today, we’re ending the diet wars.

Make Progress Not War

The One Question

Let’s forget the labels, the tribes and the deeply ingrained diet dogma (if you can!). When it comes to choosing a diabetes reversal diet, one question stands out:

"Does this help me lose the right kind of fat without losing muscle?"

That's it. That's the whole game.

When you hear the endless diet-camp claims that only they have the One True Diet, they are confusing method for mechanism. Here’s what I’m referring to:

• The Mechanism: reversing type-2 diabetes requires clearing the toxic fat that is clogging your liver, pancreas and muscles. This improves your insulin sensitivity and allows your body to start healing.

• The Method: keto, plant-based, calorie counting, low fat, intermittent fasting... these are all just tools. They are different ways of engaging the mechanism.

If your chosen method is helping you clear out that internal, toxic fat, it's working. If it's not, it's the wrong method for you.

The Surprising Proof

Anyone who tells you that you have to cut out an entire food group to reverse your diabetes is simply wrong. The proof is in the real world.

People have successfully reversed their diabetes using every diet imaginable, including the most extreme ones. There are documented cases of people succeeding on the potato diet (eating only potatoes!) and the carnivore diet (eating only animal products!).

(Note: I’m not minimising the benefits some people get from these diets, or even suggesting there isn’t a grain of truth in their ideas.)

I spent years - decades! - believing I had to cut carbohydrates to lose weight and improve my health. I slowly watched my blood sugar increase and my health decline. Finally, a serious health crisis forced me to try something else … and it worked. My new diet had several times more carbohydrate - and my blood sugar fell rapidly.

If I hadn’t seen it myself, I might have remained stuck in my beliefs.

The Golden Rule That Overrides Everything

While those diets prove the mechanism - that extreme dietary restriction can lead to fat loss and, therefore, reversal - they fail the Golden Rule:

The approach must be nutritionally sensible and sustainable.

This is why some of the more exotic diets are poor long-term methods. Despite the convincing rhetoric, some can lead to nutritional deficiencies, gradual loss of health and are not viable for most people over a long period. Any diet that doesn't meet your basic nutritional needs is not a health plan; it's a stunt.

But here’s why the freedom from diet dogma is the ultimate good news.

It means you don’t need to adopt a weird, complicated, or expensive new diet. It explicitly means that extreme, unsustainable, and potentially hazardous approaches ARE NOT REQUIRED. The best plan for you might simply be a moderately adjusted version of the diet you already know and like.

These Myths Have to Go (For Good)!

Let's call out some of the most stubborn myths that keep people trapped.

• Myth: "Carbs cause diabetes."

  • Reality: No, chronic energy overload causes diabetes. An excess of both carbs and fats leads to the fat buildup in your organs that is the true root of the problem. Obsessing over one macronutrient misses the point.

• Myth: "You have to be on a keto diet to reverse diabetes."

  • Reality: Keto can be an effective tool for some because it helps reduce internal fat stores. But many other approaches, including low-fat and plant-based diets, can achieve the exact same result.

• Myth: "Eating fat is fine because it doesn't spike insulin."

  • Reality: This is dangerous thinking. Your body always has some baseline insulin. Fat is incredibly energy-dense and contributes directly to the toxic fat storage in your liver and muscles that causes insulin resistance.

• Myth: "If a food spikes my glucose, it must be unhealthy."

  • Reality: A moderate, temporary rise in glucose after a meal is completely normal! Even on diets that successfully reverse diabetes, this happens. Obsessing over single readings is a distraction. The long-term trend in your weight and HbA1c is what matters.