Reverse Diabetes

Lower Your Blood Sugar by 25%

Revised & Updated!

Reader’s Digest

Reverse Diabetes

12 Week Challenge

Gain Energy Lose Inches!

PRAISE FOR REVERSE DIABETES

This book is great. I learned a lot about good food choices and foods to avoid. It also contains great recipes for diabetics that are healthy and delicious. Would recommend this book to anyone with diabetes or prediabetes. The section on calories, sugar, and carbohydrates found in different foods was a big help in planning my everyday meals. The exercise section was also very helpful. Already lost 15 pounds. —J.S. MD

This book answered so many questions when I was newly diagnosed with diabetes. It’s a long-term book for living with and reversing diabetes in addition to being very encouraging and upbeat. The organization of the book and the layout are reader friendly. I have marked it liberally with a highlighter and refer to it several times a week. —Elizabeth Allanson

This is a WONDERFUL book, it is easy to read and understand on any level. No big scientific words… Just regular words and pictures :-) It takes you step by step on HOW to improve your life with diabetes and how to minimize the symptoms and reverse diabetes. GREAT BOOK! —S. McGee

Love this book and it has really helped me. Very well thought out with clear explanations. Worth getting and I will be recommending it!—A’anna T. Williams

I found this book educational. I like the clear descriptions as well as the variety of menus… I will go back to it often. —Gisela M. Damandl

I love this book. I am not diabetic; however, I did want to shed unwanted pounds. This book teaches how to keep your sugar steady so you aren’t constantly hungry. An easy read! —Shakala

Excellent book to read if you are diabetic. Many helpful suggestions were presented. Often it just takes a few lifestyle tweaks to make diabetes management possible. —Karen L. Pitts

My husband found out he had type 2 diabetes and I knew nothing about it or how to cook and care for him. This book was excellent. The price and packaging were great as well. Recommended purchase. —Mamad

This is great, explains everything so well… This is a great start to YOU helping yourself fight and get rid of diabetes for good. No need for medications, that’s what you are working for! —Nancy J.

DI • A • BE • TES

(noun): a disorder of carbohydrate metabolism characterized by inadequate production or usage of insulin and causing excessive levels of glucose in the blood and urine

RE • VERSE

(verb): to turn in the opposite direction or send on the opposite course

Contents

Foreword by Jackie Newgent, RDN, CDN

Introducing the Eat, Move, Choose Plan

PART ONE

EAT

to Reverse Diabetes

The Plan

The Quiz

GOAL 1 Eat five+ servings of vegetables a day

GOAL 2 Cut your refined carbohydrates by half

GOAL 3 Eat three servings of fruit a day

GOAL 4 Include lean protein at every meal

GOAL 5 Trade good fat for bad

GOAL 6 Use the Plate Approach for perfect portions

GOAL 7 Plan your meals

PART TWO

MOVE

to Reverse Diabetes

The Plan

The Quiz

GOAL 1 Know how to exercise safely with diabetes

GOAL 2 Walk at least five days a week

GOAL 3 Build muscle with the Sugar Buster Routine

GOAL 4 Make active choices every day

PART THREE

CHOOSE

to Reverse Diabetes

The Plan

The Quiz

GOAL 1 Practice the subtle art of self-motivation

GOAL 2 Sleep restfully

GOAL 3 Embrace self-care

PART FOUR

12-WEEK CHALLENGE

A 12-week road map to turn your Eat, Move, and Choose goals into lifelong habits

PART FIVE

Reverse Diabetes

TOOLS

A kitchen makeover, meal planner, shopping list and more—all the tools you need to reverse diabetes

PART SIX

Reverse Diabetes

RECIPES

Dozens of delicious diabetes-friendly dishes that make eating the Reverse Diabetes way a snap

Diabetes Is No Longer Something to Fear

UNLIKE SEVERAL DECADES AGO, diabetes is a diagnosis that comes with plenty of tools to manage it. Personally, as someone with a family history of type 2 diabetes, I’ve seen firsthand this evolution from a feeling of apprehension to now one of determination and possibilities. Professionally, as a registered dietitian nutritionist (RDN), chef, and cookbook author, I’ve tried my best to be at least one small part of that solution—writing three diabetes cookbooks to date.

Today, you can feel comforted in knowing that managing your diabetes is not something you need to do all on your own. Many people, organizations, and publications offer tremendous care, support, and reliable, evidence-based information. Think of it as a team approach with this book, Reverse Diabetes: 12-Week Challenge, as an integral part of your support team.

Being up to date is key. The prevention and treatment of diabetes has changed over the years—including in the 13 years since this book was originally published. This completely revised edition—based on the latest research about what works—showcases how restrictive diets, avoidance, and a one-size-fits-all approach are no longer the focus. Rather, individualization and What can I eat? rather than What can’t I eat? are guiding principles. Strict counting and precise calculations are not necessary. A variety of colorful vegetables, whole grains, beans, nuts, seeds, and yes, even fruits, are celebrated. And even that slice of birthday cake can fit into a plan for type 2 diabetes. You’ll use the Plate Approach to effortlessly put your personalized diabetes eating plan into practice.

Making smart choices is the aim. Carbs, including sugars, are not the enemy; but choosing mostly nutrient-rich sources of carbohydrates and balancing them throughout the day is key. Healthy fats and protein are beneficial. The concept of skinny or drastic weight loss is out. And aiming to lose 10 percent of your body weight (not what a chart or social media says) is the research-backed approach. Step by step, Reverse Diabetes shows you how to achieve these eating and healthy weight goals—and more.

How does this book do that? It starts with a comprehensive, yet can do attitude and a simple, user-friendly style, focusing on three areas where you can be the boss of your disease—eat, move, and choose. It takes an overall lifestyle approach to managing your blood glucose and A1C levels, and diabetes in general.

The plan features clear and doable goals for each of these three areas. It offers more than 60 tasty diabetes-friendly recipes, sample meal plans, easy-to-implement exercise strategies, and lots of friendly yet impactful diabetes-focused lifestyle advice, such as walking five days a week and getting restful sleep. The nutrition information offered throughout the book is based on current research and facts, not fads. And it can be adapted to your preferences and needs—for instance, if you choose to adopt a plant-forward diet, travel frequently and need to dine out often, or work a night shift, you can still easily follow the 12-Week Reverse Diabetes Challenge.

Plus, the book includes numerous interactive quizzes, checklists, trackers, and other tools to help you easily transform the book’s guidance into action. You’ll find everything you need to follow the 12-Week Challenge within the pages of this book, but if you prefer to go digital, you can do that, too, with the online tools at thehealthy.com/reversediabetes

.

Finally, it’s important to know that what you do today to manage diabetes will change over time. Beyond the 12-Week Challenge, and throughout the weeks, months, and years to come, the knowledge and tools you’ll find in this book will help guide you in continuously evaluating and adjusting your approach to diabetes management.

While diabetes is a serious medical condition, take heart in knowing that it is fully manageable. You—along with your team—can help determine your healthy future and put your diabetes into remission. You’ll be so thankful you chose this book to help you do just that.

Cheers to your good health!

JACKIE NEWGENT, RDN, CDN

Introducing the Eat, Move, Choose Plan

Can you really reverse type 2 diabetes? Absolutely! Groundbreaking studies on real patients have shown that it’s possible to send the disease into complete remission—to erase all signs of it within a year. This turnaround is possible no matter how long you’ve had diabetes.

Doctors accomplished this through weight-loss surgery on obese people, but even without surgery, it’s now clear that you have the power to reverse the course of your disease—to turn back the clock on insulin resistance, the metabolic problem at the core of the condition, and see better blood sugar levels again, along with vastly improved overall health. All with far less hassle than you might think.

A wave of research shows that by making easy, manageable changes to your daily habits you can achieve remarkable improvements in your A1C level (an indirect measure of your blood glucose levels over the last three months), your weight, and other health markers. If you take diabetes medications or use insulin, you may be able to reduce your dose or even tear up your prescription, depending on where you are in the course of your disease.

Even modest lifestyle changes can have profound benefits. For instance, simply taking a brisk walk three times a week can significantly lower blood sugar. Eating a bit less every day, but not dramatically cutting calories, can lead to long-term weight loss, a vital goal for most people with type 2 diabetes. Swapping certain foods for healthier choices can not only improve your body’s sensitivity to the hormone insulin—essentially reversing the course of your diabetes—but can also keep a lid on your risk for heart disease, without punishing your palate. Scientists have even discovered that reining in stress can lower blood sugar and decrease the amount of harmful fat, known as visceral fat, that you carry deep in your belly, fat that makes blood sugar management more difficult.

Reverse Diabetes incorporates all the newest findings about the best ways to thrive with this condition and translates these revelations into a 12-week challenge with simple, clear goals and easy-to-follow advice. But first, a bit more about the new cutting-edge science upon which this book is based.

The New Thinking on Reversing Diabetes

THERE’S ONE WORD that medical researchers rarely utter—and it’s this: Cure.

Yet, during a presentation at a science conference, that’s exactly the word researchers from the Diabetes Remission Clinical Trial (DiRECT) used to describe the outlook for people with type 2 diabetes. This ongoing study of hundreds of people with diabetes has revealed a powerful cocktail of lifestyle approaches can help drive diabetes into complete remission. That means blood sugar remains in the healthy range, without the use of medication, month after month after month.

To help you achieve this enviable result, Reverse Diabetes addresses three key areas: eat, move, and choose. Let’s take a closer look at how all three work together to help you put diabetes in your rear view mirror

The Reverse Diabetes Eat Plan: Smarter Carbs and Fat, More Protein and Veggies

The old thinking about diabetes and diet could be summed up in two words: Avoid sugar. That seemed logical; if diabetes causes high blood sugar, why would you want to add to the problem by gobbling chocolate bars and guzzling liquid calories?

But sugar is just one ingredient in the nutritional pie. While it’s still great to eat less of it, other dietary tweaks are proving just as powerful or even more so when it comes to managing and reversing diabetes.

The new advice:

Quit focusing on subtraction—because it usually backfires. If you’ve ever sworn off sugar or desserts, then you know this all too well. You might manage a few zero consumption days. Eventually, however, your cravings overpower your willpower, leading to more sweets than ever before.

Thankfully, there’s a better way.

Instead of banning foods, think about adding nourishing foods that help maintain steady blood sugar levels and simultaneously lower your risk for heart disease.

On the Reverse Diabetes plan, you’ll fill your plate with:

Produce. Consuming more fruit and non-starchy vegetables—nature’s all-purpose disease fighters—appears to combat diabetes. People who eat three servings of fruit per day cut the risk for developing type 2 diabetes by 18 percent, finds research. On top of that, every serving of leafy green vegetables you consume per day—such as lettuce, spinach, broccoli, and others—may lower risk by another 9 percent.

How do fruits and veggies help? First, these healthy foods tend to be low in calories, which can help you lose fat. Second, fruits and vegetables tend to be rich in fiber, which helps to slow digestion, providing slow and even rises in blood sugar as well as curbing your appetite.

Finally, produce comes packed with healing nutrients such as antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals which are thought to help ease the insulin resistance that drives diabetes.

Smart proteins. Whether it comes from animals (poultry, seafood and beef) or plants (beans, soy, and nuts), protein helps to dampen appetite, making fat loss easier. It also doesn’t affect blood sugar levels as much as carbohydrate-rich foods.

That said, not all protein-rich foods offer the same benefits.

Highly processed and fatty meats have been linked to an increased risk of diabetes, whereas leaner, minimally processed options such as chicken breast, seafood, beans, and low-fat Greek or Skyr yogurt help to lower your risk. In the Reverse Diabetes 12-week challenge, you’ll learn how to shift your protein choices toward smart proteins that help you fill up on fewer calories.

Smart carbs. Minimally processed whole foods can be your best friends. Rich in digestion-slowing fiber and plant nutrients, these foods closely resemble their right off the vine state. Think sweet potatoes, brown rice, beans and lentils (which are also protein rich), and corn, among many other foods. In contrast, highly processed carbs such as white bread and sugar-sweetened foods digest quickly, sending blood sugar soaring.

Smart fats. Nuts, avocados, and olive oil are all top sources of monounsaturated fat. Unlike artery-clogging saturated fat (found in full-fat dairy and in meats) and trans fat (the fat in many snacks and fast foods), monos appear to fight heart disease. Even better, replacing bad fats with the monounsaturated variety combats insulin resistance, which we’ve already described as the key metabolic problem at the core of type 2 diabetes.

A high-mono diet can help people with type 2 diabetes control their A1C and weight, according to a study at the University of Cincinnati. The study’s lead author, nutritionist Bonnie Brehm, PhD, says the key to successfully re-crafting your diet is to start with small, achievable goals— which is exactly what you’ll be doing during your 12-week challenge.

Don’t focus on forbidden foods. Instead, think about adding to your diet foods that help maintain steady blood sugar levels.

The Reverse Diabetes Move Plan: Revving Your Metabolic Engine

Play a few sets of pickleball. Take a long hike. Spend an afternoon planting perennials. What do these enjoyable activities have in common? As in all forms of exercise, they burn up blood sugar as well as reduce insulin resistance, making cells more sensitive to the hormone and thereby putting your disease into reverse.

Here’s how it works. Normally, in people who don’t have diabetes, insulin easily unlocks muscle cells so they let in glucose (blood sugar) from the bloodstream to use as fuel. But if you have type 2 diabetes, your body has become less responsive to insulin, and your cells remain locked up to glucose, leaving it to build up in the blood. That can cause damage to tiny blood vessels and nerves. Over time, chronically elevated blood sugar can lead to a long list of diabetes complications: vision loss, serious skin ulcers, kidney disease, and others.

Exercise encourages the body to become more sensitive to insulin. Hardworking muscle cells that desperately need glucose will go to extreme measures to get it, producing chemicals that lower their resistance to the hormone.

That’s not all. Reams of studies show that regular exercise can help improve hemoglobin A1C levels, lower triglycerides and cholesterol, and slow the development of diabetes-related complications such as peripheral neuropathy, the nerve damage that can lead to numbness and pain.

You may be wondering how hard and long you need to work out to see results.

The answer: A lot less than you probably think.

The results of the The Look AHEAD (Action for Health in Diabetes) trial (one of the largest randomized trials evaluating physical activity and diabetes) are in and they’re promising. People who moved for 175 minutes a week improved a host of factors—weight loss, blood sugar control, reduced blood pressure and cholesterol–than people who didn’t exercise. That’s just 20-25 minutes a day.

And it doesn’t have to be done all at once.

Sprinkling activity throughout your day—especially short walks after meals—helps to blunt the post meal rise in blood glucose, insulin, and triglycerides, finds research. You might start with one 5-to 15-minute walk after lunch or dinner. Over the 12-week challenge, you’ll progress to up to 45 minutes per session.

Want to lower your blood sugar even more? Most experts agree that adding strength training to your routine is essential, too. Resistance training builds muscle, which helps to improve blood sugar control and decreases insulin resistance.

On the Reverse Diabetes plan, you’ll combine both forms of exercise, starting at a duration and pace that works for your lifestyle and fitness level.

The Reverse Diabetes Choose Plan: Stress Poses a Triple Whammy When You Have Diabetes

For starters, it leads to unhealthy habits. You know the usual suspects: eating junk food, skipping exercise, drinking too much alcohol. You also may forget to take your medications or just decide you can’t be bothered with them.

On top of that, stress raises blood sugar even in the absence of unhealthy behaviors. When you’re stressed, your body produces more of the stress hormone cortisol. Cortisol helps to mobilize your fight or flight response in the event of a crisis—a fire, for instance. But it also raises blood sugar. That means that over the long-term, chronic stress can pose a serious problem. High levels of stress hormones can put your diabetes out of control, says Wayne Katon, MD, University of Washington professor of psychiatry.

Finally, over time, stress can also increase the amount of fat you accumulate around your internal organs. This type of fat produces dangerous chemicals that damage the arteries and increase the risk for heart attacks.

Getting a better night’s rest can significantly lower your blood sugar.

Just reading about all of that is pretty stressful! Thankfully, you have the power to manage stress. The Reverse Diabetes Choose Plan will show you how.

By inspiring