This is a detailed article about what happened when I tried to experiment with a low-fat, high-carb diet led by Cyrus Khambatta from Mastering Diabetes for “ultimate” sensitivity to insulin.
This is a lengthy post because I want to do the experience justice. I also want to give enough detail to give proper credit and acknowledgment to those who do enjoy and thrive while eating a high-carb, low-fat, plant-based diet.
But by Day 9 of this experiment, I’ve realized I’m not one of those people.
Before This Experiment
My “usual” over the past few years has varied between a low-carb diet (50 grams or less of carbs) or a lower-than-average carb diet (100 grams or less). And sprinkled in there are also indulgences like gluten-free pizza or the incredible gluten-free chocolate cake I made for my twin brother when he came to visit or gluten-free Christmas cookies. (Yup, diabetics can eat cookies!)
My point is: I save my carbs for the good stuff: pizza night, burger night, and occasional homemade desserts. Pizza night is probably 3x a month. Burger night is far rarer, 1x a month at most.
I’ve managed to keep my A1C between 5.5 and 6.5 with this flexible approach to eating mostly whole foods, mostly low-carb, and “saving” room in my “carb budget” for the carbs that I enjoy the most. This also makes blood sugar management around those treats easier because your low-carb choices all day required very little effort and insulin/carb juggling.
You can also keep your carb intake still relatively low if you’re just indulging once per day (or once per week, etc., your choice), so you’re preventing any feeling of deprivation but still eating a mostly lower-carb diet.
I was also a big fan of intermittent fasting prior to this experiment, and I continued to do 16-hour fasts while following Cyrus and Robbie’s program.
My insulin doses before this high-carb experiment
- My Tresiba (basal) dose was 10 units. (Prior to getting Norovirus, my Tresiba dose was at 11 units. But a week of consuming only Gatorade and rice cakes is inevitably going to bring that down.)
- My insulin-to-carb ratio using Humalog was generally 1:12 (1 unit of Humalog for every 12 grams of carbs).
- My correction factor was generally 1:100 (1 unit would reduce my blood sugar by 100 points).
Over the past 10 years: I’ve experimented with high-protein/low-carb plans, ketogenic eating, being pregnant & eating a giant bowl of cereal every day because otherwise my pregnant soul simply could not go on—seriously!
I ate lower carb during pregnancies than the average person, but it was still high-carb for me…and my A1c stayed between 5.1 and 6.1 because of diligent blood sugar checking and expected fine-tuning of insulin doses as pregnancy with type 1 diabetes progresses.
I’m a big, big, big believer that different phases of life call for different shapes of eating.
A sample typical day of low-carb eating, for me, looked like
- Fasting until 12 p.m. or 1 p.m. (Occasionally I would eat as early as 11 a.m. if the toddler and 10 months old were trying my energy and patience more than usual and I needed fuel ASAP).
- My first meal would be a flaxseed muffin in a mug with butter or peanut butter, OR a big green salad with 2 eggs OR sauteed/air-fried veggies (cabbage, broccoli, onion, carrots, etc.) with 2 eggs.
- My second meal would be an apple & 2 slices of cheese OR carrots & hummus OR homemade eggplant chips with olive oil, paprika & salt (made in the food dehydrator)
- Some days, I would strive to not eat again so that when my husband comes home from work, I could hop on the treadmill for fasted cardio which ensures I would burn fat for fuel rather than glucose if it had been 4 hours or longer since my last meal.
- Or if I was just plain hungry, I might have an Orgain protein shake with unsweetened almond milk & peanut butter (if I hadn’t had peanut butter already that day) OR sauteed tofu with salad OR homemade Psyllium Husk Rolls with butter…(which are awesome for your digestive tract, by the way! And require zero insulin).
- And lastly, dinner would be something as simple as steak and veggies OR low-carb BLTs OR edamame fettuccine with sautéed veggies and homemade meatballs OR a giant salad with (gasp) full-fat commercial salad dressing & a bunless hamburger OR a high-carb indulgent treat of tacos or pizza.
- During the month of March, my discipline in the treats and sweets department was pretty lacking. I ate low-carb during the day but indulged more nights than not in some variety of wine, chocolate, or a high-carb/high-fat dinner like pizza or burgers. That being said, I didn’t gain weight and my insulin needs didn’t change because the rest of my day was still very low-carb and consisted of whole foods.
In some order, which varies, those are my go-to meals lately.
Why I wanted to give High-Carb/Low-Fat a try
I began this high-carb, low-fat experiment on April 1st for a few reasons.
- I was feeling bored and unmotivated by my current eating. While I enjoyed all of those foods, it was very much tried and true and there wasn’t much “experiment” left to it. And I’m a girl who clearly loves to tweak and experiment and see what happens.
- I’ve always respected Cyrus Khambatta’s completely controversial passion for his plant-based high-carb, low-fat approach to thriving with diabetes. I published many of his articles at DiabetesDaily during my 5 years as Editorial Director, and stand by the fact that there is no one-size-fits-all diet for everyone. If you feel best eating beans and strawberries all day, good for you! I don’t need to convince you to eat my way if you’re enjoying eating yours. But hey, if you’re looking for help, I’m happy to share my two cents on what works for me and many of my friends.
- I had just gotten Norovirus (most likely from the local children’s library), and after 5 days of eating nothing but Gatorade and rice cakes, I realized I was perfectly primed to give Cyrus’ approach a shot. He had explained to me earlier that it’s essential to give your body a bit of “transition time” if you were previously eating a lot of fats. Your liver and your muscles are (in layman’s terms) storing a great deal of extra fatty acids, and switching suddenly to high-carb isn’t gonna be pretty if you rush that transition phase.
- I did still want to lose those remaining 10 lbs. And while eating clean and low-carb has always worked well for me in the past (my postpartum weight loss being the most recent case in point), I was ready to be open-minded and experiment with something new.
The “Mastering Diabetes” High-Carb, Low-Fat, Plant-Based Program
In a nutshell, (because if you really want to try it, you should become a member and learn from the experts, not me), Cyrus Khambatta, Ph.D. and Robbie Barbaro teach an approach to diabetes management and nutrition that is the direct opposite of a ketogenic diet.
You should know: Cyrus and Robbie are two of the most upbeat, positive, and passionate nutrition coach fellas you could find. They are 100% dedicated to their mission of teaching people how to achieve healthier lives with diabetes through their program, and that dedication is admirable.
I have a great amount of respect for both of them even if I don’t feel that their program is right for me.
The gist: Achieve ultra-sensitivity to insulin through an extremely low-fat diet that is high in carbohydrates from “plant-based, whole foods.”
Your daily fat intake goal is between 20 to 30 grams of fat. While 30 is considered within the goal, Cyrus emphasized that keeping your fat intake down at 20 grams per day leads to mega-mega changes in insulin sensitivity and insulin resistance.
Confused?
Yes, eating a low-carb diet reduces your need for insulin, but overall, Khambatta and Barbaro teach that it can make you more insulin-resistant because fats “blunt” our sensitivity to insulin.
A ketogenic diet (or low-carb diet) works because even if you are technically more resistant to insulin due to the high-fat intake, your carb intake is low enough that your insulin needs are still plenty low regardless.
If you’ve ever tried this approach, you know that when done properly it makes nearly non-diabetic blood sugar levels practically effortless–taking 1 unit here and there for low-carb meals of protein/fat and veggies.
Cyrus and Robbie, on the other hand, teach folks to severely reduce their fat intake with a goal of 20 to 30 grams total daily, and thus make your insulin needs for large quantities of carbohydrates much lower.
A bowl of bananas and mangos for breakfast? A lunch of beans, corn, spinach, oranges, and berries? A dinner of brown rice and more veggies and more fruit? You bet. Tons of carbs. It took 300 grams easily for me to meet my nutritional needs as a 5’2 female. Easily 600 grams for active males.
A sample day of high-carb eating for me looked like
- Fasting until 1 p.m. (this was harder on this diet, I felt pretty damn hungry by 11 a.m. and waiting impatiently to end the fasting window
- Oat bran with blueberries, salt, and cinnamon
- Homemade 3-bean salad with sautéed veggies (onions, celery, corn)
- Apple, strawberries, and a couple times I had gluten-free Fig Newtons to treat lows
- Protein shake of Orgain protein powder with unsweetened almond milk
- Black bean pasta with tomato sauce & salad OR potatoes with green beans
Their client testimonials include a variety of type 1 and type 2 diabetics who have reduced their insulin usage, reduced their A1c levels, and are eating 300 to 600 grams of carbs per day. This clearly has worked well for a variety of people.
Like all extreme diets, the question we can never answer for sure is how long people continued to follow this diet (or a keto diet) after a testimonial was written.
Regardless, when you severely reduce any one macronutrient, you’ll need to compensate by drastically raising your consumption of another macronutrient.
- In the bodybuilding world, it’s usually fat that’s decreased. Protein goes up dramatically and carbohydrates are carefully placed for maximum usage for recovery.
- In Khambatta and Barbaro’s approach, fat is severely decreased. Carbohydrate consumption rises dramatically, and your protein consumption is more moderate.
- In the low-carb/ketogenic world, carbohydrate consumption is severely decreased. Fat consumption rises dramatically, and protein consumption is more moderate.
An aspect of their philosophy where I really disagree with Cyrus and Robbie is here: Within their program, you can find a detailed explanation of non-diabetic blood sugar “norms” and A1c goals vs. diabetic blood sugar “norms” and A1c goals.
They argue that non-diabetics have blood sugars fluctuating up to 140 mg/dL regularly. If this were the case, however, non-diabetic A1c levels wouldn’t be in the low 5s and high 4s. This argument, seemed to me, like an attempt to dismiss the issue that carbohydrates do in fact raise blood sugar more than any other food.
While I absolutely believe people with diabetes should strive for A1c levels that feel safe and sustainable to them, there is no denying that an A1c of 6 percent is still much higher than a non-diabetic would see from “perfect” blood sugar levels.
Within the first week of eating high-carb/low-fat: After two or three days, I dropped my 10-unit Tresiba dose down to 9. On Day 3, I went out to dinner with my husband for our anniversary and ate gluten-free pizza and gluten-free beer and gluten-free cake! It was delicious. But obviously didn’t follow the program at all.
I did a 24-hour intermittent fast that day to help compensate for the extra load of indulgent calories, carbs, and fat. But it was delicious and worth every unit of insulin.
By the next morning, I was back to business and ate following the program: loads of veggies, some grains, no added oils (even in salad), and fruit. And potatoes!
I could definitely feel my body burning through the food I was eating. And to be honest, food was all I could think about during my non-fasting window of about 1 p.m. until bedtime. As Cyrus warned me, when you’re eating this way, it takes a lot more calories and larger quantities of food to feel full and get what you need.
“If you’re hungry, eat,” he encouraged. And I was. Very.
By Day 5: Eating oat bran (rather than oatmeal) was starting to give me that same lethargic feeling that oatmeal and rice have given me in the past. I just don’t feel good when I eat those foods. It’s more extreme with the oatmeal but I was feeling it with the oat bran, too. My body is not fond of grain. Even in a low-fat diet.
I did notice that when I did need to correct a high blood sugar, it came down much more quickly than when I was eating a diet lower in carbs. With so little fat in my diet, my insulin worked much more quickly in my system and affected my blood sugar much more quickly, too.
By Day 6: I had lost 1 pound according to the scale. I was feeling some momentum, and I clearly hadn’t even done it 100%. I was also enjoying the challenge of minimal fat intake.
But I should add that I’ve never been a “gassy” person and holy moly, the daily bean intake was making me extremely gassy. I eat a lot of fiber in my usual diet, so my digestive tract is plenty accustomed to high-fiber intake, but the beans are another story.
And this gassiness continued on every day. It also made me feel surprisingly constipated — something else I’d never felt on my usual nutrition plan.
By Day 7: Despite seeing clear evidence of mega insulin sensitivity, this is when things started to unravel a bit, including my enthusiasm.
My insulin doses after 1 week this high-carb experiment
- My Tresiba (basal) dose was down to 9 units.
- My insulin-to-carb ratio using Humalog was clearly 1:25 during the day and possibly as high as 1:30 in the evening. (I would’ve needed more time to experiment and confirm the exact gram ratio but it was clearly much, much higher.)
- My correction factor was the same at 1:100 but as mentioned earlier, it did seem like my corrections took effect much faster now.
- My weight loss was still at the 1-pound lost mark mentioned earlier. (Which, considering it’s only been 7 days, seems pretty reasonable and what Cyrus advocates in his program for weight-loss pace.)
Despite my declining insulin needs, I was noticing that I felt like my blood sugar was high even when it wasn’t. I felt that sort of lethargic, thirsty feeling that comes with blood sugars around 250 mg/dL or higher.
I was checking my blood sugar more often to see if I was indeed high, but I wasn’t. Even at 90 mg/dL, I just felt that icky high blood sugar feeling. And brain fog like whoa.
I also had developed a headache that wouldn’t budge with more water or Asprin. Can I say that this headache was absolutely the result of this high-carb diet? No, but headaches are a truly rare thing for me, and this was the only change in my life at this time.
And, my digestive tract was continuing to fight off all the legumes. Gassy to the max. And while I was (TMI alert) pooping twice a day in my previous low-carb diet, I was now only pooping once a day and it was not an effortless poo, I’ll just put it that way.
But I continued to follow the program, eating entirely vegan all day long, whole foods.
Your goal on their program is to eat fewer than 30 grams of fat per day. And that might sound easy at first, but simply eating an entirely vegan diet up until dinnertime could add up to 17 grams of fat (yup, even oat bran has 4 grams of fat).
The idea of striving to meet their ultimate goal of only 20 grams of fat seemed pretty impossible, and I am amazed that women following this program can do that while still getting enough fat to maintain proper hormone levels and menstruation.
Then I ate cheese at dinner!
What I wasn’t aware of when I headed into this experiment is that the program expects your 20 to 30 grams of fat to be made up of entirely vegan foods. Using the remaining 15 grams of fat in my total allotment on Day 6 in the form of cheese for tacos in which steamed purple cabbage was my substitute for ground beef was actually not okay.
The entire rest of my day was vegan but the presence of 10 grams of fat from cheddar cheese (which put my fat quantity at 31 grams) was not allowed because it’s not “plant-based.”
(Neither were the corn tortillas because they are processed. It didn’t matter that the rest of my day was whole foods I cooked myself…the expectation was zero processed foods.)
My understanding was that as long as my fat intake was 30 grams or below (yes, I went 1 gram over), it was up to me how that dietary fat allotment was spent. But their definition of “plant-based” actually meant vegan.
Cyrus later explained that they don’t use the term “vegan” when describing or teaching their program because of the negative connotations that can go along with it. Honestly, had I known he expected 100 percent veganism, I wouldn’t have signed up for it because I firmly disagree with it — but I’m not going to start a debate on that here — it’s unnecessary and my thoughts on it aren’t unique.
Not knowing veganism was the expectation, I posted a picture proudly of my corn tacos with water-sautéed purple cabbage, cheddar cheese, and taco seasoning. I posted this picture in the Members Only “Mastering Diabetes” Facebook group.
Many of the reactions were positive and supportive–congratulating me for skipping the beef and embracing the vegetables. And sharing their personal approaches that they used to eat cheese, but over the course of weeks or months, they gave it up and don’t miss it. Along with meat, too.
(I would love to quote some of the incredibly kind and supportive comments from other members but I left the group and therefore don’t have access to those direct quotes anymore.)
And some of the reactions–primarily from coaches of the program (there are additional coaches besides Robbie and Cyrus)–came in the form of lectures that cheese is absolutely not part of this program. As well as several directions to “The goal is 20 to 30 grams of plant-based fat. Go back and review the course materials to learn how to construct a perfect dinner.”
This language and expectation of 100 percent compliance within the first week of the program left me feeling incredibly alienated and criticized. I knew that even while continuing with the program, I wouldn’t be posting any more pictures or trying to engage in discussion about my personal experience.
I want to note that this same kind of unfriendly interaction could easily happen in a ketogenic group if someone said they ate fruit. It’s a “100% or nothing” kind of mentality that simply doesn’t work well for me, but it does work well for some others.
Anyway: I went to bed that night with a blood sugar of 60 mg/dL, which I treated with 8 grams of carbs and went to bed.
I woke up in the morning with a blood sugar of 350 mg/dL–which was clearly a direct result of the cheddar cheese. When I told Cyrus about this spike, he assured me that’s incredibly normal and what he would expect to see when you eat 10 grams of fat from saturated fat rather than plant-based fats. The fat, simply put, cause a tremendous spike in my blood sugar over the course of hours.
Do I want to be on a diet that makes my body overreact so severely to saturated fat that one serving of cheese suddenly spikes my blood sugar by 200 points?
This is another area where I really disagree with Cyrus’ and Robbie’s approach in that they’ve concluded that this means people with diabetes shouldn’t eat saturated fats or even most sources of fat because clearly, they raise blood sugar.
But I can tell you that in my normal low-carb eating approach, I could easily eat 10 grams of cheddar cheese and my blood sugar would not rise at all. Instead, the carbs would be what caused a dramatic spike in blood sugar.
- The extreme route with the ketogenic diet is to wipe out all carbs because “they raise blood sugar.”
- The extreme route within Cyrus and Robbie’s approach is to wipe out all fats because “they raise blood sugar.”
In reality, it seems to me that the extreme reaction from one macronutrient is a direct result of the extreme consumption of another macronutrient.
I could easily argue that Cyrus and Robbie’s approach to eating so many carbs makes me way too reactive to fats, which raises my blood sugar and thus means I shouldn’t eat so many carbs.
By Day 9: I felt like one big starchy bean. My blood sugar felt high all day even though it wasn’t. I felt foggy and thirsty. And I was confident in what was causing this: this high-carb diet. I felt like my veins were full of starch. And that headache that started on Day 7 was still rocking hard.
And that’s when I decided that starting on Day 10, I would transition back to a lower-carb eating with a newfound understanding of/or appreciation for:
- Using my new air-fryer! (I have been cooking nearly everything in this and I love it! )
- Feeling incredibly grateful for the clarity and constant energy that comes with a disciplined lower-carb diet
- Make an extra effort to ensure that my low-carb eating consists of lots of vegetables
- Cyrus talked to me in great detail about the immense value of making sure you are rotating your insulin injection (or pump) sites. The more you inject into one area, the more scar tissue and thus insulin resistance will result. I’m pretty lazy about rotating, so this is a valuable lesson and reminder that I will strive to carry forward.
- Feeling re-motivated to reduce the treats I was eating in March and lose that final 10 pounds that’s clinging mostly to where those two babies of mine were pulled from via c-section. Losing those 10 lbs would get me to a leanness that would enable me to see my abs and that’s simply a fun goal.
By Day 10: I fasted until 1 p.m. and then ate a meal of 2 eggs over-hard with a giant bowl of veggies from my air-fryer (which I would normally have just steamed and lightly oiled in a pan). I didn’t feel hungry again for hours after that meal. By the time 4 p.m. came around, that thick starchy feeling was subsiding and I was starting to find my natural energy and clarity from a lower carb approach to eating.
I realize that I definitely did not give this approach of eating as much time as Cyrus would have preferred before I came to any conclusions, but I honestly felt so lethargic and “starchy” that I couldn’t keep doing it. It’s not the right fit for me. And YES, it absolutely did make me more sensitive to insulin but the trade-off, for me, wasn’t worth it.
UPDATE: By Day 20: Transitioning back to my usual eating took a little “eating anything” route for a few days (maybe days 11 thru 14) where I just truly felt like my body wanted to eat anything that was gluten-free and calorie-dense, perhaps to compensate for the ultra low-fat intake of 10 days.
A rebound, for sure. But, I also started exercising again–only then did I realize that during my high-carb, low-fat experiment was my energy feeling a bit more precarious and I hadn’t had the energy stores to feel like jumping rope regularly. I could feel my body so thoroughly burning through everything I ate, the idea of exercising was just passively unappealing.
By Day 15 of eating “my” way, I was jumping rope again every day, for up to 45 minutes and feeling very energetic. (I recently realized I can do this form of exercise in my living room, while the baby is napping and the toddler is playing, while fasted, and it doesn’t cause any issues with my fibromyalgia sensitivities!)
Insulin Doses, Weight-Loss, etc.
- I’ve also lost another pound, down to 123. Eating between 1600 to 2000 calories based on how much jump-roping I did and overall hunger cues!
- I raised my Tresiba background insulin dose to 10 units initially, but I’m back down to 9 units. I’m considering dropping to 8 units as I type this because I’ve had recurring lows over the past 24 hours.
- My carb ratio is about 1:15 or 1:20 depending on when I last jumped rope!
- My correction factor is out of control sensitive which is why it’s definitely time to first adjust my basal insulin dose (mentioned above) and then see where my correction factor is. A correction factor of 1:150+ is a big, big sign that there’s too much basal on board.
- I’ve been eating my whole-foods, fairly high-fat diet. Carb intake is about 100 net carbs, but I’ve had a few days that were higher, too, around 150 net carbs.
- Real food. Plenty of fats. Lots of veggies. Some meat. Some fruit. Avoiding sugar or “treats” except for the weekend and those are treats I baked myself. Or my favorite gluten-free pizza! PIZZA! AHHH! I love pizza.
- ..TMI…my bowel movements are back to their usual, effortless, happy selves. (Yes, I just gave bowel movements their own identity and emotion.)
By Day 25: Eating delicious things like homemade pumpkin chocolate mousse (with real sugar), my background insulin dose is now down to 7 units…because of jumping rope for 30 to 45 minutes a day! Holy insulin sensitivity, Batman! Why bother with an extremely restrictive diet when jumping rope makes insulin like super juice? Loving it.
In a sense, it comes down to which argument you like best because we can find a zillion studies that support each side’s argument: eat less fat and more carbs vs. eat more fat and less carbs.
Cyrus and Robbie argue that ketogenic and low-carb diets that consist of large quantities of fat lead to heart disease, high triglycerides, and high cholesterol but there are plenty of cases of research proving this to be an outdated myth and misconception.
Pro-Fat Arguments, Studies & Experts
Here are just a few of those studies and arguments from experts why fat does not raise your risk of heart disease and cholesterol…
A great place to start reading is how the philosophy of low-fat philosophies actually began in this document from the History of Medicine & Allied Sciences.
- The Diet-Heart Myth: Cholesterol and Saturated Fat Are Not the …
- Cholesterol | The Nutrition Source | Harvard T.H. Chan School of …
- Rethinking dietary cholesterol. – NCBI
- Why Eggs Don’t Cause Heart Attacks – DiabetesDaily
- Everyone Was Wrong: Saturated Fat Can Be Good for You | Greatist
- Large diet study suggests it’s carbs, not fats, that are bad for your …
There are tons and tons of people who are thriving on low-carb or ketogenic diets. Their lab work easily disproves the myth of “dietary fat raises cholesterol levels.”
We could go on and on arguing about this but the fact is that people have now been eating this way for years and many are reporting great results and great health.
Pro-Carb Arguments, Studies, and Experts
And then, there are a variety of arguments trying to make the case for a low-fat diet, too…and with that are tons of people who feel best on this type of eating rather than low-carb eating!
- The China Study – T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies
- Q & A with Dr. Neal Barnard – Vegetarian Times
- The Evidence for Saturated Fat and for Sugar Related to Coronary Heart Disease
- Interview with Cyrus Khambatta on Treating Diabetes with High-Carb/Low-Fat
- Doug Graham’s Raw Food Philosophy
- (I honestly had trouble finding more studies because every time I googled “low-fat diets and high cholesterol,” I just got more results for why dietary fat does not lead to high cholesterol.)
So, Can’t We All Just Get Along?
Does there have to be only one way to eat for health? Must we promote our own approach only by bashing someone else’s?
I do wish that Cyrus and Robbie would consider offering a more middle-ground approach for people who want to learn how to better incorporate carbs in their diet without becoming a severely low-fat vegan. And that their online community, in general, would be open to “less than perfect” meals so that those who aren’t on board with being fully vegan could still be part of that higher-carb community and supportive discussion.
I also wish that both sides could appreciate the simple fact that there is more than one way to be healthy in life with diabetes. Your plan does not succeed based on the failure of another plan. We all respond differently to different approaches…and that’s really okay.
I’ve been directing people to Cyrus’ site for years whenever I hear come across someone expressing frustration that low-carb isn’t working for them or that they simply don’t want to eat that way. I wish the two extremes of eating could respect each other’s differences and appreciate each other’s passionate devotion to what works best for them.
I tip my hat to all the high-carbers and all the low-carbers, because both require tremendous discipline.
Personally, I’m finding the extreme swing in either direction to be the biggest turn-off for me at this time in my life, and in my own health, it feels unnecessary. There is a middle ground. It’s very possible to eat a lot of plant-based foods on a lower-carb diet. Which personally feels far more balanced to me. And why on earth must I completely give up gluten-free pizza just to obtain ultra-sensitivity to insulin when I wasn’t struggling with insulin resistance in the first place?
FACT: Carbs do raise blood sugar. But it’s very easy to survive without them because your body will convert more protein into glucose for additional fuel, and burn ketones for fuel if carb intake is low enough. Burning ketones for fuel has proven to be very safe and effective, even treating conditions like epilepsy. Babies are in and out of ketosis regularly, even when breastfeeding.
- At the same time: there are many people for whom a low-carb or ketogenic diet simply doesn’t work for any variety of reasons. They thrive eating this high-carb, plant-based, low-fat approach. And that’s great!
FACT: Fats do cause varying degrees of insulin resistance. But does that mean fats are the enemy? The body cannot function without fats. This is a fact.
- And there are many people for whom eating a vegan diet led to a variety of extremely negative symptoms. Eating a low-carb, higher fat diet leads to awesome energy, better blood sugars, and sustainable weight loss. And that’s great, too!
Fortunately, you get to choose how you eat. You get to experiment and see what feels right to you. Why must everyone follow the same protocol?
Achieving ultra-sensitivity to insulin does not automatically equal health in the same way that achieving flat-lined blood sugars through a ketogenic diet doesn’t automatically equal health. Your health is more complex than that.
I’m happy I was open to experimenting, but what I’d love to see next is how my pal Cyrus felt on a low-carb diet! Although, I think asking him to try that might be asking too much.
Regardless, I admire Cyrus and Robbie’s passionate dedication to their own philosophies on food and thriving with diabetes. They’re clearly helping many people with their program–and that’s what matters! Find what works for you, be open to experimenting, and never stop learning and studying your own diabetes.
If you are interested in eating a high-carb, low-fat vegan diet, I highly recommend checking them out at MasteringDiabetes.org. They are passionate, genuine and eager to teach more people their unique approach to eating.
Personally, I think a large majority of people don’t do well with the extremes of ketogenic or this low-fat vegan approach. Both eliminate tons of different types of food, are hard to sustain long-term, make social food-related gatherings feel awkward and impossible, and heck, they take a lot of the FUN out of so many delicious foods the world has to offer!
I think a large majority of us, diabetic or not, would thrive from focusing on a few simple things:
- More veggies
- More whole foods
- Fewer processed products
- Less alcohol
- Fewer $7 coffees from Starbucks that contain 80 grams of sugar
- Just more real food in thoughtful moderation with a twist in quantity that you know works well for you.
- And room for the occasional treat like ice cream, pizza, or tacos! If that’s what works for you!
What works best for YOU? Listen to your body and create your own success.
Marilyn Kohler
I have had type 1 for 63 yrs. I followed Dr. Bernstein for 11 yrs. I have followed Mastering Diabetes for 5 yrs. I tend to be diligent and I don’t cheat. I took the course from Cyrus and Robbie, so was well aware that I was signing up for a vegan diet. My A1c was 4.7 to 5.2 while low carbing and eating 30 daily carbs on approximately 21 total units of insulin. My current A1c is 4.8 while eating 275 daily carbs on approximately 21 total units of insulin. I never fast.
Low carbing left me with 2 heart stents, passing out from low blood pressure and migraine headaches. As soon as I changed to the low fat high carb plant based diet, I felt much better. No more passing out and no more migraines.
I love being a vegan for many reasons, but mostly because I can eat my fill of fruits, vegetables, grains, legumes and seeds while keeping great glucose levels.
I have never been hungry on either diet. I lost 10 lbs quickly when on the Bernstein diet, and I lost 10 lbs quickly on the Mastering Diabetes diet.
The Mastering Diabetes is a diet that I can easily live with. When I was in my 30’s and 40’s I was a diabetic who kept a supposedly decent A1c while I ate whatever I wanted to for the most part. I just don’t want to live that way anymore as I try to make it to at least my mid 80’s in decent shape. I am 71 now.
Hugo
Hello
you said: “I could definitely feel my body burning through the food I was eating. And to be honest, food was all I could think about during my non-fasting window of about 1 p.m. until bedtime. ”
Can you describe the symptoms? How did you know/feel your body burning more the food than normal? You maybe had constantly blood-sugar crashes (hypoglycemia) that causes sugar craving and desire to eat more?
Sarah Kimball
Ginger-Many thanks for this article! I agree wholeheartedly with you that a more balanced and less extreme diet is the way to go. I’ve had T1D for over 35 years now and have always taken care to keep my HbA1c below 7. I’ve tried a variety of “diets” including low carb, keto, crazy pregnancy hormone driven egg salad only, etc. I have been eating mostly whole food plant based for awhile now and then saw Mastering Diabetes in the bookstore and decided to give it a try. I found that just using 1 tablespoon each of hempseeds and flaxseeds every morning made it so that I could barely make the fat limitation even if I added no fat-full foots (avocados, nuts, tofu) for the rest of the day. Then I looked at the Mastering Diabetes sample diets and realized that they were basically fruit only diets with a little naked lettuce here and there. That is definitely not healthy by any means, nor is it socially sustainable. I wouldn’t be able to share meals with my family or ever go out to eat. I like your more moderate approach and will adopt it: more fruits and veggies, fewer processed foods, more whole foods. YES!
Kylee Garcia
Hi there!
I don’t have diabetes, but I have PKU and am insulin resistant. I came across this site looking for info on reversing diabetes with high carb low fat. I appreciate how you pointed out the need to compensate for one macro nutrient when dramatically decreasing the other…which makes me wonder what happens if one just eats a normal well balanced diet of approx 50% healthy carbs/30% healthy fats and 20% proteins along with daily exercise? I really feel best when eating whole foods. I love the motto of just eat real food. I believe that balance, consistency, and eating whole foods is the main thing we should all be doing! I am plant based as protein must be restricted on my PKU diet, but I recently learned that the amino acids methionine and serine are possibly more difficult to get on a vegan/plant based diet and are also necessary for blood sugar control. Lacking them can cause an array of issues like hair loss, fatigue, memory loss etc. Actually very similar to the “fog” you felt which you described as a high blood sugar feeling even though it wasn’t high. I believe you craved the cheese because you needed it (high in methionine) so I say eat it! Our bodies are smart. If we would just listen! ?
Celeste
Can I just say that I thoroughly enjoyed this article/experience that you shared? Oh what a gem. Thank you dear for sharing. AND LOL at by day 9 I felt like a starchy bean ? this article was very good.
Crystal
Hi there,
Type 2, insulin dependent here…
Very interesting article! I appreciate your detailed breakdown of your experiences and the transparency of your food choices. Initially, I was pretty surprised to read that you did not like the MD method, but after reading through to the end, it was pretty clear how you came to that decision. I too have “experimented” with this plan (and absolutely every other plan that is supposed to help diabetics), but unlike you I had much more favorable results. In less than two weeks, I was able to cut out half my meds, my BS average was steadily in the green and the weight was melting off faster than I ever dreamed. I did discover a few things during that time, like I couldn’t eat any kind of oats or oat bran or else I would spike. I also didn’t like the way pasta made me feel, so I skipped that. BUT, I could litteraly eat as much fruit and rice as I wanted (for the 1st time in 12 years) and I never had to count carbs or calories, just fat! It really was a dream come true. Like you, I was gasy and constipated for the first few weeks, but after my body adjusted, those things resolved. One very suprising benefit of the plan, was that my belly fat (that never seemed to budge with any other plan), just melted away and I discovered it actually IS possible to get your waist back after starting menopause! Also, my normal cloudy headedness and exhaustion that comes with eating fats had disappeared after only 3 days. The MD is litteraly a dream come true for me… especially since I don’t believe in eating animals anyways and really don’t like cheese either. The hard thing for me to let go of mentally, was my milk and butter. But after 3 weeks without the fats, butter actually started to smell revolting. Honestly, after reading your article, I’m wondering if it didn’t work for you because you really didn’t “give it a real 100% try” and actually follow the plan. In the same way a weight lifter can undue an entire weeks worth of work by drinking a couple beers, I really do think that all the low-fat eating can be undone by eating animal fat. It sounds more like this was a half-hearted attempt to follow a new way of eating, in which you were making your own rules to and still expecting to have the benefits of following it completely. As far as I know, there is no rule that said you have to eat oat bran or even beans and I was successful without the two. Have you learned about your gut biome and how that affects things? Not trying to argue here.. just think it’s kind of unfair to say this plan did not work for you, when you didn’t really even follow it. I think it could possibly dissuade others from giving it a try and possibly changing or even saving thier lives.
Mork Fromork
Interesting that you open by saying you wanted to give the experience justice, but said you lasted 2 weeks and even then it doesn’t look like you followed it that whole time.
Cyrus, as far as I’ve seen, advocates for a 3 day fast every 30 days, no a Gatorade fast because of an illness.
Protein shake? Pretty sure it’s not on the diet as it’s not a whole food.
Also, you say at the end that you would like to see how he feels on a low carb diet, but if you really knew him, you’d know he tried it when he was first diagnosed and had terrible blood sugars.
Your entire write up stinks of bias going into the experiment. Perhaps that’s why you didn’t want to give it a real chance?
Allison
Thank you so much for this write up. I have been type 1 since I was 8 (over 25 years now) and have tried keto, Whole30, low-carb, what have you – but recently have been trying to cut back on my meat intake. (The meat I do eat isn’t really high quality stuff.) I keep coming across Mastering Diabetes and it sounded a bit hokey to me, despite the authors being two very educated guys. Your post made me feel like my approach is just fine – eat whole foods, and more of them! (Thank you Michael Pollan.) The research and personal experience you used really helped me feel like I don’t need to keep debating if this HCLF way of life is worth trying.
Karen Lavine, retired diabetes educator
Thank you for your efforts to document your findings as objectively as possible. Very interesting information. You have reported short term responses to switching back to a much lower carb diet with liberalized intake of fats. Do you notice differences in your pre-meal/fasting BGs and/or how you feel based on the types of high fat foods you eat? Have you gotten a fasting lipid panel since resuming a low carb diet? By any chance, did you get one while on the very low fat diet?
Ginger Vieira
Hi Karen!
Your questions sound more geared towards the debate of HCLF vs. LCHF.
I do not follow a severely high-fat low-carb diet like Keto. Instead, I simply strive to eat mostly whole foods, lots of plants at every meal, with normal amounts of protein and fat. I also eat fruit several times a day, but I limit whole grains and the starchiest plants (like potatoes, oats, and rice) because I simply feel less energetic when I eat them even if my BG is in-range post-meal. That’s what I know about my body.
There’s a funny assumption these days that if someone isn’t “plant-based” or “vegan” they must not eat very many plants, or that they sit around eating sticks of butter and slabs of bacon all day! LOL. I wish we wouldn’t keep applying such extremes to everything. Unlike the diet described in this article, I simply eat a lot of vegetables plus a healthy amount of protein and fat. My background insulin dose is between between 8 to 10 units….I’m clearly not suffering from insulin resistance just because I include fat in my diet.
My last lipid panel, if I can recall the general ranges, showed my HDL at 106! Which is awesome! I was pleased to see that, and my LDL was in the normal range. I don’t recall the actual lipid number.
But in short: I was only on the HCLF diet for less than 2 weeks because I felt pretty yucky on it. So that wouldn’t have been worth running a blood panel on.
I feel WONDERFUL and energetic, running 3 miles a day or jumping rope for 30 to 45 mintues a day plus weights and 5 miles of daily dog-walking when I follow the ONE RULE of: eat mostly real food. My A1c is in the low 6s and has been for years. Could I get it lower if I wanted to obsess about it? You bet. I’ve certainly been able to maintain lower at different times in my life. But juggling two little kids, recently divorced, and moving 4 times in one year, an A1c of 6.3 is fine for me! I do not obsess about any one macronutrient and I do not believe in any extreme dieting, whether it’s keto or HCLF. I DO however support someone in their own pursuit of finding out what works for them. For some, this HCLF is a wonderful fit. For others, it is not. We’ve all gotta experiment and find our personal balance. At the end of the day, I think it comes down to eating more real food and less processed crap.
Larry Ayotte
Thank you for this article. I’ve been on keto (20g) for about 5 years. I’ve never eaten this much whole food in my life. It works for me. You answered a lot of questions I had about high carb. I didn’t see Diet Doctor included in your source list. They are my go to source for anything keto related. Thanks again.
Larry
Johnny
Thank you for your detailed post, I recently purchased the mastering diabetes book after listening to a podcast, they attached an additional PDF of information to the audiobook and one detail it has in it says:
Low-carb diet -> excelent blood glucose control -> Nondiabetic A1c -> Increasing “silent” insulin resistance -> Increased chronic disease risk -> Diabtes complications and increased risk of all-cause mortality
So what alarms me is according to this, even if our A1c appears normal, there is something silent under the hood going on that is putting our future self in danger. What are your thoughts on this chart or do you know any further detail on what they mean by this?
Ginger Vieira
Hey Johnny!
A very thoughtful question indeed. With a variety of ideas of thoughts in response:
1. It’s a simple fact that YES some people do become very insulin resistance on high-fat/low-carb diets. This has been detailed in many articles about ketogenic diets on DiabetesStrong. (Christel Oerum does NOT eat a ketogenic diet for this reason, but many others do not experience this issue an dit works for well for them.)
2. Mastering Diabetes has always expressed the blanket statement of low-carb eating as if it means there are no vegetables in a person’s diet, and this is extremely false. Paleo Diets, for instance, are intended to be largely focused on eating A LOT of vegetables while still being a mostly low-carb diet. The Ketogenic diet definitely proposes a lifestyle that limits what kinds of veggies/whole-food fiber you can consume…and guess what: that’s why I don’t eat a ketogenic diet, nor do I encourage others to do — because of exactly what you stated.
3. I agree with you completely: even if a low-carb diet results in a low A1c that is NOT the only measurement of health, especially if it’s void of whole foods, namely vegetables. BUT I would also argue that MasteringDiabetes has simply accomplished this extreme absence of vital nutrition by swinging the extreme opposite direct by reducing dietary fat intake to unhealthy levels for the sake of insulin sensitivity. Sensitivity to insulin is NOT the only measurement of health. Dietary fat is a critical component to your body functioning properly. In my personal opinion, the amount of fat they guide their followers to eat is dangerous, and the long-term consequences of this newer extreme diet have yet to be seen.
4. Lastly, this is why I personally feel that we should ditch the extreme diets (high-carb/low-fat or ketogenic) and find a balance of macros that is more reasonable that offers a more balanced picture of health. At the end of the day, that comes down to simply eating more REAL/WHOLE food (included healthy fats) and less processed junk.
https://diabetesstrong.com/flexitarian-diet-for-diabetes-management/
Thank you for your thoughtful comment!