I have tried to put summary of my experience. If you have any questions, let me know.
Background:
. Male, 39 yrs old.
. Diagnosed diabetes in 1st week April 2017.
. Pain in nerves. So much so that I could not go to office for 2.5 months.
. Cardio - Atrial fibrillation happened few times.
. Bones crackling in the body.
. Vision changes for few days.
. Few other issues but you get the idea from above.
This is how I will summarize my experience:
. hba1c
. 24th April 2017 - 11.9
. 24th Jul 2017 - 6.1
. 24th Sep 2017 - 4.9
. No allopathic medicines.
. I took ayurvedic pills in the beginning but stopped after few days after few incidents of hypoglycemia.
1st 3 months:
. Mostly vegan diet except milk in tea.
. Followed Neal Barnard's book on reversing diabetes
. Followed Ramdev yoga video.
. Lot of vegetables and fruits in my diet. I ate Mangoes also. Only 2 fruits that I avoided - Banana and Cheeku/Sapota
. In the morning - cinnamon water, chia seeds, flax seeds, tulsi seeds.
. Nuts - almonds, walnuts, Pista, Cashew, peanuts.
. Ate in limit, 3-4 times a day.
. Cheat food - coffee/tea - 1-2 times a day.
. Drinking vegetable juice in morning. Vegetables - Lauki, Cucumber, Amla, Carrot, Green leaves, Tulsi, Karela.
. Lot of walking and some cycling since i was at home.
. Pranayam and yoga daily - 1 hour
Next 3 months:
. More liberal with food so ate out few times.
. Ate non-veg 2-3 times per month. Change from my past life was that for 1 unit of chicken, i would eat 3-4 units of vegetable. So no more stuffing with just non-veg in any meal.
. Had up to 2-3 rounds of tea/coffee on certain days. Nothing regular though.
. Stopped eating roti regularly. I developed taste for salads and fruits so I felt like eating those most of the time.
. Was eating chawanprash - organic india - that is based on jaggery and not white sugar.
. continued with my vegetable juice in the morning although less frequent.
. continued eating nuts
. included pumpkin seeds, watermelon seeds, sun flower seeds in my diet.
. had beer few times in last 3 months. I did not measure sugar level afterwards so I don't know what damage it did.
. in general i stopped measuring sugar level on daily basis which I was doing in first 3 months. I measured it few times randomly though.
. My weight was 68 kgs ( Peak weight 90kg in Dec 2016 ).
. Pranayam reduced to 30 mins. No more Yoga. I started going to office on bicycle so I sweat twice after 20-25 mins of cycling in morning and evening.
. I eat breakfast, cycle to office. eat lunch and take walk of 25 mins. eat dinner in office and cycle back to home. So do some exercise after every meal.
. Breakfast at 10 . Dinner at 7, so main course is limited to around 9 hours.
. Becuase of lot of weight loss, I was felt like improving my diet a bit and had eggs for few days.
. started some meditation - hoping to keep stress in check
To summarize,
. I found that I am eating better food now. Eating lot of veggies, fruits, nuts and seeds helped me immensely.
. With this diet, every now and then if I am forced to go out, I find it ok to eat things like non-veg etc in limit.
. I have also consumed some fried food ( made at home only).
. In general, i am much more active than i used to be before I got diabetes.
. Using vegetable based diet, my father, 64 yrs old, also 27yrs diabetic, has reduced 15 kgs.
. His insulin dose has come down from 36 units to 15 units, which he was taking for last 22 years.
. He bought bicycle and cycles 30 mins everyday.
. He is also doing 1 hour pranayam daily.