Me at age 6 with the beginnings of Buddah Belly-leading indicator of insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes.

“If you want to lose weight: Don’t eat.  

If you have to eat, don’t eat carbs.
 
If you have to eat carbs, eat low GI-carbs.””

-Richard David Feinman
*

I saw an intriguing video from a blog I follow about the cure for type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance.

You’re not gonna like it.

Fasting.

Doctor Jason Fung reported findings of other’s work and analyzed it. As a test trial, one researcher found that if 20 healthy men were exposed to chronic high amounts of insulin, they developed type 2 diabetes and PUT ON 20 LBS despite reducing the amount of calories from 2000 to 1700 per day.

In contrast, 10 previously obese people who had undergone lap band or gastric bypass surgery （forced fasting） had REVERSED type 2 diabetes.

FASTING CURED TYPE 2 DIABETES!

He suggested that chronic exposure to insulin caused the cell receptor sites to become “immune” or “resistant” to it, conceptually like we can become “resistant” to antibiotics.

My boot camp starvation technique may be working on this insulin resistant body. I’m now down about 5lbs.

“you’ll go into starvation mode!”

That would be true if my body were normal but it’s not. Even Dr. Fung debunks the “starvation mode” argument.

The more I learn, the more I’m convinced I went into insulin resistance by age 6. I was a chubby kid, my siblings were not.

Hypoglycemia runs in the family and I’m not exactly sure why I was the fat kid and my sister was thin. Partly, I blame Barbie-she was a sedentary toy for a very girly girl and my sister was an active tomboy.

All that noise and activity scared me as a kid.

I could never have imagined that mosh pits and black metal would have appealed to me as an adult…

I have been on the razor’s edge of type 2 for 25 years.

The low-fat diet fad of the 80’s and 90’s only seemed to work for me because I had full blown Grave’s disease at the time. It’s another one of those “would you rather” scenarios:

You can eat anything BUT you will go blind

OR

Irradiate your thyroid and keep your vision but put your weight in the hands of misinformed thyroid doctors.

Fabulous.

So what’s it like to fast?

Weird at first. I can’t lie. The first day I feel sorry for myself that I can’t enjoy life like others do. Drinking wine, having solid food, eating a cookie, tasting life.

Here’s the strange part-by about day 3, it seems I can enjoy smells of food and sugar. I cooked an ENORMOUS BBQ for 20 on Saturday but ate very little of it.
The champagne and beer toasts I brought to my.lips but did not drink.  The smells were amazing and it felt like I was eating each dish I sent out of the kitchen.

Also, I’m now addicted to those candle warmer scents like cinnamon buns and cookies. It’s as if I actually eat them without eating them.

A side note to my husband and friends: if ever you cannot find me, I will be in 1 of 2 places-the bathroom or the candle aisle of Walmart sniffing candles.

“omg that’s so SAD! How can you STAND it?”

I’ve learned that I am resiliant and tough as hell. You cannot endure almost 40 years of endometriosis or 25 years as a female geologist without being tough. The pain of endo, when it is active, feels WORSE THAN GIVING BIRTH EVERY DAY.

Since retiring from my desk job, I have been pretty much pain free, so in comparison, a few days of starvation is pretty easy.

I keep myself busy, drink coffee, drink SFH whey protein shakes and smell a lot of candle wax.

I have yet to see a BBQ ribs candle, but when I do….

you know where to find me…