How My Diet Has Evolved, Its Impact On Type 1 Diabetes And Holistic Health…And The Importance Of The Mastering Diabetes Program

I started to become interested in nutrition at some point ten years ago. I am, to this day, a pure amateur of the subject, but a life with type 1 diabetes somehow forces you to develop some basic understanding of some things.
What I eat on a regular basis is one of these, and developing more awareness around my food choices marked the start line of a journey that eventually led me to understand and optimize other equally critical areas such as physical activity, sleep and stress management.

In my life before diabetes, my diet was a mess: pizza & coke, beers, chips, sweets of all kinds… the modern standard for most westerners, and thousands of miles away from the way humans have eaten all throughout their evolution.

When I was diagnosed with type-1 diabetes, long before I became aware of such things as the Mastering Diabetes Program, the diet proposed to me by my nutritionist was no better, the “Mediterranean Diet” in its worst shape possible. It included lunches and dinner composed with “50 grams of white pasta or rice; 30 grams of salami of choice or fish; a portion of cheese of choice (parmesan on the pasta, butter, mozzarella, etc.); one side of vegetables with olive oil”. The **breakfasts I was advised to eat were slices of bread with jam and butter, a cup of milk and that was it. I am not kidding. Fresh fruits, omega-3 fatty acids and whole grains were not mentioned in the file. I was treating my frequent lows with candies and bread, my frequent highs with extra insulin units, enjoyed pizzas and kebabs and beers with my friends and my life sucked. But I didn’t know it yet, I just relied on medications for a short-term fix when needed.

A few years into this apocalypse, around 2018, I went vegan. I had been vegetarian for one year or so already and ditching the meat had brought some improvements both in diabetes management (less fluctuations and lower insulin needs) and in my body composition too, as I had dropped some extra fat accumulated over the years. I loved cheese in all its shapes and forms, and I had no intention of abandoning it. It just happened, at some point I didn’t feel like I needed it anymore, so I stopped eating it and never craved it since then.

Step 1: Early Days As A Vegan Type-1 Diabetic. A Mess, But Less Of

This was the moment when I became interested to understand what I was eating and why, what kinds of energy sources are out there, and how they should be combined to promote health. I was quite serious about it from the get-go because I had also started to ramp-up my workouts. My transition to a vegetarian and then vegan diet was part of a larger commitment to health that included physical activity. No day passed without some form of Power Yoga (with the one and only Sean Vigue Fitness) or calisthenics workouts, or both. 15 minutes at first soon became half-hours and then full hours: I enjoyed it, and have never stopped exercising.

But I needed to fuel and recover, so I had to understand carbs, fats, proteins and fibers too. I had always consumed minimal amounts of fibers and I absolutely rejected any type of bean, so there was a gut microbiome to rebuild and adapt from scratch to “unknown” things like legumes and fresh salads bowls.

There was no Mastering Diabetes Program, no Glucose Goddess Method, no Huberman Lab Podcast, none of the resources I regularly rely on today to understand well-being. I knew nothing about relevant books and authors in this field, I just watched “The Game Changers” documentary on Netflix and cooked according to *Simnett Nutrition* and Healthy Crazy Cool Vlogs on YouTube, where I also discovered Mic The Vegan and NutritionFatcs.org by Dr. Michael Greger, my point of reference to understand the science of nutrition. That was essentially it: it was enough to reduce the friction of acquiring technical knowledge and to eat fairly well without having to worry about much, and most of all without having to spend hours in the kitchen.

I vividly remember how I used to eat during this period, here are some examples. Breakfast: a giant post-workouts smoothie bowl for breakfast made with a blend of bananas, frozen berries, spinach, chia seeds and soy protein powder, topped with puffed rice, oats and goji berries.

Lunch: an abundant pasta bowl with tofu, olives, tomatoes and capers, accompanied by bread (I had no idea how bad refined carbs were, back then).

Dinner: a big stir of tofu, seitan, bell peppers and zucchini dressed with olive oil and tahini and some steamed legumes. Luckily for me, this was also the period when we, as an extended family, started to maintain a harvest and grow our on vegetables during the summer, so tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini and eggplants were abundant and self-produced. A true blessing.

Step 2: Less Vegan Junk Food…But Junk Food Nonetheless

In all of this, I had almost forgotten about junk food, so pizzas and similar foods dropped from a weekly to a monthly frequency. It’s not that I forced myself out of it, it just happened. Junk food was not aligned with my attempt to conduct a healthier lifestyle, so its share in my meals reduced gradually and dramatically.

Without knowing it, the quality of my food consumption had skyrocketed since my early days with Type 1.

But there was still a lot of work to do: my Time In Range was just around 80% and I still experienced the swings in blood sugars that kept my daily insulin needs way too high, just like my levels of frustrations.

Things had improved, but I still feared having lows while working out or going about my day. I was still interrupted by diabetes while studying, reading, hanging out with friends.

The problem? My diet was vegan, but full of processed foods nonetheless. Processed foods are processed foods, and no matter whether they recite “vegan” or otherwise on the label they still constitute a problem for health.

I was also not paying any attention to my fat and protein intake: oils, spreads and processed soy products regularly found their fair share in pretty much every meal, and that was directly feeding my insulin resistance under the hood.

I was eating cleaner, but I was far from eating clean. I was eating vegan, but being plant-based was something different (I explain why, to me, they are different in this article).

Step 3: The Mastering Diabetes Program, Understanding The Causes Of Insulin Resistance And Going “Plant Based”

I started querying YouTube for “Vegan Type 1 Diabetics” or “Can You Eat Vegan With T1 Diabetes” or “How To Reduce Hyperglicaemias”. Videos from the Mastering Diabetes Method started to pop on my screen, and especially the early “What I Eat In A Day” vlogs from Robby Barbaro. I was stunned by the possibility that someone could eat that many carbohydrates, while having such a great Time In Range, excellent blood glucose levels and requiring such a minimal amount of insulin. I was stunned, and that was everything I needed to see.

Thanks to the videos and articles from Mastering Diabetes, I became aware of the concept of whole foods. In particular, whole plant-based foods that are rich in carbohydrates and naturally low in fats. That was the missing element from my diet. Seitan, vegan burgers, vegetable oils, pastas, breads, protein powders did not fit into that definition, they were not whole foods. They were industrial, processed foods made with added oils, refined starches and proteins that my body (just like any human body) is not equipped nor supposed to handle due to the way it has evolved over the millennia.

This early exposure to the message that the Mastering Diabetes guys were spreading almost feels now like taking Matrix’s red pill and facing a (previously) unsettling truth. Nobody wants to hear that everything you’ve grown up eating - milk with cereals, white chocolate, grandma’s cakes, pizzas, sandwiches, kebabs with friends, popcorn at the movie theaters, perhaps even fast foods - is bad for health.

But that’s exactly the “program” we’ve be instructed to accept more or less from the second half of the twentieth century, when the food industry discovered new ways of processing natural resources and combine them in ever so cheap, convenient and irresistible products.

They’re cheap, they are ubiquitous and they fit any occasion, so we largely overconsume them. The fact that we often associate these foods with social events (pizza with friends) or that we don’t want to displease someone (grandma’s cake) has not helped with taming this trend.

Step 4: Foods That Helped Me Reverse Insulin Resistance And Improving Blood Sugar Control…For Real

That was the revelation I had when I read the Mastering Diabetes book (they’re not the ones who “invented” the concept of whole food, nor are they the only ones spreading this idea. I just discovered it through them first). I had never heard that there existed some real food out there, unprocessed, that had preserved the real taste of nature. I had never really experienced the taste of a potato because all the potatoes I had ever eaten were drenched in olive oil and inundated with ridiculous amounts of salt. I was just tasting salt.

When I became aware of this, I started to see salt, oils and sugar hidden everywhere, in almost everything I was eating on a regular basis. Thanks to Mastering Diabetes now I knew exactly how to recognize the causes of insulin resistance in my meals, the hidden culprit behind all my blood sugar problems, and what was leading to occasional unwanted fat accumulation.

I now had a name for what was good for health and what wasn’t.

“Green light foods”, the ones that now constitute 95% of my diet. These are whole food, plant based, carbohydrates rich foods that are naturally low in fats. They include everything ranging from whole fruits, whole grains, legumes, vegetables, potatoes, mushrooms. I don’t put a limit for how much I eat these.

“Yellow light foods”: nuts, processed soy products (tofu, soy milk, soy yogurt), the occasional treat (a vegan patty), nut butters, smoothies, dried fruit, dates, pasta alternatives. Since they have higher fat and protein content (nuts, tofu) or a faster way into the bloodstream (juices), they either cause insulin resistance or cause spikes. I consume these with caution and moderation, saving them for emergencies or special occasions.

“Red light foods”: animal products, industrial plant-based products with added oils and refined carbs, oils, anything with refined flour (pasta, bread, pizza, baked products), sweets, etc. I just avoid these as much as possible. Animal products are not a part of my diet, and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve had any of the others in the past year or so.

Bonus: How I “Cook” And Eat To Reverse Insulin Resistance

Now, I am not a chef. I don’t have any cooking skill beyond boiling potatoes (and my multicooker does that for me most of the times anyway) or preparing overnight oats. When I don’t know what to eat, I just open the green light foods list, pick four to five items that are in season, and combine them inside a bowl.

I get all my carbs - and fuel in general - from whole plant based foods, mainly fruits and grains. Then I accompany them with a big portion of fiber. A typical summer meal will have some leafy green, a couple of tomatoes, one yellow bell pepper, one beetroot, chia seeds, some chickpeas and one whole grain like buckwheat or oats (prep time: 3 mins?). I dress salads with vinegar, ginger and lemon (sometimes pure cocoa powder, too!); I don’t add salt as the intake is covered by seaweed and the whole foods themselves and my fats come from a spoonful of seeds.

I will only add two more caveats, which are part of a recent "dietary" shift rooted in human evolution that are having noticeable impact on my health (including fat loss, decreased insulin resistance, better blood sugar control and much better digestion).

The first one is that whatever I eat must be in season. I don’t eat peaches in the winter nor do I binge on cauliflowers in the summer. There’s a reason why Nature has placed certain foods in certain periods of the year, and in those periods, they are at the peak of their nutritional density. Eating iceberg salads doesn’t count as a nutritious meal, because the nutrient content in that thing is null. Eating a combination of wild herbs (I pick them from the ground during walks in the woods), varying them as much as possible and buying stuff I’ve never heard before is a good way to ensure I am getting a variety of different micronutrients on a consistent basis.

The second one is that I get as much variety as possible. Eating the same mix of salad+tomato+cucumber everyday will not get you and your gut health that far. Variety is key to make sure that all the micronutrients, or at least the most part, are covered most of the time. To achieve this, I make it a point to include servings of leafy greens of different colors, and to consume at least one unusual herb a week.

Let me add an honorable mention for seaweed and fermented foods. Seaweed, mostly forgotten in western countries, except for the occasional All You Can Eat at the Sushi restaurant, is an exceptional substitute for salt and it is packed with micronutrients and proteins. And fermented foods**,** (kimchi, sauerkrauts, pickles, tempeh, etc.) are a true blessing for our gut microbiome. I never had the habit of eating them, and only recently I have understood how much I was missing. I guess that is one of the downsides of modern life: previous generations had to rely on fermentation to preserve foods because they did not have refrigerators, and once these became available, fermentation was forgotten by most people. We must bring all that back into our concept of nutrition, and I actually enjoying the process and the wait of fermenting my own vegetables from start to finish.

None of the above is going to work, however, if we actively create the conditions for spikes. That is why I always accompany carbs with fiber (whole grains with salad or whole fruits with some greens, as examples), and why I strive for one or two main meals a day, and rely on small snacks for the remaining part. The “breakfast-lunch-dinner” schema is completely artificial, and it only suits our industrial society: I eat when I am hungry and minimize the amounts of large portions. I train in the morning, so I’ll typically have a large breakfast and a fair amount of calories for lunch with snacks in between as needed. Except for rare occasions, I grab my last bite of something light in the afternoon and skip dinner, so my stomach has time to digest and I have enough hours to catch my blood sugar trend before hitting the bed.

Bonus 2: There Is No Magic Diet. Eat Simple Foods, Like Your Grandma’s Grandma

This was a long article, and you deserve a recap. To stay in range and reduce insulin resistance, I eat whole unprocessed plant based foods 95% of the time. No added oil or salt or sugar. I pack my meals with fiber and move after eating. I don’t have too many large meals and rely on lighter snacks, which is a great strategy to avoid spikes. Additionally, to make sure that all of this is also providing real nourishment to my body, I eat seasonal food aiming for a wide variety, including seaweed and fermented food.

There’s no magic pill to health, I would conclude. We all know what the “magic diet” is, and we all know it is much closer to that of grandma’s grandma: whole foods, in season, eaten in smaller amounts and less often. Its just that we prefer the crazy taste of modern food.

“Grandma’s grandma diet” is enough to keep me healthy, fuel my performance as an endurance athlete, keep my type-1 diabetes in check, and achieve perfect bodyweight without putting any effort into it.

And it wins against any of the crazy diets sold by “expert” doctors I have naively tried in the past.