December 28, 2024
Back in September of this year, I learned about insulin resistance on a personal level. The way it started, I read a book called “Good Energy” by Dr. Casey Means. I downloaded all my previous labs, and despite my physician, not doing his job and informing me that I was in the beginning stages of insulin resistance. I found this out by comparing my labs to the scale in the book. This was very eye-opening. I begin my journey of researching the information from the book. What I found was that a ketogenic or carnivore diet was the best treatment for insulin resistance to reverse it. By September 28, I had put together a plan of attack and started with the ketogenic diet. I found it near impossible to keep my carbohydrates less than 20 g per day so I just went full on the carnivore until I can figure this out.
So what has been going on between 2017 and now. So in 2018/2019 I started on a ketogenic diet. I had lost down to 150 pounds in total. During this time I had fallen and broke my ankle during the summer and was pretty much chair bound, except for therapy for three months. My doctor did not like the ketogenic diet after doing it for almost a year. He said that my cholesterol and LDL was too high and he wanted me to go on statins and change to a plant-based diet. I declined the statin but took his advice and changed to a vegan way of life.
So the end of 2019, I embarked on the plant base diet, which was a challenge for me. However, I stuck with it 2019 to 2022. I gained back up to 192 pounds. I gained tons of inflammation in my body. I gained skin problems such as delayed wound healing, my mouth was always breaking out with ulcers, and I started having sciatic nerve pain and pain in my thigh & muscles in my right thigh. One of the things I did discover during this process was medicinal herbs and their benefit. So I started doing herbal classes and research on the different herbs, and I tried multiple herbal remedies for the inflammation, wound issues, muscle pains, and oral ulcers. I found out that my problems was not needing an herbal remedy, but cleaning up my toxic body, which brings us to this year.
2023 brought a lot of confusion. started researching vitamin deficiencies related to vegan lifestyle and started trying to do a more Mediterranean diet, adding back chicken and eggs. I also started baking sourdough bread and making fermented foods no matter what I did nothing helped with the pain and inflammation that I was experiencing.
2024 started my journey of research of what kind of diet that I need to be on to not only address my symptoms, but my generalized health because I was not feeling well. I started reading books about my symptoms and found Dr. Casey means book called Good Energy. This brings us to date.
See my labs from May 2023 below.
Hgba1c 5.7%, triglycerides 206, HDL 50, LDL 154, fasting glucose 93, total cholesterol 242. These labs are on a post vegan/Mediterranean diet.
I joined an organization called LEVELS. They sent me a continuous glucose monitor, and I purchased some specific labs that they recommended. See labs below from September 25, 2024.
Hgba1c 5.9%, fasting insulin 14.5,triglycerides 113, ApoB 142, uric acid 5.9
The advice that I received was to do some lifestyle changes such as cut out all process and ultra processed foods, Lower carbohydrate intake,Improve sleep quality, and exercise.
After being on the ketogenic/carnivore diet for five weeks, I had my annual doctors visit. He drew a few labs when I told him I was back on my ketogenic diet and had lost 10 pounds.
Following labs from Dec 6, 2024
Triglycerides 135, LDL 241, HDL 42, fasting glucose 71,total cholesterol 308.
Of course my doctor wanted me to go back on statins and was not an approval of my ketogenic/carnivore lifestyle. He was not concerned about the previous labs from 2023, insulin resistant, or September 2024 labs except for LDL and total cholesterol. I am in the pursuit of a functional medicine physician at this time that will walk with me on this journey without throwing pills at me and the standard American diet. I am due for lab work next week and will post another update.
