Got some good news from the Dr yesterday and just wanted to share… the advice and insights from this sub have been invaluable.

Now comes the hard part, seeing if I can maintain it for the rest of my life 😅

In case anyone is interested I’ll post what I did below. But want to caveat that I don’t think this is the “right” way to do it just what seemed to work for me. I had asked my dr if I could try to bring it down naturally w/o meds after he initially prescribed metformin, he said yes but looking back maybe I made it harder on myself than I needed to. Annnyway:

Goal of 1g protein per lb body weight

Ordered a butt-ton of Perfect Amino powder (game changer to actually reach that protein goal and not feel hungry… tried Fortagen too but didn’t like the taste as much)

Tried to stay under 20-25g carbs a day. Used MyFitnessPal to track. 

On the days when I couldn’t be perfect followed the advice here of eating protein/veggies first, then carbs, then going for a walk. 

Got an X3 bar and worked out with it for 15 mins daily 5-6 days a week

Intermittent fasting 16-8 most days (so I would eat lunch and dinner but no after dinner snacking)

Got a CGM (Stelo at first - just got a Libre with an Rx.) Listen to all the people on here who say this is a total game changer! Incredible to get the near real time feedback of how what you’re eating affects your glucose. 

Maybe most important - my wife decided to get on board with doing the diet with me. Can’t overstate how crucial that was in the daily routine, and making it through the holidays. I’m lucky. 

Some things that surprised me:

I was anticipating being hungry a lot more than I was. But the extra protein really helped. 

Before I had been doing a lot of after dinner snacking and would enjoy a few beers, even a week or two after cutting that out I could definitely tell the difference. Now on the occasion I do drink I’m a total lightweight, 2 glasses of wine and I’m properly drunk, where that would barely give me a buzz before. 

Speaking of drinking, with the CGM realized I would crash down below 70 at like 2am after having a glass of wine with dinner, so now when I drink I follow the advice on this sub of having a handful of peanuts or spoonful of peanut butter before bed. 

I got reintroduced to steak, eggs cooked in butter, bacon, cheese… lots of stuff I used to avoid that I thought was unhealthy. 

I figured that after doing this 3 months I was going to be f’d as far as cholesterol. My LDL did go up but so did my HDL, and triglycerides went way down. I thought I’d be in for another diet change but to my surprise my doc said the hdl/triglyceride ratio is what’s  most important and he wasn’t worried that my ldl increased (said it’s common with keto based diets)

Dropped about 37lbs

Hope some of this is helpful to people who are newly diagnosed - hopefully I’m able to keep it up from here! 

7.5 to 5.4 in 3 months