Sheer willpower, a regular exercise regimen, and the low-carb eating plan put her on a track to successfully managing type 2 diabetes, she says. RELATED: 7 Ways to Stay Motivated to Exercise if You Have Diabetes
Taking the First Steps Toward Making Lifelong Changes
Marcus, a church office manager in Arlington, Virginia, knew it wasn’t healthy or effective for her diabetes management to weigh 260 lbs. She’s right: Extra weight can increase insulin resistance (the hallmark of type 2 diabetes), making it harder to control blood sugar and increasing the risk for health complications, according to the American Diabetes Association (ADA). But her biggest push toward healthy living started with a jarring doctor’s appointment, she says. She had been living with prediabetes, the precursor to type 2 diabetes, for a few years, and had put her health on the backburner while caring for her mother, turning to convenient but unhealthy snacks for fuel. She went to the doctor in January 2016 and was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. “[My doctor] was very concerned,” says Marcus, noting her A1C — a two- to three-month average of blood sugar levels — was 11, indicating full-blown diabetes. Marcus explained her doctor wanted to put her on a few kinds of medication, including Glucophage (metformin), right away. “I said, ‘Can I have a couple of months and see if I can turn this around on my own?’” Marcus recalls.
Cutting Carbs on the Atkins Diet and Starting to Move It
Marcus immediately began exercising and completely upended her diet, clearing her kitchen of diet-sabotaging foods like donuts and outsourcing the daily task of cooking. “For me, I’m kind of a food addict, and I crave sugar. That didn’t go away for about three months,” she says. She knew cooking at home would help, but Marcus says she didn’t enjoy the task and didn’t often have time to meal-prep. She ended up finding a solution in a home-food-delivery service, Diet-to-Go. RELATED: The Best and Worst Foods to Eat in a Type 2 Diabetes Diet Diet-to-Go works with dietitians and chefs to create low-carb meals. One of their plans meets ADA guidelines, keeping meals between 40 and 60 grams (g) of carbohydrates per meal, and offering eats with healthy fat, like turkey burgers and salmon, says Hilton Davis, CEO of Diet-to-Go. Marcus says she chose the ADA-approved option, slowly easing herself into the lower-carb lifestyle of the Atkins diet. She ate them for lunch and dinner at first, but made her own breakfast and snacks at home to more easily transition into a lower-carbohydrate plan. (The ADA does not recommend Atkins for managing type 2 diabetes.) She says she’s since moved on to using the service only for dinner and started making her own portion-controlled, veggie-filled lunches from scratch. For Marcus, Diet-to-Go’s ADA diet–focused meals enabled her to easily cut out sugar and lower her carb intake. Slowly, she has started to see improvements in her health. Franziska Spritzler, RD, founder of LowCarbDietitian.com who is based in Orange County, California, says diets like Atkins that limit carbs to between 30 and 50 g per day may help control blood sugar through long-term carbohydrate reduction. (Spritzler is not involved in Marcus’s care, and she says she does not recommend any delivery service, encouraging cooking at home instead.) The first stage of Atkins keeps carbs below 20 g a day, and then slowly incorporates more carbs as your body adjusts. “As a dietitian, I think about how we try to get as many nutrients (as possible),” Spritzler says. “I really promote a whole-foods approach. It’s not 100 percent unprocessed, but I like for people to get as much as they can from real foods.” Today, Marcus weighs 140 lbs and her A1C is 5.7, signaling prediabetes. As her body began to transform, some of her friends hardly recognized her. “I would walk into a room somewhere, and people wouldn’t know [who] I was and they’d introduce themselves to me,” she says.
How Willpower and Determination Have Been the Keys to Marcus’s Success
Avoiding all those carbs in the form of sugary and starchy foods wasn’t easy for Marcus. It involved a lot of willpower — including preplanning what she would order if she went out to dinner. She says she began going to the gym three times a week and got a personal trainer when she changed her eating habits, noting that exercise has made all the difference in her health. The change also has opened new doors for Marcus. In summer 2017, she went paddle-boarding and kayaking — activities she says she would never have done before because she had been self-conscious about how people would react to her weight. Eating a diabetes-friendly diet over the holidays can be tough, Marcus admits, but she tries to avoid temptation when possible while still allowing herself to indulge. At the end of the day, she knows she has the strength to maintain a healthy balance. “I was very dedicated. Really, for a year and a half, I did not deviate. I really stuck to the plan,” she says. “You have to have a lot of willpower.” Those efforts have paid off, she says, and the best reaction she’s received so far has come from her doctor. “She said she’s never seen anyone turn it around like that,” Marcus says. “I did it for my health.”
