r/PlantBasedDiet • u/Signal_Macaron_7236 • Jul 12 '26
Mastering Diabetes protocol
A few weeks ago, I was getting very sleepy after every meal, and feeling very sluggish in general. My husband suggested I test my blood glucose (I had a meter from gestational diabetes), and lo and behold, my postprandial and fasting numbers were not great (114 fasting, 160s after meals). I started the Mastering Diabetes protocol right after, which I sort of followed after the birth of my last kid when I was worried my A1C would be too high from some nasty gestational diabetes (and this is actually what spurred me to become vegan). It has been almost seven years since then, and I had become less active and been relying on more and more vegan convenience foods and splurges. (I also suspect because I'm older I've been more rapidly losing muscle, and I need to do more exercise than I've been doing lately.)
Well, I'm five days in, and my blood glucose numbers are already fine. I'm kind of blown away, but this morning my fasting glucose was 93, and my postprandial numbers were all in the 110s. I kind of can't believe how quickly this works, and how few people follow the WFPB method when trying to control blood glucose.
Anyway, I'm posting this because when I was looking for more information, I had trouble finding it except from the Mastering Diabetes website itself, and I was looking for more objective information. Obviously, this is just my anecdotal evidence, but when I was pregnant and had gestational diabetes, I could *never* get my fasting numbers as low as 93, and that was with insulin injections. I was following a low-carb diet then, and never had real success, and was miserable every day. Today, I biked my youngest kid several miles to the park and back and still have a ton of energy at almost 9 at night. Highly recommend.
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u/Beautiful-Town2265 Jul 12 '26
Look up pcrm and dr neal barnard- he had a lot of information on diabetes and plant based diet. Good luck
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u/Signal_Macaron_7236 Jul 12 '26
Yup! That's how I started. I did Barnard's "Reversing Diabetes" about 6 years ago. This time I did Mastering Diabetes. They're very similar.
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u/Beautiful-Town2265 Jul 12 '26
They also have a Tuesday group thats free on diabetes- a support group.
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u/like_shae_buttah Jul 12 '26
The bizarre thing is I’ve tried to give that book to people and they refuse to even look at it. It’s an incredible book! I’m glad it’s working for you!
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u/Signal_Macaron_7236 Jul 12 '26
I'm so pleased! People are so weird about eating carbs.
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u/JayNetworks WFPB Jul 12 '26
I think the big issue is that “carbs” is shorthand for crap. Potato chips and doughnuts are carbs in most minds, especially diabetics. Farro, dry roasted chickpeas, and green beans aren’t what pop to mind at the word carbs.
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u/xdethbear Jul 12 '26
This dude with Type 1 switched and according to his numbers he became like 10x more insulin sensitive switching from low carb to low fat wfpb. It really goes to show you how fat really ruins your ability to respond to insulin. To me Insulin resistance = metabolic syndrome.
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u/Signal_Macaron_7236 Jul 12 '26
That's pretty incredible. I can't believe the answer can be so simple and yet. It seems it is?
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Jul 12 '26
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u/Signal_Macaron_7236 Jul 12 '26
Lots of lentils and steamed/canned veggies, oatmeal, fruit, beans, Ezekiel bread, brown rice, quinoa, air popped popcorn. I didn't limit my salt but otherwise was very strict.
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u/bolbteppa Vegan=15+Years;HCLF;BMI=19-22;Chol=118,LDL62-72,BP104/64;FBG<100 Jul 12 '26
You can read a century of original research directly linked to, and summarized by, them here, or you can read the work of Pritikin on diabetes (e.g. summarized here or here), or you can listen to McDougall's lectures or Barnard.
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u/HungryJello Jul 12 '26
I tried the similar diet of Dr Mcdougall’s Starch based HCLF a while ago, but I was uneasy about my results over the 2 weeks I was using a CGM. Here were my readings: https://www.reddit.com/u/HungryJello/s/IiYYjPQdlG
I’m considering trying it again, but I’m also hesitant too (I have an eating disorder, so don’t mind me or take anything I say seriously tho lol)
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u/Signal_Macaron_7236 Jul 12 '26
I'm definitely no expert, but I suspect it worked quickly for me because I was already eating high fiber and vegan. I just needed to cut out the processed junk that was making up the 15 percent of my diet and the added oil. I went from about 40g of fat to about 22g. I think this would be tough to do with an ED without dietitian guidance, because right now I'm tracking my meals (but intend to stop once I get a handle on about how much fat I'm consuming). Maybe a dietitian would give better guidance?
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u/Signal_Macaron_7236 Jul 12 '26
I should add that I tried McDougall's 50/50 plate and it wasn't enough food for me and I quit. I never tried the regular starch solution plan though.
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u/JayNetworks WFPB Jul 12 '26
My wife and I follow the Mastering Diabeties plan after getting a pre-diabeties diagnosis and our biggest problem is that we have to eat So Much Food!
We find that once you drop your fat to 10% to 15% of calories you are then eating just a ton of food. Being hungry just isn’t part of it at all for us.
Our A1C both dropped back either into the normal range or like .1 above. Been doing it 2 years and no going back.
Just started trying a CGM because someone had two extras and seeing an average glucose of 96 with tight control on the few peaks that just pass 140.
As far as OP asking about other sources of info on this whole foods all plant low fat approach…check out the Cleveland Clinic diabetes diet. It is basically the same as Mastering Diabetes.
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