Hi, I wish you lots of success and looking forward to your results.
I didn't know anything about ND diet until joining the forum. But I am very curious about it.
Since I have always had a good experience with Low Carb diets I have sticked to it a few times with great results for weight loss and the management of my PCOS. However I was diagnosed Type 2 at the beginning of january and I wasn't diabetic before.
I was insulin resistant and had been for many years but nobody really pointed out at me what that really meant. My understanding of Low Carb diets pre dates my research and learning over PCOS and Diabetes, both of which have genetic components and are related.
I believe in some type 2 people diabetes is highly a genetic problem and not just the consequence of bad lifestyle habits.
In the past I have managed to lose weight significantly and I have been able to eat relatively normally without putting significant weight back up for quite a while. Of course I was younger and didn't have diabetes (understood as high BG at fasting etc) but I was insulin resistant.
Because of this I am certain, that after losing weight (which improves insulin sensitivity) my tolerance for carbs increases, because I have had experienced this in the past but because I wasn't diagnosed as a diabetic I wouldn't use the term reversal or cure (as I have no way to prove that).
I have, thanks to all my low carb previous experiences, managed to bring down my BG from diagnosis in January, in less than a month from 24.6 to 4.5 for most of the time, being around the 4.7 all day long. I did that by low carbing. I take Metformin which improves insulin sensitivity (and have taken it in the past), I was prescribed gliclazide, took it for two weeks and ditched it when I realized that I was producing actually excess insulin and no the other way around.
I don't think at diagnosis my problem was not having enough insulin, I believe my problem was my body not recognizing it at all and worse than ever before. However since what they measure at diagnosis is BG and not insulin levels, I have no way to confirm my logic.
When I low carb, I tend to eat much much less than I normally would do when I follow a conventional lifestyle. The reason why I have always liked low carb is because I can control my hunger in the long term better than every time I tried low calorie, however, I believe my caloric intake is lower than 1500 a day as I really can skip meals and not feel hungry at all.
Therefore, I was/am, really interested in the ND diet approach as I think, particularly in people where actually really bad lifestyle habits had triggered weight gain and diabetes (not heavily genetic) it would make sense to me that it would be possible to reverse the condition. But I don't think it would work the same on me, where a family history of the condition and my personal health history confirms that my genes have a lot to be blamed for.
In my case, I remain optimistic that I can improve dramatically my insulin sensitivity, but I will always have to be careful with what I eat, as I've proved time and time again that the weight comes back after a while (sometimes long while but still) if I don't stick to the general low carb approach.
At the moment I am following Dr. Bernstein's advice about keeping BGs around 4.7 all day long (and never over 5.6). I'm doing that but keeping some elements of diet constant (like portions and amount of carbs) as he suggest, but the diet I have always followed is Atkins induction.
Looking forward to read about your journey.