How Type 2 Diabetes Helped Me Heal My Relationship with My Body

In our diet-obsessed culture, it’s easy to get caught up in all the hype that promises to “cure” type 2 diabetes. But it was only after I let go of diet culture that I was finally able to practice genuine self-care.

As someone born into a larger body, I’ve spent most of my life trying to fight my natural body type, forcing it to be something it isn’t.

On the advice of my pediatrician, my mom put me on my first diet, Weight Watchers, in the first grade. This started 40 years of chronic dieting.

But none of the dieting ever significantly changed my shape. Instead, it set off a lifelong battle with my body that culminated in developing atypical anorexia, which is only “atypical” because the chronic starvation doesn’t result in emaciation.

Eventually, I “recovered” from the anorexia, only to realize it had simply morphed into orthorexia.

This came after being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. I became obsessed with trying to cure my diabetes by following every fad that promised a cure — from keto to fasting to resetting my microbiome.

Ironically, I was doing exactly what “they” say to do to avoid type 2 diabetes (eating healthy and exercising) when I was diagnosed. Yet, due to the persistent messaging of diet culture and anti-fat bias, I still blamed myself and my body size for getting type 2 diabetes.

Thus, these two conditions have long gone hand-in-hand for me. I spent decades trying to “fix” my body through chronic dieting and then another decade trying to “cure” my type 2 diabetes by attempting to — you guessed it — make myself thin.

Needless to say, for most of my life, I’ve viewed my body as the enemy, something I needed to subjugate and control.

Fortunately, I came to a point when I learned to let go of that battle and, instead, treat myself and my type 2 diabetes with compassion. Ultimately, this is what led to better health for me.

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I learned acceptance

I could have lost all hope and given up entirely after decades of dieting and exercising failed to change my body type or cure my type 2 diabetes. Instead, I stopped fighting reality by practicing radical acceptance.

Discovering acceptance began after the keto diet failed to cure my type 2 diabetes. At first, in my typical fashion, I got more extreme with it and added in intermittent and multi-day fasting. But, ironically, fasting — eating nothing at all — made my blood glucose much worse.

Soon after, I started a gut microbiome program, which required eating more carbs than on keto. Counterintuitively, my blood glucose significantly improved after increasing my carbs. My curiosity about what I was experiencing led me to dive into both type 2 diabetes and obesity research.

This is when I learned that weight loss diets not only fail for the vast majority of people, but they can also be harmful.

Further, the preponderance of evidence — including research done by the American Diabetes Association (ADA) — shows that weight loss isn’t even effective at significantly changing type 2 diabetes for most people, despite the ADA’s continued recommendation.

The reason for the continued focus on weight loss can be boiled down to fatphobia, or internalized weight stigma, which skews the findings of most research on the topic.

These discoveries validated my lived experience. Although I’d bought into the diet culture gaslighting that led me to believe my body and my type 2 diabetes were my fault due to overeating and “poor lifestyle choices,” I wasn’t an overeater. In fact, I was a chronic under-eater. I also ran marathons, participated in triathlons, and worked with personal trainers.

Yet, I was still fat and had type 2 diabetes.

However, research that adequately controls for factors like anti-fat bias, weight stigma, and weight discrimination in healthcare, such as this 2013 paper and this 2020 research review, demonstrates that fat is not, in fact, a cause of type 2 diabetes.

After all, people of all sizes get type 2 diabetes, and only a tiny fraction of those classified as overweight or obese ever get it.

So, I let go of the self-blame and the ongoing war on my body and learned to accept the things I could not change.

I practice self-compassion

While I was still deeply entrenched in diet culture and dealing with multiple eating disorders, I’d get distressed whenever the needle on the scale wouldn’t budge, or my glucose numbers would skyrocket despite all my best efforts.

I remember one night curling up in a ball sobbing on the kitchen floor because I was so terrified by the question of what to eat for dinner.

The problem with much of the messaging around type 2 diabetes is that it’s often couched as being our fault. Prevailing messaging, including from the medical community, tells us that we give ourselves type 2 diabetes by doing things like existing in larger bodies and that we exist in larger bodies thanks to poor lifestyle choices.

But weight is far more of a fixed trait than diet culture leads us to believe. Although lifestyle choices can influence body size, body size has far more to do with biology and genetics.

Likewise, while many people can manage their type 2 diabetes with food choices and physical activity, there’s currently no cure for type 2 diabetes. And lifestyle choices can have radically different results for different bodies, even bodies within the same family.

I now understand that all kinds of things unrelated to food can affect my blood glucose.

Once I understood this, I could treat myself far more compassionately. Instead of buying into the belief that I just needed to “try harder,” which did nothing but lead to intense body shame and harmful eating disorders, I now practice self-compassion.

When my blood glucose rises for seemingly inexplicable reasons, I remind myself that it’s not my fault. I do the best I can, but I have a disease.

Sometimes, it helps to get curious about what might have caused it. But I never indulge in self-blame, even if the spike is because of something I ate.

After all, someone without type 2 diabetes could eat the same thing and have normal blood glucose. So, I treat myself with the same compassion I would anyone who has a chronic health condition.

I work with my body instead of against it

When I was deeply entrenched in diet culture, I constantly felt that if I could just find the right diet or the right way to eat, I would finally be able to “cure” my body. Moreover, when I was inside atypical anorexia, I viewed self-imposed starvation as a punishment for having a larger body. Likewise, I exercised for punishment, not health.

This attitude kept me in constant battle with my body, attempting to impose my will on what it should want and need and then getting extremely distressed when none of it worked.

Now, I tune into what makes my unique body feel healthy and energetic.

The key is understanding that what helps any one individual manage their type 2 diabetes looks different for everyone. No outside force can tell me the right amount of calories, carbs, or types of foods to eat because everyone’s body reacts differently to different types and amounts of foods.

Thus, I typically practice intuitive eating, which lets me work with my body instead of against it, and I exercise because being fit feels good, not because I need to be punished for being fat.

Through experience, I’ve learned the lifestyle choices that make me feel good and keep my blood glucose within range. Although this is a constant work in progress, knowing what works for me helps me tune out all the outside voices telling me what I should be doing.

Letting go of all the diet hype and tuning into my own body to understand what makes me uniquely feel good ultimately helped me let go of fighting my body. Instead, I now treat my body as a friend, which did more to improve my health than any amount of fighting it.

Takeaway

It’s easy to get caught up in chasing the next “right” diet, especially when we’re constantly hearing about new fads, like keto, that will cure our diabetes, or drugs, like Ozempic, that will help us lose weight — which we’re also told will cure our diabetes.

But the truth is that no one else can tell us what’s right for us. We can only discover that within our own unique selves by seeing our body as a trusted friend and partner rather than something to be controlled.