I don’t like to offend anyone, but I’ve mercilessly crushed insulin resistance… Anyone want to join me?

Ah, insulin resistance! It affects more than half of the Turkish population. We’re very sensitive to avoid offending anything or anyone, but not with this. There’s no need to be gentle. We just go in with our heads, our arms, whatever we have, and we get what we want.

Why does insulin resistance develop?
It’s very simple… Excessive carbohydrate intake and a sedentary lifestyle. Pastries, cakes, rice dishes, sweets, buns… We, as a nation, love these things. Didn’t we start filling our plates with pastries on days when we went out with our mothers when we were children? We drank sugary, carbonated drinks, we were pressured at every meal to “eat bread, you won’t be full,” and now we’ve become a society that eats every bite with bread, swallowing each bite with bread. When I was in high school, I used to get a quarter loaf of bread with french fries from the canteen… Carbohydrate on top of carbohydrate… Carbohydrate squared next to… This disrupted the body’s dynamics. The most noticeable result is insulin resistance. That’s why most of us have it.

When I was first diagnosed, my insulin level was 26 (an incredibly high number). Now it’s generally around 0-1. At my last check-up, it was 0.8 (0-4 is considered normal). If I broke it, you all can, my dears…

Once the body locks up, that insulin resistance doesn’t break, but the solution is actually very easy. This is one of the most frequently asked questions. The medication your doctor prescribes is important, of course, but if we eat whatever we want thinking “I’m taking medication anyway,” that resistance won’t break for years, and it might even get worse.

Let’s think of this as a three-legged stool. One leg is nutrition, one is walking/exercise, and the other is medication. If one leg is missing, the stool can’t stand upright and will fall. I suggest you always keep this in mind. If your doctor hasn’t given you medication, then your stool has two legs.

Nutrition: The most important condition for recovery from this disease is nutrition. The formula for this is a low-carbohydrate diet, but definitely not a ketogenic one. The ketogenic diet is a recovery diet and should absolutely be done under the supervision of a doctor or specialist; if done without proper guidance, it can lead to much more serious illnesses. The duration should also be determined by a specialist.

The diet we will follow to break insulin resistance is different.

Here’s the prescription!

Plenty of vegetables

Maximum 1 or 2 servings of fruit per day

Good protein (meat from well-raised, hormone-free animals, seasonal fish)

Good eggs

Yogurt, kefir, cheese (from milk of hormone-free, drug-free animals)

Good fats (unroasted nuts, seeds, and olive oil, butter, pure oil)

Legumes, a miracle of nature (soak them overnight in kefir or yogurt water to remove gas)

Avoid excessive amounts of flour. Everything containing flour has a higher glycemic index. Whether it’s legume flour or nut flour, consuming it in whole form is healthier.

2 liters of water every day (if you can’t drink it all at once, you can keep a bottle on your table, add parsley, mint, and fruits to the water to make it more palatable).

Every day, regardless of rain, mud, or heat, walk briskly for at least 45 minutes. If necessary, you can even do this indoors, using exercise videos you find online.

When you incorporate these into your daily routine in a balanced way, your insulin resistance will definitely break down. But please don’t give up if you see no change in 15 days. We can’t expect the metabolism we’ve damaged over 30 years to be fixed in 15 days. We must love our bodies and give them some time. This might take 3 months for some, 6 months for others, but believe me, it will happen.

I wish everyone healthy, happy, and sugar-free days.

With love,

Sema