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War on diabetes newsletter 9th August 2025

Welcome to the ninth War on Diabetes newsletter, your weekly tips and ideas from someone who has had diabetes for five years and learned a lot about it. It's a practical and actionable guide to details your doctor probably won't have time to tell you about.

Spectacular views of Manchester from Higher Pit Lane on my trek back from Starling

I started off with a huge glucose spike on Sunday after foolishly having some mashed potato with my roast dinner. I really should know better by now! Being out and about all day can be frustrating when it comes to planning food around diabetes. Eating out tends to be a high-risk game of guess how much sugar might be in a sauce or gravy, and it's frustrating when you end up having to have something with high carbohydrates because nothing else is available. Everything comes with bread, potatoes or rice and it's rare to find something that's simply fat, protein and green veg. Going back to my mixed grills and steaks elsewhere in future.

This is the smallest portion of gammon I've ever been served. About three quarters of this plate of food is not an option for me, but with nothing else on the menu and getting to that hangry-hypo point I decided to risk it. I passed over half of the potato load but still ended up with a glucose spike that ruined my 7-day average for the whole week.

Million step challenge

I've reached the half-way point of more than 500,000 steps this week and managed to give myself tendonitis again in the process. I've got my recovery routine well worked out for this now. I've patiently endured my two rest days and am back at it again. Having the exercise bike at the gym has been great for helping me keep my exercise routine up without putting strain on my feet.

Friendly goose on my walk back from the gym

What I learned this week

Cortisol is commonly thought of a 'bad' stress hormone but it can actually be utilised as a powerful ally in managing blood glucose levels.

I've been using fasting as a tool to help bring down my blood glucose baseline and it has been a massive help in doing that but I managed to get it all wrong on my fifth attempt at a full day fast, and ended up having to make a hypo-hurry breakfast at 4am 😅

Progress Update

More on my mashed potato meltdown, fasting mistakes, and I really need to cut down my wine intake.

Frozen beef mince

This week's superhero meal was my 4am breakfast of minced beef with scrambled eggs and parmigiano. Having frozen mince, onions, and peppers, meant I could just throw everything in a pan with some butter and get it cooked quickly while I was feeling very dizzy from dehydration. A tip I've learned from this lesson is to take a glass of water to bed at the end of a fasting day.

Super quick to make with pre-chopped and frozen ingredients: onions, beef mince, peppers, spinach. I added butter, 2 eggs, dried basil and parmigiano.

Natto, seeds and berries with yoghurt, but for breakfast...

This is a usual go-to for a quick lunch but this week I've found that it can be better used as a pre-gym breakfast. Having it after exercise caused a bigger spike than I'd like, so I experimented with it as a pre-workout option and that resulted in very stable glucose for the rest of the day. It's important to pre-soak the chia seeds and natto so I'd prepared those the night before and left them in the fridge. Chia seeds can cause digestive problems if eaten dry, as they absorb water and swell. Freeze-dried natto needs about four hours of soaking in water to rehydrate and restore the activity of its nattokinase enzymes.

Natto, chia + flax seeds, dried barberries, blackberries, blueberries and about 3 tablespoons of full fat Greek yoghurt. I normally add pumpkin seeds but had just run out of them.

Bacon and cottage cheese with scrambled eggs

Okay, this one isn't a good looking dish, but it made a great post-gym lunch when I'd made myself very hungry and then it barely made a blip on my blood glucose levels. It's actually helped give me have one of the most stable glucose days I've ever had without fasting. Adding cottage cheese adds a nice bit of acidity and unexpectedly helped stop the eggs from sticking to the pan.

I was mega hungry so had 3 slices of bacon and 2 eggs with this. Other ingredients - butter, red onions, cherry tomatoes and sprouts.

I'm walking a million steps this summer to help Diabetes UK fund research and support for people living with diabetes in the UK. If you're able to make a donation, I'll be made up and have one more reason not to back out 😅

I struggled to find where to buy non-homogenised milk locally and eventually found The Modern Milkman. Their organic whole milk in my area is non-homogenised so I've been getting milk and eggs from them for two years now. Use this link to get 50% off your first two weeks and they'll give me 50% off my next delivery as well. Cheers!