Welcome to the Sweet Spot!

Your weekly dose of practical tips, real talk, and encouragement to help you lower your blood sugar and feel better in your body, one simple step at a time.

Hi there Reader ,

So many of you wrote back last week to say sleep, not dinner, was the real culprit behind a rough morning number. That tracks with everything I know about how glucose actually works overnight, and it's a good reminder before we go further that this story is bigger than food alone.

I want to talk about fasting this week, because I think it is such an easy tool to use to help lower blood sugar and A1C without having to do anything extra or buy any new device.

It's also on my mind because a reader messaged me this week asking if she could try a 16 hour eating window the way her sister does, who doesn't have diabetes. It's a fair question, and one I hear constantly, which is exactly why I want to walk through how I actually think about readiness instead of just curiosity.

When people ask me about fasting, the conversation almost always starts with food. Isn't this starvation? What time should I stop eating. Should I skip breakfast. How many hours counts as a real fast. Those questions matter, but if you have type 2 diabetes there's a bigger one sitting underneath them: what does your medication and glucose safety plan require?

Changing when you eat changes how your body responds to medications that lower glucose. If you take insulin or a drug like a sulfonylurea, going longer without food can raise your risk of a low. That risk isn't a reason to rule out fasting forever by any means. It's a reason to plan before you experiment, rather than copying a schedule from someone on social media whose body, medications, and history look nothing like yours. There's no prize for pushing through shakiness, sweating, or confusion just to finish a window. Your safety outranks the clock every time.

Before you touch your eating schedule, sit with four questions.

-What diabetes medications do you take, and could any of them cause a low?

-How will you monitor your glucose if your schedule shifts?

-What symptoms or numbers mean you stop and treat a low immediately?

-Do you need to loop in the clinician who prescribes your medication before you try any of this?

None of these are about willpower. They're about information you gather ahead of time so a change in eating pattern never turns into an emergency. If you use insulin, write your answers down and bring the page to your next appointment instead of trying to recall it out loud in the room. It takes ten minutes and it can save you a genuinely bad afternoon.

If you want to get started with fasting, stay tuned, because I am going tell you exactly how to start next week. For now, think about these questions and I'll see you next week.

Which of these four questions don't you have an answer to yet? Reply and let me know, I read every response.

You've got this 💪
Stephanie
​The Diabetes Maven

P.S. Next week I'll walk through what a thoughtful fasting approach actually looks like from start to finish, and I'll open registration for the October 15 Fasting Challenge. Reply with the word READY if you want an early heads up before that email lands.