Downsizing: Introduction

How I lost 8 stone, reversed my diabetes and regained my health

There is a tendency in these polarised times to believe everything, or to believe nothing. These pages are an account of what worked for me on the journey to losing 100lb (45 kilos), reducing my blood pressure and reversing my type 2 diabetes.

I began 2018 several stones heavier, and I left the year feeling so much lighter, in so many ways. It was a journey that began with three books written by Dr Michael Mosley, Dr Aseem Malhotra and Dave Asprey, and which exploded into an obsessional amateur interest in nutritional science and cellular biology.

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This is a free chapter of my Sunday Times best-selling book, Downsizing. It’s an account of what worked for me on the journey to losing 100lb, reducing my blood pressure and reversing my type 2 diabetes.

I’m sharing a chapter from Downsizing every Wednesday morning, exclusively with subscribers to my weekly newsletter. If you’re new here, subscribe to get the next chapter directly in your inbox next week

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To those who may think that Downsizing is a blueprint, I apologise in advance, because it’s not. All I can do is tell you how I changed my life in 12 months, what led me to my darkest moments and what helped me to see the light. You must find your own route to success, though, and you must develop your own rules and rituals.

My weight-loss journey worked for me, but it’s not for everyone, and prior to embarking on any low-carb, high-fat (LCHF) diet you should be checked out by your GP, particularly if you are on insulin or are taking other medications.

I also need to emphasise that, whenever I reference diabetes in this book, it will invariably relate to type 2 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease which results in the body destroying the cells in the pancreas that produce insulin and, as a result, it cannot be reversed or put into remission. It is an important distinction to make.

I don’t claim to be an expert in the field, either – I’d prefer to describe myself as an obsessive amateur biohacker – but, when it comes to type 2 diabetes, I’m living proof that it can be managed (or even reversed) through a combination of diet and exercise.

With this in mind, I’m committed to telling my story with honesty and candour, and I’m keen to challenge the orthodoxies at the very heart of public policy. Some will no doubt condemn me for what I have to say; after all, I broke the nutritional guidelines endorsed by my own government.

To them, I can only say that I did it to the best of my ability by reading relevant studies and research and, whenever I needed clarification, I sought advice from people with a scientific background.

Others may not want to believe my articulations because they challenge the findings of people who are far more qualified than me. I am sorry if I annoy or offend anyone in this respect but, putting it simply, I can only speak from my own personal experience, and this particular route proved successful for me.

In the end, to understand the science of weight loss you have to enter ferocious global arguments being waged between clinicians, governments and food conglomerates over many continents. And you have to deconstruct some very powerful axioms that are so fundamental to our lives that they determine what we choose to put into our bodies.

I broke the most powerful food rule of all: the one that said that fat is bad for us. Incredibly, increasing my saturated fat intake helped me to break a thirty-year sugar habit. I am a sugar addict, you see. If I’d continued consuming the sucrose (and other sugars) that sustained three decades of cravings, I could well have been dead by now.

That’s the other thing you learn when you are a hundred pounds lighter, and mercifully sugar-free: sucrose is the most powerful drug in the world. And when this toxin eventually breaks your pancreas, the fat produced in your liver from starchy carbohydrates continues the damage by effectively strangling your organs.

Let me emphasise that again: I am a sugar addict. I believe I will die if I resume this dependency, and for that reason I still employ the approach of a former drug user to create a basic daily discipline of eating food and buying food.

As I’ve journeyed toward a healthier life, I’ve begun to understand the all-pervasiveness of the ‘Big Sugar’ economy. The corporations that run the global system of production and consumption – Kellogg’s, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, that’s you – are using every ruse they can to hold up reform of the system.

If Vladimir Putin had silently poisoned four million British citizens, we’d be at war with Russia.¹ Yet these huge conglomerates – which I’ve taken to calling the ‘Global Sugar Industrial Complex’ (or GSIC) – have helped create a societal tolerance of sugar that has done just that, and more. Of the three million-plus type 2 diabetics, two million of those currently medicated by the NHS have an entirely reversible condition. Now that I’ve experienced this physical and emotional turnaround for myself, I feel like I’ve found a new goal in life: Remission for All.

But the health journey for me has also been politically instructive. There’s a golden rule of politics: the more harm an industry inflicts, the greater the lobbying spend. When a former House of Commons intern sent me a Christmas card from her new role at British Sugar, I knew I was on to something. The more I learned about the techniques used by the GSIC, the more I realised that the sugar lobby is the biggest and most powerful of all. They literally hack our brains.

The biggest gain from losing a third of my body mass was the most unexpected: I’ve got my brain back. A thick fog has been lifted. I can recall facts quicker and my concentration is deeper and longer. I can pay attention in meetings more than before. I have more patience. I feel more compassionate.

I say this because if two million of the UK’s 3.4 million type 2 diabetes sufferers can achieve similar mental gains through quitting sugar, then we can significantly lift the productive capacity of the nation. Our international cognitive punch can be accelerated. So what is stopping people transforming their lives?

Contrary to the reflexive commentators in the national press, it’s not sloth and laziness. There isn’t a simple answer to why, as a nation, we’ve staggered into a public health crisis of our own making; but I do believe that one of the likeliest reasons is global sugar’s all-pervasive marketing. They make Russia’s fake news factories look like amateurs. Not only do the GSIC hack our brains, they try to manipulate our emotions.

Those Michael Jackson concerts you went to as a kid? Pepsi sponsored them because an executive probably wanted our childhood memories to be synonymous with soda-pop. And Coca-Cola’s marketing plan explicitly states that they seek to ‘inspire moments of optimism and happiness’. This is why they sponsor big sporting events, not the surgical wards that amputate the toes and feet of British men and women week after week due to sugar-related conditions.

For the millions of us who are predisposed to sugar intolerance and insulin resistance, this is manifestly not the case. If you’re reading this book it’s likely that you’re concerned about your weight, or your hypertension, or your high blood-glucose readings.

Perhaps you’re feeling anxious about your health, and are fearful for the future. Please don’t panic. It is eminently possible that, through nutritional change and a slight increase in exercise, you can actually transform your health. And if you have type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes, you may even be able to reverse your condition or significantly improve it.

I am testament to that. At 52 years old, and having transformed my health, the pursuit of a long and purposeful life carries far greater significance for me than when I was a hedonistic young man.

I want to live another half-century, and I want it to be fulfilling. I have effected changes in my life to make that outcome more likely and, because I hold a position of relative influence in the public arena, I want others to be allowed that same opportunity.

Ultimately, I’m keen to encourage others with type 2 diabetes to experience the many benefits of remission. As a Member of Parliament I often hear the phrase ‘take back control’. That’s what I’ve done, and I’d love others to be able to do the same with regard to their own bodies. I want them to have the joy of transformation. I want them to feel stronger and smarter.

Since I revealed my diabetes diagnosis, back in September 2018, I have been moved and inspired by the extraordinary public response and support for my personal battle. Hundreds of people have contacted me through emails and via my social media channels to say how they have struggled with their health and well-being, just like me.

So many people have been in the same boat as me, beset with feelings of guilt, denial and helplessness in the face of being diagnosed with a deadly serious, potentially life-limiting condition. That’s why I felt compelled to write this book: to inform others with type 2 diabetes that you have nothing to be ashamed of, and that you are so far from being powerless.

On the one hand, Downsizing is a polemic on how global sugar is wrecking our society, and is a call to arms for a Remission for All movement. On the other hand, it is the shared insight of a middle-aged fat bloke nicknamed Tommy Two Dinners who lost 100 pounds in a year, who found the will to exercise and who rediscovered his health and happiness. And who still eats bacon and eggs for breakfast.

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The next instalment from Downsizing will be shared next Wednesday. Missed the previous chapter? Find the link below

• Prologue

1. I wrote Downsizing in 2019 and the book was first published in 2020 - obviously, long before Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine and unleashed the biggest war in Europe since World War Two.