Background

So after feeling tired for what has seemed like forever, scratching my feet to the point of bleeding and having a throat drier than than the Sahara I guessed things weren’t quite right with my diabetes. After speaking to my GP and having a blood test it was confirmed that it had indeed got significantly worse. The GP said I could carry on with my current lifestyle and have my pancreas completely give up on me and then risk doing permanent damage to my liver, or as an alternative I could try changing my lifestyle, prolonging my life expectancy and also potentially kick the diabetes in to remission. He suggested that I try a university researched crash diet called the Newcastle diet (strange name unless it derives from Newcastle) which is beginning to show signs of kicking type 2 diabetes right in the arse! For a somewhat stubborn 35 year old who always knows best this was a rather frightening proposition and made me think “I’ll be fine. I don’t need to worry about that”. However, I was not alone when I was having this discussion with my GP as my beautiful but somewhat nosey girlfriend overheard the conversation despite me dragging my heels whilst walking the dog to edge away from her. Alarm bells were ringing and I could see the look of love (or was it anger) in her eyes as the doctor explained the potential ramifications of not changing and continuing on my journey to an early grave. So being the amazing woman that she is and always has been in the relatively brief period that our lives have intertwined she has offered to come on this journey with me to what I hope is a better health and life for me, for her and for my son. So after a brief discussion (where she told me that we were doing it regardless of my views) we read in more detail what we needed to do and began our journey on Saturday 1st May 2021. We wanted to share this journey with you which will no doubt have ups and downs, peaks and troughs, highs and lows. We hope you enjoy reading this which we will try and lace with humour alongside the more serious stuff.

Mike and Liz