How I Lowered My A1C From 11.7 to 5.5 Without Medication

By: Ray Taylor. Not a Doctor.

The phone call I remember is the one I almost did not answer. It was July 8, 2022. A nurse from my doctor’s office was on the line. My blood had been drawn two days earlier, on July 6. She read me the number. My A1C was 11.7 percent.

I did not fully understand what that number meant yet. I just knew from her voice that it was bad. I was already on three medications for Type 2 diabetes. Metformin, Glipizide, and insulin. All at once. And the number was still 11.7.

I’m just a guy who got sick and tired of being sick and tired. That call is the day sick and tired finally turned into something else. I decided I had to do something different.

Today my A1C is 5.5 percent. That is a completely normal number. I take zero diabetes medications. This is the honest story of how the number came down, including how long it really took.

This is not medical advice. I am not a doctor. Talk to your own physician before you change your diet or your medications.

Disclosure: I’m an Amazon Associate. If you buy my book through a link on this page, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.

What an 11.7 actually meant for me

Let me put 11.7 in plain terms. A normal A1C is under 5.7 percent. Diabetes starts at 6.5. I was at 11.7 and climbing, on three drugs that were supposed to be holding it down.

A couple of months before that call, in May 2022, I had landed in the emergency room. My blood sugar there was 450. A normal fasting reading is under 100. I was more than four times that.

Here is what was happening inside me, in plain words. My body had stopped responding to its own insulin. Insulin is the key that lets sugar move out of your blood and into your cells. Mine had stopped turning the lock. On top of that, my liver kept releasing more sugar into my blood even when I did not need it. So the sugar piled up with nowhere to go. That is the engine behind a number like 11.7.

The drugs were pushing against that engine. They were not winning.

What I changed first

I want to be honest about one thing: the order matters more than people think, and getting it wrong is where most people stall out.

The first thing I changed was when I ate, not just what. I pulled my eating into a shorter daily window and stopped grazing from morning to midnight. I am not going to pretend I eased in gently. I jumped in. But how far you take that window, and how fast, is exactly the kind of thing you should not guess at on your own, especially if you are on medication. (I am not a doctor. Fasting while you are on diabetes medication, especially insulin, can be dangerous. Talk to your doctor first.)

At the same time, I cut the obvious culprits. Bread. Sugar. Pasta. Rice. I did not need a science degree to know those were spiking me. I cut them and pulled my portions back. That was day one. Simple and blunt. The deeper food work, the label reading and the swaps that came later, was an upgrade, not the starting line.

The third piece was movement. Not punishment. Walking. On one of my early days I walked about eighteen thousand steps and my afternoon blood sugar read 196. Still high, but a long way down from north of 300 that same morning. Walking pulls sugar out of your blood and into your muscles, and it does that without needing insulin to do the job. I could watch it work.

Food. Fasting. Movement. Three pillars. I never ranked one above the others. But the exact order I did it in, how I built my fasting window without wrecking myself, what I cut and when, and what to do when the number stalls out, that is the whole system. I laid it out step by step in my book, Type 2 Ain’t My Type. This post is the proof it is possible. The book is the plan.

The climb, by the numbers

Here is the part nobody likes to hear. It was slow. It was not a thirty day miracle. It was years of showing up.

These are my real lab numbers, with the dates.

• July 2022: A1C 11.7 percent. The starting line.
• January 29, 2024: 6.3 percent.
• April 2, 2025: 6.0 percent.
• September 23, 2025: 5.7 percent.
• March 4, 2026: 5.5 percent.

From 11.7 to 5.5 took me about three and a half years. I had good stretches and hard stretches. The line on the page is not perfectly straight. But the direction never changed for long, because I kept coming back to the same three pillars. Consistent persistence overcomes resistance. Every. Single. Time.

Along the way I lost more than 50 pounds. I did it by changing what was on my plate and when I ate it.

What normal and remission actually mean

At 5.5 percent I am not just lower. I am in the normal range, the same range as someone who never had this disease. And I am there on zero diabetes medication.

There is a real definition for this. The American Diabetes Association says remission is an A1C under 6.5 percent held for at least three months after stopping all diabetes medication. By that standard, I am in remission. I say remission because this is something I maintain, not something I get to forget about.

When my doctor saw the numbers keep coming down and the medications gone, there was no lecture. He told me he had never seen anyone do what I did, and to keep doing exactly what I was doing.

If you just got a number like mine

If you are reading this because you got an A1C that scared you, here is what I would tell you.

You do not have to do everything tonight. I did not. Pick one thing. Shorten your eating window a little. Or cut the most obvious culprit on your plate. Just one. Then do it again tomorrow. Stack the small wins and let the number chase you down over time.

The reason I wrote my whole story out is that nobody handed me a plan on day one. I had to build it. You do not have to build it from nothing.

I put the exact first 24 hours into a free guide called the 24 Hour Reset. It is the simple starting move, written out step by step, so you are not guessing on day one.

Get the free 24 Hour Reset →

Want the whole thing in order? That is exactly why I wrote the book. Type 2 Ain’t My Type lays out the full system the way I actually did it. The 12 week plan, week by week, plus the toolkits for the parts that trip people up. The food swaps. Reading labels. Beating the cravings. Eating out. Staying in remission once you get there. It is everything I wish someone had handed me at 11.7.

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take to lower your A1C?

For me it took about three and a half years to go from 11.7 percent to 5.5 percent. An A1C reflects roughly your last three months of blood sugar, so you can often see movement on a test in two to three months. Reaching a normal number took me years of staying consistent. Individual results vary.

Can you lower your A1C without medication?

I did, but I did not start that way. I was on three medications at once when I made my move: Metformin, Glipizide, and insulin. I will be honest, I walked away from all three at the lowest point I had ever been, out of pure desperation. That was my decision, not a plan I am handing you, and it can be dangerous, especially with insulin. Please do not copy that part. What actually moved my number over the next few years was food, fasting, and movement, not the way I came off the pills. My doctor watched the labs keep dropping and told me to keep doing what I was doing, and today I take zero diabetes medication. If you want to reduce or come off any medication, do it with your doctor, never on your own. This is not medical advice.

Is a 5.5 A1C normal?

Yes. An A1C under 5.7 percent is in the normal range. Mine is 5.5 percent. Type 2 diabetes is diagnosed at 6.5 percent and above.

Can a high A1C go into remission?

It can. The American Diabetes Association defines remission as an A1C under 6.5 percent held for at least three months after stopping all diabetes medication. I reached 5.5 percent on zero medication. I call it remission because I maintain it, not because it is gone for good. This is my personal result and individual results vary.

This is not medical advice. The information here is based on my personal experience with Type 2 diabetes. Individual results vary. Always consult your physician before changing your diet, fasting schedule, or medications.

By: Ray Taylor

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