My A1C Was 6.0: The Number That Made Remission Undeniable

By: Ray Taylor. Not a Doctor.

If you have already gotten one good lab back, and a part of you is whispering that maybe it was a fluke, maybe your body just had a good quarter and the next number is going to snap back to where it was, I know that voice. I lived with it. You do the work, the number moves, and instead of celebrating you start bracing for the disappointment you are sure is coming. This is the post about the draw that finally shut that voice up for me.

This is draw number five. If you want the full run-up, the lab right before this one is where I first got emotional. Start there and read the 6.3 first, because that is the moment I knew the climb was real. This is the moment I knew it was going to last.

On April 2, 2025, my A1C came back at 6.0.

From 11.7 to 6.0 with no diabetes medication

Let me lay the whole thing out so a first-time reader is not lost. In July of 2022 my A1C was 11.7 and a nurse told me over the phone that it was extremely dangerous. In January of 2024 it was 6.3. And on April 2, 2025, it was 6.0. Food, fasting, and movement, the entire way. No Ozempic. No insulin. No metformin. No surgery. Zero diabetes medication.

When the 6.3 came back the year before, I got emotional. I told you that already and I am not taking it back. But underneath the relief there was still a small, stubborn doubt. One good lab can be luck. One good lab can be your body cleaning up a single bad season. I had been burned by hope before, so I did not let myself fully trust it.

Then 6.0 showed up. And a second strong number, lower than the first, with more than a year of consistent work between them, does something the first one cannot do. It tells you this is not a fluke. This is a pattern. This is who your body is now.

What an A1C of 6.0 actually means

Here is the part that matters. An A1C of 6.0 works out to an estimated average blood sugar of about 126 mg/dL. Back at 11.7 my estimated average was about 289. So the body that was averaging 289 was a body in a five-alarm fire. The body averaging 126 is a body that is mostly running like it is supposed to.

It is also well under the line. Doctors diagnose Type 2 at an A1C of 6.5. At 6.0 I was not just barely under, I was a half point under, and I had been off medication the whole time. That is what remission looks like on paper. Not healed, not gone. I do not use those words, because this is something I still manage every single day. The word I use is remission. The disease that was supposed to take me was not just sitting down. It was staying down.

Remission has a real definition, and I want you to hear it so you know I am not making up my own scoreboard. The American Diabetes Association calls it an A1C under 6.5 percent, held for at least three months, with no diabetes medication. By April of 2025 I had been under that line and off the meds for a long stretch. The 6.0 was not a lucky reading on a good day. It was the proof that the lower numbers were holding.

What I actually did to get there, again

There was no new secret between 6.3 and 6.0. People always want the new trick, the next thing, the upgrade. The honest answer is that I kept doing the same three things, just deeper and more consistent.

The fasting kept maturing. By this point my eating window had narrowed a lot, but I want to be very clear about how I got there, because this is where people hurt themselves. I did not start with long fasts. I started gentle, with a normal overnight window, and I stretched it over a long time as my body got comfortable. The long fasting is where I ended up after years, not where anybody should begin. If you are new, you start with something like twelve hours and you build from there. The whole point is just giving your body real stretches of time without a flood of sugar to deal with.

The food kept getting cleaner, and it kept getting more honest about what actually spikes me. I had already cut the obvious stuff years before, the soda, the white rice, the bread, the candy. By now my plate was plant-forward, built on chickpeas and fish and vegetables, with olive oil and avocado as my fats and berries when I wanted something sweet. I call my way of eating Kinda Vegan, Kinda Not, and I mean it as a flexible thing, not a rulebook. This is my list. It is not the law. You will find your own.

And the movement was still the engine, and I had leaned into the muscle harder than ever. I walked every day like it was a game I was trying to win, thousands of steps. And I kept building actual muscle, push-ups and hills and a medicine ball. That part is not vanity. Muscle is one of the biggest places your body parks sugar. It pulls glucose out of your blood through a door your muscles open when they work, and they can open that door without leaning on insulin. The more muscle I built, the better my body handled food. Food, fasting, and movement, all three pulling the same rope.

How my own doctor started relating to the numbers

I want to talk about this part plainly, because it is real and it matters, and I am not going to dress it up.

When a man with Type 2 walks in with an 11.7, the conversation is about damage control. It is about medication, about cholesterol, about what could fail next. That is the right conversation to have at 11.7. I am not knocking it.

But the conversation changes when the numbers change. When you keep showing up with labs like 6.3 and then 6.0, off medication, the tone in the room shifts. It stops being a lecture about what you are doing wrong and starts being a real back-and-forth about what is working. The numbers do the talking. You do not have to argue or convince anybody. You just keep handing over the lab reports, and the lab reports make the case for you.

I am partnered with good clinicians, and I want that on the record. I am not anti-doctor. I am anti the idea that a number like 11.7 is a life sentence with only one exit. A good doctor watches the data move and meets you where the data is. Mine did. The proof was on the page, and the page does not exaggerate.

Why this matters for us

I keep coming back to one thing. When I went looking for proof that a regular Black man could turn this around without a pharmacy bag, I could barely find it. So I am being loud with my own labs on purpose. 11.7 to 6.0 is not a slogan and it is not a vibe. It is a dated lab result, then another dated lab result, lower than the first. If it can happen for a guy who walked himself out of a 450 hospital reading, it can happen for more of us than anybody is telling.

I have to say the honest part too, because I will not sell you a fantasy. This was my result. It is not a guarantee I can hand you. What I can tell you is that the door is not as locked as they made it sound when I was at 11.7, and the only way I found out was by walking up to it and pushing.

What came next

And 6.0 was not the floor either. The number kept moving after this, into territory I genuinely did not think was on the table for me when that nurse called in 2022. There are two more draws in this story, and I am going to show you both of them with the dates on them.

If you are doing the work and waiting on your own proof, the free guide lays out the exact first day and the system I used to get this started. Get the free guide here.

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.

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This is not medical advice. Do not change your medication without your doctor.