My A1C Was 6.3: The First Number That Made Me Emotional

By: Ray Taylor. Not a Doctor.

If you are putting in the work right now, walking after dinner, closing your eating window, cutting the sugar, and you are wondering whether any of it is actually going to show up when they draw your blood, this is the post I wish somebody had handed me. Because I wondered the exact same thing for a year and a half. Then I got the lab back.

This is draw number four. If you want to feel the full weight of it, read the 11.7 first, because that is where this climb started.

On January 29, 2024, my A1C came back at 6.3.

From 11.7 to 6.3 with no medication

Let me say it plainly so there is no confusion. In July of 2022 my A1C was 11.7 and a nurse told me it was extremely dangerous. A year and a half later, it was 6.3. I did that with food, fasting, and movement. No Ozempic. No insulin. No metformin. No surgery. Zero diabetes medication the entire time.

I am not telling you that to brag. I am telling you because for eighteen months I was doing the work on faith. My daily glucose meter was trending down, which kept me going, but the meter is a snapshot. The A1C is the verdict. It is the three-month average that does not care how hard you tried. It just tells the truth.

When the 6.3 came back, I will be honest with you. A grown man got emotional. Eighteen months of walking until my legs were tired, of pushing through hour 16 of a fast when the chicken and rice was calling my name, of saying no to things I loved. And there it was, in black and white, from the lab. It was working. It was real. I was not crazy and I was not too far gone.

What an A1C of 6.3 actually means

Here is the part that matters. An A1C of 6.3 works out to an estimated average blood sugar of about 134 mg/dL. Compare that to the 289 I was averaging at 11.7. That is not a small adjustment. That is a different body.

It also crossed a line that matters. Doctors diagnose Type 2 diabetes at an A1C of 6.5. At 6.3 I was back under that line. When you are under 6.5 and you have been off medication for months, that is what remission looks like on paper. Not healed, not gone. I do not use those words, because this is something I manage every day. The word is remission. The disease that was supposed to take me was sitting down.

What I actually did to get there

There was no secret pill and no trick, so let me give you the real version.

The fasting kept evolving. I started with a basic window and kept stretching it as my body got comfortable. I want to be clear that the long fasts are where I ended up after a lot of time, not where I started. You start gentle and you build. The point was simply giving my body long stretches without a flood of sugar to deal with.

The food changed slowly and honestly imperfectly. I cut the obvious stuff first, the soda, the white rice, the bread, the candy. Then over time I learned about the sneakier foods that spike you. It was not overnight and it was not perfect. Progress, not perfection.

And the movement became the engine. I walked every single day, thousands of steps, like it was a game I was trying to win. Then I started building actual muscle, push-ups and hills and a medicine ball I slammed like it owed me money. That part is not just for looks. Muscle is where your body burns a lot of its sugar. The more muscle I built, the better my body handled glucose. Food, fasting, and movement, all pulling in the same direction.

Why this matters for us

I keep coming back to one thing. When I was 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 6.3 is not a slogan. It is a LabCorp result with a date on it. If it can happen for a 47-year-old guy who walked himself out of a 450 hospital reading, it can happen for more of us than anybody is telling.

What came next

And 6.3 was not the bottom of the climb. The number kept dropping after this. The next draw, and the two after that, took me somewhere I did not think was possible when that nurse called me in 2022. I will show you all of 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. 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.