I Fell Off. Here Is How I Got Back On.

By: Ray Taylor. Not a Doctor.

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You were doing it. You had it rolling. The numbers were finally moving, the weight was coming down, and for the first time you thought maybe this time is different.

And then you fell off.

A rough weekend turned into a rough month. The weight crept back. And worse than the weight was that voice in your head going see, you always do this, you were never going to keep it up, you might as well quit. You think falling off is proof the whole thing was doomed from the start.

I want you to hear this from a guy who is not perfect and never claimed to be. I fell off too. Years into this. After everything I am about to show you, I still fell off.

And the reason I am telling you is simple. Falling off did not end my story. And it does not have to end yours. The key was never whether it happens. The key is what you do next.

First, the truth about my numbers

I am not a doctor. I am just a guy who got sick and tired of being sick and tired.

In July of 2022 my A1C was 11.7. I was on metformin, glipizide, and insulin, all three at once, and I was still getting worse. My blood sugar hit 450 in a hospital bed. By January of 2024 I had climbed all the way back to a 6.3. As of March 2026, my A1C is 5.5. That is in the normal range, and I take zero diabetes medication. The whole climb took about three and a half years, and if you are wondering how long it actually takes to move your own A1C, I wrote about that too.

But that line from 11.7 to 5.5 was not a straight shot. Nobody’s is. Somewhere in the middle of it, I fell flat on my face.

I had it going. Then I heard the vanilla wafers calling my name.

Here is the part nobody puts on the highlight reel.

By early 2024 I was rolling. The A1C was down, the weight was off, I felt like a different human being. And then I got comfortable. That is the trap, by the way. Not the bad days. The good ones, where you think you have got this beat and you can let your guard down.

I let mine down. I started creeping back toward the processed junk. Oreos. Vanilla wafers. The stuff I swore was behind me. I literally heard the vanilla wafers calling my name from the cabinet, and I gave in.

One box became a habit. The habit ran about five months. And in those five months I put 14 pounds back on.

I tell you that not to scare you, but to be straight with you. I wrote in my book about “the cookies calling you from the cabinet,” and then there I was, living it, years into my own turnaround. Slipping up is not a beginner mistake you outgrow. It is just part of being a human being who likes cookies.

The difference is never whether the wafers call. They will. The difference is what you do when they do.

The all-or-nothing trap is more dangerous than the cookies

Here is what almost got me. It was not the 14 pounds. It was the thinking that comes with the 14 pounds.

That voice that says you already blew it, so you might as well blow it all the way. You ate the cookies Friday, so the weekend is shot, so the week is shot, so what is even the point. That is all-or-nothing thinking, and it is the actual killer. The cookies are nothing. The story you tell yourself about the cookies is what sends you all the way back to square one.

In my book I put it as plain as I could:

“You’re going to slip up. The key isn’t if it happens, but how you respond when it does. Ditch the All-or-Nothing Thinking. This is critical. One bad meal, one bad day, even one bad week does NOT mean you’ve failed.”

Read that again. One bad meal is not failure. One bad day is not failure. One bad week is not failure. Failure is deciding the slip is permanent and walking away. As long as you do not do that, you have not failed. You have just had a Tuesday.

So when you fall off, the first thing to fix is not your plate. It is that voice.

How I actually got back on (no magic, I promise)

People want the secret. There is no secret. When I climbed back out of that five-month hole, I did not do anything clever. I went back to the same three things that built the result in the first place.

The food

I stopped buying the junk that was calling me. You cannot eat the wafers if the wafers are not in the house. I got back to real food, stuff with ingredients I can pronounce, minimally processed if at all. I am not sitting there counting carbs and counting calories. I just eat my vegetables and I keep the garbage out of the cart.

The window

I got back to my eating window. I eat my one meal in the evening, after work, and I keep the rest of the day fasted. That is my practice, and it is the destination, not the on-ramp. I would never tell a newcomer to jump to one meal a day. You start gentle, an overnight fast, and you stretch it only when it feels easy. The point is just this: I got back to a structure, instead of grazing all day on cookies.

The walking

And I moved. Not a gym membership I would never use. Walking, with purpose, every day. That is the most underrated thing on this whole list and the easiest one to restart the day after a slip.

That is it. No grand restart. No punishment. No three-day cleanse to “make up for it.” Just back to the basics that worked the first time. There is a full playbook in the book for getting back on after a setback, the whole method for learning from a lapse instead of drowning in it. But the bones of it are right there. Food. Window. Walking. Repeat.

When you are climbing back, you do not need a perfect plan. You need a couple of dead-simple things you can lean on without thinking. When I have no plan and no energy, I open a can of Eden chickpeas and just eat those. Real protein, real fiber, no syrup, no decision to make. And the simplest reset meal I lean on is a bowl of plain Bob’s Red Mill rolled oats with a little fruit, eaten in the evening, one ingredient I can actually read on the bag. Boring food is what gets you back. Boring is the whole point.

If you want the rest of the no-think staples that make getting back on easy, the simple stuff I actually keep in the house, I put all of it on my remission toolkit page. That is the cart you copy when you have no energy to think about it.

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.

Now look at what the numbers did

This is the part I need you to actually sit with, because it is the whole reason I am telling you about my worst stretch.

I fell off in 2024. Five months. Fourteen pounds back on. And here is what my A1C did across that whole mess:

• 6.3 in January 2024, right before I got comfortable and slipped.
• 6.0 in April 2025, after I got back to the food, the window, and the walking.
• 5.5 in March 2026, normal range, zero medication.

The relapse did not break the line. One fall did not undo years of work. The trajectory kept going the right direction because I got back on instead of giving up. That is the entire reassurance, and it is the truest thing in this post. A slip is a dip in the road, not a cliff. You do not have to be perfect. You have to refuse to quit. If you want the whole arc, the full story of how I went from 11.7 to 5.5 and into the normal range is its own post, relapse and all.

You will fall off. Plan to get back on.

So let me say the thing I wish somebody had said to me before my slip instead of after.

You are going to fall off. Not maybe. You are. Life is going to happen, a craving is going to win, a hard week is going to knock you sideways. That is not a character flaw. That is Tuesday. The people who get better are not the people who never slip. They are the people who get back on the next morning instead of waiting for the perfect Monday that never comes.

Consistent persistence overcomes resistance. Every. Single. Time. And persistence is not a clean, unbroken line. It is falling off and climbing back, falling off and climbing back, until the climbing back becomes the habit. I fell off after years of progress and gained 14 pounds, and my A1C still went from 11.7 to 5.5, drug-free. Not because I was perfect. Because I kept coming back.

You may not get all the way to remission like I did. But you can absolutely get better. Lower numbers, more energy, maybe less medication down the road, all of it with your doctor in your corner. And none of it requires you to be flawless. It just requires you to not quit when you stumble.

If you fell off this week, you did not fail. You found out you are human. Now get back to the food, the window, and the walk. Tomorrow. Not next Monday. Tomorrow.

Tell me about a time you fell off and got back on. Or tell me you are climbing back right now, today. Either way, I want to hear it in the comments. I read them.

P.S. New here, or climbing back from a slip? I put together a few free guides that are a clean, simple place to restart, no perfection required. Start here.

This is not medical advice. Always talk to your doctor before you change your diet, your movement, or your medication.