What Black Men Are Not Being Told About Type 2 Diabetes

By: Ray Taylor. Not a Doctor.

If you are a Black man who just got told your A1C is high, or you love one who did, I want to talk to you straight, the way I wish somebody had talked to me. You have probably already heard the warnings. You have probably already gotten the look across the desk, the pamphlet, the speech about how serious this is. What you have not heard, what almost nobody says out loud, is the part that actually matters. So let me say it. I am not a doctor. I am a regular man who got a number that should have scared the life out of me, fought it with food, fasting, and movement, and kept every lab report. This is the part they left out.

The warnings are real. The way out is what nobody shows you.

Let me be honest about the numbers first, because I am not going to soft pedal this. The stats land harder on us, and you deserve the real ones, not a vibe.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health, in 2024 Black adults were 24 percent more likely than U.S. adults overall to have diabetes. And it gets heavier. The same agency reports that in 2022 Black Americans died from diabetes 78 percent more often than the population overall. For us specifically, the Office of Minority Health puts the diabetes death rate for Black men at about 1.7 times the rate for the total population. Black adults were also more than twice as likely to develop kidney failure caused by diabetes. (The Office of Minority Health notes its comparison data is for non-Hispanic groups.)

I am not telling you that to scare you. You are probably already scared. I am telling you because here is the thing they hand you the warnings and then they stop. They tell you the disease lands harder on you, and then they leave you sitting there with a pamphlet and a prescription like that is the whole story. It is not the whole story. The warnings are real. But so is the way out, and the way out is the part they almost never show a man who looks like me.

The proof stories never look like us

Here is what kept me stuck for years, and I bet it is keeping you stuck too. When I finally went looking for proof that a regular Black man could take a bad number down and keep it down without a pharmacy bag, I could barely find it. The success stories I found were rarely us. The before and after photos were rarely us. The man on the page talking about how he got his health back rarely talked like me, ate like me, or came up where I came up.

So what happens? It starts to feel like a sentence instead of a problem with a way out. It starts to feel like this is just what happens to us, like it is in the cards, like the most you can do is take your pills and slow the damage and wait. That is the lie inside the silence. Not that anybody says you cannot do it. It is that nobody shows you one of us who did. And when you cannot see it, you cannot believe it, and when you cannot believe it, you do not even try.

I decided to be the proof I could not find.

What they are not telling you

So here is the part that nobody put in front of me when I was where you might be right now. Here is what I had to learn the hard way.

The number is not a sentence. It can come down, a lot, and stay down. When a nurse called me in 2022 and told me my A1C was 11.7 and extremely dangerous, I believed that number only moved one way. I believed my only job was to slow the damage. I was wrong. My most recent lab, March 4, 2026, came back at 5.5. From 11.7 to 5.5. Food, fasting, and movement the whole way. No Ozempic, no insulin, no metformin, no surgery. Zero diabetes medication. You can read the 11.7 phone call here and where I am now at 5.5 here. I am not telling you to do what I did. I am telling you it was possible for one of us, on paper, with dates.

Your body is not broken. It stopped listening. I thought my body had just quit on me. That is not what Type 2 is, in plain terms. Your body stopped listening to insulin and your liver keeps dumping sugar into your blood. That is a problem you can work on. Eating in a shorter window gives your insulin a rest instead of working around the clock. Walking and building muscle pull sugar straight out of your blood through a door your muscles open when they work, and they can open that door without needing insulin. Fiber slows the sugar spike from a flood to a drip. None of that requires you to be a doctor. It just requires somebody to tell you the truth about what is actually happening inside you.

The fix is not a willpower contest. Nobody told me that either. I figured if I had this disease it was because I was weak, that I lacked discipline, that better men would have handled it. That is shame talking, and shame keeps you sitting still. The real driver is not your character. It is processed food, refined carbs, a body that quit listening to insulin, and years of being managed instead of being shown a road. You are not failing a test of willpower. You were handed a problem and never shown the other half of the answer.

Remission is a real, defined thing, and it is most reachable early. I want to be precise, because near these numbers people get loose and I will not. The American Diabetes Association defines remission as an A1C under 6.5 percent, held for at least three months, with no diabetes medication. That is the word. Not a cure, and I never say the other word people throw around. Remission. And here is the honest part about timing. Remission is most achievable in the early years after diagnosis and gets harder the longer the disease runs, but meaningful improvement is possible at any stage. So if you just got that number, that is not bad news. That is the best window you will ever have. Do not waste it being scared.

What I actually did, as testimony, not a prescription

I have to be careful here, and I am going to be, because this is the part that gets people in trouble. I am going to tell you what I did. I am not going to tell you to do it.

I came off all my diabetes medication on June 1, 2022. At that time I was on three drugs, including insulin. I want to be clear that I did that against medical advice, on my own, and it was my risk and my body. That is testimony. That is not a green light for you. Do not change your medication without your doctor. I am putting that in bold further down for a reason.

What I leaned on instead was three things working together, never one at a time. Food, fasting, and movement. My food I call Kinda Vegan, Kinda Not. It is plant forward, built on chickpeas as my staple, plus fish like salmon, cod, tuna, sardines, and mackerel. Vegetables fill the plate. My fats are olive oil and avocado. When I want something sweet I reach for berries. My nuts and seeds are walnuts, pumpkin seeds, hazelnuts, and raw peanut butter that is just ground peanuts. I do not drink alcohol, at all. And I keep it flexible on purpose, because it is my list, not the law. You will build your own.

My fasting I built slowly. I started with a normal overnight window and stretched it over a long time as my body got comfortable. The tight rhythm I run now is where I arrived, not where I began, and not where you should begin either. If you are new, you start gentle, something like a twelve hour window, and you build from there. You wade in. You do not jump in the deep end on day one trying to copy a man who has been at this for years.

My movement is the engine that never turns off. I walk every day like it is a game I am trying to win, with a step target I worked up to over time, and I walk after meals. I also build muscle on purpose, with push ups and hills and a medicine ball, because muscle is one of the biggest places your body burns and stores sugar.

Why I am standing here saying this out loud

I keep coming back to one thing. When I needed to see a regular Black man stand up with dated labs and say it can be done without a pharmacy bag, that man was not there. So I became him. Seven dated lab draws, from 8.6 in 2018 all the way down to 5.5 in 2026, the bottom half of that climb done with zero medication. That is not a slogan. That is a paper trail.

And I have to say the honest part, the same way I say it every time. This is my result. My body, my years, my work. It is not a guarantee I can hand you, and I would be lying if I dressed it up as one. Remission is what happened to me. What I can promise you is that the door is not as locked as they made it sound when I was sitting at 11.7 believing my life was basically over. The only way I ever found that out was by walking up to it and pushing, one day at a time, for years. You are the hero of your own story here, not me. I am just the man holding up a flashlight saying it can be done, because somebody should have done that for you already, and for too many of us, nobody did.

Consistent persistence overcomes resistance. I am living proof of that, and I am still going.

Start here, today

If you want to take one real step before you read another word, the free guide lays out the exact first day and the simple system I used to get this moving. It is the thing standard care never handed me. Get the free 24 Hour Reset guide here.

And if you want the whole story, the fear, the hospital, the day one walk, and every step in between, I put all of it in one place for the next man who gets the call I got. The complete account is in my book, Type 2 Ain’t My Type: The True Story of My Divorce from Diabetes Using Food, Fasting, and Movement.

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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