What Fasting Actually Did to My Blood Sugar Numbers

By: Ray Taylor. Not a Doctor.

If you keep hearing that fasting helps blood sugar but you are tired of the hype and you just want to see what it did to a real person’s numbers, this one is for you. I am not going to sell you a miracle. I am going to show you the dated lab draws and tell you the honest version of what a shorter eating window did over years, not over a weekend. You can decide for yourself.

This is a results post, not a how-to. If you want the step by step on how to actually start, I wrote that out in the gentle way to start fasting. Here I just want to show you what it did.

Start with the proof, not the promise

Here is the trend that matters, in lab draws with dates on them. My A1C went from 11.7 in July of 2022 to 5.5 in March of 2026, with food, fasting, and movement, and zero diabetes medication, over about three and a half years. You can read the 11.7 phone call here and where I am now at 5.5 here.

An A1C is the long average of your blood sugar over a couple of months, so that arc is not one good day. It is the trend of the whole machine settling down. Fasting was one of three pillars that got it there, equal partners with food and movement. I will not tell you fasting alone did it, because that would be a lie, and you would smell it.

The early signal that made me believe

The very first day, I got a result that woke me up. That morning my blood sugar was north of 300. Instead of eating, I walked, a lot, and I held off on food. By the afternoon, about twenty hours since my last bite and after an 18,000 step day, I pricked my finger and the meter read 196.

I am not going to dress that up. 196 is still high. But it was over a hundred points lower than that morning, and all I had done was walk and wait. That was not remission. It was a clue. It was the first time I believed the window could actually do something, and that belief is what carried me through the years it actually took.

Thirty days in, the weight was already coming off, about fifteen pounds, and my blood sugar was living under 200 instead of over 300. Not because of one heroic day. Because of a pattern I could repeat.

What a shorter window actually does

Here is the plain version of why it works, so the results make sense. A shorter eating window gives your insulin a rest. When you are not eating, your body is not being asked to handle a fresh wave of sugar, so it gets a break it almost never gets on the standard eat-all-day plan. Over time, that rest is part of how the body starts listening to insulin again.

That is the whole logic. Not magic. Just giving an overworked system fewer interruptions so it can settle.

How I built it, the honest pace

Now the part the highlight reels skip. I did not start with anything heroic. I started June of 2022 around a sixteen hour window, which mostly meant not eating after dinner and pushing my first meal later. As it got easier I eased to eighteen hours. A couple of months in, after I had built up gradually, I did my first longer fast, from one evening to the next.

Over a long stretch, more than two years, I worked my way to eating one meal a day. I want to be careful here, because that is my advanced endpoint, not a starting line, and I would never tell a newcomer to begin there. If you are just starting, the message is the gentle on-ramp. Start around a twelve hour overnight gap and build from there at your own pace. Trying to begin at the deep end is how most people quit. The slow build is how I got the result.

What I will not claim

I will not throw a daily fasting blood sugar number at you and act like it sits at one steady spot every morning. Real blood sugar moves, and anybody who tells you theirs is one fixed number every day is selling you something. What I trust is the dated A1C arc, because it is the honest measure of the trend, and it is on my lab reports.

And remission is what happened for me. I cannot hand you my exact result in a guarantee. What I can tell you is what a shorter eating window did to my numbers over years, told straight, with the receipts.

What to do with this today

If you want to try this, do not copy my advanced moves. Start gentle. The free 24 Hour Reset guide lays out the simple on-ramp I wish someone had handed me, the first day done for you. Get the free 24 Hour Reset guide here.

And if you want the full fasting story, every step and every number, it 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.