What My A1C Did When I Stopped Medication and Started Fasting

By: Ray Taylor

I need to start this one with a warning before the story.

I am not a doctor. I am not telling you to do what I did. I am telling you what I did, why I did it, and what my labs did next. If anything in this post makes you think about your own medication, you do not change a single thing without talking to your physician. Please hear me on that part before you keep reading.

Now the story.

The hospital

In May 2022, I ended up in a hospital. I had been ignoring the warning signs for years. Foot surgery that would not heal back in 2017. Constant urination. Belly fat that would not move. Dizzy spells. Acne in my forties. The body sends mail. I was throwing the mail in the trash.

By Day 3 in my hospital room, my blood sugar reading was 450. Not a typo. Four hundred and fifty.

Here is what I was on at the time. Metformin. Glipizide. Insulin. Triple therapy. The most aggressive medical regimen they could throw at me. I had picked these up one at a time over five years from a patchwork of prescribers nobody coordinated. Metformin starting in 2017. Glipizide added by an ER doctor in late 2019. Insulin added at a treatment facility in 2020. Nobody pulled it all together. Nobody asked whether the system was working. By the time I was lying in that hospital bed, I was on three diabetes drugs at once, and the meter still read 450.

I lay in that bed and I thought one sentence that has not left me since.

“I was genuinely not sure how much longer I would live in the condition I was in.”

I did not want to die. I wanted something different. I had to do something different.

I’m just a guy who got sick and tired of being sick and tired.

The decision

This is the part I want you to hear carefully.

In June 2022, after I got home, I made a decision. I stopped all three medications. Metformin. Glipizide. Insulin. Cold turkey.

That was MY decision. I made it out of desperation. I made it because I had been on the meds for years and the meds had not moved the number; the meter at the hospital had told me that out loud. I made it because I wanted a different outcome and I was unwilling to keep doing exactly the same thing.

I am telling you what I did. I am NOT telling you to do the same thing. I am not a doctor. I am not your doctor. I am not anti-medicine. I took every pill exactly the way I was told. The point of this post is not that the pills failed. The point is that what moved my number was not the pills. It was what I started doing in the same month I stopped them.

If you are on diabetes medication right now and reading this, the rule is simple. Do not change anything on your own. Make a real appointment. Bring this post if you want. Have a real conversation with a real doctor about what a lifestyle-based plan could look like for YOUR body, with monitoring, with check-ins, with labs. Do not freelance. The risk of suddenly stopping certain diabetes medications is real, especially insulin. Talk to your physician. I keep saying this on purpose. It is the most important sentence in this post.

OK. That said. Here is what happened after I made my decision.

The first 90 days

I got home from the hospital on a Saturday. On June 1, 2022, I started a 16 hour fasting window. No fancy plan. No expensive coach. I stopped eating between 6 PM and 10 AM the next day. That was the whole strategy of week one.

On Day 1 of the protocol, my morning home glucose reading was north of 300. By the afternoon, after a 20 hour fast and 18,000 steps, the meter said 196.

In one day, with no drug in my system, my own body cut my blood sugar by more than 100 points. It just needed me to stop pouring fuel on the fire.

For the next six weeks I held the 16 hour window, walked every day, ate plants, fish, and seeds, and stopped eating anything that came out of a wrapper. The processed food was the first thing to go. The walks built up to multi-hour stretches some days. The fasting got easier. I did not feel deprived. I felt clearer.

On July 6, 2022, I went in for a LabCorp draw. My fasting glucose at that draw was 273 mg/dL. The lab also ran the A1C.

On July 8, a nurse from the doctor’s office called me to read the result.

A1C: 11.7%.

That number is the anchor of this whole story. I want to be precise about it because it gets confused all the time.

The 11.7 was drawn in July 2022. By that point, I had ALREADY been off all three diabetes medications for about a month. I had ALREADY been doing the protocol for over a month. The 11.7 is not the picture of me on triple therapy. The 11.7 is the picture of me right after triple therapy. Drug-free. The drugs had been on board for years and the number had still climbed. The 11.7 was the floor I had reached BEFORE the protocol caught up.

That detail matters because the shape of the next two years is what proves the point.

The shape of the chart

If you laid out my A1C across the years, two halves of the chart tell different stories.

The climb. 2018 to 2022. Diagnosed in 2017 at 8.6. Six months later, still 8.6. Six months after that, 10.5. Three years after that, 11.7. That climb happened WHILE I was on diabetes medication, eating the same way I had always eaten, walking the same amount, sleeping the same way, drinking the same sodas. The drugs were doing what drugs do. The lifestyle was unchanged. The number went up.

The drop. July 2022 to March 2026. From 11.7 to 5.5. That drop happened drug-free, with food changes, with a shorter eating window, and with walking. Same body. Different inputs. Different result.

The climb shows what happens when you treat Type 2 diabetes as a pharmaceutical problem instead of a lifestyle problem. The drop shows what happens when the lifestyle changes and you give the body what it needed all along.

I am not arguing that lifestyle replaces every medication for every person. I am showing you, with eight dated LabCorp draws, what happened in my body when the lifestyle finally moved.

The arc, in plain English

Jul 19, 2018: 8.6. The diagnosis number. I was 42. I thought it was a manageable problem someone else would fix.

Jan 3, 2019: 8.6. Six months. Same number. Nothing moving. On metformin.

Jun 26, 2019: 10.5. Up. Now eating more, drinking more, walking less.

Jul 6, 2022: 11.7. Five years from diagnosis. Drug-free for one month. Protocol for one month.

Jan 29, 2024: 6.3. First drop after the protocol caught up. About 18 months of consistent persistence. Over 50 pounds gone.

Apr 2, 2025: 6.0. Holding.

Sep 23, 2025: 5.7. Officially out of the prediabetes range.

Mar 4, 2026: 5.5. Where I am right now. Zero diabetes medications. Zero shots. Zero surgery.

The American Diabetes Association defines remission as an A1C under 6.5%, sustained at least three months, with no glucose-lowering medication. I have been under 6.5 for over two years. The clinical criteria are met. The lab confirms it every six months.

A different doctor picked me up in early 2024, around the 6.3 draw. He can see the 11.7 in my chart. He did not treat me at my worst. He has watched me hold the line.

What you do with this story

Here is what I want you to take from this post.

If you are reading me and you are on diabetes medication, the takeaway is NOT “Ray quit, you should quit.” The takeaway is that lifestyle moves the number. The drug controls a number while it is in your system. The lifestyle changes the underlying system. Those are different jobs. Sometimes both jobs need doing at once. Sometimes one job done well makes the other job smaller. Sometimes it makes the other job unnecessary. Your doctor and your labs decide which version is true for YOU. Not me. Not the internet. Not a video. The labs.

What I want you to actually do, today, is something small that costs nothing.

Get the 24 Hour Reset → divorcediabetes.com/start/

It is the gentle on-ramp version of the protocol. A 12-hour window, not a 16. No drugs touched. No medication changed. Just one day, in your kitchen, doing the food and movement piece. See what your own meter says the next morning. That is data you can bring to your doctor.

The full story, with every dated LabCorp draw and the full protocol, is in the book: Type 2 Ain’t My Type on Amazon.

The companion deep read on the 5.5 number lives at a1c-5-5-where-i-am-now. The broader version of this post, written for someone whose first question is “is there an Ozempic alternative,” lives at How I Dropped My A1C From 11.7 to 5.5 Without Ozempic.

Consistent persistence overcomes resistance. Every. Single. Time.

This is not medical advice. Do not change your medication on your own. Please talk to your doctor before making any change to your treatment plan.

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