Why Standard Diabetes Care Kept My A1C High for Years

By: Ray Taylor. Not a Doctor.

If you are doing what you were told and your A1C still will not come down, I want to talk to you, because for years that was me. I took what they gave me. I did not feel like I was breaking any rules. And the number on my lab reports just sat there high, then climbed. It is a special kind of discouraging, because you start to think the problem is you. You feel like you are failing at something you are following correctly. I do not think you are failing. I think there is a gap nobody named for you, and I want to name it.

What my care actually looked like

I was diagnosed with Type 2 back in 2017, after a foot surgery would not heal. Here is what I was handed. A prescription and a pamphlet. That was the plan. Take the pill, read the paper, come back later. Nobody sat me down and walked me through what was happening inside my body or what would actually turn it around. So I did what a lot of people do. I took the pamphlet, took the pill, and went right back to my life.

I want to be fair about my own part in this. I did not take it seriously enough at first, and I will own that. But here is the thing that stuck with me later. Even the offer itself was thin. A pill and a pamphlet is built to keep a number from getting worse. It is not built to walk a man back to where he does not need the pill at all. Those are two different jobs, and nobody told me they were different.

The number that proved the gap

Let me show you what that gap looked like on paper, in dated lab draws, because I will not be loose with numbers.

My first A1C on record was 8.6 in July of 2018. An 8.6 is an estimated average blood sugar around 200 mg/dL for about three months. A year later, June of 2019, it was 10.5, around 255 mg/dL. By July of 2022 it had climbed to 11.7, around 289 mg/dL, the highest of my life, and a few weeks before that draw my blood sugar had hit 450 in a hospital.

Look at the direction. Under the standard road, my number did not just refuse to come down. It went up. That is not a knock on any one person who treated me. It is the plain truth about what management does and does not do when the underlying problem is left untouched.

The part nobody explained to me

Here is the piece I needed and did not get, in plain words. In Type 2, your body stopped listening to insulin, and your liver keeps dumping sugar into your blood even when you have not eaten. A medication can help push that sugar down. But if nothing changes the reason your body stopped listening, you are bailing water without fixing the leak. The number stays high, or climbs, and you keep doing everything you were told.

That is why I could feel like I was following the plan and still watch my A1C rise. The plan I was on was aimed at the water in the boat, not the hole.

I am not anti-doctor

I want to be clear, because this is where people expect me to start swinging at the medical system, and I will not. I am not anti-doctor. Good clinicians kept me alive through the worst of it, and a hospital is exactly where I belonged at a blood sugar of 450. The system is built to manage a disease, and managing is real work that saves lives every day.

The gap is not a villain. It is just a gap. The standard road manages the number. It is not designed to hand you the daily food, fasting, and movement habits that get the number down on its own. When I finally found those, nobody had to argue me out of my medication with a slogan. The work spoke for itself.

What actually moved my number

When I changed the inputs, the number moved. I leaned on three things, equal partners, none above the others. Food, fasting, and movement. A plant-forward way of eating I call Kinda Vegan, Kinda Not. A shorter eating window I built up gently over time. And walking, which became the cornerstone of the whole thing.

I also have to be honest and loud about the medication, because it matters. My starting point had been three drugs, including insulin. Today I take zero diabetes medications. I came off them on my own, and I will tell you plainly that I did that against medical advice and it was a risk I took. That is my testimony, not your instructions. Do not change your medication without your doctor.

Here is where the work landed, in dated draws. From 11.7 in July of 2022 to 5.5 in March of 2026, with food, fasting, and movement, 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. Those are lab reports with dates on them.

Remission is what happened for me, and I cannot promise you my exact result. But if your A1C will not come down on the standard road, I do not think that means you are broken. I think it means the road you are on was built to manage, and you have not yet been handed the part that moves the number.

What to do with this today

Do not panic and do not run to the pharmacy. Take one honest first step. The free 24 Hour Reset guide lays out the exact first day I used to start pulling my number down, the piece standard care never handed me. Get the free 24 Hour Reset guide here.

And if you want the whole story, every number and every step, 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.