Well, it's not some new fangled fad diet. It's simply a lifestyle of eating and drinking only those things that will not make our blood glucose (bg) numbers spike to unhealthy levels.

We're both type II diabetics, and after trying numerous diets over the years (including the American Diabetes Association's Diet, the Low Glycemic Diet, as well as many others) we began doing a *modified version of **Dr. Richard Bernstein's diet and found it to be just what we needed.

The reason no diet before this one was able to keep our bg numbers in check perfectly was because they all still contained the culprits that would sabotage our best efforts. Identifying and removing those culprits has finally made all the difference for us.

So what are the main culprits for us? The wrong kind of carbohydrates! And what makes any particular kind of carb wrong for us? Simply this: if it makes our bg numbers spike above healthy levels, then it is the wrong carb for us! For us this means nearly all grains, legumes (beans), most fruit, a few key vegetables, certain dairy, and all sugars.

Good grief, Charlie Brown! What's left to eat??? Only a huge variety of healthy and satisfying foods we are enjoying finding creative and tasty ways to prepare! Seriously! We're having great fun with this!

But why bother to eat only foods that won't spike our bg numbers when we (in theory) can eat whatever we want and just take some insulin and / or diabetes drugs to do the job for us of keeping the numbers in check?

One reason is the 'No Spike Diet' contains much healthier foods than the ones many diabetics allow themselves to eat when they can just take something to bring their bg numbers back down. Our bodies are benefiting greatly from the excellent nutrition we are getting.

Another reason is we are not on any medications and are able to keep our bg numbers at a healthy level through diet and exercise alone. As long as this is possible we want to keep doing it. There may come a time when we must take meds but that is not right now and we're grateful this diet is helping us maintain healthy bg levels without meds so far.

One more reason is that even with taking insulin and diabetes meds to keep our bg numbers in check some of the meds have been found to have a down side which we want to avoid as long as we can. Also, with some of the people we know, too often taking meds means bringing higher bg numbers back down which says they spiked to unhealthy levels in the first place. This is not as good as keeping them in check.

We dearly wish we had known to do this (and how to) years ago, because a lot of precious time was wasted. We had no idea what great harm was being done to our bodies with bg numbers spiking to unhealthy levels. Even the phase that set us up for diabetes (before actually developing it) was harmful to our bodies. We have deep regret about our past ignorance but tremendous thankfulness for what we know to do now.

With this lifestyle of eating we're able to keep our bg numbers in check and maintain a much better level of general good health.

*Modified because we do not have access to, nor the funds for, a doctor like Dr. Bernstein in our area to do his regimen perfectly (keeping bg numbers where he advocates). Thankfully, what we are doing now is infinitely better than what we were doing!

** (Book) Dr. Bernstein's Diabetes Solution (The Complete Guide to Achieving Normal Blood Sugars)

** (Book) The Diabetes Diet (Dr. Bernstein's Low-Carbohydrate Solution)