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Emily: Pregnant, Diabetic, and Healthy in Colorado


Robyn Openshaw - Jul 28, 2011 - This Post May Contain Affiliate Links


I met this really cool girl in Castle Rock, Colorado last weekend. She was dying to tell me about how my homemade granola, chocolate beet cake, green smoothies, and other whole-foods habits and recipes have helped her THRIVE going into her third pregnancy. This is radically different than her first two, which were a scary experiment in managing blood sugar and other tough issues faced by Type 1 diabetics.

I am routinely frustrated that most diabetes doctors focus exclusively on insulin, and NOT AT ALL on nutrition. Some things that are tough and time-consuming to turn around with diet. Entrenched degenerative gut conditions (IBS, Crohn’s, colitis, etc.) and auto-immune diseases, for instance. But heart disease and diabetes? Top two for SO EASY to turn around and control, if you understand what WISE, RESPONSIBLE FUEL is. I’ve had a number of Type 2 diabetics and pre-diabetics reverse the disease completely by following my program—even though it’s not a diabetes-control program per se. There’s NO reason for diabetics to be losing limbs and sacrificing quality of life.

I would love to hear from some diabetics, here, about what happened when you made a strong commitment to whole foods!

Posted in: 12 Steps To Whole Food, Health Concerns, Videos

9 thoughts on “Emily: Pregnant, Diabetic, and Healthy in Colorado”

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  1. Anonymous says:

    Hey Robyn I have a question about your chocolate beet cake. My sister’s birthday is this weekend and she not only has type 2 diabetes, but has gone gluten free due to a low thyroid. I want to bake her a cake, and am wondering if you know how to make it gluten free. Also since I am trying to eat as raw as possible I’m curious if your homemade granola can be put in the dehydrator instead of the oven. Thanks so much!

    1. Robyn Openshaw says:

      Patti, there’s a LIVE granola recipe made in a dehydrator in Ch. 10 already. Might as well make that–it’s AMAZING–if you’re going to go to the trouble of dehydrating it. With the beet cake, use a whole-grain, gluten-free flour and it should be okay (I’ve not tried it though). There are lots of options, just make sure they’re not refined flours.

  2. Anonymous says:

    Um, Robyn, you do know that Type 1 diabetes is a whole different kettle of fish than type II diabetes? You don’t reverse Type 1 diabetes, EVER. You can manage it well through diet and regular doses of insulin, but it never goes away, and the patient must always take insulin.

    Type II diabetes is easily reversed with superior nutrition and exercise. My father is doing just that with a strict vegetarian whole foods diet. Is now off ALL medication for diabetes, blood pressure, and cholesterol, and has lost a considerable amount of weight over the last 18 months.

    1. Robyn Openshaw says:

      Roxanne, yes, I do know that. I am talking about reversing Type II diabetes (see my comments introducing the video), which is not hard to do and which we have received lots of testimonials about. I live with a Type 1 diabetic, for several years now (not related to me) and am well aware of the differences. Emily, in this video, is Type 1—and you can still manage your disease more effectively and reduce dependence on insulin with good nutrition. Jean, who lives with me, found her blood sugars and more noticeably, her energy, more stable when she started green smoothies (even though she hasn’t done my whole program, just that).

  3. Anonymous says:

    Dear Robyn,
    I have been a Type 2 diabetic for 10 years. I have been on various oral medications the whole 10 years. I had fairly good A1C tests whenever I did go to the doctor. For a time we didn’t have insurance so I am not sure what A1C’s would have been during those times.

    I found your site last year in May and my husband and I (also Type 2 diabetic for about 5 years) started drinking green smoothies and following much of what you website said. For about 6 months by eating more raw, less meat, etc. my blood sugar was fairly well controlled. My A1C was 6.2 last November, 6 months after these changes.

    However, even though we kept drinking green smoothies, the last 6 months my A1C was 10.9!!! It had never been out of the 7’s before! I had a gall bladder attack and surgery during the 3 months this test included. I am sure that did not help.

    Then one night my blood sugar was 325 on a Friday evening before dinner. ( I had gotten a new glucose meter and was trying it out because I hadn’t been checking it too much because my meter was not working.) It was after 5PM, so I had to go to our doctor’s office walk in nighttime clinic to figure out what to do. If it had been a week day they would have put me on insulin that day, I am certain. BUT because it was after hours and I couldn’t talk to a dietician, they had me double my oral meds to 2 times per day and come back in 6 days to see what it was doing. I was really scared because I didn’t want to go on insulin, but I thought maybe my pancreas had worn out since I was eating so much better than in the past.

    But during those 6 days I ordered your whole course. I had already bought the download, but my husband told me to order the whole thing. I started immediately adding the steps I hadn’t already done and was much more diligent. We already had an alkaline water ionizer, so that part was already in place. But with smoothies and alkaline water alone, something wasn’t working in regard to my blood sugar. I know that I was pretty much eating other foods, hoping the green smoothies would “do the trick”. For a healthy person I sure that would be somewhat true, but I was in crisis mode!

    I started studying insulin resistance, which is a Type 2 diabetics main issue. I realized that out of about 15 things listed that could help and reverse insulin resistance, thanks to the 12 Steps to whole foods and eating no animal protein, processed sugar and all bad oils; just Flax, EVOO and coconut oil, I was doing 13 of them! I started write a blog to keep track of all that was happening to me.

    There wasn’t enough room in my 12 steps journal to write it all down!! My blog is called http://www.greensmoothiemimi.wordpress.com. My 9 grandchildren call me Mimi so my daughters have been calling me green smoothie Mimi lately : )

    I applied all the parts of 12 steps immediately except Step 5, (gardening) and step 8,(fermenting). I do all the rest of it! My sugar started dropping and then stabilizing, and i had about 3.5 weeks before I had my physical with my doctor to see if I could keep from going on insulin, because I was told over the phone by his nurse that I was supposed to go to the dietician and start on insulin BEFORE my physical which was 2 weeks and 4 days after I was told this. I told the nurse I needed until July 26th (physical date) to try. My doctor reluctantly told her to tell me I could have that time.

    So here is what happened. I also had removed all animal protein and all processed sugar from my diet in addition to the 10 steps in the program. My sugars just kept coming down. 12 days before my physical, I accidentally forgot to take my morning pill. When I discovered that I knew my blood sugar was low and stable all that day. I took the night pill that night and the next morning my blood sugar was 65 and that is too low. So I skipped that morning’s pill and just took the night one. Then the next morning it was 57, so, of course I did not take that morning pill. The 3rd night I took the night pill, and again the blood sugar the next morning was in the 50’s. I stopped taking both pills 9 days before my physical.

    All through those 9 days it was in normal range! I was so excited to go to the doctor for my physical appointment! When he said to me, “well I guess I don’t even have to write you a prescription for this anymore!!, needless to say I was ecstatic!!!

    Thank you Green Smoothie Girl for all the research you have done and are willing to share. Without the grace of God and 12 Steps to Whole Foods this would never have happened. Free from meds for diabetes after 10 years!!!! I now have a hope of living to see my grandchildren grow up!! I never planned on becoming a Vegan, and someday maybe I will eat a cookie with a free range cage free egg in it, but for me that is how I can reverse diabetes in my life! It is well worth it. All those foods that used to call my name seem like poison to me now!

    I am also walking 2+ miles everyday mostly on the treadmill, and I now have energy that rivals what I had in my 30’s! I am almost 57 years old. Thanks again!

  4. Anonymous says:

    Hi Robyn…I have been doing your smoothies with one cooked meal in the evening…4wks now….weight loss….energy….but I wanted to tell you that my endocrinologist is a supporter of a Vegan diet. He does not know I am on the green smoothie diet and will be happy to hear that upon my return in one month for a check up. My husband is also drinking smoothies on the weekends and 1x during the week when I make for him (he has to get on the wagon and make his own!) He has a problem with gas and bloating however. I am going to have him read your site on that …thanks for all the great great info and postings. I am anxious to see how my weight loss pans out…..

    1. Robyn Openshaw says:

      Debra, awesome that your endocrinologist “gets it”! More and more docs do! The results are undeniable. Hope your husband gets some relief, such a common symptom and usually short term unless it’s a food sensitivity, which you can eliminate.

  5. Anonymous says:

    Robyn,

    I really liked your post – very interesting – I found it after searching for a green smoothie recipe for pregnancy. I just wanted to comment on your comment about crohn’s disease being difficult to reverse with diet. I know in some severe cases, it might be, but I wanted to give a story of success and maybe hope for some people. I was diagnosed with Crohn’s in July of last year. The doctor wrote me a prescription for a steroid and told me to take it INDEFINITELY! I handed her back the prescription, and said “No, this is not going to be my life. I will not take steroids!” And after two days of intense research and crying 🙂 I threw myself head first into a raw, organic, grain-free vegan diet. If it didn’t fall into that category, it didn’t go into my mouth. I lost about 35 lbs. (which I needed to) and within just 2 weeks I was able to go off of both of the prescription meds I was on for the reactive arthritis caused by the inflammation in my body due to the Crohn’s. Within about a month, all of my Crohn’s symptoms (intestinal cramping, anal fissures, cracked skin on my hands, too frequent bowel movements, hair falling out) were either much lessened or GONE! When I went back for a check-up in October (I had a bet with my doctor – if I wasn’t better by then, steroids it was!) and my small bowel series of xrays indicated that I had NO bowel strictures, no inflammation, no irregular fold patterns, no wall thickening! The doctor said it looks like I’d never had Crohn’s in the first place and that I was in the clear! I will admit that after the ‘all clear’ I thought I could add some things back into my diet – cheese, some fish, rice – and I started getting pain in my joints again. So, now that I eat about 90-95% raw, I am maintaining my good health, and my husband and I are currently trying for baby #2 – something I didn’t think I’d ever be able to have with Crohn’s!

    1. Robyn Openshaw says:

      Melanie, very exciting story. Since writing that, based on experience with folks with very advanced cases of Crohn’s, I’ve had two doctors tell me that it’s one of the easier things to turn around, of all the conditions they work with. So I’m going to stop saying that. CONGRATS! I’m going to share your story in a dedicated blog post.

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