Do Diabetes Medications Cause Weight Gain?

What if I told you that taking diabetes medications to control your blood sugar could actually cause you to gain weight? 

Crazy, right? 

In fact, it may surprise you to learn that there are numerous studies that support the theory that these medications may be the primary culprit behind weight gain in those with type 2 diabetes. 

In this article, I’ll discuss how diabetes medications actually worsen diabetes, and how you can reverse diabetes and insulin resistance the correct way.

What Is Insulin Resistance?

Insulin resistance is when your body’s cells become less responsive to the hormone insulin. 

When this happens, your pancreas needs to produce more insulin to drive glucose into your cells. 

Over time, this process begins to take a toll on your body and you may develop type 2 diabetes.

In other words, insulin resistance is a precursor to full-blown diabetes.

Although it’s common to think of insulin resistance as a disease only associated with obesity, it’s important to note that anyone can develop it, regardless of their body fat percentage.

In fact, it’s estimated that 90% of the population has some degree of insulin resistance.

Why Do Cells Become Insulin-Resistant?

Insulin resistance is a defense mechanism your body uses to protect itself from a buildup of glucose in the cells. When the cells realize that there is too much glucose coming in, it decides to stop accepting glucose so it doesn’t damage itself.

But, insulin resistance is a double-edged sword. 

While it does protect you from long-term damage caused by chronic hyperglycemia (an excess of blood sugar,) insulin-resistant cells don’t accept glucose as well.

As a result, the pancreas has to work much harder to pump more insulin and keep blood sugar levels normal. 

Over time, the insulin that the pancreas pumps out can’t control the blood sugar, which can lead to type 2 diabetes.

But, this is just a surface-level issue.

Why Do People Become Insulin Resistant?

The root cause of insulin resistance comes from the excess consumption of carbs and frequent eating.

For example, for the majority of human history, humans only ate 1 – 2 meals a day. 

They also consumed very few carbohydrates.

But, when humans invented agriculture and started farming, they started eating more carbs.

However, this change was tolerable when people were still exercising a lot, infrequently eating, and doing multi-day fasts.

But, the way people eat now is too big of a change for the human body.

One report found that most people are moving from the traditional meal frequency of three meals a day to something closer to 5 – 6 meals per day.

However, the more meals you eat, the more you spike insulin.

In addition to that, the modern diet is filled with carbs, like bread, cereal, pasta, rice, and sugar, that also spike your insulin.

And sadly, most of the advice given to overweight or insulin-resistant people is that you need to eat a “balanced,” low-fat diet with lots of grains and fruit.

And on top of that, they recommend that you eat 5 – 6 small meals so you can “balance your blood sugar” or “increase your metabolism.”

But, that’s obviously problematic since both of those things increase your insulin.

And, if you constantly eat carbs for enough time, you’ll slowly develop insulin resistance.

And once you do become a diabetic, your doctor will likely tell you to get on medications to manage your blood sugar levels.

However, the problem with these medications is that they cause more harm than good. 

Do Diabetes Medications Cause Weight Gain?

Most diabetes medications cause weight gain because they promote insulin, which is the fat storage hormone. This happens because excess insulin causes the cells in your body to become even more insulin-resistant.

But, there’s a solution.

How To Reverse Type 2 Diabetes Correctly

If you want to truly reverse diabetes and insulin resistance, you need to address the underlying cause, which is a poor diet filled with too many carbs and a lack of fasting. 

You see, if you continue taking diabetes medications and don’t address the underlying cause, your condition would actually worsen because diabetes medications just try to manage your blood sugar whilst sacrificing your insulin resistance.

But, instead, you need to address the root cause of your insulin resistance and diabetes, which is an excess amount of carbs and too many meals.

If you did that instead of taking medications, then you wouldn’t need to take any drugs that managed your blood sugar at the expense of your insulin resistance and overall health.

So, the way you reverse your insulin resistance is by eliminating all carbs, like:

• Sugars–Desserts, candy, fruit, etc.
• Grains–Wheat, rice, pasta, bread, etc.
• Vegetable starches–Potatoes, sweet potatoes, beans, etc.

Eliminating carbs would help to lower your insulin, so then your cells would slowly become more insulin resistant.

In addition to that, you should also eat fewer meals and practice intermittent fasting so you can lower your insulin even more.

I recommend starting out with a 16:8 eating window, where you eat for 8 hours of the day and don’t eat anything for the other 16 hours.

Then, once you get used to that, you should slowly shorten your eating window until you reach one meal a day so you can reverse your insulin resistance even faster.

And, on top of that, if you did both of these things, then not only would you cure your insulin resistance and diabetes, but you would also enjoy many of the other benefits that a low-carb diet and intermittent fasting have to offer, like:

• Weight loss
• Decreased inflammation
• Decreased risk for dementia
• Increased energy
• Increased happiness

Conclusion

In conclusion, most diabetes medications actually worsen diabetes because they manage your blood sugar symptoms at the cost of insulin resistance, which is the root issue.

For that reason, you should avoid diabetes drugs as much as possible and instead solve the root cause of your diabetes, which is insulin resistance.

And, when it comes to reversing insulin resistance and diabetes, a low-carb diet with intermittent fasting is king. 

This means adopting a diet that eliminates foods such as sugar, grains, fruits, and legumes whilst also skipping meals.

Doing this would not only help you to reverse your diabetes, but it would also give you many other benefits, such as weight loss and decreased inflammation.

If you want to find out how I reversed my insulin resistance with keto and intermittent fasting, and how you can too, you can read my article here where I go in-depth on everything I did to reverse my insulin resistance.

Hope this helped!