Deepti had faced issues with her weight and suffered pregnancy diabetes, which led to a caesarean delivery, luckily her daughter was delivered healthy. Later at the age of 35, she was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and high cholesterol. Based on her past experience she knew medicine was not the answer. With her husband’s support, she explored the whole plant-based diet and made changes in her lifestyle. She was able to reverse her diabetes and lower her cholesterol. Today she lives a medicine-free life and is totally empowered to take care of her health herself. Read her inspirational turnaround here.

Deepti Varshney
37 years, Procurement Manager
Netherlands

How it all began

I was born in Agra, the city of Taj Mahal. I was raised as a vegetarian, so never ate meat. But was very fond of drinking sodas ( Pepsi, Cola, Fanta, etc) and eating junk food like burgers, pizzas, loved street food like chole bhature, chaat, aloo tikki. It was during my teenage years I had gained a lot of weight, but never bothered about it. Then at the age of 21, I decided to shed some weight because I had to prepare for national defence academy exams and they had a strict requirement on weight, so I stopped eating junk, street food, also stopped with sugar carbonated drinks. I did stop eating rice and wheat, ate a lot of fruits, replaced wheat with besan and mung dal chilla. As I was playing a lot of tennis and did swimming I was able to shed around 30 kilograms in 6 months. My body was very fit, I hardly got flu. It was later when I moved to Delhi to presume my Masters I started eating junk and street food again and gained weight again.

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After completing my Masters at 24, I started working and the same year I got married to my classmate. I did not shed any weight in fact even gained more because I was eating a lot of unhealthy food. It was at 26 I had problems with throat infection and had fever, I took “SUMO” tablet, it is composed of paracetamol and “nimesulide”, this is banned in most of the developed world - US, Europe, but unfortunately in India this tablet is still sold. I got adverse reaction to “nimesulide”. I got ‘Steven Johnson Syndrome’, in simple words I had developed more than 1000 mouth ulcers starting from throat in whole mouth. I was sick for about 21 days. After traditional allopathic medication made my life worse I was almost on death bed. I took homeopathic medication and slowly I got better and finally recovered, but illness affected my liver and later I had developed several food allergies.

Moving to the Netherlands

I moved to the Netherlands with my husband in year 2009, life was good but I was still overweight and did not do much to control it. Although here I was cooking a lot at home but still ate a lot of fried food which I love. In 2012 I got pregnant, at 4 months of pregnancy I was diagnosed with pregnancy diabetes. I had to take insulin shots as there is risk of still birth for child and I wasn’t aware that diabetes can be controlled by food. The doctors had to induce pain at 38 weeks, after 72 hours of labour I had to deliver our daughter via caesarean section. Everything went ok, I did not have diabetes after delivery, and our daughter was healthy and happy.

It was after delivery I had post natal depression and after a year I developed tooth pain, so severe that the dentist had to pull out one of my tooth, he told me it was due to infection that I had developed during ‘Steven Johnson Syndrome’. In 2016 I had developed type 2 diabetes and was also diagnosed with high cholesterol.

A holistic approach towards health changed my life

I had been struggling with health issues for a while. But after being diagnosed with diabetes and high cholesterol at a young age of 35, I knew it was time to make changes to life. I decided not to take take any medication, else I would be dependent on it for the rest of my life. My husband was doing his research on internet to see which are the best suited diets for diabetes. He came across DIP (Disciplined and intelligent person) diet which is a plant based diet programme. This diet has helped people in reversing their diabetes, heart diseases and other auto immune diseases. My husband was very convinced that this diet will work for us. He was also suffering from hay fever and was taking anti-allergic oils which gave him many side effects like itching, nausea.

So we made the following changes as I did not want to take any allopathic medication - we quit dairy immediately, which meant no desi ghee and yoghurt which were my favourites. My husband and myself left all processed food, dairy and started preparing food at home from scratch, we even bought a mill (atta chakki) to make fresh flour to make gluten free breads, also bought slow juicer to extract fresh fruit, vegetable and wheatgrass juices. We also followed Ayurveda to understand our “Doshas” (body type) and what to eat for a particular “Dosha”. I started practicing yoga regularly.

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This new lifestyle helped me reverse my diabetes and the cholesterol numbers are back to normal. My husband also got relief from hay fever. We got these results within 2 years. I am also losing weight slowly, but I need to lose more, so that journey continues. I have more energy and I feel very healthy. I have not taken any allopathic medication, not even paracetamol since March 2018.

How I started my plant based healthy lifestyle journey

I started eating fruits in the morning. It was difficult in the beginning as I was not used to it, but slowly my body started enjoying it. The number of toilet trips increased initially as the body was getting the right cleansing inputs, gradually they stabilized. For diabetic patients doctors always advise to stay away from sweet fruits like bananas and mangoes, I ate all fruits and still my blood sugar was in control.

• I ate only fruits in morning until 11. Then I ate brunch which was normal sabzi, oat roti, sometimes wild or brown rice. I have dinner around 6 pm max 7 pm in the evening, I generally take vegetable soup or sometimes besan or mung dal chilla. I do not eat roti and rice together as multi grains are a load on the digestive system.
• Gluten plays an important role in diabetes as it can lead to increase in blood sugar, so I decided to stay away from gluten. If I was really tempted to eat wheat roti, I would eat some raw salad before lunch; this helped me control my blood sugar levels.
• I was eating a lot of raw salads. But I got terrible Irritable Bowel Syndrome with constipation. So now I eat in small portions only, 30 minutes before my cooked meal. Doing this change in the way I eat raw veggie salads gave me relief.
• My daughter, I and my husband do not eat any processed food, all meals are freshly cooked and made from scratch. We also do not eat refined flour (maida), white sugar. We have replaced sugar with dates, coconut sugar, jaggery.

My journey experience

I found out that allopathy does more harm than good, it is designed for quick relief, but it does give a lot of side effects, some can even destroy your life. Almost 85% of our problems come from the food we eat, rest 15% could be an accidental injury like car accident or natural calamity which we cannot avoid. Lots of herbs help but we need to be more patient. Eating too many digestive herbs, pills even Ayurvedic ones can take a toll on our intestines, so always eat in right quantity and right time.

I do not eat after sunset because I have realized that there is scientific reason behind it. Our digestion fire is lowest after sunset. I eat hearty meal between 11 and 12 as my digestion is strongest at this time. I do not drink water after an hour before and after meal as it interferes with the digestion process. Overall by following healthy plant based lifestyle I have changed my life and will continue to follow this lifestyle until I am alive. Plant based diet has proved beneficial to me and to my family, ditching dairy helps a lot.

(About Deepti Varshney: Deepti is a mother of a 6 year old daughter, married to her college sweetheart. She is working in a Dutch multinational in the Netherlands. Her hobbies are gardening and travelling, she loves to grow vegetables and fruits in her balcony, she dreams to have a garden where she can grow different fruits and vegetables. She loves to travel, especially to counties which have great vegan food.)