Strength and Sense: Reversing a prediabetic diagnosis

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Happy Friday Reader,

“I’m no longer pre-diabetic. Dropped from 5.9 to 5.6.”

That was the message my client Yogan sent me after receiving his latest fasting blood glucose result.

There was no dramatic speech accompanying it.

No announcement about completing a detox.

No photograph of all the foods he had permanently banned from his life.

Just a message containing two numbers.

But those numbers meant far more to him than another change on the scale.

Yogan had been managing prediabetes, and his fasting blood glucose had fallen from 5.9 to 5.6.

So, what did we do?

We did not attempt to change his entire life overnight.

We focused on four ordinary behaviours that he could continue practising.

Here is what that looked like.

1. We improved his portions

Portion control does not mean eating the smallest meal you can tolerate.

It means eating an amount that supports your goal without leaving you feeling as though you are constantly being punished.

For Yogan, this meant becoming more aware of how much food was on his plate and reducing the amount of foods he regularly overate.

There was no need to create an entirely new diet.

We started by adjusting what was already there.

That made the change easier to repeat because it still resembled his real life.

2. We prioritised protein

We made protein a more consistent part of his meals.

Again, there was nothing revolutionary about this.

Protein made his meals more substantial and helped create a clearer structure around what a balanced meal looked like.

Instead of concentrating entirely on what he needed to remove, we gave him something useful to add.

Sometimes better nutrition begins by building a better meal, not simply making the existing one smaller.

3. We reduced processed foods

We did not ban processed food from his life.

We simply made it less dominant.

This distinction matters.

When people receive a health warning, their first instinct is often to remove everything they believe is “bad.”

The kitchen gets cleared out.

The rules become rigid.

The person feels highly motivated for a few weeks.

Then real life returns.

Yogan did not need a temporary demonstration of discipline. He needed an approach he could continue using after the initial urgency had disappeared.

The goal was fewer processed foods, not a performance of perfect eating.

4. We increased his walking

Walking is often dismissed because it does not look intense enough to qualify as meaningful exercise.

It does not leave you collapsed on the floor.

It does not produce an impressive workout video.

It rarely attracts compliments.

But walking is accessible, repeatable and much easier to integrate into a demanding life than another punishing workout.

For Yogan, more walking meant creating additional movement without making his routine unnecessarily complicated.

The best form of movement is not always the one that exhausts you most.

Sometimes it is the one you are still doing several months later.

Why ordinary behaviours work

The behaviours capable of producing meaningful change will not always feel meaningful while you are performing them.

Choosing a more appropriate portion can feel insignificant.

Adding protein to a meal does not create an immediate transformation.

Leaving some processed food for another day rarely feels like a defining moment.

Going for another walk might not feel like “real exercise.”

These decisions are quiet.

They do not provide the emotional rush that comes with beginning an extreme new plan.

But when they are repeated, your body begins collecting them.

One meal.

One portion.

One walk.

One ordinary decision after another.

Eventually, the evidence may appear somewhere you can measure it.

For Yogan, part of that evidence was a fasting blood glucose result of 5.6.

Something to practise this week

Do not attempt to copy all four behaviours at once.

Choose the one that would most improve the way you currently live:

• Make your most frequent meal more protein-focused.
• Reduce the portion of something you regularly overeat.
• Replace one heavily processed option with something more filling.
• Add a walk you can realistically repeat.

Then practise that one improvement until it begins to feel ordinary.

Do not dismiss a behaviour because it feels too small to transform you today.

Your body is still keeping the receipt.

Manifest Your Strength.

Shaneal Diiren.

P.S. Yogan did not need another extreme diet. He needed the right behaviours, applied consistently and adjusted around his real life.

If you know what to do but continue struggling to make it stick, that is exactly what I help people solve through 1:1 coaching.

Together, we will build a fat-loss approach around your body, your responsibilities and the life you actually live, so you can make visible progress without relying on another temporary burst of motivation.