Who's The Daddy: RIP, Dr Mosley. You’ll be sorely missed
As journalists, we do our best to insulate ourselves from reporting on death as best we can. We throw up the shutters like a defence mechanism, because if we didn’t the sheer weight of it would break us.
But sometimes one sneaks through and floors you. Michael Mosley is one, the TV doctor who died last week while on holiday on the Greek island of Symi.
You’re all aware of the circumstances surrounding his death, his disappearance and discovery of his body was all over the news for days. But to the many thousands of people around the world Dr Mosley saved during his life, it hit harder than most.
Regular readers may recall yours truly was diagnosed with Type-2 diabetes 18 months ago. The NHS, while brilliant at diagnosis, was pretty hopeless when it came to beating it. Its attitude seemed to be, take metformin for the rest of your life and with any luck you won’t go blind or have your toes amputated.
Thankfully I stumbled across Dr Mosley on YouTube and his simple and straightforward advice on how to get Type-2 diabetes into remission. And thanks to him, and an incredible kinesiologist called Cheryl Towey who taught me things about diet I’ll hopefully never forget, I dropped 35lbs in six months and got it into remission in four.
Basically, his advice was to stick to a Mediterranean diet, so plenty of protein, fibre, fewer carbohydrates and no sugar. Also, cut out all processed food. The weight steadily dropped off at just over 1lb a week. And more than a year after hitting his target of losing 15 per cent of my body weight, it has stayed off without any real effort.
He said the key was to lose fat from around your organs. And he was right. At diagnosis in November 2022 my HbA1c level was 53. Full-blown Type-2 diabetes. By the end of February 2023 it was 33, well within the normal range - all through diet. I ate and drank myself into it, and thanks to Dr Mosley’s advice I ate and drank myself out of it. Same as he did.
Who knew you could get Type-2 diabetes into remission just by what you eat and drink, and what you don’t eat and drink? Well he did, and he put it in such a way that made an old cynic such as me believe him, because he did it himself.
People who go to the gym to lose weight are wasting their time and money while making gym owners rich. Dr Mosley knew that you lose weight in your kitchen, not the gym. He actively discouraged people on his admittedly pretty hardcore 800-calories-a-day diet from doing any exercise (apart from walking, getting in as many steps as you can every day is the magic bullet for fat loss) because it makes them more hungry.
Dr Mosley was a man who only did good. Apparently whenever he made a public appearance, or was out doing his weekly shop, there would be a queue of people who had followed his advice who wanted to shake his hand and thank him.
And it’s a crying shame he’s not around now. Because there are thousands upon thousands of people around the world who are only alive because of him. How little tweaks to your diet, done consistently over a few short months, can change your life for the better.RIP, Dr Mosley. You’ll be sorely missed.
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