The belief that eating fat makes you fat is too simplistic and not entirely accurate.

It is true that fat is high in calories and, if you eat a great deal of it, you will gain weight.

People with type 2 diabetes are overweight because they are insulin resistant, meaning they have high levels of insulin in their body, which their body is no longer responding to.

Insulin promotes your body to store fat and inhibits your body from burning fat.

Eating fat does not promote a rise in blood sugar or insulin levels.

However, eating high carbohydrate food, like a bowl of pasta, will cause a rise in your blood sugar level, followed by a rise in your insulin level.

The blood sugar that is not burnt off as energy or converted into glycogen is converted into body fat and stored, particularly over the abdominal area, where most diabetics and those with Syndrome X (metabolic syndrome) carry excess weight.

If a farmer wants to fatten his cows or pigs, he doesn't feed them butter, eggs and red meat – he feeds them grain!

We are the same – if you want to fatten yourself up, eat lots of bread, pasta, breakfast cereals, potatoes and rice.

If you eat a lot of these foods, your insulin level will remain high, which inhibits your body from burning fat.

You don't have to eat any fat to be overweight!

This is an excerpt from Dr Cabot and Margaret Jasinska's book, 'Diabetes Type 2 – you can reverse it naturally'.