801010 Questions Answered with Dr. Douglas Graham

Type 2 diabetes, healing crises, food combining, hunger, fasting, insulin sensitivity, and more from nearly 50 years of lived experience

Dr. Douglas Graham, @drdouglasgraham, joined me for one of the most genuinely enjoyable 801010 questions answered sessions of the entire bundle window. We took live questions from the audience and went deep into type 2 diabetes and insulin sensitivity, healing crises, food combining, hunger on a vegan diet, the overt versus covert fat distinction, B12 and fat intake, what the 801010 Diet Masterclass adds beyond the book, and more.

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Dr. Graham is also currently training for national powerlifting championships and then worlds in his age and weight class. The man is nearing 50 years raw vegan and still setting personal bests. That context matters when you hear his answers.

What the Masterclass Adds to the Book

One of the best 801010 questions answered in the whole conversation was an implicit one: why create a masterclass when the book already exists? Doug’s answer was hindsight. Nearly 50 years of lived experience, thousands of coached clients, and the patterns that emerge from watching where people consistently misinterpret or miss the nuance of the written word.

He made a point I found really useful. When he says the word house, he has a picture in his head. Every person who hears him say house also gets a picture, but everyone gets a different one. Written language has the same limitation. The masterclass was built partly to address the most common misinterpretations, the questions that have come up again and again across decades of coaching, and to bring clarity to things that seemed obvious on the page but were not landing that way in practice.

He shared three examples. A man who had been doing 801010 for 25 years heard something in the masterclass and said he had never made that connection before. A raw food leader with 10 to 12 years experience realized she had missed an entire part of the equation. Another leader who had been at it 15 years admitted that when Doug originally told him it was food and sport, all he heard was food. Adding the sport component transformed every health metric he had been tracking for years. New numbers, all significantly better.

Type 2 Diabetes and Insulin Sensitivity

A viewer asked where to begin with 90 pounds to lose and type 2 diabetes. Doug’s answer was characteristically direct: begin at the beginning, keep things simple, and know that type 2 diabetes will be a thing of the past very quickly.

The metric most diabetics are not monitoring, which Doug finds baffling, is insulin sensitivity. This is expressed as the number of grams of carbohydrate that can be consumed per unit of insulin. Severe type 2 diabetics may start at a ratio of one to one or two to four. Milder cases might be at ten to twelve. A well-nourished raw vegan on an abundant low fat diet would likely be around 100.

The key driver of improving that number is reducing dietary fat. Fat impairs insulin function directly and measurably. In Doug’s clinical experience, most type 2 diabetics see roughly a 75 percent improvement in insulin sensitivity within the first week. He has never had a type 2 diabetic who remained on insulin for more than four days after beginning a properly applied 801010 approach. Most are off within two days.

Sleep, activity timing, and meal timing relative to insulin all factor in, and custom coaching can streamline the process significantly. But following the book alone produces real and fast results. The full section on diabetes is covered in the 801010 Diet, which is included inside the masterclass.

Healing Crises After Many Years Raw

A viewer asked whether Doug still goes through healing crises after so many years. His answer was illuminating. As far as he knows, he has never experienced what most people call a healing crisis, partly because doing things right from the beginning means the body is not accumulating the kind of backlog that produces dramatic elimination events.

He makes a distinction worth understanding. The body heals 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, without any conscious awareness required. Every cell is detoxifying continuously. Most of what people label as a healing crisis is actually the body responding to something being done wrong, and a teacher rationalizing that as detox rather than acknowledging the error.

A genuine retracing phenomenon does exist, where a previously injured area begins deeper regeneration during a fast or a period of rest, and that can produce temporary symptoms in that area. But the framing of these as unavoidable suffering that must be pushed through is not Doug’s experience of a properly applied lifestyle.

His measure of rejuvenation is athletic performance. Last year at nationals he lifted more than the year before. His intention for this year’s nationals is to lift more again. That is the kind of number that does not lie.

Fat Intake, B12, and Tingling Feet

A viewer shared that after eliminating overt fats and eating only fruits and greens, the tingling in their feet had stopped. Doug’s response was careful and worth understanding properly.

You cannot actually eliminate all fat. There is fat in bananas, in celery, in lettuce. What you can eliminate is overt fat, meaning nuts, seeds, avocado, olives, durian. And when you do that, absorption of nutrients improves across the board. One of those nutrients is B12. Reducing fat in the diet improves B12 absorption meaningfully, which may well have been what resolved the tingling.

Doug also noted something fascinating from the research: B12 levels have been observed to increase during extended water fasting. The body absorbs its own internally produced B12 far more effectively when fat is not impairing the process. This is one of the clearest practical illustrations of why the overt fat distinction in 801010 questions answered sessions matters so much.

Food Combining: Important or Not

One of the most common 801010 questions answered in coaching. Doug’s analogy was excellent. Food combining is like a back-friendly chair. A person with a healthy back can sit in an uncomfortable chair and barely notice. A person with a compromised back suffers immediately. The chair is not better or worse depending on who sits in it. The benefit is there either way, it just takes longer to accumulate for the person who does not feel it right away.

Perfect eating is one food at a time when genuinely hungry until full, which requires no food combining at all. Beyond that, proper food combining is the next best thing. It is never wrong to do the right thing, as Doug quoted Dr. Vetrano. The benefits to digestion, absorption, and assimilation are real even when they are not immediately felt.

Why Am I So Hungry on a Vegan Diet

The most common reason: not eating enough food. Full stop. But Doug added important nuance. People transitioning to a vegan or raw vegan diet are often coming in with nutritional bankruptcies built up over years or decades. The body is working to fill those deficits and will signal hunger more intensely until they are addressed.

The microbiome also plays a significant role. The microbes responsible for breaking down and absorbing plant foods take time to establish. Until they are sufficiently present, absorption is compromised and the body signals for more even when adequate volume has been consumed. This typically resolves within a few days to a week as the microbial population shifts, but it is a real and temporary contributor to persistent hunger early in the transition.

The other useful distinction Doug offered: are you hungry and maintaining your weight, or are you hungry and losing weight? The second scenario is a clear sign of insufficient intake or insufficient absorption, both of which are addressable.

How to Share This With Someone Who Is Not Ready

A viewer asked how to ease a brother into the lifestyle without being preachy. Doug’s answer: give him the bundle as a gift and say nothing. Use his email address, send it directly, and let him make his own discoveries.

If you want to introduce the book specifically, he suggested a different approach than handing it over and saying read this. Pick three to six paragraphs spread through the book, highlight only those, and say, “Would you just read these highlighted sections and tell me if this guy even makes any sense?” Curiosity rather than instruction. People respond to being invited to form their own opinion far better than being told what to think.

About Dr. Graham

Dr. Douglas Graham is the author of the 801010 Diet, nearing 50 years raw vegan, current world champion powerlifter in his age and weight class, fasting practitioner, and the person who has coached more people to success on a low fat raw vegan diet than anyone alive. Find him at @drdouglasgraham and at foodnsport.com.

The 801010 Diet Masterclass we created together is available after the bundle at its regular price of $747 at therawadvantage.com. To be notified when it relaunches as a group course with live calls, join the mailing list here.

As Always

Wishing You Much

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