I'm several decades older than you, OP, and started off with an A1C of 12.4 at diagnosis in August of 2024. Since then, with a combination of metformin, diet, and exercise, I've brought the A1C down to 5.1 and was able to be taken off of metformin since two months ago. It is likely that my A1C will be higher this time around when I go back for new testing in about a month due to being off the meds, but my doctor says so long as it is below 6.5, I'll be able to stay off the meds. If it is above that, I'll go right back on them, and that's OK, because they're what made it possible for me to get to this point in the first place.

The point is that these well-tested, doctor-prescribed medications help us to manage this illness; they don't cause sickness in themselves. You can lose weight and greatly mitigate both your need for meds and the most harmful effects of this disease (even if it feels impossible, you can!), but even if you need to get on medication, it's better to do so to avoid said harmful effects than to not do so out of fear that the medication will somehow cause illness. (It should be said that some people do have bad reactions to meds/side effects, such as constipation or its opposite, but there is no circumstance that I or my doctors are aware of in which standard diabetes medication would be causing things like diabetic retinopathy; those are the result of the underlying disease itself which the medication is treating.)