The Battle with Blood Sugar

Posted by Angelique on June 5, 2008

Within this last year, I have decided to make a lot of changes in my life. I decided to move to my mom’s house, decided to change my major to psychology, and more recently, decided it was time to take care of my health.

The decision to move to my mom’s wasn’t hard ~ I really had no choice because of my son; and the decision to change my major wasn’t too difficult either because I had originally wanted to go for psychology years ago before I started college, but I let someone talk me out of it. So it took me several years and a few different majors to figure out that psychology is what I was supposed to be doing to begin with…..and now I have a 4.0 average in my major. That’ll teach me to listen to anyone else besides my own intuition.

However, the decision to take care of my health was a little tougher. I am diabetic and have known for years, but I never paid too much attention to it. Yeah, I would try every now and then to cut back on certain things, but I can’t say I ever really tried too hard. For those of you who don’t know, blood sugar levels should usually stay between 70 and 120, preferably less than 100. Mine was staying between 300 and 400. I figured I felt fine, so I rarely, if ever, took my medicine, and hardly ever took my blood sugar level unless I felt sick. It was stupid, I know that. I should have started focusing on it a lot sooner.

Well, about a month ago, I decided to start taking my medicine again. I was packing some things to take to my mom’s, and I ran across a book for toning the body. I sat down and started reading. It talked about exercises to do and about making a food log to keep track of your daily intake. Right now, I am not really interested in toning my abs or anything so much, but the food log got me thinking…..Instead of using it the way the book said, I could use it to keep track of things that affect my weight and my sugar. So for a couple of days I wrote my food intake in a spiral notebook, then I got tired of writing everything over and over again. So I went through and created a food log on my computer. It has the day of the week, a place for the date, a place for blood sugar and weight, and spaces for all three meals and all three snacks throughout the day, then I printed out enough pages for four months. I began keeping track on May 16th. Now, three weeks later, I am still keeping up with it. I cut out all pasta and almost all breads. I also started eating a lot more fruits and vegetables. And you better believe I am searching the aisles for all kinds of sugar-free items……Just a note: I have found that sugar-free cool whip, sugar-free chocolate mint cookies, sugar-free vanilla wafers,  and the no sugar added chocolate quik are delicious :)……I don’t much care for the no sugar added ice creams or the Light and Fit low sugar strawberry yogurt.

Anyway, so far so good. Since I have begun to watch what I eat and take my medicines regularly, I have gotten my blood sugar down from the mid-300’s to an astounding 180-200. It has not been over 200 for the last five days. For me, that’s amazing! I will admit that I have faultered a few times and went off the eating plan. Those are the days that my sugar was over 190, but I will just mark those off as cheat days and leave it at that. As for my weight, I’ve only lost about three pounds, but at least my blood sugar is going down and that is the main thing I am worried about at this moment. I figure as long as I keep this up, the weight will begin to go down eventually.

The biggest influence for all this is my kids. They are getting older and their lives are changing. So if I want to be here to see their lives change and grow, I need to make some big changes in mine. Life is also beginning to come together for me as well, and honestly, I would really like to be around to see what happens.