When Reality Slaps You Upside The Head: Life Mis-Adventures
I've had a few rough years with injuries, dealing with old injuries, divorce, moving 1/2 way across country again, etc. Those things were an excuse, once I got settled in here, to kind of get in the mode of "I'm happy just to hang out here and live out my life." Turns out, that's not the best of approaches to healthy living.
I had blood work done back in Feb and everything was pretty much normal. Cholesterol wasn't high but it was at the upper limits of normal...same with A1C.
The VA doc called me in for follow up blood labs the last week of September when I was getting checked out for a knee injury. Results were less than stellar. I'm 59 (a month shy of 60), 5'8" and was up to 228 pounds, cholesterol was still "normal" and unchanged at 198 (HDL 60...so pretty good), A1C was 8.7 and glucose was 168.
BAM! I'm diabetic. And it's completely my own fault. I wish there was someone else to blame and someone else to fix it but there isn't.
So, suddenly I have a choice. Continue on and suffer the effects of diabetes or make some serious lifestyle changes. I've chosen not to gain more weight, make my situation worse, potentially go blind and have extremities amputated, etc.
First the diet changes... I have a friend who's really into the keto diet. I educated myself and found it happens to be a good plan to follow as a diabetic but I don't do a rigid keto diet. Pretty close. Almost no foods/drinks with any added sugar. That's tough...cuz I like sweet drinks and foods. But, even harder than cutting out the sugar is cutting out the carbs. I could live on breads and pasta and things like that. I'm finding perfectly acceptable low-carb substitutions for pretty much everything except breads. Still looking for something that's as tasty and good as a warm baguette that's fresh outta the oven with some butter. Overall, the diet change was a little difficult to figure out at first but it's starting to fall into place and it's really not the end of the world. There are actually some really good keto/diabetic friendly things like certain ice creams and sodas that are actually quite good. And there are other things like vegetables that you can pretty much eat as much as you want. And I like veggies so that's a bonus. It's basically just retraining myself on what I'm gonna eat.
The next thing I did was start exercising. I used my injuries as an excuse to avoid this because it always hurt. Waaa....
I started exercising. Simple things like walking and some basic sit ups and pushups to start. It's .27 miles each lap around my block. At first I could only manage to make it a quarter of a lap before my legs, knees and back started hurting pretty badly. I could manage about 2 or 3 situps and couldn't even do a complete pushup. After a week I was up to a full lap and 10 each situps/pushups. That was right around the first week of October. Today I did 7 laps around the block in under 30 mins and I'm up to 20 each situps/pullups. At weigh in this morning I was down to 212. 16 pounds off in roughly three weeks. I can actually see results now, too, which is very encouraging. It's one thing to see a number on scale, it's another to realize the web belt with my jeans has to be pulled tight about an extra inch from where I normally wear it.
So, just a word of warning for those who may need it. You're not gonna be in your 30s and invincible for your entire life. If you need to, start making the lifestyle changes now, while you want to, instead of later when you have to. I'm lucky I got the chance. Some people don't.
