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Month: June 2010

Tonight’s Main Event Fight – Diabetes vs Diabetes

Chris Stocker 1 Comment

Well, as I spoke about in yesterday’s post about missing the Roche social media summit, it sucked!  Luckily, this was a DOC event so of course our fellow friends were there tweeting everything good going on.  There seems to be a lot that was discussed and hopefully it will make an influence on decision makers minds and that things will get done.

The tweet that stuck out the most to me was from @saraknic.  I don’t think it was a tweet, and I don’t know how it was said or who it was said to, but Manny put the quote on Twitter, “No other disease fights with itself.”  This struck me big time, because it is something that I have been fighting for, to get everyone on the same page with the same goals.

Here is a perfect example, my girlfriend Amanda wanted to buy a bracelet with a charm on it, or a colored bracelet, not the rubber ones, but a regular one, and she was going to buy a red one because the is the “color for diabetes.”  Well, red is what the ADA uses, but IDF uses blue.  So which one is it?  Why is it even a question?  When you see the color pink, what is the very first thing you think of?  Exactly.  You automatically think about breast cancer.

Well, I don’t want to speak too much about things that went on at the event, because I really don’t know and I’ll be waiting to hear from all the people that were there.

But thank you Sara for bringing up such a great point!

No Roche Social Media Summit For Me

Chris Stocker 3 Comments

This morning I woke up at 7:00 am very excited to meet all of my fellow DOC friends.  I have been wanting to meet all of you in person for a long time and this was finally the time to do it and also get a chance to have our voices heard.  That excitement turned into sadness and disappointment very quickly however.

When I went to go pick up my rental car from Budget this morning, which was already paid for by the way, they told me that they would need to put a $500 hold on my card.  Well, 6 months ago I cancelled all of my credit cards because I am trying to pay them off, and I just came back from a weekend vacation for Amanda’s birthday, so $500 just sitting in my bank account for nothing is not something that I have.  I also don’t have a reliable enough car to drive to Orlando and back.

So, I am now sitting at home watching Law and Order: SVU.

I am very, very disappointed and will never use Budget rental car services ever again in my life.

This sucks

Absent Next Few Days

Chris Stocker 1 Comment

I will be traveling over the next few days for Amanda’s birthday.  I will be going to Cocoa Beach, FL and Cape Canaveral to go to Kennedy Space Center this weekend and then I will be driving back home and then driving back up to Orlando for the Roche Summit on Tuesday.  So basically I am driving 3 hours north, then back home, wait a day, and then drive 3 hours north again.  Kind of redundant, but Amanda has to work so I can’t just stay up there.

Since it is her birthday weekend, I will not be on Twitter or Facebook or blogging or anything.  I disconnect myself, or at least try to as much as possible.  So if you send an @reply to me or an e-mail, I probably won’t get back to you until Sunday night or Monday morning.

Have a great weekend everybody!

Meal Planning to Lose Weight

Chris Stocker

Yesterday I posted about how I am starting to log all of my blood sugars again.  That is not the only thing that I am logging.  I am also starting to log the foods that I am eating as well.  Meal planning and logging my foods helps me lose weight.  I am trying to keep my calorie intake to 1,200 calories a day.  I know that sounds like very few carbs, but I have done it before and I can still get all the nutrients that I need.  In order to keep track of how many calories that I am eating, I have to log everything.  You don’t really realize what you are eating until you right down every thing that goes into your mouth.  It also helps me stop eating things on the go and just random chips or cookies or something that I shouldn’t be eating.

Eating healthier like this does require some mental toughness for me because I am used too eating so much food that when I eat a normal meal, I get hungry a few hours later, so I need to create small, healthy snacks.  My favorite healthy snack is to have cucumber slices with a little french onion Lite dip.  It is healthy, and its under 75 calories, can’t beat that for a snack.

The items that I keep track of in my log are the type of food, calories, carbs, fat, and fiber.  Bottom line is that 1 pound is equal to 3,000 calories.  So if I cut out 3,000 calories from my diet, I lose one pound.  I tend to eat a low calories, high fiber diet.  I don’t cut down too much on the carbs, it just comes naturally.  Basically, if something has a lot of carbs, chances are it’s going to be high in calories also, so if I eat low calorie foods, the carbs will be cut as well.

Here is a picture of a normal, new lunch for me.  It consists of 9 grain sandwich thin, 2 slices of ham, 2 slices of cheese, mustard and 1 cup of salad with fat-free dressing.

What are your favorite snacks?

How Do You Log Your BG?

Chris Stocker 1 Comment

Last week I was asked what my average blood sugar was and I could not give a good answer.  I thought, hmm I can look in my pump, but wait, I don’t always input my sugars into there.  So then, maybe I can look at my meter, but oh yea, I use about 4 different meters so those averages would not be accurate.  Finally, I thought I can look in my logbook, but unfortunately it hasn’t been touched in about 3 years.  I’ve made plenty attempts to use an excel sheet but then I started just writing numbers all over the place and never in the right place.  I decided to start using a logbook again.

Right now I am just using the Bayer one that came with the Didget meter.  I am going to take it old school for about a month and write down every sugar, the time, and how many carbs with how many units of insulin that I am taking.  I had put a question out on Twitter to see how many of you still used a pen and pencil logbook and some of the answers I received were expected, “What is pen and paper?”.  Even though I am an internet marketing guy, pen and paper to me still use what works best.  Eventually I will probably switch over to using the iPhone to record all of my sugars, but I’m not to that point yet.

Logging my blood sugars is something that I haven’t been very good at doing since I was diagnosed.  I recorded every single blood sugar for about a year, but then I became too comfortable with my diabetes and didn’t do it as well. I thought, what’s the point of recording them, if I can keep good numbers it doesn’t make a difference.  Or I can just upload the results to the computer, but then I started using multiple meters and couldn’t get a good, accurate average.

I am also going back to testing 10 times a day and knowing what is going on with my blood sugars at all times.  I have about 6-7 CGM sensors left that expired a few months ago, but I am going to give them a shot anyway and see how accurate they are. To end this post, I am going to ask for your help and just answer a few questions in the comments:

  1. What logbook do you use?
  2. What app on iPhone do you use?
  3. What computer software do you use to log blood sugars?
  4. Do you log food info along with blood sugars?

I appreciate your help with this.

Weekend Recap – Few Too Many High BG’s

Chris Stocker

Good morning and happy Monday to everybody.  I hope you all had a good weekend.  I know I sure did.  I did that thing called relaxing.  Friday night Amanda and I went to Outback for dinner because I had a free blooming onion coupon, so seriously, who can pass that up?  Over the last 6 months Outback has become my favorite restaurant because of two meals that I get every other time I go, and they are amazing.  Ok, not too much about them, but I do love them.  Unfortunately, my blood sugar did not like them very much because my bg went as high as 435.  I took out my site and could tell that there was something wrong, it was very irritated.  After I put in a new site, my bg went down to a manageable 205 before I went to bed.

Saturday when I woke up, which wasn’t until 1:00 pm, I went and laid on the couch.  I have not slept in that late since I was in high school.  It felt so good to sleep that late and then wake up and do nothing.  If I ever sleep past 9 a.m. I freak out and feel like I already wasted half of my day.  I even took the time to sit on my couch and catch up on some reading.  I decided that I wanted to read some fiction and get my mind off of business and reading about what I do everyday.  I am a huge fan of the James Patterson books about detective Alex Cross.  I am reading the one called Cross, which I strongly believe I have read before, but about 3 years ago so I’m not sure how it ends, ha.  My bg’s all day were pretty good.  Even with eating Arby’s and having a few Heineken Lite’s for the UFC fight.

On Sunday I felt like I was a father even though I’m not.  I laid on my couch, drank a beer and watched golf.  Life can’t get much better than that for me.  The highest my bg went yesterday was about 225, which isn’t bad for the way my bg’s have been going.  The only other thing that I did, which I do every Sunday night is begin to plan out all my work for the week.  Well, not really plan it, but just brainstorm and write down every little thing that comes into my head, and then I try to make sense of it Monday morning.

Podcast Friday’s On Hold

Chris Stocker

Last week I mentioned that I will be posting a podcast every Friday.  This is going to put on a hold for a few more weeks.  There have been some scheduling conflicts over the past couple of weeks that have not allowed me to get good, quality material to post.  This will most likely begin after I get back from the Children with Diabetes event at the end of the month.

For now, it is time to go watch Team USA.  Have a great weekend everybody.

Weird Words How People Found My Blog

Chris Stocker 1 Comment

A few weeks ago I was running my monthly Google Analytics reports from the many websites that I manage.  I usually don’t look too much into the stats for this site because it is simply a personal site and the number of readers and subscribers doesn’t mean more money I make, unlike the other sites that I manage.  But I decided to take the time to look at some of the keywords that were bringing people to my blog.  Below is a list of the top 8 keywords that brought people to my blog and a short explanation of how I THINK it happened, and questions as to why and how people are even coming up with these search phrases.

Top 8 Keyword Searches

  1. Recent Misleading Store Ads – this one is pretty simple.  I had a few posts about how CVS was printing an ad that advertised a certain test strip on sale for a box of 25, but yet not a single store even had it in stock.
  2. Diabetic at Pei Wei – this one is a little weird.  Maybe someone was thinking of eating Pei Wei and they wanted to see if other diabetics ate there?  Not too sure, but I did find a Fired Up Friday post about places not having many drink options for diabetics.
  3. I am Diabetic and I still love to eat a lot? – Well, this one doesn’t make me feel too great about myself if that is how people are finding my blog.  I have a lot of posts on here about my weight though and my journey of trying to lose it.
  4. Is my life over when I am diabetic? – Short answer, NO, it’s just beginning!
  5. sexhollywood.blogspot.com – Ummm….ok?
  6. “Submit a guest post” – money – seo – Looks like somebody was trying to make some money off of my guest posting week.  No shame in it, submitting guest posts is great for SEO purposes, but I would expect a phrase like that on my business blog, Chris Stocker Inc, and not on here.
  7. Chick fil a diabetic – Ok, this one just weirds me out, sort of like the Pei Wei one.  Once again, I think the only post it could be about is the limited drink options.

So, these ones weren’t that bad, but there was about 1,000 other phrases, but these ones were just the most common out of them all.  What are some of the funniest / weirdest keywords you have had people enter your site through?

New Condo, New Start

Chris Stocker

I recently moved into a new condo and now I finally have everything moved in and set up the way that I want and am sleeping here every night.  Every time that you move it gives you a new start and a chance to get into better habits.  These habits can be anything from a better cleaning schedule, making the bed, better organized, better diet, work harder, and these are everything that I am trying to do.

The fridge is filled with healthy food only.  If there isn’t bad food in here, then there is no urge to eat at late at night.  The only urge that I really get is to have a bowl or two of Frosted Flakes at night for a snack.  Since moving in, I have been extremely motivated.  I have completed more work at home than I have in about 3 months I think.  I am eating a lot healthier.  My meals still aren’t as healthy as they can be, but I am only eating one serving, so I will start losing weight just by cutting back the 2-3 servings I usually eat.

I had a real rude awakening the other day that I went to the grocery store.  I never step on those scales at the store, but I was like, screw it I haven’t weighed myself in a couple months and my eating habits had been out of control.  As much as I don’t want to share this number I will….that scale said 267!  In 2004 before I was diagnosed I weighed 205, after losing the weight because of being sick for 3 months my weight went down to 175.  So, that is over 60 pounds gained in 6 years, not very good.

I don’t think that the Publix scale was very accurate because just yesterday, which was about 3-4 days after the Publix encounter, my scale said 244.  So unless I lost 23 pounds in 3-4 days, one of these scales is wrong. The picture says it all.

Thank You to All Guest Posters

Chris Stocker

First thing I want to do is thank all of my guest posters from last week. Lorraine and Caleb,  Scott Johnson, Cherise Shockley, Michale Hoskins , Rebecca Thomson, and Samantha Morris (Samantha’s has been re-posted and updated due to several technical difficulties).

These blog posts were amazing.  They are going to make my blog look boring now that you have to ready about my boring ole’ life again.  I received a lot of great feedback from readers that I have not had before.  Also, some of my readers that were not reading these other blogs were thrilled to be exposed to these other great blogs.

I encourage all the posters to take a look at all the comments on their posts because there are some great ones.

I will be doing another guest post week shortly, I am thinking about making it a monthly thing, as long as I have a guest post to post, I will post it.