Category: Diabetes Blog Week

Today’s post is all about exercise, or lack there of.  I am going to break this down into two sections.  One is what I am currently doing right now and the second part will be what I would normally be doing when I am not lazy.  Let’s start with what I am doing now, which will be very short.

I do not get much exercise right now at all.  I do some things to help me get exercise in ways that don’t seem like exercise.  When I go to the mall, I park further away from the store, unless it is raining of course.  I take the stairs instead of the elevator or escalator.  When I go to the mall with Amanda, I will just walk around the mall while she is in the same store for 30 minutes.  Every so often I will walk to the grocery store since it is right across the street from me.  I also play basketball every so often at my house, but nothing too intense.

When I do exercise, even a little bit, I feel so much better.  I may not be losing weight, but I feel like I am skinnier, mainly because my jeans now fit.

Now, the exercise model that I follow when I am not actually being lazy is a lot different.  When I do work out like this along with my eating that I talked about yesterday, I easily lose weight.  So why don’t I do this then?  First, in the morning as soon as I wake up, before any coffee, breakfast, or shower, I do 10 push-ups and 20 sit-ups.  Doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s more than 0 and it just gets the heart pumping after sleeping for 8 hours.  I will take a quick 5-10 minute walk during the lunch time just to get the blood flowing through the body after sitting at a desk for several hours.  Before dinner I will ride the bike for about 20-30 minutes and burn off close to 300 calories.  I will then do a cool down for about 5 minutes worth of a slow paced walk.  Finalized with about 50 push-ups and 100 sit-ups.

Some variations to this will be if I am playing tennis, I won’t ride the bike, or just cut the bike workout in half.  I don’t do much running, just because I can’t run very far right now because I am out of shape.  I can only run about 3/4 of a mile right now, that is embarassing, being that I used to run 3-5 a day.

Well, that is my exercise habits, can’t wait to read yours.

To Carb or not to carb?  Well I am a firm believer that you need carbs, bottom line.  I don’t eat too many carbs, but I wouldn’t consider myself to eat a low carb diet either.  It is just a little lower than what a normal person would eat.  Right now I am not very active in the physical aspect of my life, but I normally am.  When I am working out and playing basketball and tennis, I NEED a lot of carbs or else I am exhausted and get tired so quickly when I try to work out.

If I wanted to go out and eat 100 grams of carbs, oh well.  That is what I have insulin for. 1 lb = 3,000 calories, bottom line.  When I want to lose weight, I just need to eliminate 3,000 calories out of my life some how.  Whether I do that with a high carb count or a low carb count does no make a difference.  And there is nobody out there that is going to tell me otherwise because I have personally lost 30 pounds by a strictly low calorie diet.

Some things that I try not to eat very often is ice cream and pizza.  Pizza is the devil.  I have never had a good blood sugar after eating pizza.  I get an extreme high, usually in the high 300’s right after I eat and then an extreme low, usually 50-60’s depending on when I catch it, after the high comes.  I have tried plenty of different ways to figure out how to bolus for pizza and nothing works.  So I have cut it out of my diet, I only eat it once in a while.

Ice cream is in the same boat as pizza.  I don’t eat it very often.  One thing that I do eat a lot of is salad.  Salad and veggies are the success to my good blood sugars.  When I am eating healthy, I eat an extra bowl of salad instead of more rice or pasta or meat and then snack on veggies later on in the night.

Well, Diabetes Blog Week is almost over, but it sure was a great idea!

Wow, the biggest supporter.  This is a tough call because we are using the word “support”er.  I get a lot of “you need to do this”, “you should do this” from family all the time, but I don’t always get the, “how are your blood sugars”, “wow good job you didn’t have a blood sugar over 150 today.”  But I would have to say that I have 2 large supporters.  One is a worrier and is always concerned that I have enough insulin and supplies ordered and helps on the financial side of things.  The other is just my back up manager.  I’ll explain what I mean a little later.  But these two people are my mother and Amanda, respectively.

First, my mother.  Every time she calls she is concerned about my blood sugars and asking how much insulin I have left and testing strips and pump supplies.  She wants to make sure that my COBRA insurance is up to date and deposit money into my account to pay for it.  Yes, it gets annoying at times, but when you step back and look at it, it is all out of the goodness of her heart.  I must admit that I don’t always give her the truth about my blood sugars because I don’t want to hear the lectures that she is about to give.  This is one of the reasons that my mother is one of the two largest supporters.

The second one is Amanda.  Who knows where I would be without this girl.  Well, for one I’d probably be 30 pounds lighter.  It’s a common trait in my family (my dad, my brother and I) to gain a lot of weight once we fall in love.  I guess it’s because we’ve trapped our lady, so we can let ourselves go a little, ha.  In all seriousness though, she has saved me plenty of times.  Most recent example.  We were at Dick’s Sporting Goods and I was upstairs in the fishing and golf section and my blood sugar was going low.  I didn’t want to leave because I was talking to the golf guy about new clubs, so she went downstairs and bought me some candy and brought it up to me to raise my low.

Whenever we go anywhere, she not only grabs her wallet to put in her purse, but she is always filling her purse up with Skittles or other candies.  She will double ask me to make sure that I have enough insulin my pump before we leave on a long shopping day or walk through a park.  When we fly, she makes sure that all of my stuff is on the carry-on and not checked in.  She is my everyday backup.  She does also get on me a lot when I go for that second piece of cake.  Every time I see cake now I hear her voice saying “Christopher! that is a lot of sugar!”  We all know that I’m in trouble when I get the Christopher!

Of course there is always the DOC.  There are too many of you to name in here that have been supportive and helpful to me.  I don’t think there is a negative one out there.

Day 2 of Diabetes Blog Week is all about Making the Low Go. I have made it pretty clear on here before that my favorite food, well candy, to use is Skittles. The next closest thing is sour patch kids or the watermelon ones, mmmmm. I don’t get to eat these foods very often, so when my blood sugar is low, it gives me the perfect opportunity to indulge and also fix my low.

Unfortunately, the downside to Skittles is that they tend to spike my blood sugar after I eat them. If I have a regular size bag, I end up eating the whole thing which is too much. They are too good to stop once I start. That is why I like to buy the small packets that they hand out during Halloween because they are perfect sizes.

There are also times when my sugar is starting to go low and it is time for dinner, but Amanda and I are out. I get a craving for the same place pretty much all the time, Olive Garden. When my sugar is low, I love to eat OG, because I know I am about to pig out and eat a lot and my blood sugar is going to raise. It is crazy to me how much my blood sugar does go up when I eat one bowl of soup and 4-5 bowls of salad.

Well, that is all for me, those are the main foods that I use to raise my blood sugar. Juice only when I don’t have candy. Glucose tabs make me gag so I don’t eat them ever.

Can’t wait to read what all of you use as well.

I think Karen’s idea of running a diabetes blog week is a great idea and I am happy to be participating in it.  Day one is a day in the life of diabetes.  Well this post should be easy for me, being that the name of my blog is The Life of a Diabetic, that is what I blog about daily.  As diabetics, we all do the same things differently.  Sounds like it doesn’t make sense, but it does. We all test our blood sugar, but we use different meters and different times a day, etc.  So here is a normal weekday of my life.

7:00 am – Wake up and find some coffee like some sort of zombie before I do anything at all.  Usually, if I am making coffee I will test my blood sugar while the coffee is brewing.  That is the first test of the day.  Usually my blood sugar is a little high in the morning, about 170, so I will need to correct.  I don’t always eat breakfast in the morning, so there’s usually not a bolus for that.  Also, at this time I check my pump to make sure that I have enough insulin for the day.  If I don’t, then I will fill another reservoir and keep it with me for when it runs dry.

9:00 a.m. – Next blood sugar test.  This one is primarily used to check and see how the correction worked in the morning.  If I am going to have a mid-morning snack, this is typically the time that I will take it.

12:00 p.m. – Lunch time!  Time for another test and time to count the carbs in my meal to determine how much insulin to take.  I have to take a lot of insulin, mainly because I am so overweight.  I used to be on a 15:1 carb ratio, then it was 10:1, then it went to 8:1, now it is down to a 5:1 carb ratio.  That means for every 5 carbs, I have to take 1 unit of insulin.  On a typical day, I will eat either a salad or a sandwich and sometimes left over pasta.

2:30 p.m. – After lunch test.  This is just a quick test to see how well I counted the carbs and if the insulin did it’s job or not.  This is one of the two or three tests a day that I worry about because I want to make sure that I took the right amount of insulin.

6:00 p.m. – This is the time that I usually wrap up my work for a few hours and take a break to eat dinner, exercise, watch tv and just hang out.  Also, at this time I will change out my infusion sets if need be or change my reservoir.  A typical dinner for me definitely includes a salad and then whatever is for dinner that night.  Lately I have been eating too much and having 2 servings instead of just one, but that is all changing now because I have been out of control.

11:00 p.m. – Sometimes I test before this time, but I will definitely test at this time because it is when I start getting some more work done and I will usually drink an energy drink at that time.

The rest of the night is unpredictable because I can either stay up until 3:00 doing work, or I will just go to bed early.

Well, day one of Diabetes Blog Week is down, can’t wait to post tomorrow’s as well.