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Category: Exercise and Diabetes

A Disconnected July

Chris Stocker

What a month July was.  There were so many highs, lows, ups, downs, and whatever other phrase you want to use.  My wedding was in the middle of the month, but my family flew into town the first week of July and that’s when the vacation in my mind kicked in.  I stopped going to the gym on July 3 because of the holiday the next day and then parents flying into town.  The week after the wedding was a relaxation week and I didn’t get to the gym at all that week either.  Then, the week after that I was flying up to Pennsylvania to spend time with family and have a little reception up there as well, so still no gym.

Since I’ve been back from PA, I haven’t made it back to the gym either.  Today is going to be my first day back in over a month, so this should be a lot of fun.

Obviously, by not going to the gym for over a month I have put all the weight that I lost, back on.  During this month long vacation, I didn’t eat very well either.  In the month of July I probably cooked dinner a total of 5-6 times and ate lunch at home maybe 2-3 times a week, the rest of the days were all eating out.

Also, during this time, my insulin supply was low, so it was pretty stressful not knowing where I was going to get my next round of insulin from.  My morning blood sugars have been crazy high since I went off the pump, so I have been dealing with that during the month of July.

Everytime I would try and sit down and write a blog post or read blog posts, or talk with people on Twitter or do anything related to the DOC, I never seemed to have any time to do so.

I am happy for all of the great things that happened in the month of July, but I am also glad that it is over and now that Amanda has started working again with the school year here, I have so much more time to do a lot of the things that I have been missing out on.

1,000 Down and A Lot More to Go

Chris Stocker

Last night’s gym trip led to 1,000 calories burned.  My daily goal is to reach the 500-600 mark and then once a week I want to hit the 1,000 mark.  This consisted of about 2.5 miles on the elliptical, 4.5 mile spin, a short jog and few other cool down exercises.

I knew that once I was able to get back into a real gym that I would become more motivated than using the at home exercise equipment that I have.  It’s tough to focus on exercising like a beast when your bike is in the same room as your home office, which you spend about 8-10 hours a day in working from. Read More

Free Gym Trial Day One

Chris Stocker

Amanda and I started our free trial at the new gym today. We were initially going to join a gym last month, but the costs were a bit high, but we were willing to pay them, especially with the wedding coming up in 3 months. We found another local gym that was a lot cheaper long term and didn’t seem to have so many juice heads when we went to visit it. I figured a one week trial and going there between 5-7 would give us a good idea of what type of people are in there and if it’s too crowded or not. Read More

Joining a Gym for First Time

Chris Stocker 3 Comments

Joining a GymI have been using my “home gym” for a while now, but I get the feeling that there is only so much I can do here and only so much weight that I can lose.  Every time I watch the Biggest Loser, I think to myself, damn if I just had access to that kind of stuff, I could shed this weight with no problem.

So, that is exactly what I am going to do, join a gym.  Amanda and I are going today to join a local gym, after some detailed research.  I wanted to find something around $20/month, but around here, that doesn’t exist.  There is a $10/month gym, but it is about a 20-25 minute drive away with local traffic, and I know that I will not want to drive there every single day.  Plus with gas prices, it would be a lot more expensive than the $10. Read More

The Biggest Loser Fails Again

Chris Stocker 2 Comments

the-biggest-loserI wrote at the beginning of the new season that I was going to watch the Biggest Loser this year because I never had really watched it, but thought that it might help keep me motivated. It has definitely done it’s job in that area. Seeing some of the contestants reach the 100 pound weight loss mark and seeing others at the beginning of the season and realizing that I now weigh more than them puts a little spark in me.

Read More

New Kettle Weight Workout

Chris Stocker 1 Comment

I started to fall off of my old exercise routine and I knew that I needed to get back into it, but I just really have not had much time to drive to the gym, work out for 30 minutes and then drive back home.  So, I knew that I was going to have to start exercising at home again.  I have a stationery recumbent bike in my house that I used to ride daily, but the batteries died out and do you know how hard it is to find D batteries?  Well, if you don’t know, it’s pretty damn hard.

I have had a kettle weight laying around my house for a while and I never really used it, so I figured what better time to start using it then right now.  And, let me tell you, this thing has been kicking my ass for the last 3 days.  I started this on Tuesday and have done it Wednesday and earlier today.  It is a short 8 minute workout, so there is no excuses for not having the time.  10 minutes out of the day is not that bad.  But, I feel like I am getting an hour workout in. Read More

Working at Home with Diabetes

Chris Stocker 1 Comment

You may remember last week I write about how I left my job at an interactive marketing agency to go back to running my own company full time.  There are a lot of risks that I have taken in doing so, but all risks that I am willing to deal with in order to reap the rewards.  One of the positive outcomes that I am already starting to see is better control of my diabetes.  Working at home with diabetes has become a lot easier for me than working away from home in an office.

First, all my supplies are right here.  There were plenty of times in the past when an infusion set fell out, and I forgot to pack a few extras in my bag and had to drive all the way back home.  Now, everything is either in the room I am working in or the next room over.  If an infusion set is bad or has fell out, no big deal, I have more right here with me.

The next diabetes related item that has improved is my eating habits.  I have been very strict with keeping a tight schedule while working at home and continue to have a lunch break from 12-1.  There is no more eating out because I “forgot my lunch at home.”  If there were no left overs from the night before, than I can simply spend the time to make a nice, healthy lunch as opposed to going out and grabbing a slice of pizza or a sub.  That is only lunch, dinner is an even better story.  Before, I wasn’t getting up until after 7 p.m. and I was always so tired to make a nice dinner.  Well, I typically end my day at 5:30 in order to start cooking dinner for when Amanda gets home from work.  We have been done eating and cleaning by 7 in the first week of doing this.

Next on the list of things that have been going better since I began working at home is the increase in exercise.  My exercise bike is 10 feet from my desk.  I have found myself just getting on the bike and riding for 30-45 minutes once a day.  There is no more excuses that I don’t have time to do it and that I am too tired to do it after I get home from work.  Starting tomorrow, I am actually going to begin riding the bike in the morning and get a good hour workout in before the day even gets started.

Finally, my blood sugars have been better because I am testing more, and honestly, I am just not as stressed out.  My blood sugars would get high throughout the day because I was so stressed at work.  Then, I would come home, and still have about another 4-6 hours worth of work to do and I wasn’t getting to bed until about 3 a.m.  This just was not good on my blood sugars at all.  I am also sleeping a lot better too.  I have gone to sleep by 11, almost everyday in this past week.  That is most likely due to change tonight, since I have a few deadlines for tomorrow.

Looks like the health reasons for going back to working from home and running my own company again are slowly taking shape.  The financial reasons, well, let’s just hope they stay on track as well.

Have a great night everybody.

Some Pretty Damn Big Life Changes

Chris Stocker 2 Comments

Today is February 1, 2012.  Not only is today about flipping over those calendars to the next month and doing a drumroll before seeing what the next picture or phrase or which cheerleader is going to be on the next month (or am I the only one that does that?).  Today is a very serious day for me.  A day of change.

As some of you may know, I own my own business, CSI Marketing Solutions, LLC.  Also, as some of you may know, I have been working at an agency for about 18 months.  This digital agency is voted best place to work just about every year and received hundreds of other awards a year.  It truly is an amazing place to work.  However, I have had a few opportunities come up over the past few weeks or months that requires a lot more of my time.  So, I have made the decision, starting today, to go back to running my business full time.

Before making this decision, there were so many different things that went through my head.  How am I going to pay rent?  How am I going to make my car payment?  How can I afford anything?  And most importantly, how am I going to get health insurance?  Then I started playing the what-if game.  What if I don’t have enough clients and I don’t make enough money to pay my bills and then I lose everything I have.  A good friend of mine said, “..you can’t play the what if game.  For every negative what if you come up with, there’s a positive what if on the other side. So you can go all night on the what if’s.”

I also felt that by making this decision to be able to make my own hours I can get more things in life accomplished.  For one, I can now go to the gym at lunch time or in the morning and begin to get back into shape and lose weight again.  Next, I no longer have an hour long commute each way, so I can be home earlier and I can eat dinner and be ready for bed earlier.  I can also spend more time being more involved in the DOC.

So, let me quickly get into the health insurance issue.  I am entitled to COBRA for 18 months, and the costs of it are about 1/3 of what I thought it was going to be, so I am extremely happy about that.

So, that is where I am.  Moral of the story?  If you want something, do it.  Stop thinking about it constantly and stressing about it and going back and forth.  Weigh your options, and make the best choice for yourself.

If You Want It, Go and Get It

Chris Stocker

The other day I saw a tweet from Rob Dyrdek, from MTV’s Rob & Big and Fantasy Factory.  I don’t remember the exact tweet, but I remember that I re-phrased it on Facebook and it has had me thinking about the tweet ever since then.  Basically, this is what I said, “There’s two types of people you can be.  Those that bitch about the shit you don’t have, or those that work hard to get the things you want.  I know which I am, which will you be?”

Ever since then, I have really been thinking about it.  Not just in my personal life, but in the business side of things as well. I then started relating it to my diabetes as well.  I always talk about how I want certain things related to diabetes, and I want to do certain things.  Well, it’s time to stop talking about them and doing them.  So, here are the top five things that I want and will work my ass off until I get to it.

  1. Omnipod – I’ve been saying for a long time that I want an Omnipod.  I have ripped out so many infusion sets from my wire being caught on the arm of my office chair.  Or a hassle to connect and disconnect when I’m at the beach and I want to go into the water.  The one and only reason that I am not using an Omnipod right now has nothing to do with insurance or coverage.  It is because I use too much insulin.  I would be changing sets every single day.  In order to cut down on my insulin usage, I need to lose weight.  When I was 60 pounds lighter when I was first diagnosed, I was using only about half of the insulin that I am using now.  I WILL work my ass off to lose that weight, so I can start using an OmniPod
  2. A1C below 6.5% – I am definitely not a fan of the A1C, nor do I get too upset when I see a high number.  I know the number is important and it gauges how the last 90 days went, but I know that I can always improve it.  Well, I want it to be below 6.5%.  This is something that is in my control and bitching and complaining about it is not going to accomplish anything.  Losing weight, eating better ,exercising, wearing my Dexcom constantly, are all actions that I can take to accomplish this.  I WILL work my ass off to lower my A1C to below 6.5%
  3. New Jeans – I don’t just want any kind of new jeans, but I want new jeans at the old size I used to wear.  I am not setting any unrealistic goal here.  I want to fit into the size jeans I was wearing about a year or maybe two years ago.  There is nothing better than losing weight back into an old wardrobe.  I have done it before, but I just went back and ate myself right back into the heavy wardrobe again.  I WILL work my ass off to be able to buy new, smaller jeans.
  4. Attend More Events – This year, I really want to attend more diabetes events.  The main reason that I haven’t been able to go to as many as I want to is because of financial reasons.  That will be the same issue this year, but I am working on ways for that not to be as much of an issue.  The few events that I do get to travel to every year are amazing.  I love spending time with everybody that I talk to online and meeting new people at these events.  I WILL work my ass off to be able to attend more events this year.
  5. Make a Difference in my Community – I have plans on being more active with my local government and local leaders on becoming more active with them and getting diabetes in front of their faces a bit more.  I was able to start on this last year, but did not have a lot of success, so I WILL work my ass off this year in order to make a difference in my community.
That’s it.  That’s a lot of things that I want to do that I kept talking about, and I have put some plans together to be able to get this stuff accomplished.
I’ll do a follow up shortly to see how I have done.

Lifestyle Changes – Day One

Chris Stocker

Diabetes Lifestyle ChangesToday started day one of my true beginning of a new diet.  As I told you yesterday, I am going on a pizza strike.  Not only a pizza strike, but all bad foods strike.  I had a lot of time to think about life things this weekend and my health was what on my mind a lot.  I realized that the way I am living, I won’t be living as long as I want to, unless I make some serious lifestyle changes.  I was able to do this a few years back and lost a lot of weight and had my A1C under 6.5 for a year straight.  I haven’t done that since, about 2-3 years.  The number one goal of mine for the rest of this month and then April as well is to pack a lunch everyday.  This part is easy because I create 5 inividual lunches every Sunday for the week, but I don’t always bring them, or when I do, I decide that I don’t feel like eating it.  Too bad, I’m eating it!

This is also a way to save money because I am not getting any younger.  There are plenty of things that I need in life that are more important than going out and buying a slice of pizza or a sub for lunch.  I am 100% totally dedicated to the diet and lifestyle changes this time.  Previous times that I did this, I was not as dedicated and it was just a half-ass effort, not anymore.

Today is day one, and tomorrow will be day two and that is exactly how I have to look at it.  Eventually it will be day 365 and I will have lost about 40 pounds.

Have a great Monday everybody.